The talking point of the day: Sen. John McCain does not know how many houses he owns.

In a classic gaffe, he tells a reporter to check with his staff; he just doesn’t know. The McCain campaign says “at least” four. Newsweek estimates seven.

Politico has the story that everyone is linking to.

Almost immediately Obama and his favorite surrogate, Gov. Kaine, went on the attack. Here’s Obama’s attack:

At a campaign appearance in Chester, Va., on Thursday morning, Obama said: “Somebody asked John McCain, ‘How many houses do you have?’ And he said, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. True quote: I’m not sure, I’ll have to check with my staff. So they asked his staff and he said, at least four. At least four! …

“If you’re like me and you’ve got one house – or you were like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so that they don’t lose their home — you might have a different perspective. By the way, the answer is: John McCain has seven homes. So there’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world and what people are going through every single day here in America.”

And the McCain response, also from Politico:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in response: “Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?”

Okay, standard political boilerplate on both sides.

Here’s two truths that the McCain campaign can’t say: one, it is Cindy McCain’s money and not his. Therefore, he doesn’t know how she spends it. It is possible, even likely, that the senator has not even been to all of these houses. Most likely they are investment properties, which have full-time tenants. As for the homes that the senator and his wife actually use… let’s say it is three. If McCain says three and it turns out there are two or three or four more investment properties, then it looks like he lied about something he should automatically know the answer to. He is too smart a politician to guess. So the classic senatorial “check with the staff” dodge. Maybe Cindy’s accountant knows…

Second, McCain is not the richest U.S. Senator. And not the second richest either. Does John Kerry know how many houses his wife owns? What about Ted Kennedy? Or West Virginia’s senator John D. Rockefeller IV? People who lives in glass houses and forget how many glass houses they live in…

For better or for worse, the senate is a rich man’s club. This is largely due to campaign finance laws, which limits how much other people can give you but doesn’t limit how much you (or your wife) can give to you, and partly due to a kind of “House of Lords” tradition. (Of course, McCain is to blame for last two iterations of “campaign-finance reform.)

Finally, McCain had one good answer open to him when asked how many houses he owns: None. My wife owns them all.

A lot of guys can identify with that.

Barrack Obama’s wife says that when he is president “he will make you work.” Well, it looks like it is Obama himself who will have to work to be president.

The coronation has been put on hold.

The latest Zogby/Reuters poll shows McCain leading Obama by five points–the first time that the GOP candidate has been in the lead since Hillary dropped out.

Support for Obama seems to be sinking across all categories:

The dip in support for Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, cut across demographic and ideological lines. He slipped among Catholics, born-again Christians, women, independents and younger voters. He retained the support of more than 90 percent of black voters.

“There were no wild swings, there isn’t one group that is radically different than last month or even two months ago. It was just a steady decline for Obama across the board,” Zogby said.

Notice how Reuters works in the first black president bit? That gambit has two prongs: If Obama is winning it shows that he is a different kind of leader and can’t be held to ordinary standards and if he is losing, liberals can blame the voters for being racists.

I’ve met dozens of liberals in the past few weeks who bring up the race issue. Is America ready for a black president? they ask portentously, like their crystal ball is showing them something they don’t want to see. Or America is such a racist country, they say. Look at all the hicks in West Virginia and Kentucky that voted for Hillary. And so on. (Of course, the real racists are liberals living in major coastal cities running “affirmative action” programs for colleges, corporations and city agencies. But I digress.)

Strangely, I hear none of this America-is-racist-and-not-ready-for-a-black-president talk from black Democrats. A concert promoter, who is politically independent, says he is proud of Obama, the way the Irish were proud of Kennedy. That sounds right to me. I remember my older Irish relatives fondly talking about Kennedy in the 1970s and 1980s–long after he had been killed in Dallas. As for the racist bit? Well, Obama is going to win, he says, and then we will see how racist this country is.

At the Capitol Hill Cigar Lounge, a nearly 100% black establishment on Florida Avenue, I took an informal poll. Everyone supported Obama, except for one off-duty policeman. No one thought that racism was going to cost Obama the election, though a few ventured that some racist might shoot him before he is sworn in. (Kennedy again.) Yes, they thought racism was a problem. But it hadn’t stopped them and wouldn’t stop Obama. Okay, it is not a scientific survey. But it is interesting how black liberal opinion in D.C. differs from white liberal opinion in D.C. — and which one is the more fatalistic.

So why is Obama slipping in the latest Zogby poll? Its not racism, it is the economy. McCain leads by nine points (49-40%) over Obama on that issue, which is the no. 1 issue for a large plurality of voters this year.

Unfortunately for Obama, gas prices have become a proxy for the economy. The higher pump prices climb, the more people think the economy is sinking. McCain’s flip-flop to support offshore drilling showed sympathy. It was translated as: He is willing to fight the establishment to improve the economy for average people.

By contrast, Obama couldn’t depart from liberal orthodoxy (which openly favors high gas prices because it will force us to change the type of fuel we use in our cars). He finally managed to say something along the lines that while he favors higher prices, he thought prices climbed too fast. Huh? Later, he favored some sort of drilling as part of package involving more subsidies to alternative energies. … His flip-flop wasn’t dramatic enough and was weeks too late. Hence Obama is losing on this issue.

Reuters wants to attribute McCain’s rise to his attacks on Obama. McCain’s “attacks” have been gentle. It is just that anything short of worshipful deference strikes liberal reporters as harsh. It is a shame they don’t treat him that a regular candidate; the criticism might make Obama better.

Still, the Zogby polls shows that issues matter more than most journalists want to admit.

And this year, so far, high gas prices are the issue and Obama is on the wrong side of it.

Apparently Obama did so poorly in his Rick Warren outing that his surrogates (whoops, reporters from major American papers) are parsing “Get Smart” references.

In that 1960s series, itself a spoof on James Bond movies, super-agent Max would go under a silly looking plastic cone whenever some secret had to be discussed. The joke was that even when the chief was also in a “cone of silence” he couldn’t hear Max either.

You might wonder what this has to do with the Obama-McCain debate moderated at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church this past Saturday. While Obama spoke first, McCain was supposed to be in a “cone of silence” so that the questions he would face would be equally new to him as they were to Obama.

Now the New York Times is claiming that McCain cheated. He was in his limo racing to the church, not in a “cone of silence.” The McCain campaign hotly denied that the senator was listening in and, umm, cheating.

Naturally lots of bloggers have piled on.

To call this a “tempest in a teapot” would be generous. Let’s say McCain really was listening in–which was news to Rick Warren. He looked visibly surprised to learn that McCain was not in the building the whole time. For the sake of argument, let’s concede McCain was in his motorcade and was listening in.

So what? Warren’s questions were not the word traps that the White House press corps specializes in. They were the kind of masterfully simple things that ordinary people would like to know: define rich, when does a human being get human rights, what would you do about poverty and AIDS? And so on.

The biggest crime is that the MSM hasn’t asked these questions of the candidates long before.

But the questions were not brain teasers. If you want to “tax the rich,” then you have to have some working definition of what rich is. So why can’t you tell us? If you have voted on abortion-related legislation (and both candidates have), you have to have some idea when a human being is entitled to certain rights–conception, birth, 18 years old, whatever. Any reasonably active political person would have thought about and debated these questions for years.

Still, the press hates questions about issues. They laugh at common citizens who stand up at town hall meetings and ask about issues. They roll their eyes and talk about his shirt. (Some of these citizen questions really matter, such as the question: Who is your favorite political philosopher? in the 2000 GOP primary. Bush’s answer (”Jesus Christ… because he changed my heart”) solidified support among evangelical and other voters.)

Instead, the press focuses on the horse race: who is ahead in the polls? Who said something dumb that might hurt their standing in the polls? Et cetera, et cetera.

Rick Warren showed-up the MSM and they got their revenge by claiming McCain cheated. What does that tell us about them?

UPDATE: Ann Althouse is taking a poll on the “Cone of Silence” non-story. The multiple choices say it all.

Tolerance is a wonderful virtue, but its quality depends on what is tolerated and what is not. Thieves tolerate theft, yet no one praises their tolerance.

Hollywood praises itself for its tolerance, yet there are many things it cannot tolerate: people who honestly believe in God, others who vote for the Republican party, to name two.

It poisons itself with a college-campus like intellectual conformity. Every once in a while, a mind breaks free from the herd.

Robert Avrech is both a screenwriter and an observant Orthodox Jew. In most lines of work, he would not be forced to choose. Yet, he confesses, for years he had to swallow his words with producers and executives. He would be out of work if he came out of the closet.

For a considerable period of time, I kept my level of Jewish observance a secret. I did not wear my yarmulke to Hollywood meetings. I understood, on the deepest level, that wearing your religion on your sleeve would be professional suicide. I understood that though Hollywood professed to be “open and tolerant,” when it came to religion - any religion, except for something harmless and fashionable like new-age Buddhism - Hollywood was as open as, well, the KKK.

I’m a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There’s even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney - yes, Disney - to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats. 

There was a time when liberals opposed provincial bigotry and blacklists, when freedom of conscience meant something. They challenged the Southern (Democrat) racists in the 1960s. Yet they look at demands of conformity or punishment differently when they are not the ones in the dock, but the ones who decide if punishment for ideas is warranted.

Fairness is a better virtue than tolerance. Maybe Hollywood should try that.

Harrold, Texas may be miles from anywhere, but today it’s heading into the red-hot center of the American gun debate. That’s because the school district has just announced a set of rules allowing teachers to carry loaded firearms in the classrooms and corridors of the main campus.

The Associated Press says it is the first school district in the nation to do so, but its reporter is wrong. A town in Georgia (U.S.) actually required all adults to carry firearms for a time in the 1990s. And there may well be other Western school districts that do not have Manhattan and Manhattan Beach-style gun phobias.

The high school in Harrold says it is vulnerable because it sits on an interstate where criminals can easily do the worst and flee while the nearest law-enforcement office is some 50 miles away. Teachers who want to pack heat will have to be licensed by the state of Texas, be approved by the school district and use ammunition that is less likely to ricochet. On both counts, the assessment of the potential threat and the restrictions, the school district seems prudent. (Though regulating the civil rights of teachers may be unconstitutional in a public school in this post-Heller world.)

What everyone forgets is that most school shootings are stopped when a teacher goes to his car, retrieves his legal firearm and either confronts or shoots the attacker. Every year, some two million criminal incidents are stopped without firing a shot when a law-abiding citizen simply brandishes his gun and demands the retreat or surrender of the perpetrator, according to statistics compiled by the American Rifleman magazine.

So the Harrold precedent could be the beginning of a sensible school safety measure: let teachers carry guns.

Will it happen soon? Not likely. Too many Democrats in the Bush years are bitter and cling to their anti-gun religion.

While observers of the scene are two-minded about the Gay cruising site, Manhunt.com, they are outraged that one of the site’s owners recently maxed out in a donation to the McCain campaign.

The donor defends himself by saying Obama shares McCain’s opposition to Gay marriage, but McCain will do a better job defending the country–giving Americans a chance to live and debate Gay marriage later.

The outrage in Gay circles is interesting and revealing. Why should a particular sexual orientation demand a particular political orientation? Sweater-knitters and ice-skaters are not organized along political lines–and neither are all straight people expected to vote for one particular party. Why do Gay rights advocates demand lock-step political obedience?

Indeed they seem as vicious against Gay dissenters as they are toward evangelical Christians.

Still it makes one wonder: What trouble do they have with a free society where everyone is entitled to go their own way? Why are they tribal, not pro-individual?

He calls himself Joseph now, but in a former life he was Masab, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas member of parliament in the West Bank. Ha’aretz has the incredible story.

Raised in a strictly Islamic household, he secretly converted to Christianity in his 20s. Eventually, he made his way to Southern California, where he surfs and prays. He says that he wants to start an international organization to, as he says, break people out of “the prison of Islam” and sow peace in the Middle East.

While the Middle East can find peace without converting Muslims and remembering that Palestinian Christians have carried out terrorist attacks about Israel, Joseph’s organization could at least show the region the importance of freedom of conscience–the essential human right to freely change one’s mind about the identity of the universe’s maker. That alone would be a valuable contribution.

So Ben Stein, writing in an oh-so-self-assured-yet-casual style, wants to raise your taxes.

He said so in the New York Times, which exists to satisfy the smug Upper West Side with a Republican mea culpa every now and then.

This is a remarkably brain-dead piece from an intelligent, funny man.

Here is his argument: the government needs the money and it is time to be adult and “responsible” and give the money-addict feds what they crave.

Stein cites Eisenhower as a responsible president, even though his veto of a huge congressional tax cut drove the nation into recession in 1953 and the Republicans from the House of Representatives for 40 years. (A tax cut similar to the one Eisenhower vetoed was signed into law in 1961 by President Kennedy, lowering the top income-tax rate from 91% to 70%. The long 1960s economic boom began shortly thereafter.) If Stein cares at all about economic prosperity, he should be championing tax cuts, not hikes.

Next he tells us that Reagan was an irresponsible spender. True, government spending in the Reagan years scaled new heights. But the House of Representatives writes the budget, not the president–and the House is given that right in the Constitution. Reagan’s calls to close unnecessary federal agencies (like the Urban Mass Transit outfit, which is properly a state or city function) and privatize others were ignored by the Democratic-party led Congress. Finally, he writes that President Clinton was “responsible” because deficit spending was eliminated on his watch. Yes, it was. By a Republican Congress. So if Stein is concerned about spending, he should be addressing his column to Nancy Pelosi, not John McCain.

And he tries the old dodge that virtually all federal spending is “non-discretionary” (social security, welfare, military, debt service and so on). “Non-discretionary” is simply a political dodge. We elect politicians to make tough decisions. Tough decisions can be unpopular. So the elected deciders say that cannot decide. In truth, in our democracy, all spending is a political decision. And a refusal to decide is a discretionary decision.

What to do? Simple. Follow the lead of Western European countries and start to privatize government-run operations. The Netherlands privatized its post office more than a decade ago. Britain privatized its water-treatment plants, under the Labour government. Sweden privatized half of the public housing in Stockholm and half of social security nationwide.

It will happen eventually. The only way the federal government is going to pay the tab for the retirement of the Baby Boomers will be to privatize. We could start with Amtrak, PBS, NPR, Fannie and Freddie Mac. The list is long.

The responsible,adult thing to do is cut spending. Or does Stein think we absolutely must have a federal agency that decides what flavors of tea should be permitted?

The strangest thing about John Edwards’ admission that he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife with a plaything on the his payroll is… that he says he “didn’t love her.”

There is a volume behind that line.

First, it is ungentlemanly and cowardly to say it. Even if he never loved her, in some important metaphysical sense, he should never say so. It means he thought of poor Rielle Hunter as an object to be used. And then thrown away. Plus, he paid her. That makes her a whore. Surely he has done her injury enough; why add this insult? Remember the Democratic Congressman caught in the ABSCAM scandal who refused to reveal the name of his paramour, even if doing so would shave two years off of his prison sentence? The quality of our rogues has dropped in the past few decades.

Second, it seems like the kind of thing extracted by his wife. A kind of desperate grabbing for the feathers when loyalty has flown. But, whimper, you didn’t love her, did you? Did you? No, of course not, honey. Still, why did he share this no-love verdict with the public? Because she demanded it, like one does a plea agreement. (He didn’t love her, he loves me!) That makes her complicit and it suggests that this was not the first time.

Third, it means that the feminist moment is over. When a man can have sex with a female employee, deny the paternity to her love child and, even, deny that he ever had a tender feeling for her–and the folks at the Feminist Majority and Ms. Magazine are not calling press conferences, not even batting an eyelash– well, it means that their credibility is gone too. It turns out that the Clinton wound was mortal.

All of his public life, John Edwards has acted as if life is a trial with a gullible jury. Maybe he was right.

UPDATE: A clever blogger actually phoned a senior L.A. Times editor and asked him why the paper wasn’t covering the Edwards scandal, even advising their bloggers not to link to it. Seems even funnier now.

In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles.

Exhibit A: A proposal by the L.A. city council to ban smoking outdoors. Outdoors. Say on a patio or hotel balcony.

Puritans are people who want to live according to a strict moral code of their own devising and want to make you live their way too.

The first round of Puritans murdered their king, Charles I, and ignited the English Civil War, which left many cities aflame and thousands dead. The next wave of Puritans nearly starved half of their number to death in a botched attempt at communal farming and (later) killed the Indians who had fed them one cold November afternoon. Next, came the infamous Salem witch trials (which find their echo on politically correct campuses today). Held at bay for almost a century of progress, the Puritans roared back with a long campaign for prohibition. They finally got their way, with legislative maneuvers that Machiavelli would envy, and Prohibition passed in 1919. The result: the emergence of organized crime, the corruption of police, high officials and normal people, a tsunami of gangster attacks and the idea–new at the time–that ordinary citizens didn’t have to obey every law. The level of lawlessness has not yet retreated below its 1919 level. And, of course, the end of Prohibition, helped bring the New Deal. But the Puritans were not done. Their children grew their hair long and sampled LSD, but had the same attitudes. America should not be able to test its atomic weapons. Invasions by communist armies of our democratic allies should be treated as “civil wars” and ignored. At first, they were simply Puritanical in their foreign policy, but, as they aged, the authoritarianism came home. When I wrote in the 1990s that smoking bans would be followed by wars on fatty foods and coffee, people laughed. Rhetorical excess. When I insisted I was serious, they smiled as if at an infant. (When Chicago banned fois gras and New York targeted trans-fats, no one called to apologize.) The modern form, what I call”hippie-Puritanism,” has one innovation: it is godless. That means that the last check of Puritan ambition is gone. With God went the idea that other people are ends, not means. The rest of us are simply extras in their private movie of moral vanity.

Now L.A. and a host of other cities (some disturbingly east of the earthquake zone) are considering outdoor smoking bans. They have already banned smoking in offices, eateries, bars and beaches. Outdoors is next. Followed by a ban on smoking in your private car.

What is behind this Puritan impulse? Public health, you say. Well, that is what they always say. Witches were problems of moral health (the witches, not the witch hunters’, mind you) and alcohol was destructive to mind, body and society. Of course smoking and eating excessively can have negative health consequences. But Puritans have to morals of slaughterhouse operators: they want the cows to go to their deaths perfectly healthy. What does it matter if they were bored?

Puritanism, and those who are cowed before it, ignore the key question: Who decides? Who decides if a goose’s displeasure is better avoided than my displeasure at being deprived of fois gras? Who decides if a passerby’s momentary displeasure is of more value than my hour with a Churchill?

At the metaphysical level, these debates could go on forever. But on the practical level, the solution is simple: the owner of the property makes the rules. When government became unlimited and this simple understanding of private property was lost, the stage for social civil war was set. As usual, the Puritans are the aggressors. In the name of peace, the rest of us keep surrendering. At some point, enough people will realize they have run out of room.

That moment may come with Obama’s plan for a nationwide smoking ban.