The Census Bureau has released the poverty rate for 2007, which edged up 0.2%. The 2007 rate of 12.5 is slightly higher than the Bush 43 average of 12.34.

Poverty Average By Presidency (1959-2007):
Ford: 11.77
Carter: 11.93
Nixon: 12.04
GWB: 12.34*
Clinton: 13.29
GHWB: 13.83
Reagan: 14.08
Johnson: 15.60
Kennedy: 20.80
Ike: 22.30**

*(2001-2007)
**(1959-1960)

1. Obama’s Abortion Extremism, by Robert George, Public Discourse

2. The Campaign Takes a Strange Turn, by Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media

3. Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?, by Orson Scott Card, Meridian Magazine

4. McCain for President, by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

5. Smells Like Socialist Spirit, by Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

If you’re in the Memphis area this weekend, come visit the Haunted Web of Horrors, a huge, 13,000 sq ft haunted house with two separate haunts — The Asylum and The Darkness. All the actors and operators are volunteers, and the ticket sales benefit Youth Villages.

That was me last week, just sitting down to get my face painted for the part of a twisted autopsy doctor in The Asylum. And below is one of me in costume for The Darkness, standing with some of the other actors:

Watch the promotional video:

It looks like the “Memphis and Shelby County Democratic Club” is using a photograph I took of Jake Ford to promote the Obama/Ford ticket. Don’t they know Obama is running with Steve Cohen this year?

I wish I hadn’t been triple-booked tonight, because I would have loved to confront Jackson Kibitzer/Baker at the SPJ forum on media Presidential coverage. Fortunately, Mediaverse live-blogged the event; I’m particularly interested in this excerpt:

7:30: Asked if he feels if the media invaded Joe The Plumber’s privacy by exposing his private details and whether he consented it, Baker said he invited the scrutiny because he asked a question of Obama that could have been politically advantage and the media was right to inspect his public image. Baker said that was a classic case of the media doing its job since McCain used him as a test case for his own agenda.

I’d like to have clarification on what “could have been politically advantage” means.

Still, Baker thinks Joe the Plumber — a private citizen — “invited the scrutiny” of his “private details” because he asked a question that provoked a controversial answer from a politician passing through his neighborhood?

Baker thinks the media was right to inspect Joe’s “private details” because a second politician seized upon that candidate’s gaffe to advance his own campaign?

And yet Baker thinks it “ain’t good” for the media to investigate an actual, prominent public figure who may have fathered a child with a paid campaign staffer (who apparently had no prior experience doing the job) while still married to his seriously-ill wife, may have been spotted visiting the child under the cover of night, and may have continued to lie about the whole scenario, while simultaneously being (seriously) considered for U.S. Attorney General?

Astounding.

It appears to be Kibitzer/Baker’s contention that private citizens who embarrass Democrats should be subjected to exponentially greater media scrutiny than public servants who engage in seriously unethical behavior but happen to be Democrats.

Kibitzer/Baker says “everything [I] do is boiringly ideological,” but he’s the predictably Leftist shill.

RELATED POSTS:

• MEMPHIS LIAR CREEPING INTO NOCTURNAL SHADOWS
• FAMILY MATTERS
• THE EDWARDS HAS NO CLOTHES

INSTEAD OF HOUNDING JOE THE PLUMBER: “If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story….”

The Original Mud Puppy says, “I don’t respect commentary from anyone that refers to Barack Obama as Barry, BO, or BRCK BM.”

Since his apostles continue to have difficulty with my designation, please allow me to explain.

I started referring to the Junior Senator from Illinois exclusively as BRCK BM on February 28th, giving him the same honor the Hebrews reserved for YHWH.

Such reverence was necessary because his religious followers objected to BRCK BM’s full name being spoken or written, since using his given name was “an obvious attempt to associate him with The Great Muslim Menace.”

Hoping to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, the Democratic Presidential Candidate’s name had to be handled with extreme care and reverence. Unfortunately, it appears even this considered, controlled measure has been judged inadequate. But next to Chimpy McBu$Hitler — the commonly-accepted Leftist term for our current President — BRCK BM stands up pretty well.

Still, I fully suspect the Left will continue to preemptively reject conservative commentary no matter how we refer to BRCK BM — named, unnamed, nicknamed, This One, That One or simply The One. It’s just another excuse to ignore and/or prosecute those who disagree… until that blessed Red Dawn when The Fairness Doctrine silences us permanently.

Colin Powell had no choice but to endorse BRCK BM if he wanted to rehabilitate his career and make an opening for himself in the Leftist super-majority everyone is expecting to seize Washington. His reputation took a severe hit from the flawed intelligence included in his U.N. presentation on Iraq, so Powell’s only option was to endorse the one candidate who has come to symbolize the anti-war movement, someone who wasn’t forced to consider the threat, weigh the evidence and make a responsible decision. Just as they’ve done with John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Biden, the radical Left will eventually swallow hard and largely forgive Powell’s trespasses.

If General Powell were to endorse John McCain, the Left would have shrugged him off, nobody would have listened, and his situation would have remained unchanged. Endorsing McCain certainly wouldn’t have landed Powell a free, 30-min commercial on Meet the Press.

So I believe Gen. Powell when he says race wasn’t the main factor in his decision. But I must say his stated reasons leave much to be desired; Powell had to endorse an inexperienced, radical Leftist whose career was launched by anti-American racists, domestic terrorists and the Chicago machine… because John McCain has moved the Republican Party too far to the right? Please.

UPDATE: The knee-jerk Leftists over at Post Politics assume I wouldn’t have questioned Powell if he had endorsed McCain, as if I’ve been slavishly devoted to McCain rather than critical of both campaigns. I can’t be too hard on those commenting, since they’re ignorant of my actual position, being too lazy to actually visit the site and engage in dialogue here; it’s much easier to comment via a third-party’s excerpt and make an uninformed judgment.

Jon says “it can’t possibly be that he honestly thought Obama was the better choice. For, ya know, all the reasons he actually gave us.” If Powell had given us a plausible reason, sure. He didn’t.

Bobby Blevins says, “It was about more than preserving power and influence. I bet you would have accepted his answers on Meet the Press completely if it had been for John McCain.” If in your hypothetical situation Powell had endorsed McCain, and was actually given 30 minutes on Meet the Press for what otherwise would have been considered a non-story, I imagine Powell at least would have been forced to come up with plausible reasons for supporting him.

In such a hypothetical situation, Powell could have said: McCain’s the most moderate Republican Presidential candidate in decades; he’s got a long history of exemplary service to this country; he puts his convictions ahead of his party and consistently works across party lines; he’s been an effective, productive and influential Senator; he has a wide and deep knowledge of foreign affairs; he helped set the table for victory in Iraq by criticizing the Bush administration’s handling of the war and supporting the new strategy; he was prescient in his assessment of Fannie Mac and Fannie Mae; he has a clear understanding of the threats presented by radical Islam and dictatorial regimes around the world; he’s been an advocate of vulnerable populations such as veterans and the unborn; he’s not an ideologue; he’s a leader in the charge against wasteful spending; he’s not set in his ways and is willing to admit error; etc, etc.

Alternatively, Powell could have given solid reasons not to support McCain. He could have talked about McCain’s moral failings, his inconsistency, his uneven temperament, his shallow understanding of economic theory, his reckless policies on campaign finance and immigration, etc, etc.

Instead, Powell invented this BS about McCain being too conservative and cited some unattributed comment about Muslims and a photograph he saw in a magazine. Meanwhile, by some grotesque insult to circular logic, he considers BRCK BM qualified to be POTUS by nature of his having campaigned for two years, while Gov. Palin is unqualified to be VPOTUS. This is not the sober assessment of a disinterested individual.

UPDATE II: A second-degree Instalanche. Welcome friends of Glenn Reynolds; he would have linked directly, but since I’ve never had an abortion… well, let’s just say it’s one of those little-known secrets to getting linked by the big libertarian blogs.

OTHERS: Donald Sensing

SURPRISE: “Colin Powell will have a role as a top presidential adviser in an Obama administration, the Democratic White House hopeful said today.”

Left Wing Cracker writes: “When I grow up / I want to write just like The Rude Pundit. I have wanted SOMEBODY to say this since 1981…”

Since 1981, Left Wing Cracker has wanted a Democratic Presidential candidate, in a televised debate, to encourage the Republican candidate to concede defeat prior to the election, to preemptively claim a landslide victory, to refer to the opponent’s anticipated defeat as a beheading, to repudiate the service of Vietnam War veterans, to reject any mention of left-wing domestic terrorists, to reveal perverted ideations about public exposure and necrophilia, to describe sexual encounters with the skulls of public servants (both living and dead), to detail homosexual acts to be performed on him and his running mate, and to describe plans to have his administration sodomize a Governor and members of her family?

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