WHO WON?














ABC's morning anchorperson took on Governor Sarah for her first Most Excellent TV Interview Adventure.




She had her weak moments. But at the end of the day, the imperious, supercilious, self-important Professor Gibson just made himself look...small.



H-m-m-m-m

It has come to me recently that I have one very, very big fear about the 2008 U.S. election:

I fear that at some point, Sarah Palin's mountain man husband, Todd

is just gonna HAVE to CLOCK somebody!!!

And I would SO want to be there when it happens! Please, somebody, have the camera rolling!

But I sure hope it doesn't turn out to be former-conservative-turned-alien-life-form Andrew Sullivan, cuz Andrew's, er, "husband" is a REALLY big dude too,


and he might decide that, like Mr. Palin, he has to step in and..., um,... defend his woman.... as 'twere.

Among Sullivan's early reactions to the Palin pick [even before he became an irresponsible smear-monger in the National Enquirer mode]:

Squaring The Christianist Circle

29 Aug 2008 11:35 am

Now I understand: she's a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she's not from the South.

And later, after flogging every scandal he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe [about Bristol being Trig's mother, about an affair with a business partner, you name it, he disseminated it]:

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That's all you need to know.

Sully, we hardly know ye..... Well, yeah -- we do now.


Hurricane Ike -- bearing down on my little niece's house! STOP THAT!

STILL STANDING


The Marine Corps flag hangs straight and still, in the corner of a Pentagon office blown open by the deliberate crash of Flight 77, September 11, 2001.







We mourn and remember:

Ken Basnicki
David Barkway
Jack Charles Aron

and

Rick Rescorla

and the 2996.


And we celebrate
and pray for
the living --
those who were left behind,
those who survived,
those who protected,
repaired, nursed,
sheltered, rebuilt.

And those who fought, died fighting, still fight, will fight,
and who will, in the end, be the best of our peacemakers.

Let us give [vote] them leadership worthy of their sacrifice.
























[Three photos above by Michael Yon]

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

Here I was, feeling like I had to soften the blow of a mouthy Canadian newsbabe who fired off a bazooka-sized bitch-slap on Sarah Palin, via the CBC webpage [scroll down].

Well, why should I be surprised that once again America has built something bigger and better. Or in this case, badder and bitchier. Check out the Malign-a Monologue by some mistress of the frickatives named Cintra Wilson at Salon.com. I won't even quote any of it here. Reading it once was too exhausting.

Re: the weird tilt toward Puritanism exhibited by the most lefty of the left when they take on a person of sincere traditional moral convictions. Strange how Mrs. Palin brings out the over-sexed smut-mouthed prose stylings in these feminist columnists, who sex-up every angle of every argument, but do so with this bizarre, dripping disgust -- you can almost see the lace hanky being brought to the turned up nose and the cry for smelling salts, like a spectator at the Ascot races who just heard Eliza Doolittle holler, "Come on Dover, move your bloomin' arse!"


Or, more to the point, they are as seized by seething shock as the nice little church ladies who sat at their dinner table and endured Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen's on-screen alter ego) gracing their gathering with a bag of feces and a two-bit hooker.

Spare us the gasps and squeemish dry heaves, ladies. Go ahead and strike something, if it makes you feel better, but not this particular pose.

TRANSCANADA GAS PIPELINE, or

CANADIAN WOMEN JOURNALISTS STRIKE!

Many a Canadian is delighted that before becoming internationally famous, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin pushed to seal the deal on the gas pipeline that will bring north Alaska gas to the lower 48 via western Canadian territory. (details here, maps here)

That project will take some years to come online, but in the meantime there's been a blast of Canadian unnatural gas that is blowing all across the United States, and nations abroad. ** Journalista Heather Mallick, a viciously anti-American asp who has worn out readerships in newsprint and codex form, and is now on her last legs on the CBC website. Marshalling all the poisons in her alchemical closet, Mallick churned out a piece called A Mighty Wind Blows Through Republican Convention a few days ago. It starts like this:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Then builds to stuff like this:

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

You get the picture.
[**Mallick also re-worked her malice for Britain's Guardian]

Fortunately, one of the people who made this column famous was James Lileks, who conducted a world-class fisking on it here. Even more fortunately, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay dismantled Mallick, and her employers, in today's National Post, with Another week, another disgrace at the CBC.

In the same issue of the Post, Jonathan is one-upped by his mom, Barbara Kay, who writes this!:

I imagine his pre-speech expression as alert, but relaxed paternalism, like a chief surgeon set to supervise a lowly resident's clumsy initial attempt at an appendectomy. Then puzzlement as the surgeon realizes that he's to be the patient, and finally horror as, strapped to the table and, before a nation of fascinated onlookers, he is subjected to ... a palinoscopy!

Oh, she got through to him all right. For eight months critics haven't really laid more than glancing blows on Obama, because they were jabbing away at his exterior. Sarah got him right in the gut.

Palin's mockery tickled Obama's worrisome polyps of swollen self-regard (the "styrofoam pillars"), his history of words over action ("two memoirs, but no major bills"), his curious pattern of risk avoidance (unlike community organizers, mayors have "actual responsibilities") and his tendency to solipsism(presidential journeys are not "voyages of personal discovery").

Bottom line:

...Palin wasn't ever committed to any collectivity but America itself. She was never "I am Woman, hear me roar." She was always, "I am Sarah, watch me act."

Mama Mia!

Just passin' this on, so's people don't assume from the 'Mallick aforethought' that everybody in this banana-like republic is certifiably bananas.






NOT A PICTURE OF HEATHER MALLICK --

NOT, NOT, NOT

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.