Barack Obama has the wrong policy goals for helping low-income urban blacks. Part of this is due to his liberal ideology. And part of it is surely due to the limited reforms he can propose because of the trouble he will get in with other blacks.

The two biggest lessons of the last two decades regarding the black inner cities is that policing is important for reducing crime and welfare reforms matter a lot. Heather MacDonald recently wrote about Obama:

For all his effort to touch an array of policy bases, Obama ignored the single most effective urban policy of the last decade: accountable, data-driven policing. The conquest of crime has done more to revive troubled cities than any other government policy of the last 40 years.

Likewise, regarding welfare, the most important welfare reforms of all time were implemented in 1996. These reforms placed time limits on getting the basic welfare check (TANF). With out-of-wedlock birthrates climbing to 90% in the black inner cities, enabled by single mothers being able to survive on welfare without living with the fathers of their children, it was obvious some reforms were needed. Most liberals however (including Obama), resisted reforms and warned of a catastrophe, but the opposite occurred. Welfare mothers began working more and child poverty rates dropped. We need to build on the idea of more restrictions on welfare, but Obama talks nothing about doing this.

Being half black, if Obama pushed for most intensive policing in black neighborhoods and reducing welfare benefits, some would call him a traitor to his race. Based on his past writings, it is very important for Obama to show that he authentically black. So if Obama is elected to president, don’t expect much improvement in the lives of inner city blacks.

I am not saying Obama’s intentions are bad. Obama does support improving infrastructure that could impact the inner cities. But doing a better job of paving the roads will not do squat for reducing the percentage of single parents or cutting crime, the things most needed to revive black inner cities.

All of these inner city problems reinforce each other. Single mothers often do an inadequate job of disciplining their sons. The boys then, with no fathers around, turn to gangs to find father figures and make money via crime. If they get girls pregnant, it is no problem because the girls can get welfare. Lax policing allows the gangs to thrive and gang members take on prestige in the neighborhoods. It is a never ending cycle that can only be broken with major welfare reform and more aggressive policing.

The black inner cities will become livable, vibrant places only with major new policies. We need change - but Obama will have none of that. It will just be more of the same, with maybe a few more paved roads.

Lisa Schiffren at The Corner writes regarding the attacks on Sarah Palin:

A woman running for office with five kids is a bad mother, the msm have established. But a man who ran for national office with ten kids at home, including a six month-old, and a pregnant wife — became a hero, a martyr, and an icon to which all dreams of what liberalism might have been were attached for a generation. Was Robert F. Kennedy ever vilified for ignoring his family? Did anyone sneer at his failure to abort or use contraception? No and no.

I have never been one to point to acts of sexism that hold American women down. Women in America are doing just fine, and most supposed sexism is in the imagination of feminists and left-liberals.

But now I have finally discovered real sexism, sexism of the rawest and most blatant kind. In your face sexism. Where is it? Well its coming this week from the feminists and left-liberals regarding Sarah Palin! Instapundit today links to a site set up to begin to document it , and there is plenty already. None of this would ever be said about a man.

What hypocrisy! This is truly the PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome). The irony of course is that they are just making the McCain-Palin ticket stronger.

The thing that I have always so disliked about so many left-liberals is that they just have to despise their opponents. There is no spirited disagreement. No, if you disagree with them - you are low-life scumbag. Now Palin is getting this treatment firsthand. The only thing is - she can bite back.

There is a downright desperation among Democrats on what to do about Palin. To Hillary Clinton’s credit, so far she has refused to chime in from some sexist angle.

And where are left-liberal feminsits defending Palin against sexist abuse?

Howard Gutman, an Obama National Finance Committee member, had this to say about Sarah Palin in an interview with Laura Ingraham (via Patterico):

“Your responsibility is to put your family first,” [said Gutman].

“So you’re saying she’s not putting family first,” Ingraham said.

“Absolutely not,” Gutman said. “If you take a daughter who’s got this emotional strife and subject her to the most intense scrutiny of the world at this time in her life, I think you’ve put your career above your family.”

Yes, she should be at home watching her kids and not stirring up trouble. What is wrong with this woman?

Nut jobs or not? You decide (via Confederate Yankee).

Ann Althouse writes:

It’s as if some mad right-wing scientists designed and built an android to counter all the things that Obama is. Can she be real? Can it be that there was this actual human entity, on ice in Alaska, waiting for this moment to be thawed out and set loose in the lower 48?

Sarah Palin gave a spectacular speech tonight considering the circumstances. The left has been creating smear campaigns against her, and media scrutiny has perhaps been the most intense for the last 5 day of any person (and family) in American history. This morning the New York Times list of most read articles had 9 out of 10 about Palin. Set against this kind of pressure - she had to come out and prove herself - which she absolutely did. She was poised, tough, confident, elegant, and she is a naturally gifted speaker.

It is just such an incredible story - this PTA mom with 5 kids and a blue collar husband coming out of nowhere and on to the national stage overnight. It is truly a breath of fresh air from the same old political elites, whether Republicans or Democrats.

The Democrats must really be worried. They are all mixed up on how to attack Palin. (That is not true on the left-liberal blogosphere where the hate/smear machine has already been in high gear.) For mainstream Democrats, it is pretty hard to criticize her for not having time to be vice president because she has 5 kids. That goes against what feminists have been saying for years. And it is hard to criticize her lack of experience - when Obama has even less experience.

In her speech she accomplished making Obama appear as more of a loser than the god that he is made out to be. I have not seen anyone pull that off before (although Rudy Giuliani also did a pretty good job earlier of slamming Obama.)

I watched Lettermen afterwards and he was criticizing Palin for not talking to her daughter more so that she didn’t get pregnant. I have always liked Letterman, and this is actually the first time that I have thought he was out of line. Didn’t Letterman have (or at least try) to have sex with girls as a teenager? And Letterman partially makes a living on crude jokes - and now he is being a prude saying that Sarah Palin didn’t do a good job of teaching her daughter good values? Give me a break.

Chris Wallace said after Palin’s speech tonight that we have just witnessed a star being born. I think he is right.

For the first time I am truly jazzed about the McCain ticket.

How John McCain picked Sarah Palin (language alert):

Jackie and Dunlap -

McCain has picked Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his VP running mate. Democrats, and some Republicans too, are criticizing this pick saying she has insufficient experience. To this Ed Morrissey writes:

Why would he put a small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?

This is a real laugher. By the same logic, why would the Democrats make a state legislator the actual president? The answer is that Obama is a US Senator of three years experience, and Palin is a governor of 20 months’ experience. Only Barack Obama has spent two of those three years not in the Senate doing his job but running for President. Before starting his bid, he had a grand total of less than 150 days in session in the Senate. Palin, on the other hand, has run her state for more than triple that time.

And let’s remember that Obama is running for the top job, while Palin’s running for VP.

Palin, at the very least, is a new and interesting figure. While being an anti-corruption reformer in Alaska, she also has five kids, likes and shoots guns, runs marathons, plays hockey, and her husband is last year’s winner of the Iron Dog snowmobiling competition. She is attractive, young, and tends to be popular with voters. Palin has the highest approval rating of any governor in the US. McCain is taking a real gamble here, but the payoff could be that he ends up winning the presidency.

In a more ideal world, neither Palin nor Obama would even be in the running for these high offices. In fact, Obama may well be the next Jimmy Carter.

100 college presidents came out last week in support of lowering the drinking age to 18. I agree with them. If you are old enough to vote and go to war and fight and perhaps die for your country - then you should be able to drink legally.

Imagine that you just fought in Iraq for 2 years, and then you come home to the US. You had seen several of your friends killed in Iraq. And in fact you came very close to being killed yourself. So you come back to the US and go meet some friends somewhere to have a drink - but then you are arrested by the police as an underage drinker. The law says that you are not ready to drink, you are not responsible enough yet. This is just so wrong.

Selective prohibition targeted at certain sub-groups of voters is just not right. If the argument is that it saves drunk driving deaths - then why not raise the drinking age to 30? People in their 20s tend to be rowdy - I guess that they should all be arrested if they are caught drinking!

If you must be 21 to drink, then the federal laws should be changed to raise the voting age to 21 and to raise the age to join the military to 21. As a nation we have to decide: Are young people adults at 18 or at 21? We can’t have it both ways.