Obama...is part of a great moral story involving aspiration, faith and the struggle for racial equality. It is the story of lives and wages stolen by fraud and violence, of families broken at the auction block, of millions who died with their hopes unfulfilled, of millions who never abandoned hope. The story of self-evident truths greater than the flawed men who put them to paper, and of courageous men and women who claimed those promises in fact and in law.

This is the reason I will set my sons before the television set to watch Obama's speech. Because it is not "some men" but "all men." Because a historical journey that began in the Middle Passage can end in the Oval Office. Because a "dream deferred" can be fulfilled.

I won't mock his swooning for Barack; his emotions are up to him. His grasp of facts, though, is a problem.

Gerson appears to be confused, and writes confusingly, about how Americans move up the ladder. He assumes upward mobility has stopped.

Inequality is inseparable from liberty in a society that rewards striving -- but inequality becomes morally unjustifiable in the absence of economic mobility. America cannot accept the existence of a permanent underclass without altering its defining ideals.

Here's the not-secret formula to success in America: study and learn, work hard, make your own luck, don't get addicted, accept help from friends and draw your strength and purpose from faith and family. Works every time and at every level, especially for the poor.

Worked for Obama, despite being abandoned by his father.

Gerson babbles about Slavery, Katrina, Unity and Justice? Gosh, Gerson, sit down and STFU.

"Permanent underclass"? No country has ever done more to build a ladder to help individuals climb up than America.

Obama can serve as a role model if he tells the truth about his own success, not some typical leftist BS about "inequality" as if it's Archie Bunker's fault that some Americans are poor. The party of the teachers unions ought to think about how to make school harder if they want to increase upward mobility. Instead, they want to gut NCLB because it's too hard on teachers.

Here's what Obama ought to say: Try crackin' a book instead of bookin' some crack.

And maybe Obama could thank his mother. She deserves more credit than he does.

Charlie Wilson -- he of "Charlie Wilson's War" fame -- rallied a midday gathering of Texans Monday with a call to end the war in Iraq. The former Texas congressman said the U.S. should have kept its focus on Afghanistan and never gone into Iraq.

... "We should be led by Osama bin Laden," he said, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean Obama and Biden."

Biden has described himself as a 30-year friend of a key figure in the Rezko trial who's pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing.

When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden's Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.

In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals.

On the day Cari's name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was to have hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Chicago. Cari was a no-show at that July 25, 2005, event.

Offering Cari a vote of confidence at the time, Biden said, "All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he's an honorable guy, but I don't know anything beyond that."

...Two other donors whose names surfaced in the Rezko case -- Chicago lawyers Myron "Mike" Cherry and Anthony Licata -- donated to Biden's U.S. Senate campaign, as well. Cherry has given Biden $5,900, while Licata gave $1,000. Neither Cherry nor Licata has been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

Earlier this year, in a bid to distance Obama from Rezko, the Illinois senator's campaign fund gave away to charity an amount equal to what had been contributed to the Democratic presidential hopeful by Cari, Cherry and Licata.

But the truth will set you free, Gary. Here is an excerpt from "Macroeconomic forecasts and microeconomic forecasters," a 2002 paper by economist Owen Lamont, published in the prestigious Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Click here to download it from Lamont's website at the Yale School of Management. This is my source for what I said about Shilling. Beginning on page 270 we find:

One practice is the “broken clock” strategy, which consists of always forecasting the same event. An example in the sample is A. Gary Shilling, a well-known recession-caller. Throughout the 1980s, Shilling continually predicted recession. In 15 out of 18Wall Street Journal surveys in which he participated 1981–1992 (data which are not used elsewhere in this paper), his year-ahead long-bond yield projection was the lowest among all forecasters. Fig. 1 shows GNP growth forecasts published in Business Week (various issues). As can be seen in the figure, 8 out of 10 times his forecast is below consensus, and he is often the extreme pessimistic outlier (when he is optimistic in his forecast for 1972, he is also the extreme optimistic outlier). Keane and Runkle cite Zarnowitz’s (1969) finding that in a survey including non-professional forecasters, “a number of the occasional forecasters submitted extreme and rather unreasonable predictions” as an example of “inaccuracies due to lack of proper economic incentives” of the forecaster. Yet it is hard to describe Shilling’s forecasts as anything, but “extreme and rather unreasonable”.

Shilling also provides direct anecdotal evidence on the forecasters’ manipulation of perceived ability by feeding his clients selected observations into the R function. The following abstract is taken from the 1987 Wall Street Journal index:

A. Gary Shilling & Co., an economic consultant and investment strategist, recently mailed clients material that included a copy of a Wall Street Journal article with a paragraph showing that Mr. Shilling had made the best forecast of 30 years treasury bonds in a survey published about a year ago; but he covered up a paragraph noting that Mr. Shilling was tied for last place with his bond forecast of 6 months ago (1/26-23; 3).

Note that Shilling is not an outcast among forecasters: he is frequently quoted in the financial press, and has run his own firm for more than 10 years, a firm which in 1992 employed 18 people and had US$ 2 million in annual sales.

John Edwards has been barred from making a speech at the Democratic Convention because he had an adulterous affair and lied about it.

In his place, Bill Clinton will be speaking.

What am I missing?

"All the King's Men," 1949

Best line: "Look, Willie, you yell at them too much. Just tell them you're going to soak the rich guys." - Advice to the governor-to-be on how to give a political speech

Best line: "Someday we're going to have a Negro president. After that we're going to do something for that other minority and elect a woman." - Former Democratic president to the convention

Best line: Earl: "Would you still love me as much if I wasn't the fine governor of the great state of Louisiana?" Blaze: "Would you still love me if I had little tits and worked in a fish house?"

Best line: "What's behind Bob Roberts? I don't see anyone at home. I will say once or twice in our debate I detected the odor of sulfur in the air." - Roberts' opponent on his flaws

Best line: "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep f- everybody till they're all the same color." - Bulworth on the campaign trail

Best line: "What do we do now?" - McKay, after winning the election

Best line: "The trick is to know what the people want and then know what they will settle for." - Skeffington

Best line: "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked. I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause, even if the room gets filled with lies like these and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place." - Smith at a low point in the filibuster

Best line: "I'm going to tell you something really outrageous. I'm going to tell you the truth." - Gov. Stanton at a rally.

Best line: "Some speechwriters have the tendency to become what is known as 'paranoid.' Just because someone seems interested in her doesn't mean they are after her 'secrets.' " - Kevin lecturing Julia

Update... Richard Ridgeway has the best of all.

"The Ghost Breakers" 1940

Best line: Geoff Montgomery (played by Richard Carlson) explains zombies. "...It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring." Larry Lawrence (played by Bob Hope) responds: "You mean like Democrats?"

I found this in the Washington Post regarding Fannie Mae and thought you'd enjoy it. I'm a financial journalist, so I can understand how a copy editor who regularly edits say political copy or other stories might not understand mortgage matters. But this was a hoot, nonetheless:

Freddie Mac, for instance, no longer finances no-money-down mortgages, nor does it continue to buy or guarantee mortgages given to people who have failed to document their finances. Fannie Mae has withdrawn from the market for all-day loans, which are considered risky because they require less documentation than traditional prime loans.

Of course they meant "Alt-A" loans, not "all-day" loans.

(If you post this, please don't credit me. I'd hate to point this out, then find a similar egregious error in my own reporting!)

...America "would become France" if a certain bill now in Congress -- which would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized -- ever became law. ...this bill would in most cases take away an employee's right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment.

...You better fight to stop this undemocratic bill. I'm not the only one who thinks the proposed law violates long-established principles of democracy. ...George McGovern, a former Democratic senator and a champion of organized labor, called this bill what it really is -- "a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor."

To my astonishment, most CEOs in America are unaware of this planned hostile takeover of their human resources. I am retired, so this is not business for me. It's strictly personal. I care deeply about the competitiveness of American companies and our system of free enterprise.

Last night my wife mused that the Democratic ticket sounded like Osama bin Laden. Took me a second, then I understood.

Obama Joe Biden

Obama and Biden

Obama bin Biden

Osama bin Biden

Osama bin Laden

LINDAU, Germany -- Globalization and technology have increased income inequality around the world, four Nobel Laureates in economics argued, and governments should intervene to try to help those at the bottom.

Meeting on a picturesque island in southern Germany, the Nobel laureates focused Saturday on the growing gap between rich and poor, which has become a big issue in elections around the world, including the U.S. presidential race. The discussion focused more on broad themes than detailed solutions. But the main thrust was clear: Free markets aren't always fair, and economists should help governments figure out how to make them fairer.

Americans who lack health insurance will spend about $30 billion out of pocket on medical care this year, but others -- mainly the government -- will end up covering another $56 billion in costs, according to a new study.

The tab to cover all the uninsured would be $208.6 billion -- $122.6 billion more than this year's projected total -- mainly because people with insurance tend to use more health-care services, the study found.

The report from researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the Urban Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., is to be published Monday in the journal Health Affairs online.

Obama recently said that he would "require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term -- more than double what we have now." Note the verb "require" and the adjective "renewable."

...For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon Jan. 20, 2009.

...There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today's politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, "saving the planet," and promising edicts to "require" entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign's scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: "Where's the outrage?" In this year's campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?