St. Charles, MO, is considering banning cussing in bars.

If Obama gets into the White House, will it be due to Jeri Ryan? Just an interesting example of how contingent life can be.

[Update a few minutes later]

In other Obama news, Christopher Hitchens has some thoughts on Obama and race.

…of Jonah’s book, by someone (shockingly) who has actually read it–Daniel Pipes:

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin’s misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the “fascist moment,” roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini’s original meaning of the term, of “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Fascism’s message boils down to “Enough talk, more action!” Its lasting appeal is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.

I’ve been arguing with people for decades that there is little useful difference between fascism and socialism/communism. Certainly what difference there was was pretty transparent to the user. I think that nine out of ten (if not ninety nine out of a hundred) times that the word “fascist” is used (particularly as an epithet) it is utterly mindless. As Pipes notes, “Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify ‘something not desirable.'”

Classical liberalism is as far as it’s possible to be from both fascism and socialism. While the notion of a one-dimensional scale to describe political views is ludicrous enough in its own right, the notion that, on such a scale, libertarians and fascists would be on the same side is demented, but many people (particularly ignorant leftists) continue to maintain this delusion.

I’d like to think that Jonah’s book will provide a corrective to this decades-long calumny, but sadly, as is often the case, the people who need to read it the most probably won’t. They’ll just continue to ignorantly fulminate about the cover.

[Late morning update]

Jonah writes in USA Today today about Putin’s role model:

While Time saw fit to linger on “the Russian president’s pale blue eyes,” they left out a fascinating rationale for Putin’s power grab. For much of the last year, the Russian government has been lionizing an American president who roughly seized the reins of power, dealt briskly with civil liberties, had a harsh view of constitutional niceties and crafted a media strategy, which critics derided as “propaganda,” that went “over the heads” of the Washington press corps.

George W. Bush? Nope. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Putin has routinely invoked FDR as his role model. “Roosevelt laid out his plan for the country’s development for decades in advance,” he gushed at a news conference last fall. “At the end of the day, it turned out that the implementation of that plan benefited ordinary citizens and the elites and eventually brought the United States to the position it is in today.”

“Roosevelt was our military ally in the 20th century, and he is becoming our ideological ally in the 21st,” Putin’s chief “ideologist,” Vladislav Surkov, explained at a state-sponsored conference commemorating the 125th anniversary of FDR’s birth.

There’s a rich irony here. For years, liberals have wailed about the moral hazard of Bush’s supposedly crypto- (or not-so-crypto) fascist presidency. And yet it’s FDR, Lion of American Liberalism, who, some seven decades after his death, endures as the role model for Russia’s lurch toward authoritarianism, if not fascism.

An inconvenient truth.

So, class, is Vlad a communist? A fascist? Both? Neither?

And if you don’t want to take Putin’s word for it, Hitler and Mussolini are involved, too.

Also, he notes the Bush derangement:

Back in the here and now, GWB has done nothing remotely like what FDR did (for good or for ill, some might say). Despite the constant bleating about his hostility to the rule of law and civil liberties, he hasn’t tried to, say, pack the Supreme Court, or round up hundreds of thousands of Japanese (or Muslim) people.

Bush’s critics certainly have a point that our leaders need to think about the example we set. It’s advice liberals should have heeded long ago.

Indeed, though I disagree that they’re liberals.

Securities pay $1 if candidate nominated for respective party. Go to Intrade to trade these. The images are deep linked so should reflect the most recent trades whenever you load the page.

McCain:

Giuliani:

Huckabee:

Thompson:

Obama:

Clinton:

It’s now six years into Michigan’s CCW law, and the rate of gun deaths in the state is in decline, while registrations are up. Here’s what I had to say about this about five years ago, a year or so into the program. As Glenn notes, this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with both the theory and available empirical evidence. Of course, the irrational clueless will always be with us:

Other opponents remain convinced that it has contributed to an ongoing epidemic of firearms-related death and destruction.

Shikha Hamilton of Grosse Pointe, president of the Michigan chapter of the anti-gun group Million Moms March, said she believes overall gun violence (including suicide and accidental shootings) is up in Michigan since 2001. Many incidents involving CCW permit holders have not been widely reported, she said.

The most publicized recent case came early in 2007, when a 40-year-old Macomb County woman fired from her vehicle toward the driver of a truck she claimed had cut her off on I-94. Bernadette Headd was convicted of assault and sentenced to two years in prison.

Hamilton said that even if gun violence has ebbed, it remains pervasive, tragic and unnecessary. At the least, a more liberal concealed weapons law means there are more guns in homes and cars and on the street, she said, and more potential for disaster.

Note: “she believes.” This is a faith-based religion. These people will never be swayed by reality.

If there’s any chance to head off a Huckabee disaster, it may be that Rush is the answer.

RUSH: All right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to take the gloves off here for just a second. Welcome back, by the way, to the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB Network. We’re getting a lot of people calling here, claiming to speak for all evangelicals. Even Huckabee himself said on Fox yesterday that he did not get all of the evangelical vote in Iowa. It is not true to say that the evangelical vote in this country is monolithic and in total support of Mike Huckabee. If you want to call and speak for yourself, feel free to do so. Most of the pro-life groups out there, by the way, not groups of religious people, but most of the pro-life groups happen to be supporting Fred Thompson. In another thing, we had a guy, Eric from North Carolina, who called and said and that the Home School Legal Defense Association endorsed Huckabee. That’s not true. One of their top dogs did, a guy named Michael Farris, but the association did not. You can go through their website and you will find a lot of critical articles on Huckabee, re: home schooling. They had a press release saying that Farris’ endorsement is not an endorsement from them. This is a guy that accused me of deceiving people. You can call here, you can say what you want, but be very careful, because I am an encyclopedia. If you’re going to start making claims here, we’re going to find out about it.

He then proceeds to take them to school.

There’s still time to educate the evangelical (true) conservative voters in South Carolina, and here’s hoping that a combination of Rush and an energized Fred can head him off at the pass in the next few days.

[Late evening update]

Fred is South Carolina bound. Send some money, if you believe in the cause, and can afford it.