Glenn explains:
No doubt they all go around exchanging Obama Salutes and clicking their heels…
But don’t call them a cult!
I guess that it really is all about the “O.” Sabine Ehrenfeld is still a lot hotter, though. At this point, given the other choices on the menu, I’m ready to sign up for a Sabine/Paris ticket. Too bad she was born in Germany.
I suspect that Senator Obama’s fans may prove to be his worst enemies.
[Update a while later]
Ace has more.
I wonder how many of the people who are giving Congress single-digit approval ratings know which party is in charge?
I think that it’s foolish for John McCain to be running against George Bush. He shouldn’t be asking whether or not you’re better off than eight or four years ago. That’s Obama’s line.
He needs to ask whether or not you’re better off than you were two years ago, when the Dems started mismanaging Congress. Point out not how much gas prices have gone up in eight years, but in how much they’ve gone up in two years (probably the biggest percentage jump in history). Never use the word “Congress” without prepending it with “Democratic.”
Alan Boyle interviews the first man to relieve his bladder on the moon, about the Moon, Mars and the Gap. And it’s great to see him (and Lois) still going strong. And as he points out, there are a lot of fortieth and fiftieth anniversary news hooks coming up. I hope to take advantage of them as well.
Amid the fact that Obama’s having a bad week, and not jumping ahead in the polls as conventional “wisdom” dictated, it’s useful to note that he’s not only not president yet (despite his play acting at it with the seal and the overseas visits), but that he’s not even the Democrat nominee. I will continue to remind people that regardless of what Hillary! says about supporting him, actions shout where words whisper.
She did not withdraw from the race, and she did not release her delegates. Obama does not have enough “pledged” (i.e., derived from primary victories) delegates to get the nomination–he needs the votes of superdelegates who had previously committed to him in June, but they are still free to vote however they wish in Denver.
If he continues to make gaffes, and look weak, and lose support of the yout’ who were supposed to be his big ace in the hole, and Obama fatigue sets in, there may be a lot of buyers’ remorse among the once-enthusiastic Democrats. The stage is once again set for a very exciting convention in Denver, in which die-hard Hillary! supporters, despite her demurrals, will put her name in nomination and demand a roll-call vote. And those superdelegates will once again, and finally, be faced with a very ugly choice–go with a demonstrably weak candidate, and mollify the black constituency, or go with the winner of the latter part of the primary, and risk tearing the party apart (not to mention putting up a candidate with continuing high negatives), perhaps complete with mile-high riots. And the worse he seems to be doing, the harder the choice will be.
Peter Wood has an essay on the effects of our culture on science education.
Twenty-five reasons. You’re probably full of hate, too.
And obviously, when Obama loses, it will be because we’re all racists. What other reasons could we possible have to vote against him?
Mickey Kaus makes the case:
The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards–and I’ve gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it’s the prime reason for the MSM blackout. True, I also suspect that if Mrs. Edwards were a conservative Republican, or even an unbeloved Democrat, the MSM might somehow find a way to overcome this compassionate sentiment. But that doesn’t make it wrong. Reporters don’t have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he’d never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree (even if that meant sacrificing the deterrent effect of full exposure).
But that’s a point that clearly hasn’t been reached yet, at least not while most Americans are being kept in the dark about what, exactly, has led to Edwards’ mysterious disappearance from the political oddsmakers’ charts. A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret, even as he visits his mistress in a famous hotel that is hosting a convention of journalists, will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife’s illness until he can attempt a comeback– if given the chance.
The alternative, it seems to me, is to let affection for Mrs. Edwards suck journalists into a Print-the-Legend world where they must spend their time burnishing–or at least accepting–the story powerful people and institutions want them to tell, the story of the wonderful Edwards marriage, rather than figuring out and telling readers the truth. If I wanted to be in that business I’d be a publicist.
That’s certainly what the “journalists” have been when it came to Barack Obama. Does anyone doubt that if Edwards were a Republican in similar circumstances, that there would have been a NYT story about it? The question answers itself.
Lileks examines the train wreck that is Garrison Keillor’s latest:
I’m sorry, but I’m just fascinated by his column. Each is nearly identical in formlessness, subject and general pointlessness. To be fair: we all write at haste and repent at leisure, unless we can somehow get it out of the Google cache. We all make inelegant remarks that seemed wonderfully writerly at the moment but curdle when exposed to another pair of eyes. It’s the perils of blogging. But he has an entire week to write these things. Never does he attempt to make an argument or explore a line of thought – it’s just flat assertions ladled out with nuance or shading. The sun rises, Bush is bad, life is long but also short and so you should sit outside and drink lemonade and think of the people who came before you and sat outside and drank lemonade and there is a comfort in that continuity and we need all the comfort we can get in these days when nihilists in golf pants are everywhere and the Republic lies in ruins. Also, he is given to run-on sentences. This week has perhaps the finest example yet.
If that’s not enough, there is some cereal blogging, too.
Probably not, but we can always hope. I have a piece over at Pajamas today about fallacious and demagogic debating tactics.
…of capitalism:
Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.
These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.
As Mark Twain once wrote, “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
Most people in this country have little appreciation how good they’ve got it. It’s a shame that we no longer teach history in school.