I saw an astonishing little aside buried in a Wall Street Journal article about American Express. The article, headlined Delinquencies Mount for American Express, centered on how Amex has paid a price for being lured into the formerly-lucrative revolving charge business.

But the thing that caught my attention was this bit in the middle of the piece:

For example, AmEx recently slapped a $1,100-a-month spending limit on John and Monica Bell’s platinum AmEx charge card. The reason: AmEx customers who pay with plastic at the same places where Mrs. Bell shops and have the same mortgage lender have poor repayment histories, according to a letter sent by AmEx.

“They’re holding me accountable for someone else’s credit,” fumes Mr. Bell, a real-estate agent in Chadds Ford, Pa. His mortgage loan came from Countrywide Financial Corp., now part of Bank of America, and his wife uses the AmEx card at retailers Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Marshalls unit of TJX Cos. and to fill up her tank at Sunoco Inc. gas stations.

The couple runs up about $5,000 a month on the card, which previously had no limit, and always pays on time, Mr. Bell says.

Just so you’re clear on the details here . . .  The couple has an American Express Platinum card which they consistently put about $5k a month on, and always pay the full balance on time. But because they occasionally use the card at a local Walmart and Marshall’s, and buy cheap gas, Amex has capped this couple’s monthly use at $1,100.

Why? Because that fits a pattern a computer has identified as being statistically more prone to default–even though they’re never late. I guess you could call this “financial profiling.”

So, the next time you see an Amex commercial that touts “no monthly spending limit,” make a mental note–“Unless you’re a discount shopper.”

This is just one of several indicators I’ve observed recently that the entire corporate world is very, very nervous right now. And this story points up how a recession in the information age might play out differently than any we’ve had in the past.

At the end of a gloomy post last week about McCain’s chances, I wrote:

If the markets stabilize this coming week AND gas prices continue to come down AND some other unforeseen event actually works to McCain’s benefit (for a change)–the race could tighten back up.

Well, the first two of those conditions seem to have been met. And according to several polls, McCain has indeed gotten much more competitive. Today Zogby has McCain down by less than 3 points. If there is any degree of Wilder Effect at all, the race could be a dead heat.

But you wouldn’t know that by watching or reading the mainstream media. “It’s all over.” “It’s Obama by a landslide.” “Why bother with an expensive election, let’s just declare Obama President by acclamation.”

This is the dominant meme in the press. And it’s being put forth for a reason. The hope is to dishearten those who aren’t so much voting for McCain as against Obama (people like me, in other words)  so they won’t bother to vote. This is known as an attempt at voter suppression.

Barring any additional big, momentum shifting event, I think the race now hinges on two unknown factors.  How big will the Wilder Effect be among independents who have told pollsters they are voting for Obama; and how successful will the Dems voter fraud efforts be through organizations like ACORN.

The second factor is potentially huge. It is now universally known that in 1960, Joseph Kennedy used money to generate voter fraud to put his son over the top in a super-close election. The location of that election-buying crime?  Why, Barack Obama’s home base of Chicago, of course–America’s headquarters for crooked politicians and dead voters.

At The Witherspoon Institute’s site, Robert George writes:

Sen. Barack Obama’s views on life issues ranging from abortion to embryonic stem cell research mark him as not merely a pro-choice politician, but rather as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.

Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.

Read the whole thing here.

That’s my take on his sudden retreat from going after Obama on his shady associations and his “You don’t have to be afraid…” of Obama as President comment.  Why would McCain think he’s seeing the writing on the wall? Because this is what’s written on it:

This is a chart of John McCain’s tracking numbers overlaid with the S&P 500’s closing numbers.(created by State of the Union blog) It paints a pretty compelling picture. I have read that McCain’s internal polling paints an even grimmer picture.

It looks like Obama and the congressional leadership think he has it sewn up as well.

McCain, in his interview with Charlie Gibson (who managed to keep his frown and grimace rate to about a quarter of the Palin interview level) was asked: “Do you think this economic crisis is hurting you with voters?”  McCain’s answer was typically horrible and fumbling and unhelpful. Here’s how McCain should have answered:

“Well Charlie, in a fairer world it would be hurting my opponent, because it was the policies of his allies in his party that largely created this mess, while I and some of my fellow Republicans, including President Bush, have been warning about it for two years. But we don’t live in that fairer world. So, yes, it’s hurting my campaign, in part because you and your colleagues are in the tank for Obama and won’t report the truth.”

But McCain isn’t going to say anything like that because he’s a poor candidate. In fact, he’s the worst candidate the Republicans had for running against Mr. Cool.–just as Bob Dole was the worst choice among the contenders for running against Bill Clinton. Of course at the time McCain clinched the nomination, it wasn’t clear who the Dem nominee was going to be.

Of course, things could turn around. One wild card is the “Wilder Effect“–the tendency for many extreme sufferers of “white guilt” to tell pollsters they’re voting for a black candidate but do otherwise in the secrecy of the voting booth.

I suspect that the more the Democrats have shouted “racist” at every person who criticizes Obama, the more potentially pronounced the Wilder Effect has become. If the markets stabilize this coming week AND gas prices continue to come down AND some other unforeseen event actually works to McCain’s benefit (for a change)–the race could tighten back up.

If it does, it will be in spite of McCain the campaigner, not because of him.

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old Chinese curse.

And things do indeed just get curiouser and curiouser. For example, today I see that the son of William F. Buckley, Christopher, a writer of humorous novels and self-described conservative/libertarian, has announced his intention to vote for Barack Obama.

Read it for yourself but his reasons can be summarized as follows.

• He’s disappointed in the strategy and ads of the McCain campaign over the last few weeks.
• He loathes Sarah Palin with a deep and burning detestation– but for reasons that he doesn’t bother to articulate but assumes all sensible people share.
• He thinks Barack Obama seems smart and that it’s cool that he writes his own books.
• He’s saddened that John McCain has changed some of his positions on the campaign trail, ostensibly in order to help himself get elected. (Of course, Obama has done much more cynical triangulating since winning his party’s nomination than has McCain but this, for some reason, doesn’t bother Buckley in the least.)

So how does a smart man who claims to value small, non-intrusive government decide to vote for a guy whose entire political record and every utterance on the campaign trail has uniformly promised bigger, more-intrusive governemnt? That’s simple:

Blind hope and (faithless) prayer. Seriously:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Well, there you have it. Buckley hopes President Obama will “surely understand” that everything he has said and believed over the last 20 years is wrong-headed, once he is seated in the Oval Office.

This level of child-like (secular) faith would truly be touching if it didn’t involve my family’s finances and security. Why, it’s a faith so big that it can believe that when the new liberal Democrat super-majorities in the House and Senate led by Pelosi and Reid start sending President Obama bill after bill calling for a sweeping increases in the size and scope of government, he’ll courageously veto them.

Now that’s some audacious hope, right there my friend.

You can be sure that all of the liberals cheering Buckley in the comment thread below his little essay believe precisely the opposite. In fact, they are confident that any backtracking from ultra-liberal positions Obama may have done in the course of the campaign are purely expediencies demanded by the election process. They’re counting on the fact that Buckley’s faith is misplaced, even as they praise him for holding it.

Look into the url address window on the web site that published Buckley’s cry for help and you’ll see they named the file, “the-conservative-case-for-Obama.”

But there is no “case” anywhere to be found in Buckley’s words. Just emotion and pique. How very sad. I pray (non-secularly) that Buckley has a crisis of faith on election day.

Focus people.

. . . is old hat when you’ve been Queen Esther or a ballerina-angel on many occasions.

Or been a bride, bridesmaid or flower girl.

Homecoming queen that is.

Female Offspring Unit #2, a Senior this year, was up for homecoming queen at last night’s festivities and, to her great surprise, won.

It was a big night.

This YouTube video has gotten quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere today.

Update: The video has been taken down by the producers (for obvious reasons) but you can still find an archived version here.

Aside from the disturbing, North-Korean-style-“Dear-Leader”-worship meets Children-of-the-Corn vibe of the thing . . . the other striking thing about it is that the people who participated, produced and published this thing truly think they’re helping.

Those people aren’t “grass roots” activists from the heartland. As this blogger points out, they’re wealthy Hollywood moguls and L.A. beautiful people types.

Did you notice the big Obama poster on the wall of that room? I thought it looked familiar. Could this have been the inspiration?

I repeat. These people sincerely think this will help the Obama cause. The truly troubling thought is: “What if they’re right?”

 . . . in our century.  Behold our partners in trade, the Chinese.

And here are some thoughts I had about modern slavery in a previous post titled, “Our New Age of Slavery.”