As you may know the members of the Watcher’s Council each nominate one of his or her own posts and one non-Council post for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this week’s Council nominations is here.
With the sad departure of Done With Mirrors from the Watcher’s Council there’s a spot available. If you have a blog of your own, please consider applying for a position. If you’ve applied before try again. The rules and responsibilities are here.
Bookworm Room, “Obama wants the government to redistribute wealth”
I’m afraid that Bookworm is fighting the last war in her concerns about socialism. Socialism won. A modern state with modern regulatory apparatus or a modern military can’t be maintained on the basis of a head tax and user fees alone and anything else is socialism. As Willie Sutton said about robbing banks, we tax the rich because that’s where the money is. I think there are perfectly reasonable concerns that we’re taxing one group of the rich (who are producing more wealth) to give to another group of the rich (who aren’t). But so few Americans would want to live under a state of the sort that prevailed, say, before the American Civil War that condemning socialism is hardly worth the spit.
Joshuapundit, “A Spectator At The Orgy”
Freedom Fighter isn’t one bit happy about the manifest bias of professional journalism and its impact on the presidential race. I don’t think he should be too concerned: within a very few years professional journalism as we’ve known it for the last half dozen or so decades will have ceased to exist.
Hillbilly White Trash, “The gap between the media’s version and the actual truth grows wider”
LC notes that the reports of the election already being over are greatly exaggerated and that in places with early voting it’s proceeding at about the level of past quadrennial elections and the split between presidential candidates is very, very close. I continue to think that the fundamentals favor Obama but I’m skeptical of predictions of an Obama landslide whether in popular vote or electoral vote. I think he’ll be lucky if he receives a majority of the votes cast, an achievement that has been denied to Democratic presidents for the last several decades.
Cheat-Seeking Missiles, “Is a Barack Victory Predestined?”
When I saw the title of his post I thought that Laer was asking whether the outcome of the election were a foregone conclusion (which I think it isn’t) rather than whether it were predestined (which I definitely think it isn’t but as it happens Laer is as good as his word and considers whether an Obama Administration is actually predestined and what its prospects might be.
The Colossus of Rhodey, “We’re tired of it already”
Hube takes a Philadelphia Daily News columnist to task for the false claim that the McCain campaign is engaged in race-baiting.
Soccer Dad, “The campaign and israel: take 3029”
Soccer Dad posts on the American Jewish vote which no one doubts will go overwhelmingly to Obama for any number of reasons.
The Razor, “The Good Daughter”
Scott relates the story of scattering his in-laws’ ashes on a favorite Delaware beath, closing a chapter in his and his wife’s lives.
The Glittering Eye, “Both Candidates Suck”
In my submission this week I explain my dissatisfaction with both presidential candidates.
Well, I’ve decided which posts I’ll vote for this week. Which posts would get your votes?
Nice call on the Bookworm post. Socialism has lost its spectre in a world in which redistribution occurs all the time and after a supposedly conservative administration that signed in the drug funding law and mandated via the waging of the Iraq War some of the biggest redistributions of all.