From Lileks:

It’s possible there are bitter people who regard their station in life as a direct result of the current rate of capital gains taxes, but it seems an insufficiently reasoned basis for a national economic policy. Oh, it’s possible; at this very minute one of the country’s innumerable domestic terror cells could be planning a bombing of a Planned Parenthood center, driven to extremism by the very possibility of a Colombian trade pact. But I doubt it.

Not to say economics don’t affect people; I’m not that stupid. But like any adversity, you meet it with a certain amount of psychological capital. The more grounded you are in things that transcend the dollar, the better you can deal with the downturns. Some seem to suspect that the “grounding” is nothing more than a stake in the ground to channel the bolts tossed off by madmen in the pulpits, but those are the people most likely to believe that church services either consist of yelling and snake-handling, or gaseous bromides pumped out over a complacent stack of prim-faced morons and hypocrites who spend the service lusting after young women in the choir. There is no goodness, only the momentary self-delusion accorded by participation in a consensual charade.

I’ve been trying to find the right words for a certain theory, and I can’t quite do it yet. It has to do with how a candidate feels about America – they have to be fundamentally, dispositionally comfortable with it. Not in a way that glosses over or excuses its flaws, but comfortable in the way a long-term married couple is comfortable. That includes not delighting in its flaws, or crowing them at every opportunity as proof of your love. I mean a simple quiet sense of awe and pride, its challenges and flaws and uniqueness and tragedies considered. You don’t win the office by being angry we’re not something else; you win by being enthused we can be something better. You can fake the latter. But people sense the former.

Yup. And a lot of them are the people–the so-called independents and “moderate” Republicans”–whom the Obamamaniacs were hoping that they could con this fall.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mickey has some more thoughts:

Making excuses for autonomous human actors is always a form of condescension, I’d say. But when you make excuses for arguably what many people regard as normal, even laudable behavior, you double down on the disrespect, because you are also challenging your subjects’ moral framework.

He also has some commentary on Microsoft’s brilliant marketing strategy:

It seems like a can’t-lose approach for the Redmond, Wash. firm, as long as a) they continue to cultivate the image of a big, clumsy and greedy organization that’s just stupid enough to kill a product consumers like in order to try to force them to purchase a product the corporate bureaucracy has ploddingly disgorged and b) their new products continue to be awful.

There hasn’t been a breakthrough business plan like this since New Coke. “Suicide marketing.” (Buy this before we do something rash!) …

P.S.: The only fly in the ointment is the slim possibility that Microsoft’s next operating system, due in 2010, will actually be an improvement over Windows XP. But Ballmer & Co. know better than to let that happen.

[Early afternoon update]

John Judis says that “liberal” commentators are whistling past the fall graveyard if they don’t think that Obama’s faux pas (i.e., saying what he really thinks of the rubes) won’t hurt him in the general election.

And Rick Lowry thinks (as I do) that the donkeys, continuing to be out of touch in their liberal cocoon with the aid of the MSM, are setting themselves up for another electoral disaster:

Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it’s rude to insist: “No, you don’t. It’s the minimum wage that you really care about, and you’d know it if you were more self-aware.” But Democrats have an uncontrollable reflex to do just that. Since the McGovernite takeover of their party, they have struggled to work up enthusiasm for Middle American mores. (Since 1980, only Bill Clinton managed it, which is why he was the only Democrat elected president in three decades.)

When the liberal reflex is coupled with a Ivy League-educated candidate who seems personally remote and uncomfortable with everyday American activities, it’s electoral poison. After the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry, Republicans had to be wondering, “Could Democrats possibly nominate yet another candidate easily portrayed as an out-of-touch elitist?” With Obama, Democrats appear to be responding with a resounding “Yes, we can!”

And yes, they will, unless Hillary! can stop them. Not that she has a much better chance of winning, since the blacks and the young people who are energizing the Obama campaign are likely to stay home if it is taken from him.

From Lileks:

It’s possible there are bitter people who regard their station in life as a direct result of the current rate of capital gains taxes, but it seems an insufficiently reasoned basis for a national economic policy. Oh, it’s possible; at this very minute one of the country’s innumerable domestic terror cells could be planning a bombing of a Planned Parenthood center, driven to extremism by the very possibility of a Colombian trade pact. But I doubt it.

Not to say economics don’t affect people; I’m not that stupid. But like any adversity, you meet it with a certain amount of psychological capital. The more grounded you are in things that transcend the dollar, the better you can deal with the downturns. Some seem to suspect that the “grounding” is nothing more than a stake in the ground to channel the bolts tossed off by madmen in the pulpits, but those are the people most likely to believe that church services either consist of yelling and snake-handling, or gaseous bromides pumped out over a complacent stack of prim-faced morons and hypocrites who spend the service lusting after young women in the choir. There is no goodness, only the momentary self-delusion accorded by participation in a consensual charade.

I’ve been trying to find the right words for a certain theory, and I can’t quite do it yet. It has to do with how a candidate feels about America – they have to be fundamentally, dispositionally comfortable with it. Not in a way that glosses over or excuses its flaws, but comfortable in the way a long-term married couple is comfortable. That includes not delighting in its flaws, or crowing them at every opportunity as proof of your love. I mean a simple quiet sense of awe and pride, its challenges and flaws and uniqueness and tragedies considered. You don’t win the office by being angry we’re not something else; you win by being enthused we can be something better. You can fake the latter. But people sense the former.

Yup. And a lot of them are the people–the so-called independents and “moderate” Republicans”–whom the Obamamaniacs were hoping that they could con this fall.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mickey has some more thoughts:

Making excuses for autonomous human actors is always a form of condescension, I’d say. But when you make excuses for arguably what many people regard as normal, even laudable behavior, you double down on the disrespect, because you are also challenging your subjects’ moral framework.

He also has some commentary on Microsoft’s brilliant marketing strategy:

It seems like a can’t-lose approach for the Redmond, Wash. firm, as long as a) they continue to cultivate the image of a big, clumsy and greedy organization that’s just stupid enough to kill a product consumers like in order to try to force them to purchase a product the corporate bureaucracy has ploddingly disgorged and b) their new products continue to be awful.

There hasn’t been a breakthrough business plan like this since New Coke. “Suicide marketing.” (Buy this before we do something rash!) …

P.S.: The only fly in the ointment is the slim possibility that Microsoft’s next operating system, due in 2010, will actually be an improvement over Windows XP. But Ballmer & Co. know better than to let that happen.

[Early afternoon update]

John Judis says that “liberal” commentators are whistling past the fall graveyard if they don’t think that Obama’s faux pas (i.e., saying what he really thinks of the rubes) won’t hurt him in the general election.

And Rick Lowry thinks (as I do) that the donkeys, continuing to be out of touch in their liberal cocoon with the aid of the MSM, are setting themselves up for another electoral disaster:

Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it’s rude to insist: “No, you don’t. It’s the minimum wage that you really care about, and you’d know it if you were more self-aware.” But Democrats have an uncontrollable reflex to do just that. Since the McGovernite takeover of their party, they have struggled to work up enthusiasm for Middle American mores. (Since 1980, only Bill Clinton managed it, which is why he was the only Democrat elected president in three decades.)

When the liberal reflex is coupled with a Ivy League-educated candidate who seems personally remote and uncomfortable with everyday American activities, it’s electoral poison. After the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry, Republicans had to be wondering, “Could Democrats possibly nominate yet another candidate easily portrayed as an out-of-touch elitist?” With Obama, Democrats appear to be responding with a resounding “Yes, we can!”

And yes, they will, unless Hillary! can stop them. Not that she has a much better chance of winning, since the blacks and the young people who are energizing the Obama campaign are likely to stay home if it is taken from him.

From Kaus, who (smart guy that he is) agrees with me:

It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it’s logically possible to say ‘these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things,.” but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for … him). Yesterday at the CNN “Compassion Forum” Obama said he wasn’t disparaging religion because he meant people “cling” to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they “cling” to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”–the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those “traditions that are passed on from generation to generation” that “sustains us”? Obama’s unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians’ excess religiosity.

Exactly.

And on his intellectual arrogance:

And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about–let alone apologized for–his views? He certainly didn’t apologize in his “race” speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else’s beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone’s beliefs will revert after the revolution. … sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope!

Of course, as someone else noted the other day, when one considers that Obama’s most direct experience with Christianity is sitting in the pew of Trinity United for two decades, it shouldn’t be surprising that he thinks that all religious people are bitter, bigoted and xenophobic.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Obama’s spinmeisters are trying to avoid the real issue:

While the description of small town Pennsylvanians as “bitter” is certainly impolitic, many political analysts say it’s what follows that adjective that is potentially so alienating — the notion that small town folks “get bitter” after which “they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

But Obama allies are trying to focus on the “bitter” part alone.

A robo-call on behalf of the Obama campaign from Mayor John Brenner of York, Pa., says that, “Barack Obama understands us. He’s got it right, we are frustrated — frustrated with polices that enable businesses to leave our community, pensions to be stripped, health care benefits to be taken away and homes foreclosed. Unlike his opponents, who have been part of the Washington establishment that are out of touch with us, Barack Obama will change Washington. It is policies that hurt us. He will take on the special interests and fight for us.”

We’ll see if the MSM let him get away with it. So far, at least Jake Tapper isn’t.

[Update a few minutes later]

Donald Sensing says that Obama needs to learn when to quit digging:

So family, community and religious faith are apparently what angry, bitter people embrace. Well, I’m not bitter about anything (except, perhaps, the exceptionally poor candidates all around for the presidency this year), and I turn to all those things.

So, does Obama mean that happy, contented people have little truck with family, community or faith? I can’t believe he thinks that even if he did imply it. (Others have commented that Obama’s speaking strength is from prepared texts and he stumbles frequently off the cuff. I dunno). But if he does think that, it’s just stunning in its error and stupidity. But again, I don’t think he meant to imply it, though he did, and I don’t think he believes it.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook because if he thinks that happy, contented people embrace family-community-religion as quickly as angry, bitter people, exactly what has he said here? Nothing. Really, think about. Nothing. Except that bitter people like to own guns – I truly think that Obama can’t fathom why a happy, contented person would want to do that.

I’m starting to think that what Obama can’t fathom would fill a large library.

From Kaus, who (smart guy that he is) agrees with me:

It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it’s logically possible to say ‘these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things,.” but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for … him). Yesterday at the CNN “Compassion Forum” Obama said he wasn’t disparaging religion because he meant people “cling” to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they “cling” to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”–the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those “traditions that are passed on from generation to generation” that “sustains us”? Obama’s unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians’ excess religiosity.

Exactly.

And on his intellectual arrogance:

And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about–let alone apologized for–his views? He certainly didn’t apologize in his “race” speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else’s beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone’s beliefs will revert after the revolution. … sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope!

Of course, as someone else noted the other day, when one considers that Obama’s most direct experience with Christianity is sitting in the pew of Trinity United for two decades, it shouldn’t be surprising that he thinks that all religious people are bitter, bigoted and xenophobic.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Obama’s spinmeisters are trying to avoid the real issue:

While the description of small town Pennsylvanians as “bitter” is certainly impolitic, many political analysts say it’s what follows that adjective that is potentially so alienating — the notion that small town folks “get bitter” after which “they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

But Obama allies are trying to focus on the “bitter” part alone.

A robo-call on behalf of the Obama campaign from Mayor John Brenner of York, Pa., says that, “Barack Obama understands us. He’s got it right, we are frustrated — frustrated with polices that enable businesses to leave our community, pensions to be stripped, health care benefits to be taken away and homes foreclosed. Unlike his opponents, who have been part of the Washington establishment that are out of touch with us, Barack Obama will change Washington. It is policies that hurt us. He will take on the special interests and fight for us.”

We’ll see if the MSM let him get away with it. So far, at least Jake Tapper isn’t.

[Update a few minutes later]

Donald Sensing says that Obama needs to learn when to quit digging:

So family, community and religious faith are apparently what angry, bitter people embrace. Well, I’m not bitter about anything (except, perhaps, the exceptionally poor candidates all around for the presidency this year), and I turn to all those things.

So, does Obama mean that happy, contented people have little truck with family, community or faith? I can’t believe he thinks that even if he did imply it. (Others have commented that Obama’s speaking strength is from prepared texts and he stumbles frequently off the cuff. I dunno). But if he does think that, it’s just stunning in its error and stupidity. But again, I don’t think he meant to imply it, though he did, and I don’t think he believes it.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook because if he thinks that happy, contented people embrace family-community-religion as quickly as angry, bitter people, exactly what has he said here? Nothing. Really, think about. Nothing. Except that bitter people like to own guns – I truly think that Obama can’t fathom why a happy, contented person would want to do that.

I’m starting to think that what Obama can’t fathom would fill a large library.

From Kaus, who (smart guy that he is) agrees with me:

It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it’s logically possible to say ‘these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things,.” but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for … him). Yesterday at the CNN “Compassion Forum” Obama said he wasn’t disparaging religion because he meant people “cling” to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they “cling” to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”–the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those “traditions that are passed on from generation to generation” that “sustains us”? Obama’s unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians’ excess religiosity.

Exactly.

And on his intellectual arrogance:

And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about–let alone apologized for–his views? He certainly didn’t apologize in his “race” speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else’s beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone’s beliefs will revert after the revolution. … sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope!

Of course, as someone else noted the other day, when one considers that Obama’s most direct experience with Christianity is sitting in the pew of Trinity United for two decades, it shouldn’t be surprising that he thinks that all religious people are bitter, bigoted and xenophobic.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Obama’s spinmeisters are trying to avoid the real issue:

While the description of small town Pennsylvanians as “bitter” is certainly impolitic, many political analysts say it’s what follows that adjective that is potentially so alienating — the notion that small town folks “get bitter” after which “they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

But Obama allies are trying to focus on the “bitter” part alone.

A robo-call on behalf of the Obama campaign from Mayor John Brenner of York, Pa., says that, “Barack Obama understands us. He’s got it right, we are frustrated — frustrated with polices that enable businesses to leave our community, pensions to be stripped, health care benefits to be taken away and homes foreclosed. Unlike his opponents, who have been part of the Washington establishment that are out of touch with us, Barack Obama will change Washington. It is policies that hurt us. He will take on the special interests and fight for us.”

We’ll see if the MSM let him get away with it. So far, at least Jake Tapper isn’t.

[Update a few minutes later]

Donald Sensing says that Obama needs to learn when to quit digging:

So family, community and religious faith are apparently what angry, bitter people embrace. Well, I’m not bitter about anything (except, perhaps, the exceptionally poor candidates all around for the presidency this year), and I turn to all those things.

So, does Obama mean that happy, contented people have little truck with family, community or faith? I can’t believe he thinks that even if he did imply it. (Others have commented that Obama’s speaking strength is from prepared texts and he stumbles frequently off the cuff. I dunno). But if he does think that, it’s just stunning in its error and stupidity. But again, I don’t think he meant to imply it, though he did, and I don’t think he believes it.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook because if he thinks that happy, contented people embrace family-community-religion as quickly as angry, bitter people, exactly what has he said here? Nothing. Really, think about. Nothing. Except that bitter people like to own guns – I truly think that Obama can’t fathom why a happy, contented person would want to do that.

I’m starting to think that what Obama can’t fathom would fill a large library.

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]