WHAT DOES A "COMMUNITY ORGANIZER" DO?,
PART DEUX

The blogosphere's favourite law firm, Power Line, has the complete round-up on why the Big O's background as a Community O [seen at right during his First Temple period] is such a mockable thing, both in the specifics and the generalities. Drink deep -- it would be funny if it were not so sad.

Power Line also digs into some of the Big O's claims about his legislative triumphs in the Senate, which, to no great surprise, he has inflated out of all compass.


BLUE STATE BABY BLUES?

Mona Charen at Jewish World Review is chewing on the decidedly distasteful notion that the media blitzkrieg of Sarah Palin has something to do with her having been distasteful enough to choose life for a Down Syndrome child, and then trot it [him] out before the public eye -- rather than doing what 90% of the other Americans in her same position would have done: abort the poor blighted thing. Tom Smith at TheRightCoast thinks it might be even simpler than that: it's the reaction of people who see kids generally as having a great big "ick factor." Rich Lowry at NRO has some related thoughts on the subject. They are all probably on to something.

This is a very special and complex brand of hypocrisy. The merchants and apostles of "choice" and of hedonism (if that's your choice) have the oddest way of turning Puritan when someone on the right wing tumbles to transgression. Their attitudes toward those within their own bubble are not only different, they are at the farthest extreme of different.

They think Bristol Palin is fit for nothing other than that antiquated concept of a woman's "confinement" for the duration of her nasty condition, but Demi Moore is celebrated for being nakedly, aggressively pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 -- pregnant with a child by husband Bruce Willis, from whom she split 11 years after a Hollywood wedding that cost almost $900,000 in 1987. Three daughters in tow, she eventully took up co-habitation with boy-toy Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior [he was ten years old when her first child was born]. They married two years later. Wow, folks, here they come down the red carpet! -- aren't they just GREAT???!!!! One of Hollywood's HOTTEST COUPLES!

Perhaps Bristol Palin should have shown up on stage with her mother, wearing some tight double-knit shirt that didn't quite cover her belly, itself hanging out over a non-maternity set of skin-tight leggings -- haven't we all seen a lot of these types tooting around the shops lately? It's a symptom of the Aggressively Pregnant fad, almost literally "in your face" with the belly [that's La Britney in the picture, by the way, but she has many non-famous imitators], which is often followed by the in-your-face Hummer-sized stroller and the noisily public "negotiations" with unruly toddlers who won't eat their Whole Foods multi-grain flax cookies.

But remember, please, this condition is just for wymin who CHOSE to be pregnant -- or maybe those who got caught by surprise but are so RICH and FAMOUS and COOL that any act of spontaneity is, like, WOW, I can so cope with this! It's AWESOME! The father? He's my trainer, my DJ, my rockstar live-in, and if he and his tattoos fly the coop it SO doesn't matter -- I've got money, hear me roar.

Daughters of conservative politicians from Hicksville, however, are just dumb sluts who are fit for The Shunning, especially by their close-minded crazoid churches.

I'm just sayin'.

Well, that was fun.


The Republican convention has unconvened, closing out with clear demonstrations of just how close we all came to going down the plughole, as evidenced by the whining cadences of McBuddy Lindsay Graham (Senator from South Carolina and a long-shot for Veep) and the embalmed rhetorical stylings of Tom Ridge (former Pennsylvania Governor and a near miss for the Veep slot). God preserve us! And He did. (Also from Romney and Pawlenty, who were equally Not Exciting.)

McCain himself had a checkered speech with a checkered delivery -- it had a discernible arc to it, sometimes weighed down by a bit of boilerplate, then periodically roused to swirling broadsword -- but all was salvaged in the home stretch with deeply personal poignancy, rising to an almost "once more unto the breach, dear friends" climax.

There have been various pundit-based complaints over the past couple of days about the fact that McCain's POW story was told several times by several people, plus a video, and finally by the man himself -- that somehow this was overkill. Maybe so. But my feeling was that each person presented a slightly different subset of the facts -- no one individual told the entire story, and it took the cumulative narrative to put it all together. McCain provided the most naked fact -- that his captors broke him -- and how it became a turning point in his life. In any case, I think he put the lid on that box and that we will not hear too much more about it from this point on.

I don't know how McCain has campaigned locally throughout his career representing Arizona, but my sense is that, on the whole, he doesn't trade on the POW experience that much. I know he certainly didn't do it in 2000 during his primary run, and that it only came to the fore in 2008 when the timing seemed to require it. Besides which, it's a great story, requiring no fudging or exaggeration. It has at least as much place (let's face it: much MORE place) as the war-and-remembrance of Old Shrapnel-Butt Cambodian-Christmas-hat, John Fitzgerald Kerry.


ON THE STUMP


Sarah Palin has navigated through the gauntlet of media-smear and bitter feminist hostility with grace so far. I'm sure it will only get worse before it gets better, but one senses that she will be just fine. If there's anybody looking ahead to the Vice-Presidential debate with dread, I'm bettin' it's old Joe. She's a woman who hasn't flinched at the prospect of taking aim and blowing out a REAL jugular on a sweet-looking caribou -- I can't imagine she'll go all wobbly when she's got Jabbering Joe in her sites, no matter how much he leers at her with the big teeth and the small Irish-smiling eyes. KABOOM.

Ms. Palin positively dripped sarcasm as she dealt with the concept of "community organizing" -- perhaps she went a bit over the top? In any event, she has offended at least one community organizer with Presidential ambitions, our friend Iowahawk, who vents here.

Money quotes:

When I listened to the snarky and demeaning and condescending remarks of former beauty pageant loser Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Ooo-oooh, Caribou Barbie makes a funny, hardee-har-har. Well yuk it up now, little miss former junior college baby machine, because your sarcastic attempt to belittle America's community of hardworking professional community organizers is about to backfire -- big time. Because, for your information, I am America's community organizer community...

What do community organizers do?...

• reach out and work with communities in various ways.
• liaison with, and for, community agencies for service within affected areas.
• fight to make a difference.
• raise awareness.
• deal with community issues.
• raise awareness in the community of how we are making differences about undealt-with issues.
• when necessary, refer inquiries to outreach coordinators.
• Help coordination agency administrators identify and address outreach opportunities.
• model timetables and conceptualize benchmarks.
• issue guidelines for poster contests and interpretive dance festivals.
• Gather voter registrations, win valuable prizes.

SEE? SEE?
Sheesh.


DON'T QUESTION MY PATRIOTISM, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Q: What's the difference between a Democratic Convention and Barry Obambi's lapel?

A: Nothin' much.

FLAG MODE: ON
FLAG MODE: OFF
FLAG MODE: ON
FLAG MODE: OFF


Neatly rolled or jammed in the bag, the gaia-friendly, organic arugula conventioneers in Denver were not so mindful of waste when they threw out over 10,000 American flags they had been using as photo-op props on the convention floor. They claim these things were awaiting return to the donating company -- in black trash-bags, next to the dumpster?













Bottom line is, they sat outside the Invesco Temple for just over a week after the Second Coming, and were then reclaimed and recycled into the hands of sneaky Republican operatives, who distributed them here:







As Grande Dame Bette Davis was once heard to intone:
Fasten your seatbelts. It's gonna be a bumpy night.

And now a message from one of our sponsors.

JUST ONE VOICE
but it speaks volumes



Back soon with our regularly scheduled program [Convention, Day Four]

CONVENTION,
DAY THREE



















She needs just a teeny, weeny bit more BOMBAST -- but, oh my -- I think we have a winner.

Very hard to troll for my favourite line. This one will do.

"Senate majority leader Harry Reid has said, 'I can't stand John McCain.' Ladies and gentleman, no praise we hear this week will make it any clearer than that we chose the right man."

Or something like that. Point made. Loved it.

Loved this too:

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country. It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office. But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made. It's the journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home...

To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome.

She shoots, she scores.

Will the Dems pull their goalie?

Loose the hounds! And kick back and listen...

We interrupt coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy to announce that the U.S. has turned over control of Iraq's wild, wild west to Baghdad.

Memo to Barack Obama: Soon you will have nothing left to surrender.

...Victory in Iraq can't compete in an environment where Bristol's boyfriend is more thoroughly investigated than Obama's lifelong association with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

Investor's Business Daily gets it right. Read the rest here.





Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle just gave the delegate crowd a chant to go with the proposed Obama iconography at left. It has to do with executive experience.

ZERO. ZERO. ZERO.

THEY'RE HE-E-E-RE!!!

SARAH PALIN FACTS (Jack Bauer/Chuck Norris-style)

Check 'em out, and contribute.

Here's a sampling:

-- It’s not raining in DC. Those are God’s tears of joy that McCain picked Sarah Palin.

-- Sarah Palin knows the location of DB Cooper’s body because she threw him from the plane.

-- Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died.

-- Sarah Palin once guided Santa’s sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile.

-- Sarah Palin is the reason compasses point North.

-- Sarah Palin’s son is going to Iraq after the Surge, because a Palin during the Surge would have been unfair.

HEH.

WE think they're pretty funny:

REPUBLICAN CONVENTION,
DAY ONE/TWO:


I've been scanning a few blogs and realize that I am at a tremendous advantage here in old Canuckistan because our version of C-SPAN, called CPAC (the parliamentary channel), is broadcasting the conventions (unless something more pressing is on) gavel-to-gavel, WITHOUT INCESSANT TELEVISION PUNDIT BLATHERING. Fancy that! Like others, I've even gotten fed to the teeth with the FOX folks, who are less obnoxious than most.

Anyhoo, it's late, so I won't say much right now, except that there is something very "whipped" about the President sending his wife to defend his record with more emphasis than he has ever done himself. As usual, Laura looks "hot" in red.

Fred Thompson thumped the tub harder for McCain than he ever did for himself, and made many punchy points, and told the familiar narrative of McCain's career with a fresh flare and poignancy. Enjoyed it all. I don't know what Fred's planning, but I've suddenly started getting emails from him again, which I hadn't since he dropped out of the primaries.

Naturally I'm grateful for the efforts of Joe Lieberman, who's pretty much flushed his place in the Democratic party down the plughole -- he's starting to seem like a kid who packs a knapsack and sets out down the long dirt road to escape an abusive and dysfunctional family. He showed once again, sad to say, what an ineffectual Veep candidate he both was and would be, because he's such a dweeby speaker. But he got rolling towards the end, and did a fine job. He spoke carefully about how Obama's "eloquence" was no substitute for "a record" -- not the vague and overused word "experience." Sarah Palin has a record -- number of days logged in office is not important measure.

One could almost wonder whether Joe's vanilla performance on the stump with Gore in 2000 may have been due to the fact that he had to sell out so many principles to be credible on the ticket -- tonight he was speaking from the heart, which perhaps he could never really do eight years ago.

The tribute to Congressional Medal of Honor winner Navy Seal Michael Monsoor was very moving. I know the identities of several M.O.H. winners of recent years, but Monsoor will always be fresh in my mind, for my blog post about him served the extra purpose of encouraging my son during some down days in Iraq when, thanks to the carping trash-talk and defeatism of Democratic politicians in Washington, he was feeling discouraged about the mission. There were other military tributes, including a salute to at least a dozen of McCain's fellow POW's in attendance.

Tomorrow we meet the Fair Sarah.

High noon.

Do not desert me, oh my darlin'.

Rush report:

SARAH PALIN WAS WARNED BY MCCAIN OPERATIVE ABOUT THE POLITICS OF PERSONAL DESTRUCTION

And she replied:

"Do you know the difference between a Hockey Mom and a pit bull?
LIPSTICK!"

Sarah Palin -- Ready to Lead

And in the movie of the same name,
the part of SARAH PALIN
will be played by TINA FEY:

[UPDATED]

CONVENTION,
DAY FIVE....

NO, WAIT! WAKE UP! IT'S OVER!


AND IT'S....













PALIN!!!!

I've known very little about Alaska governor Sarah Palin, though she sounded like an interesting choice for Veep. As of this morning I read one thing-- her Wikipedia bio -- and watched a couple of minutes of two videos of her on the Kudlow business show, and was prompted to write the following to a knowledgeable but dubious friend:

How can you read that Wiki bio and compare her to Barack "all my years were Lost Years" Obama? If any bio of Obambi were that meaty, it would have to be a detailed intimate tale of Saul Alinsky-inspired, grant-based boondoggling, partnered with terrorist Ayers, on behalf of programmes aimed at destroying education in that gleaming urban success story and shooting gallery, Chicago (city of my birth)-- a big ball of nothing, all of it while sucking on the teat of the Chicago boss-machine. We would see a thin list of legislative initiatives in Illinois all aimed at making life more comfortable for black criminals and more brief for unborn children.

Palin, of whom I knew nothing till reading the Wiki stuff, sounds to me like a real old Wild West sheriff who comes into town with six-guns blazing and quickly populates the local Boot Hill with the corpses of scumbags. I am SO glad it isn't the strange and oily Romney (who spent like a drunk and managed to set few people on fire during the primaries) or the slightly fey Pawlenty (who's probably a good guy, but indistinguishable from a thousand other good guys) or Lieberman (totally right on maybe two things, and whacko left on everything else, except those good things like school vouchers which he sold down the river when nominated for veep). I like it.

I know it will be viewed by many as a gimmick or stunt, but that will subside when they hear her on the stump. (I've been watching videos of her on Kudlow.) She's pro-oil, pro-life & family, pro-reform (much more effectively than McCain), and full of American pioneer spirit. Being female is a bonus, but not her most interesting or exciting quality. I like it.

Then again, my mind could be total hog-slop after watching the Dems for four days.....

P.S. Canadians should consider this a Very Good Thing.

PALIN' BY COMPARISON:

The Krauthammer weighs in with this succinct and pummeling summary of last night's Obamapalooza at the Barackopolis. Money quote:

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger — a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

Ever-so-slightly-right-of-center pundit David Brooks dares to scar the pages of the New York Times with the speech to the delegates that the DNC forgot to schedule. Money quote:

We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely...

For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

HEH.

On a serious note, last May Nat Hentoff was prescient about the virtues of the Palin pick. Read it here.


PALIN/JINDAL IN 2012!!!

MATTHEW MODINE APPLAUDS

... which is a good thing, because I might fall asleep: this is WAY less exciting than either Bill or Hillary. Mr. O has promised to tap more natural gas -- he's got a head-start by having tapped Joe Biden for the two-spot.

Did I tell you he said we'd have safe toys?

Things are ratcheting up a bit now, since he's rolling out the promi$e$. All very, as 'twere, 'conventional'. He just acknowledged that it will all cost money, but he's going to pay for it by carving off the bureaucracy. Good luck with that.

He's ridin' the absent fathers now -- that's good.

Just challenged McCain to a debate about the "temperament and judgement to be Commander-in-Chief" -- good luck with that, too. Said McCain "won't even follow Bin Laden to the cave he lives in." Oh, Johnny Mac is going to be smokin' at that one! On this subject, Mr. O falls off his boilerplate and right into the total B.S. quagmire -- what garbage, distortion, drivel.

"I've got news for you, John McCain: we ALL put our country first." By not voting to fund the troops?

"Change doesn't come from Washington -- it comes to Washington." Or it does both, on the train, every day from Washington to Delaware. He keeps saying stuff that reflects worse on Biden than on McCain.

We have arrived at the Martin Luther King moment. And we're marching into the future, with Scripture, and stuff.

As the Church Lady might put it: "Well. Isn't that special." Yes and no.

Camera finds Matthew Modine again. Guess it's hard to find all the celebrities in a crowd of 85K. Whoa -- fireworks. Okeefine.

Oddly over-earnest music seems to have poured cold water on the crowd's excitement. Wrap-up voices (is that Nancy Pelosi I hear?) trying to re-kindle it-- 'Born in the USA' may help.


On the whole, a bit flat, and the audience under-reacted appropriately. It was a fun 'happening'-- will he respect us in the morning?

CONVENTION,
DAY FOUR

HE-E-E-Y JOE!
WHERE YOU GOIN' WITH THAT GUN IN YOUR HAND?

Last night 36-year Senator Joe Biden stood on the convention stage in Denver and rolled out a list of insults and outright lies about his 25-year colleague John McCain.

The McCain campaign let everyone know that they were releasing a new ad to run on the final night of the Democratic convention, and it was wondered whether this would be one of the lightning counterstrikes that the McCain crowd has been getting better and better at, especially in view of the hatchet job that McCain, and the Bush administration, had been subject to last night.

Surprise.

Here it is.



Hope you made your cute little mother proud last night, Joe. Very classy.

CONVENTION,
DAY THREE

IT'S A DONE DEAL

I wish I could celebrate quite as much as Juan Williams, but he's a respectable man so we'll take him at his word about the electrifying significance of Obama's nomination for the Presidency.

I really do wish it -- I wish Obama was "the guy" whose accomplishments and biography showed him to be worthy of both the political and personal plaudits now being lavished upon him. But sorry -- he's not. This celebration is a dreary pageant which is about one thing only, and that is race. His nomination is fundamentally unserious, and if he should win the election, the consequences of an unserious administration will be devastating, far beyond the borders of one nation. It's a sad thing.

I wish it were otherwise. What I really wish is that this moment -- certainly a milestone in history, unfortunately diminished by a lightweight candidate -- were given its due context, that of a long and rich story of progress in America for the descendants of slaves (which Obama, of course, is not). There is far too much rhetoric, from the candidate himself and even moreso from his wife and his circle of unsavoury associates, painting the rise of Barack Obama to the apex of American power as if it has come like an unprecedented shot from out the deep, mirey chasm of centuries of entrenched racial discrimination and oppression.

Poppycock. And such an insult to his forebears, who DID ascend to places of honour only by punching their way through nearly insurmountable barriers. It's been more than a century since black pioneers, close upon the heels of slavery, fought their way into the ranks of teachers, doctors, the military, and the Catholic clergy, just to name a few. Later came politics (local and national), law enforcement, and the military officer class, among other things.

Barack Obama stands on the shoulders, at the very least, of Thurgood Marshall -- and what ingratitude it betrays that neither Obama nor his liberal disciples can bring themselves to acknowledge the continuing historic significance of Marshall's successor on the court, Clarence Thomas, plus two black Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, one of whom was also Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All four of these exceptional people have life stories of genuine struggle and perseverance against tremendous odds, beside which the Obama biography of prep school and political opportunism pales by comparison.

Yes, we have the first (real) black nominee for President -- an office not so many breaths above those that have been held by these minority achievers who preceded him. It has been a slow but gradual -- not sudden, overnight -- ascent to the mountaintop.


Convention wrap-up:
Some woman nominated Hillary "in the name of all women" -- excuse me? As the anti-war thumpers would say, "NOT IN MY NAME!!!"

Could someone tell me why THIS scary woman (left) DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond, wearing her Washington, D.C. helmet-head of hair, is somehow Ms. Cool for the Democrats,

















but Katherine Harris (right), Florida Secretary of State in 2000, was vilified, ridiculed, and trashed by the party of feminism for having bad hair, make-up, and the gall to rule against Gore.

Just askin'.


The first "spiritually" (or whatever) black President, Bill Clinton, has just delivered his usual mysteriously captivating oratory and was a good soldier, giving a vacuous and platitudinous but highly charged endorsement of Obama, without sacrificing the opportunity to ooze his charm from every pore and remind everyone how terrific he is. He donated one unwitting gift to the Republicans by reminding us that even he was considered too young and inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief in 1992. He was. [read it here]

The Biden video, and even his handsome son, have just produced some interesting fictions: Obama tells us that he spoke out against some vague aspect of the Iraq war, and Biden himself rails about an unnecessary war and an abuse of power (so why'd you vote for it, Joe?), and then Barack assures us that Joe's best quality is his honesty (except when he's borrowing not only the words but the life of British pol Neil Kinnock).

Certain aspects of Biden's biography are indeed compelling and tragic -- but the damage he has done, especially his repugnant conduct of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has had tragic consequences for way more than one family. Beau Biden (a National Guard captain heading for Iraq in October -- good on him!) has asked something of me that no other political campaigner ever has: would I please "be there" for Barack and his dad. The Therapeutic Culture triumphs! E-e-e-e-e-w-w-w-w.

Biden is going all Evangelical with an antiphon/refrain thingy ("that's not change, that's more of the same"). Bo-ring. It's murky and peripatetic. Now Biden just got snotty about the "claim" that things are better in Iraq and that's why we don't hear about it. Then he recites a litany of how McCain was wrong on Iraq and Obama was right. He doesn't think his ""good friend" John McCain had enough parts of his body twisted up like a pretzel, he has to do the same to his record and his character? Feeling that bayonet again, John? In the back? BIZARRE!!!!!!!!!! I think Joe may live to eat those silly words. [Mirengoff at Powerline puts it all together.]

Finally he goes right up over the top with "Remember when the world used to trust us? With Barack Obama they'll trust us again." YEE-HAAAAAAA!!! Boil that boilerplate! We've all been knocked down, but we'll get up again. Cue CHUMBAWAMBA:




At last -- The Messiah has arrived in the building: Re-cap of major speeches (successful or oherwise.) Explaining why he will be doing the Superbowl Halftime thing tomorrow. Apparently it all started with a "simple idea." Hm-m-m-m-m.

What are they calling the Greek temple stage now?

-- Temple of Obamacles
-- The O-cropolis
-- My Big Fat Greek Acceptance Speech
-- Barackolis

(hat-tip: National Review/the Campaign Spot)

May I add?:

-- Circus Taximus
-- Par-Olympus
-- Pant-theon (pant, pant, pant)
-- Come-and-seum
-- Animal House II

Biden seems to have a large, cute family, especially his mom.

I wonder what colour the sky is in his world.

DETAILS LEAKED ON OBAMA
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH VENUE






Only slightly exaggerated:

[hat-tips: Political Inquirer via PowerLine]




But before we get there,
KEEP AN EYE OUT
FOR THAT I.E.D.
IN THE ROAD

It's the Bubba bomb.













O Mama.



No kiddin'. [click pic for site]




Can you spell.......?


Stay tuned.

CONVENTION, DAY TWO


THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD GIRL [Holy Mother Church] YET!

FAUX CATHOLIC, SPEAKRESS PELOSI, GETS THE EPISCOPAL SMACKDOWN FOR BUTCHERING CHURCH TEACHING ON ABORTION

Nancy Pelosi is "an ardent, practicing Catholic" -- except when she's not. I believe it's a principle of physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space, so let's be clear that an ardent Catholic and an advocate of abortion license cannot occupy the same human body. One or the other of those entities must be exorcised. There's nothing the least bit remarkable about Pelosi's spiritual bankruptcy; self-induced laetae sententiae excommunicate Catholics are a dime a dozen, especially among the political class. [Democratic Veepster Joe Biden is just such another.]

What must be called remarkable, though, is the committed and confident abject ignorance on display as Pelosi assured NBC interviewer-emeritus Tom Brokaw that, in 2000 years, the Church had never quite been able to make a definitive pronouncement about when an embryonic human acquires the status of a being with rights. Even Senator [OOPS!] Saint Augustine put it at 3 months' gestation -- so we don't know, right? So, like, whatever! -- we err on the side of caution elimination.

WHOOOOSH-H-H-H! [sound of men in moiré satin and lace swooping down like a stooping falcon] This is a job for SUPER-BISHOP!!!

First out of the chute, Archbishop Chaput (and his auxiliary, Bishop Conley), right handy there in Denver, who issued a well-crafted letter and catechetical slap to Madame Speaker, less for her benefit than for those whose perception of Catholic teaching may have been blindsided by Pelosi's brain-droppings. Full text is here with The Rest Of The Story, as well as the words of the FOUR other bishops who followed his lead: Rigali and Egan (Cardinals), Lori, and Wuerl. KABOOM!!

It's been a tough week for San Fran Gran Nan. First she makes an first-class ass of herself (yet again) by barking about how we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels by using more natural gas. (Uh, yeah. Ya see, Nan, yer natural gas is way down there where da oil is -- it works kinda like this.) Then she gets her moment in the sun at the convention (blink, blink, blink in the sun) only to burble and blabble in the late afternoon while absolutely nobody was listening. Which is just as well, since she gave so much evidence of how firmly planted she is in her little parallel universe. Then she runs afoul of a surprisingly fleet-footed Catholic hierarchy ready to read her the riot act. It's enough to make anybody's facial stitches pop.


HALLOWEEN IS TWO MONTHS AWAY,
BUT THE GREAT PUMPKIN HAS LANDED:

HILLARY'S IN AN ORANGE PANTSUIT,
AND SHE'S LIT UP INSIDE

The orange is actually a well-calculated choice, against the electric blue background -- classic colour theory. She's stealing the show pretty good, with her slightly re-worked stump speech (starting with her 35 years of experience-- as opposed to, oh, you know....) Bio video and speech are almost entirely the story of her campaign, very little else about her life before that. Old Hillary campaign signs were very little in evidence. Then she started speaking, and a whole new genre of signs -- a more personal look, consisting of her signature -- and there were hundreds of them, waving to the rhythm thunderous cheers.

Michelle looked pretty sour through the speech, until about half an hour in, when Hillary finally got around to mentioning who's really running for President. Odd-- Michelle at least got an acknowledgement that she'd be great for her perspective job. Barack got nothing that enthusiastic. Everybody's jazzed -- about Hillary, the historic woman -- who did a pretty good job of delivering tired campaign boiler-plate. She's learned not to shriek. That's a good thing. Obambi probably should have picked her, and knows it better now than he did at lunch today. I'm glad he didn't.

Hillary came to the hall this evening as a "proud mother, Democrat, Senator, American, and Barackista." Um.... let's see now. Proud........wife? Nah. Barack ain't the only one who got nudged to the margins. On a general note -- why do Democrats always have to lie so much? Just askin'.




Hey, Barack. I know you think you shouldn't take your eyes off her. But looks who's coming up behind.

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION --
DAY ONE

MICHELLE'S EXTREME MAKEOVER
PRONOUNCED "COMPLETE"

Banal and corny, soft and sweet, standard laundry-list, anger more-or-less in check, more about the promise of the future than the stale tale of our common victimization (or the perpetual whine about their damn college loans)....... who was that woman anyway??!!!

A little kiss-up to Hillary, a good scrub-a-dub for Barack, a little fog-machine on her own previous declarations.

Oh, and note to file, Mrs. O: I really don't want to hear you talking like you can relate to the military families with the empty chair at the table. Spare me -- I'm not buyin'.

Anyhoo -- she did her job. Moving on........


UNDENIABLE: TED KENNEDY LOOKED AMAZING
FOR A MAN FACING DEATH.

Maybe that's just the natural effect of being in a room where he could suck up the narcotic of public adulation with which he has benumbed the nerve-ends of basic humanity all his life. His words were the usual windbaggery; the video made unfortunate reference to his way of sailing over waters in which the innocent have drowned. He was treated with a fawning deference which mocked the tremendous damage his career of corrosive demagoguery and way-out leftism have inflicted upon the body politic (not least upon the bodies of the defenseless unborn).

Unfortunately he hasn't figured out why he's still thumping for the same government health care he has promised for the past 40 years or so: because year in, year out, so many many people know it just won't work.

I have written my anticipatory obituary for him, which will be food for another day. Sufficient unto the day is to remark that he did well and looked well in coming to the gathering of his tribe.


NOT WANTED ON VOYAGE:
THAT LUMPY OLD BAG

Speakress of the House San Fran Gran Nan Pelosi (whom I watched for a minute or so till I could watch no more, averting mine eyes from the train wreck) was particularly wooden and vacuous. E-e-e-e-w-w-w-w.


OTHER REVOLTING BAGGAGE: JIMMUH.

The Worst President of the Twentieth Century, if not All of History showed his face. I didn't stick around. Rosalyn was wearing a nice pant-suit.


Counting down the days.

GERMANS LOVE OBAMA -- CAN'T VOTE

IRAQIS HATE BIDEN -- CAN'T VOTE

All for the best, I guess, but.......

I always had the feeling that Gibberin' Joe Biden's plan for a tripartite division of Iraq along sectarian lines had been hatched without the least interest in what the Iraqis wanted for themselves -- even if it might possibly work, it was still something an American had no business advocating within the American Congress.

Now we know that the Iraqis were keeping an eye on Joe too, and were in complete agreement with me. (I always had the feeling a lot of them were pretty smart....)

Reuters (of all people!) reports the story. Money Quote Music to mine ears:

Senator Joe Biden may be one of the only U.S. politicians that can get Iraq's feuding Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians to agree. But not in a good way.

"This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing Iraq," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in parliament, told Reuters. "We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep the problems alive for a long time."

Tigerhawk weighs in with his take:

Anyway, it is a reflection of the diminishing political significance of the Iraq war that Barack Obama, who secured the Democratic nomination in part by making much of his opposition to the war and his plan to withdraw our troops on a fast schedule, is now able to pick as his running mate a senator who voted for the invasion in 2002 and whose favored "solution" would have required more rather than less American involvement in Iraqi domestic politics.

Duh.

"We rejected his proposal when he announced it..." Funny, I don't recall hearing that on Anderson Cooper 180 or reading it from the Paper of Record. Funny.

Maybe next time Joe will remember to ask them first.

Woe to those who would hide their plans too deep for the LORD! Who work in the dark, saying, "Who sees us, or who knows us?"
[Isaiah 29:15]

It's midnight in the District of Columbia, and...

IT'S BIDEN!!!!


Yes, the Obamaniacs have been hard at work in the dark of night, and Dems, you got yourself a Veepsteak.

Oh, and if you're one of the loyal acolytes who signed up to be the "First to Know" via text or email from Barack Obama (still on offer at the Obama website), you are so S.O.L., my friends -- your message should arrive some time tomorrow morning, but the Really Important People (the press) were the Real First To Know, and they beat you by hours. Perhaps you didn't read the fine print at the bottom of the page, that says you have to cough up money or perform some other act of service for the campaign in order to get what you thought was offered to you freely. (See convention tickets, etc.)

Delaware Senator Joe Biden --
just five years younger than John McCain, elected to the Senate when Barry Obama was 10 years old -- has been chosen to be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. Once infamous for having plagiarized a speech (not to mention plagiarizing his forehead hair from some other part of his body), Biden is now much more famous for his own words -- by the score. His chronic oral diarrhea has made an ass of him in more forums than one can count, most memorably in the confirmation hearings of Republican-nominated Supreme Court Justices.

Political humorist Andy Borowitz predicted a few days ago that, anticipating the nod, Biden had already "prepared a 50,000 word acceptance speech" to begin on Wednesday and close on Thursday.

Jonah Goldberg at NationalReviewOnline calls the choice "an outright terrible decision," and reminds us that "Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks." Not content to gift us with this new bon mot, Goldberg resurrects his September '05 assessment of the man (whom he actually kind of likes):

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there...What's fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you'd expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization's usual imperatives to stop talking.

Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don't understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I'm going to get right to it and besides these aren't the droids you're looking for...

[hat-tip, Obiwan Kenobi -- emphases: mine]

But while we're all chuckling at the prospect of two hot air balloons trying to occupy the same platform, it's worth remembering that two years ago Biden proposed a "solution" to the strife in Iraq which was manifestly disastrous, and he's still being treated like it was a serious proposal -- in fact, even in the past half-hour there have already been suggestions that the hard-won resolutions arrived at this year in Iraq actually bear some resemblance to the three-way religio/ethnic ghetto-izing Biden had recommended. Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune summed it up pretty well at the time-- money quote:

Just as the Iraqis were finally putting together a unity government, along comes Sen. Joseph Biden with a "detailed plan" to unravel it.

Brilliant.

As brilliant as Abraham Lincoln preparing a detailed plan to end the Civil War upon the fall of Vicksburg.

Just like Sara Lee, it seems that nobody doesn't like Joe Biden. But he is nevertheless dangerously dumb where smartness is required for survival. Many a Republican/conservative considers this choice (and the blabbering dumbness) of Biden a gift in this election cycle, and happily say "Bring it on." If the survival of the species were not dependent on these things, this could be nothing but fun. The Democratic ticket could be the gaffe that keeps on gaffing.

Anyway, Biden should enjoy himself as he runs for office on the promise of "CHANGE" (having spent 36 years in Washington), hand-in-glove with that fella he once admired for being "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy -- I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Kinda gets ya'-- rightcheer.

On the other hand, Jim Geraghty at NRO has a revealing round-up of some of Biden's less-than-complimentary assessments of his new running mate, now on record. F'rinstance, in December of '07, Joe was heard to opine: “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.” [hat-tip YidWithLid]

Well, this is as close as Ol' Joe is ever gonna get to the West Wing office. This team is not gonna get the gold-- and not because their opponents are underage!!!!