“That’s Not The Tony Rezko I Knew”

So Obama is shocked that his friend has been convicted?

If he’s this naive and trusting (and clueless) about his close associates, that they can fool him for years as to their true nature, why should we trust him to deal with foreign enemies?

And was he paying Rezko off to keep him quiet? Sixty-four grand is a lot of money, particularly when Michelle is complaining about having to pay off college loans. If he’s just a lousy businessman, who doesn’t know the value of money, is that a good resume for the chief executive of the country?

“That’s Not The Tony Rezko I Knew”

So Obama is shocked that his friend has been convicted?

If he’s this naive and trusting (and clueless) about his close associates, that they can fool him for years as to their true nature, why should we trust him to deal with foreign enemies?

And was he paying Rezko off to keep him quiet? Sixty-four grand is a lot of money, particularly when Michelle is complaining about having to pay off college loans. If he’s just a lousy businessman, who doesn’t know the value of money, is that a good resume for the chief executive of the country?

Forty Years

I recall waking up to my clock radio, which was announcing that Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed the night before in LA, on June 5th, 1968. It was quite a shock to someone growing up in a family of Democrats, coming so soon after the King assassination, and a reminder of the assassination of his brother less than five years earlier.

Now, decades on, it’s pretty clear to me that, like his brother, he was vastly overrated, but his death was a tragedy nonetheless. Not because we were deprived of a great leader, but because we imagined we were, and it was traumatic, particularly for the left. To the point that, like JFK, though he was killed by a leftist (in this case a vengeful Palestinian) they had to concoct bizarre theories to make it appear to be a “right wing” conspiracy. Both the Kennedy assassinations are wounds from which so-called liberals have never really recovered, or gotten over their anger.

Why Hollywood Sux (Part 34,652)

It’s not bad enough that they are so deficient in creativity that they have to make flicks out of old television shows and comic books. Now they’re reduced to remaking stupid schlock that should never have been made the first time. Behold, what the world has been awaiting–a new version of Capricorn One. Well, at least they won’t be likely to compound the cinematic crime by including OJ, this time.

On a cheerier note, there’s apparently a much better (to put it mildly–I shouldn’t even be discussing them in the same post) SF movie on the way.

…what I have is a story where businessmen and engineers are the heroes, the protestors are the bad guys, people accept risk willingly and some of them die for it, where they do amazing things and go to astonishing places on their own dime, where nuclear power is good and essential and the motivation is not money or power but freedom and a love of humanity, and where America and all she stands for is a beacon in a darkening world.

It’s a crazy bizarro world of science fiction!

Hollywood would never make anything like that.

Good luck, Bill–we’ll be looking forward to seeing it, and ignoring the other.

Obama The Conservative

At least in Virginia Postrel’s parlance:

Obama’s memoir is not a policy tome or a campaign biography but an emotional journey. It does not offer alternatives, only bleak observations and predictions. It is pessimistic, conservative, nostalgic. The theme running through Dreams from My Father is the search for order, for stability, for roots in an undisturbed pre-modern culture. How that yearning for stasis translates into presidential policy is not clear, but I worry.

Me, too. It’s questionable whether most of his nostrums are really “change,” but if they are, they’re not change I can believe in.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!