Usually, when a politician makes a gaffe, they try to explain it away, or say “what I meant was…”
Lawrence Eagleburger has a novel approach. He just said to Stuart Varney on Cavuto’s show that “I was stupid,” to explain his gaffe. He made up for it, by 1) pointing out that the Democrat presidential nominee is much less prepared than she is, and wrong on the foreign policy issues and 2) apologizing to the McCain campaign and governor Palin.
I think that Team Obama may end up regretting that they made fun of Sarah Palin’s wink.
Senator Obama says that if we disagree with him about the virtues of spreading our (or other peoples’) wealth around, that we’re selfish.
Nothing I like better from a socialist presidential candidate than being lectured about my personal morality.
…of Hyde Park:
The piper from Hyde Park has tougher work, not with rats with sharp teeth but with evil Republicans deserving of a death more painful than drowning. Humorless, self-righteous and immensely proud of himself, he employs his gift of “a unique ability to identify with children” to lure the grown-up children. His success as a spinner of “fairy tales,” as Bill Clinton called them in a fit of unexpected candor, is a tale of credulity run amok. Americans who look like grownups swoon like pimpled teenagers at the mention of his name, and brook no criticism however mild or reasoned the reservations. Polite questions are verboten, as Joe the Plumber learned. Scholars will write about this weird delirium in decades to come; the prudent are saving string for their Ph.D. theses. For now it’s prudent to hunker down and observe the disciplined march to the river.
Let’s hope they stop at the river bank on Tuesday.
Moral support for McCain supporters from Hizzbuzz:
The ONLY way McCain loses this race is if the media, operating as a full-fledged wing of the Obama campaign, breeds enough Eeyores amongst you to keep enough people home for Obama to squeak out wins. Hillary Clinton should have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, by larger margins that she did. Ohio should have been a 13-point win, Pennsylvania should have been a 12-point win, and Indiana should have been a 9-point win. Eeyores staying home, saying, “Oh bother, TV say me stay home, me sad, need dydee changed!” is what cost Hillary those extra points.
Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE. Get everyone you know to vote — tell them if they don’t, then Obama will turn America socialist, and we’re going to start with their house and bank account when we begin redistributing wealth. That should motivate them.
I don’t know if McCain will pull it out, but it’s going to be a lot closer than many have been predicting.
David Bernstein and Ilya Somin make it.
I agree with Bernstein generally, but this is a key point, I think:
Libertarians have been heavily involved in some of the most important constitutional Supreme Court litigation of the last two decades, either in terms of bringing the case, being among the most important advocates of one side’s constitutional theory, or both. Among the cases in this category are Lopez, Morrison, Boy Scouts v. Dale, U.S. Term Limits, Grutter, Gratz, Kelo, Raich, Heller, and probably a few more that I’m not thinking of offhand. With the minor exception of Justice Breyers’ vote in Gratz, in each of these cases, the ONLY votes the libertarian side received were from Republican appointees, and all of the Democrat appointees, plus the more liberal Republican appointees, ALWAYS voted against the libertarian side. The latter did so even in cases in which their political preferences were either irrelevant (Term Limits), or should have led them to sympathize with the plaintiff (Lopez, Kelo, Raich).
The only exception to this pattern is Lawrence v. Texas, in which Justice Kennedy seems to have been influenced by the Cato Institute’s brief. But if the liberals had been able to muster five votes without Kennedy, I’m sure the opinion would have been quite different, less libertarian and more about “tiers of scrutiny” and whatnot. I’m a law professor, teach constitutional law, and the subject is dear to my heart. I’d much rather have the side that tends to take my ideological compatriots’ constitutional arguments seriously on the Court. And Raich and Kelo, respectively, suggest that the liberals on the Court not only don’t take libertarian arguments seriously, they don’t believe in (a) any limits in federal regulatory power, whatsoever; or in (b) property rights, even when big corporations are using the political process to screw over the little guy.
I also agree with Ilya that it’s very important to have divided government right now, at least as much as a pseudo-Democrat in the White House will provide that.
McCain supporters are less likely to be willing to be interviewed. That means they’ll be significantly overstating the vote for Obama.
…and mind control. A suitable scientific topic for All Hallows Eve. I wonder if this could explain the Obama cult?
From Lileks:
The love of chrome-and-glass modern restaurants is probably due to one place, which I’ve mentioned before – the Erie Jr. in Detroit Lakes, MN. It had a counter, a high ceiling, plastic booths in vivid hues, a roof that looked like it space ships could dock in the back, and it had that space-age vibe that shimmered off so many new things when I was very young. We had a keen sense of the future then; we knew the toys we had today would be the tools of the future. You know how you put your hand out the window when you were going fast, and undulated it up and down like a dolphin, riding the oncoming wind? The future felt like that. The future was a chrome-trimmed triangular window in the front of dad’s car, and it had its own knob to open it up. The future was a hamburger under a light fixture that looked like an atom. The future was going to be awesome.
I still get impatient with people who insist that it can’t be. Pessimists can be such bores, and it’s lazy to believe the worst. What’s the line about Scaramouche: he was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad. I don’t think that’s the best modus vivendi, but it beats teaching yourself the curse of scowling and the sense that it’s all a grind to be endured until the tomb gapes wide, and the only respectable intellectual pose is a Menckenian disdain for those who refuse to see how shallow, small, vacuous and contemptible they are.
I blame the boomers, of course. 😉 If you’re going to make a fetish out of the Authentic Values of Adolescence, with its withering critiques of humanity, then you’re going to value the slouch and the sneer as signs of a Deep and Serious Person. The Boomers were handed a Utopian ideal – practical, technocratic, rational, with silver wheels in the sky tended over by engineers and scientists – and they abandoned it for a Dionysian version based on wrecking and remaking the world they’d inherited. Their patron saint: Holy St. Caulfield, who identified the greatest sin in the human soul: being a phoney. Better to be an authentic bastard than someone who cannot successfully convince a teenager that some ideas have an importance that transcend the ability of the individual to manifest them 24/7.
Of course they got sour; if you believe a Utopia is possible if we just retinker human behavior to eliminate greed and dress codes and football and anything else that reminds us of Dad, be it the specific one or the unseen National Dad that rules the boardrooms and bedrooms and cloakrooms of DC, then the failure of this world makes it a dystopia, the worst of all possible worlds.
Some suggest that the great disenchantment began with the assassination of JFK, and I see the point. But it’s strange that it led to a loss of faith in us, given who shot the President. (Yes, I’m one of those lone-gunman wackos. I’m a freethinker! I refuse to accept concensus!) If Oswald had been a card-carrying Kluxer or a dead-ender Bircher or some sort of far-right-wing nutcase, I wonder if we would have accepted the Warren Commission and moved along. But no, he was a Communist. Well obviously there has to be more to it, then. Same with Sirhan Sirhan: his motivation will forever be a mystery, won’t it?
Once you start to believe in the dark shadowy forces, you’re done with the world. You’re done engaging it, you’re done enjoying it. There’s no point. It’s a sham, a shell, a shiny façade erected by the Jews / Bilderburgers / Trilateral Commission/ Council on Foreign Relations / Project for a New American Century / Masons / Knights Templar / Illuminati / Federal Reserve / Rockefeller-Royal Family Nexus / Bush Crime Syndicate / League of Grim Intent, and all you can do is post on the internet and call talk radio to argue with the hosts who think we’re free people.
It’s nice to see hope abroad in the land again, but I wonder who will be to blame when human nature asserts itself and the manna shipments fall behind. Someone has to be blamed, after all. It’s not the task that’s a fool’s errand. It’s the fools who refuse to believe in the task.
Hope abroad, and change. But not change I have any interest in believing.
I heard yesterday that early voters in Israel went for McCain over Obama three to one. But how do expatriate’s votes overseas get translated into electors? Do they have to provide a stateside address?