Sorry: given the way that the Louisiana Democratic party is more or less at the Cheyne-Stokes breathing stage at this point it didn’t really seem that high a priority.  Results here.  Bobby Jindal won, of course (and it wasn’t even close); but it looks like that the Lt. Governor and Secretary of State races are going to be closer.  Honestly, I don’t know enough about the state political situation to speak more about it…

Open thread.

Promoted from diaries.

The legacy media have paid undue attention to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) over the last month, as compared with the early tea parties. New media, on the other hand, have gone nuts over the relatively small, union-led anti-business protests. Unsurprisingly, many analyses of the two groups have tried to find commonality between them.

Except for superficial mimicry, despite politicians claiming otherwise the two groups are almost nothing alike, and the Occupy movement is doomed to failure.

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It’s Election Day today in Lousiana:

[T]he electorate will settle increasingly nasty bouts for lieutenant governor, secretary of state and the state board of education. Local ballots are dotted with contested legislative matchups, a handful of judicial contests in New Orleans, and parish offices in Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist.

Voters also must navigate a gaggle of state constitutional amendments and several local tax issues at the parish and municipal level.

Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Any voter in line by 8 p.m. should be allowed to vote. Louisiana requires voters to present valid identification.

The big national name on the ballot is Bobby Jindal, up for re-election to his second term as governor; Jindal, the nation’s first Indian-American governor, turned 40 in June.

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(Via Instapundit) It does not in fact surprise me that a person’s enthusiasm for Communism is usually [directly] proportional to how long it’s been since he or she had to live under it*:

[Estonian finance minister] Parts is vigorous, blonde, and athletic, but seems tired. He tries to conceal a yawn, explaining that he and his wife have just had their fourth child and nights have been short. “Comparisons are always difficult,” he says. “But when [Estonia] finally escaped from Soviet socialism, we were sick and tired of government centralism. We wanted precisely the opposite in all respects: We wanted a transparent state. A country that isn’t constantly intervening, nationalizing businesses, placing a bureaucracy above everything and imposing rules on people in every respect.”

But that’s because I know that Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people.

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The following video is from C-Span and was taped on October 18th.

During the 45-minute show, Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, discusses a myriad of topics and answers questions from callers. [See below for approximate timeline.]

• Program Start: OccupyWallStreet movement & unions’ role
• 1:40 - Trumka on #OWS: “We thought they’d try to marginalize us.”
• 2:15 - “I applaud them, we support them….A shining example of what democracy is all about.”

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It’s a lazy end of the week, it seems. Not much to cover, which is why I’m dipping down to chuckling at Sprint ending much-hyped unlimited data plans as its 3G network melts under the strain of iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. I’ll say this: it should be all the harder for Sprint to claim they’re in dire competitive trouble now. Especially as, again, T-Mobile really is in trouble, unable to get the iPhone.

MetroPCS stands to benefit should the AT&T/T-Mobile deal go through, standing ready to buy assets from AT&T as part of the deal.

So let’s get government out of the way. Even rural areas see the benefit.

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Yesterday I wrote two posts about Herman Cain’s stance on abortion, which may be read here and here. One of the good things about blogging is that it allows you to shoot from the hip, which allows instant commentary and feedback on news that the traditional media cannot provide. However, it is also sometimes one of the bad things about blogging, in that it allows you sometimes to shoot before the facts are all in. Having considered the information I received via email over the last day, I now realize that calling Herman Cain “pro-choice” was not just wrong, it was disastrously wrong, and for that I am sorry.

I have come to understand that Herman Cain has in reality done far more for the pro-life movement than I ever have. For instance, he donated $1 million of his own money in an attempt to encourage black voters to vote pro-life. His 2004 Senate campaign made life a central issue.  His work opposing abortion – especially among the black population – has led many leftist organizations to denounce him with hysterical, shrieking screeds; which is probative evidence of the fact that they were to some degree effective.

Herman Cain’s statements on abortion during this campaign season have not been as clear as they should have been. I have no idea why he couldn’t have re-issued his 2004 statement when questioned this year. There is no reason that someone possessed of pro-life convictions that are as firm as Herman Cain’s undoubtedly are should have stumbled badly enough to trip the radar of many pro-lifers. I am sure I am not the only one who hasn’t paid very close attention to Herman Cain’s career prior to three weeks ago, and did not know these facts about him and thus could not place his statements to Piers Morgan, David Gregory, and John Stossel in that context.

However, that is not an excuse for me. I should have done my research, and should not have called him pro-choice. He clearly is not. And I have absolutely zero doubt – none at all – that a man who would put up $1M of his own money to advance the pro-life cause would govern as a staunch pro-lifer.

I still have very serious doubts about whether Herman Cain would be a good President. But concern over whether he is really pro-life is not one of them.

Today the Senate voted for an amendment to give a subsidy to rich people. Not the first time, and it won’t be the last time. But is a perfect microcosm of today’s politics and the politics that got us into the housing crisis. Next time any of the Senate Democrats say anything about “Occupy Wall Street”, they should get asked a simple question: if you are so worried about the 99%, why are you subsidizing housing for the wealthy.

Here’s what happened. Senators Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer, who represent rich Democrats in New Jersey and New York respectively, offered an amendment to raise the amount of a mortgage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will backstop. The level that was backstopped by Fannie and Freddie was lowered to $620k, but they raised it again to $729k. So the government will offer a loan guarantee so that people can buy a $720k house. From Bloomberg:

The U.S. Senate adopted a measure that would raise the maximum size of a home loan backed by mortgage companies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to $729,750.

Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, offered the increase as an amendment to a spending bill today. The measure was approved less than a month after the limit on so-called conforming loans was automatically reduced to $625,500.

Now in the lefty narrative is that Republicans vote themselves more power and more money, but that’s not what happened here. There were 31 votes against this upper-middle class subsidy. All Republicans. Every Democrat voted for more federal money for rich people.

I swear to God, it’s like the paper remembers that one, perfect high that it got from torpedoing then-Senator George Allen’s re-election run in 2006, and has been chasing the dragon ever since:

• 2009: You all remember the McDonnell/Deeds gubernatorial contest, yes? You also remember how the WaPo went so all-in on pushing an absurd story that Jim Geraghty started calling it the Washington Bob McDonnell’s Thesis.
• 2011: The Rick Perry nonsense with regard to the name of a ranch that his family rented hunting rights to. Notice how that didn’t blow up after all?

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It’s not just Marco Rubio who may have gotten facts wrong about his family history.

But the Washington Post never put this on its front page.

An aide to Barack Obama says the candidate misspoke on Memorial Day when he told a group of veterans that his uncle was among the American troops who liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In fact, Obama’s great uncle took part in the liberation of one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald, spokesman Bill Burton said this afternoon.

She was elected in 1996, and is serving her 8th full term in Congress.

She believes her mission in life is to solve world hunger—whether its through foreign aid or food stamps here in this country that we can no longer afford. But if people start eating too much, well hold it right it there, because the federal government has a role in controlling obesity too.

She will subsidize anything. Tobacco, sugar, peanuts, milk, mohair, energy, Fannie and Freddie, the Postal Service, the DC metro system, small businesses, and the purchases of auto consumers (Cash for Clunkers).

Increasing the minimum wage? She is a fan. Price controls on prescription drugs? She co-sponsored the bill. Davis-Bacon? She supports it.

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It is not my attention to pile on Herman Cain or to get further into the abortion imbroglio covered in detail here at Redstate.  Instead, I want to take a moment to talk about the concept of “professional politicians.”

People love to hate politicians and often for good reason. And in our hyper-populist mood these days there is a scrambling to be anti-politician, anti-Washington, anti-government, etc.  Conservatives in particular are enamored of businessmen and figures who can plausibly claim to free from beltway and big government thinking.

Obviously, Herman Cain benefits from this dynamic; and Mitt Romney has – awkwardly and unsuccessfully in my opinion – tried to use this to his advantage.  There is one small problem with this idea: it is naive and unrealistic and leads only to problems for candidates and their supporters.

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