Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

A Shorter Christopher Buckley

22 Comments

Via Mark Steyn:

If we view Obama’s past political alliances as mere cynical manipulation to advance his career and if we view his election policy proposals as just pandering to the electorate, then we can feel good about voting for him for President because of, ah , oh yes, his character.

The mental contortions one must put oneself through in order to justify voting for Barack Obama are truly amazing. It must be quite painful.

[Early evening update]

Jonah Goldberg expands:

Christopher invokes Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous line that FDR had a “first-class temperament” and so too Obama. Indeed, he suggests that Obama is a man of great character because he’s a man of great temperament. Conceding for the sake of argument that Obama’s temperament is first rate, are the two really the same thing? I don’t think so (indeed, that would be a hard case to make about FDR himself, who could be deceitful, vindictive, petty — even to his own son — and adulterous. And let us note that Holmes himself was not a man many of us should be invoking as an authority on political virtue or general decency).

The story Christopher tells of McCain’s great character has no real analogue in Obama. He may be in private a deeply honorable man, but his public record is one of accommodation, shortcuts, dishonest equivocations, serious leftwing sympathies and fellow-traveling with some awful people. Obama, let us recall, threw his own grandmother under the rhetorical bus in order to defend his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. That he sounded dignified doing it does not confer dignity on the act itself or the man behind it. That is surely not all there is to say about Obama, many of his friends and fans speak very well of him. But the scales Christopher uses to weigh one man against the other seem awfully rigged to me.

Everything in Barack Obama’s public life (other than his campaign speeches and publications) indicate that he’s a dedicated leftist (or else a very cynical man with no principles whatsoever). John McCain is, at worst, ideologically confused.

Political Commentary, Space

Did The Chinese Fake Their EVA?

16 Comments

I don’t know, and haven’t watched the video myself, but some Chinese bloggers think so:

Two seconds into the video from CCTV, bubble-like objects rose from the hatch as it sprung open. At 5 min 49 second, a bubble attached to the astronaut’s helmet. At 6 min 42 seconds, bubbles swiftly came out of the cabin. On the left corner of the video, bubbles gushed out at an angle at 7 min 17 seconds into the video.

A blogger, who is a physicist, commented in a Chinese Epoch Times article that, assuming the operation was conducted in the water, the bubbles rose faster than they would have if the water was not propelled using a wave-blower. Wave blowers are commonly used in underwater space-training exercises to simulate the weightlessness of space.

It wouldn’t shock me.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Enigma Of Obama

22 Comments

I have a piece today at Pajamas media, on the lies and spin of the Obama campaign, and his enablers in the media.

[Update late morning]

I should note, of course (though shouldn’t it go without saying?) that because I wrote this piece, like Roger Simon, I am a racist.

[Afternoon update]

I have to confess that I’m perplexed by the foolish comments that I, or John McCain, should be “going after” Walter Annenberg, or the Annenberg Foundation, or “charging them” with…something. What does that mean?

There is nothing illegal about funding leftist activities with philanthropy. I don’t even think that it should be. But I do think that the voters are entitled to know when one of their presidential candidates is involved with it. If Walter Annenberg were running for president, and doing the same things that Barack Obama is, and has done, I’d be saying exactly the same things about him. But he’s not.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Just For The Record

18 Comments

I made a crack in comments the other day that the market was tanking in anticipation of an Obama election. Some may have taken it seriously, but it was a joke.

I do think that markets react to potential election outcomes in general, but in this case, I suspect that there are much deeper issues going on, and given that John McCain has shown himself to be (as he has confessed in the past) as clueless on the economy and economics as Barack Obama, there’s probably not much street preference one way or the other. The folks in the pits are probably not even thinking about the election at this point.

While I’m not a conservative, I sure wish that there was at least one in the race, in terms of the economy.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

An Idle Question

15 Comments

How widespread is the voter registration fraud that ACORN has been responsible for? How much has it artificially boosted Democrat registration numbers this year?

There are two factors that have increased Dem registration this year. One is the efforts by ACORN and similar groups. The other is the significant numbers of Republicans who switched to Democrat so that they could vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. The first group isn’t going to vote for Obama because they don’t exist, to a large extent. The second group is going to vote for John McCain.

All of the likely (and even registered) voter polls are skewed to sample Dems more because of this perceived increase in Democrat voters. But if much of that increase is illusory, due to the factors described above, are the polls overstating support for Obama?

[Update late evening]

Iowahawk is on the case in defense of a truly defenseless minority: ACORN files suit on behalf of the voting rights of Imaginary-Americans:

“Whether we are obituary notices, hallucinatory giant rabbits, or strings of random keyboard strokes, it’s time for the chimera community to stand up and claim our rights as citizens,” said ASDFG. “We will no longer be silent and invisible. Okay, maybe invisible.”

In addition to $3.2 jubajillion in damages and free federal mortgages for homeless spectres, the suit also seeks enforcement of the Americans with Dimensional Disabilities Act. The Act requires voting places to make accommodations for existentially-challenged voters who have trouble completing ballots written in standard 3-dimensional reality. The accommodations include multiple site registration, time travel, and allowances for alcoholics to cast ballots for dependent D.T. phantasms.

“Many of our community inhabit the Tapioca subluster of the 11th Dimension, and it’s hard for them to find a convenient spacehole to make it to the local elementary school,” explained ASDFG.

Classic. And one that I wish that I’d thought of. Though as always, Burge does a much better job with the concept than I would have, anyway.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

ACORN

21 Comments

I don’t know what the penalties under the law are, but with the stories about people being hounded to register multiple times, I’d like to not only see their funding cut off, but a lot of people do jail time.

[Update mid afternoon]

Geraghty has more:

So we have an organization that has been joined at the hip with Obama from the beginning of his career, whose members have been convicted in Washington state, Wisconsin and Colorado, and had various forms of reprimand, investigation, indictment, and other run-ins with the law and state election authorities in Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, Arkansas. Perhaps most disturbingly, the organization has repeatedly entrusted convicted felons with voters’ most sensitive personal information, sort of a small business assistance program for aspiring identity thieves.

Is it time for Americans to tell ACORN to get out of their faces? Or perhaps for law enforcement to get into their faces? Or perhaps some media entity should get in Obama’s face about why one of his longtime allies keeps coming up in investigations of vote fraud?

If people don’t care about Bill Ayers, they should certainly care about this. It’s happening right now, less than a month before the election, not when Barack Obama was eight years old.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Say It Ain’t So, “O” (Part Three)

Is/was Barack Obama a member of Democratic Socialists of America? It sure looks like it.

No worries–they were probably just guys in his neighborhood.

Between these folks and Ayers and Dorhn (who are no doubt members as well, unless it wasn’t radical enough for them), it sounds like a pretty bad neighborhood.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg wonders if Senator Obama ever read his home-town newspaper.

And then of course there was Ayers’ own autobiography, the profile in the NY Times in which Ayers casually said he’d wished he’d made more bombs etc.

I don’t know Chicago well. But my sense of the place is that they take politics pretty seriously there. Young, very smart and hyper ambitious politicians like Obama tend to read the local paper (never mind the New York Times, which ran a couple dozen stories mentioning Ayers and his terrorist ties between 1990 and 2004). The political class in Chicago knows who everybody is, where they came from, what they believe. They tend to learn about people who give them jobs, money and political opportunities. And, people like Ayers don’t exactly keep their views or radical past a closely guarded secret, particularly when they remain unreprentant.

In short, I think it’s a lie — and a pretty stupid one — to say that Obama didn’t know about any of this. The obvious answer is he just didn’t care.

Yes, just like Reverend Wright’s rantings. It was no problem. Until, that is,it became politically inconvenient to him. He is lying about his relationship with Ayers, which means that he was also almost certainly lying about not knowing what was being preached in his church of twenty years. Why should we believe anything he says?

[Update late morning]

It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood, with advice columns from Barack’s and Michelle’s neighbors:

Dear Mary Ellen: Your question is borne of bourgeois ignorance and manufactured consent. A violent revolution is coming, and the workers will throw off the chains of their oppression and rise up in a bloody revolt against AmeriKKKa’s legacy of racism, genocide, and hegemonic corporatist empire. In the coming revolution, the state and its propagandist education apparatus will wither away, thus ushering in a new age of proletarian enlightenment. All education will be free, and all children, including yours, will be rescued from their bourgeois shackles and freed to join the vanguard for permanent revolution.

Bernadine has legal advice as well. Also, grooming tips from Rod.

[Afternoon update]

The memory hole doesn’t work so well any more, what with web archives. Politically Drunk has found some pages that had been previously scrubbed that confirm Senator Obama’s membership in the New Party:

From the October 1996 Update of the DSA ‘New Party’:
“New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races…

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).”

Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the “Progressive Populist” magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.

“New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.”

Is there any record of Senator Obama demanding a correction to the publications?

Next, I expect him to say “that’s not the Democratic Socialist Party that I knew…”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Say It Ain’t So, “O” (Part Three)

54 Comments

Is/was Barack Obama a member of Democratic Socialists of America? It sure looks like it.

No worries–they were probably just guys in his neighborhood.

Between these folks and Ayers and Dorhn (who are no doubt members as well, unless it wasn’t radical enough for them), it sounds like a pretty bad neighborhood.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg wonders if Senator Obama ever read his home-town newspaper.

And then of course there was Ayers’ own autobiography, the profile in the NY Times in which Ayers casually said he’d wished he’d made more bombs etc.

I don’t know Chicago well. But my sense of the place is that they take politics pretty seriously there. Young, very smart and hyper ambitious politicians like Obama tend to read the local paper (never mind the New York Times, which ran a couple dozen stories mentioning Ayers and his terrorist ties between 1990 and 2004). The political class in Chicago knows who everybody is, where they came from, what they believe. They tend to learn about people who give them jobs, money and political opportunities. And, people like Ayers don’t exactly keep their views or radical past a closely guarded secret, particularly when they remain unreprentant.

In short, I think it’s a lie — and a pretty stupid one — to say that Obama didn’t know about any of this. The obvious answer is he just didn’t care.

Yes, just like Reverend Wright’s rantings. It was no problem. Until, that is,it became politically inconvenient to him. He is lying about his relationship with Ayers, which means that he was also almost certainly lying about not knowing what was being preached in his church of twenty years. Why should we believe anything he says?

[Update late morning]

It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood, with advice columns from Barack’s and Michelle’s neighbors:

Dear Mary Ellen: Your question is borne of bourgeois ignorance and manufactured consent. A violent revolution is coming, and the workers will throw off the chains of their oppression and rise up in a bloody revolt against AmeriKKKa’s legacy of racism, genocide, and hegemonic corporatist empire. In the coming revolution, the state and its propagandist education apparatus will wither away, thus ushering in a new age of proletarian enlightenment. All education will be free, and all children, including yours, will be rescued from their bourgeois shackles and freed to join the vanguard for permanent revolution.

Bernadine has legal advice as well. Also, grooming tips from Rod.

[Afternoon update]

The memory hole doesn’t work so well any more, what with web archives. Politically Drunk has found some pages that had been previously scrubbed that confirm Senator Obama’s membership in the New Party:

From the October 1996 Update of the DSA ‘New Party’:
“New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races…

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).”

Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the “Progressive Populist” magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.

“New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.”

Is there any record of Senator Obama demanding a correction to the publications?

Next, I expect him to say “that’s not the Democratic Socialist Party that I knew…”