Jeremayakovka

Passionate Arson In Alaska

With a recent attempt to burn down Gov. Sarah Palin's church (and whoever happened to be inside it at the time), this is a good time to revisit The Passion Of The Death Threats Against Jerry Falwell.

Zogby Poll - Many Obama Voters Poorly or Uninformed

The text beneath the asterisks is Zogby poll data copied verbatim from the web site How Obama Got Elected. HOGE's founder, John Ziegler, is making a documentary about the disastrous impact of mainstream media coverage of the recent president election. (See video clip in previous post .)

Related: In an LA Times article today, Peace Action's Executive Director Kevin Martin is "expressing concern" over "so much Obama hero worship."

* * *

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

# # #

Black Democrat Warns Against Unrealistic Expectations

How did this slip under the radar?

In many ways his candidacy kind of exacerbates [the Black community's] problems rather than solves them.
- Dr. Ricky L. Jones, author of What's Wrong With Obamamania?, interviewed earlier this year

Obama's Election Heralds America's "Long, Slow Descent Into The Third World"

It's been going on for some time now. In any case, what he said:

[T]he US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.

If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.

And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue....

The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world. Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

The Old Man And The (Shallow Blue) Sea

* Top Post - SCROLL DOWN for latest posts *

Maybe the McCain campaign can't afford a 30-minute infomercial. That's OK. Earlier this year McCain foreign policy adviser, historian Niall Ferguson, delivered a 30-minute address on behalf of his candidacy. Then Ferguson led a golden, 15-minute Q&A. John McCain boils down to: Electability, Economy, Iraq.

Just one highlight (22:10): We are heading into some pretty choppy economic water. You know, some people say the financial crisis is receding.... This is a delusion. The most recent numbers that I saw from Credit Suisse on future mortgage foreclosures are truly terrifying. A recession is in its preliminary stages that I believe will be more severe than anything that we have seen since the 1970s [this, back on April 28]. But for some pretty spectacular footwork by Ben Bernanke I would have been saying the 1930s, and not the 1970s there.

But the Democrats can't wait to make things worse! [Ferguson's emphasis] It's an absolutely abysmal moment to be contemplating electing these people. Here's why. Obama is, at heart, a New Deal regulator. He cannot wait to increase regulation on one of the most dynamic sectors of the American economy.... [H]e is in fact the reincarnation of Roosevelt, not Kennedy.

.

John McCain - America's Fifth Lost Man

I don't think about John McCain, because he's part of the old world, the dead America.
- The rapper Nas, “Q&A Nas,” Rolling Stone, July 10-24, 2008.
 

A post at Gay Patriot yesterday speculated that the mainstream media has largely accepted Obama's life-narrative and worldviews because they figure this is their shot to be a part of history. Certainly that's been the heady message which Obama's supporters have internalized. They're so sure of it, they can't imagine anything else coming close. My comment to that post said as much.

That said, it's been a GOP truism that Obama can't be beaten on image, and instead can be beaten only on issues, facts, character. Obama is an extreme liberal (not "post-partisan"); Obama is a ruthless and tainted, Chicago-bred machine pol (not an "idealist"); Obama not only enjoys the enthusiastic support of most of the world's "Jamal the Plumbers," he enjoys (and occasionally cultivates) support from the anti-American, anti-liberal, and anti-Zionist demagogues who rule them (hence, he lacks " judgment"). All of the above are objectively true, and have been amply demonstrated - by conservative bloggers generally, of course, rather than by the mainstream media.

But what if John McCain's presidential bid were just as historic as Barack Obama's? Shouldn't anyone coming so far to gain a major party nomination deserve to be esteemed on that merit alone? What if John McCain - the life-narrative of John McCain - were upheld, admired, revered even (as his Democratic endorser, Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared on CNN)? What if John McCain's life were already historic? What if a John McCain presidency fit squarely in a great and already-established American historic tradition, one which should be apparent to all Americans?

The lost story of this presidential election is that John McCain's life and potential presidency already are historic. Sadly, however, what makes them so are not on the tip of people's tongues. They should be. Our media and cultural powerbrokers hardly see this as worthy of mention, let alone worthy of inquiry, admiration, and cause for pause and reflection. These people are not even capable of conceiving of McCain's virtues, I venture. (When his age is mentioned it's as a liability exclusively, not as a source of wisdom and moderation.) So few of today's cultural powerbrokers - including his opponent - have ever risked anything close to what John McCain risked (and lost) to earn them. Risked not just for his country, but for another, far-off country. For them to conceive of John McCain's virtues, and then to inform the public of them would be highly inconvenient. It would get in the way of their being a part of the election of Barack Obama.

* * *

It wasn't always that way, and it doesn't have to be that way.

Curiously, the following excerpts from a Thomas Wolfe short story, "The Four Lost Men," shed light on this situation. The story appears (in its abridged version) in the collection From Death to Morning. (Click here for discussion of the original, long version.) Set in June 1917, shortly after the US had entered WWI, Wolfe contrasts his 16 year-old sensitivities to his aged father's undying esteem for post-bellum Republican presidents - all of whom were veterans of the American Civil War. Wolfe's special power in this tale is to imagine these men's minds, not as elder statesmen, but as young wartime leaders passionately enamored with life and death, with duty and nation, with hope and wonder and agony and loss.

The lessons, concerns, and even obsessions which Wolfe visits are as timely today as they are undying - just like the historic life of John McCain. Here's just one excerpt. Please click through and read them all in sequence.

[My father] spoke then with familiar memory of the lost Americans – the strange, lost, time-far, dead Americans, the remote, voiceless, and bewhiskered faces of the great Americans, who were more lost to me than [ancient] Egypt ... – and whom he had seen, heard, known, found familiar in the full pulse, and passion, and proud glory of his youth: ... the proud, vacant, time-strange, and bewhiskered visages of [post-bellum Republican presidents] Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes.

The first vote I ever cast for president,” my father [said] ... “I cast in 1872, in Baltimore, for that great man – that brave and noble soldier – U. S. Grant! And I have voted for every Republican nominee ever since.... [In 1893] the Democrats were in and we had soup kitchens. And, you can mark my words,” he howled, “you'll have them again before these next four years are over – ... before that fearful, that awful, that cruel, inhuman and bloodthirsty Monster [i.e., President Woodrow Wilson] who kept us out of war [from 1914 until 1917],” my father jeered derisively, “is done with you – for hell, ruin, misery, and damnation commence every time the Democrats get in. You can rest assured of that!” he said shortly, cleared his throat, wet his thumb, lunged forward violently and spat again.

* * *

CONFIRMED - Major News Networks Trick McCain, Treat Obama

A Center for Media and Public Affairs study, posted on the Internet by the Associated Press at 9:20PM EST on Friday night, Halloween (assuring a minimum of instareadership), proves what every professional journalist and/or principled blogger has been asserting for months: the major news networks have been tilting their election coverage against McCain and for Obama.

A recent survey of 2,011 people regarding 979 news major network items that appeared between August 23 and October 24 turned up the following:

ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats, and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had 73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain). Hume's telecast [on Fox] had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and 28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.

It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last week that McCain's coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama's has been more mixed.

More: CMPA Press Release (Oct. 14), "Obama Leads The Media Race As Well"

The horror. The horror.

A Liberal Case For John "The Uniter" McCain

Long live the American Revolution!
.
.
Here we have a man (Obama) who is more liberal than Hillary running for the most powerful position in the world. Imagine that! The democrats finally managed to find someone more liberal than Hillary Clinton. You have Democrats who actually believe Obama can unite, and here we have our very own man like McCain who has a 2006 ACU Rating of 65%. McCain's the uniter. Obama isn't going to unite the American people with his liberal rating of 92%! DO the math. Again, you have McCain with a 65% ACU rating and, on the other hand, you have Obama with a 92% liberal rating. Do you really think people might believe Obama will be more of a uniter -- moreso than John McCain? I don't think so, but there will be some who might believe that with their fuzzy math, and it is up to us to get that truth out there. The truth is this......the way left liberal Obama has no record of UNITY. He is an attorney and a lecturer who hasn't even finished his junior status as Senator for Illinois. On the other hand, McCain the real uniter is the one who has a 65% rating which is more closely aligned to the center.

McCain Speaks With LGBT Media

Here's a lengthy, detailed interview of McCain by the Washington Blade.

Q: Why doesn't Obama sit down for a lengthy discussion with socially conservative, even "anti-gay," opinion journals?
A: Because McCain is the moderate in this election.

Obama's "Post-Partisanship" Is As Clear As The Raised Middle Finger In Your Face

The number of middle fingers in a "progressive" crowd is directly proportional to the number of Ph.D.s in a ten-block radius.

A Worldview Without Zionism

Senator Obama's political coming-of-age memoir, The Audacity of  Hope, contains not one mention of the State of Israel, reports Gay Patriot. Who knew that the candidate of Hope and Change is equally the candidate of Imagination?

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too....

Sandra Does Sarah

* Updated *

You can put lipstick, pearls, and even a cocktail dress on a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke, but it's still a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke.

Sandra Bernhard on Sarah Palin:

.
* * *

Not included in the video: Bernhard's boast that Palin, in New York, would be gang-raped by blacks. The threat (or, more perversely, the taunt) of rape to keep disagreeable women in their place. Original.

Later Bernhard explains: [The gang rape comment] is part of a much larger, nuanced, and yes, provocative (that's what I do) piece from my show about racism, freedom, women's rights and the extreme views of Governor Sarah Palin, a woman who doesn't believe that other women should have the right to choose, Bernhard told the Daily News today.

Women deserve better, she continued. I certainly wish Governor Palin no harm. I'd just like her to explain to me how she can hold such outrageous views - and then go back to Alaska.

[Update: Women do deserve better - better than you, that is. S.E. Cupp replies in the Daily News.]

Palin's "extreme" and "outrageous" views are hers alone and she owns them. Her influence with them as vice-president would be slight, and even as president, while real, would be far from absolute. One aspect which Bernhard ignores, as do most pro-choice advocates, is that to people who are pro-life, any abortion is extreme.  (And to people of mixed opinion, either extreme is dispiriting to listen to for very long.) If Bernhard were serious about wanting an explanation from Palin, she would ask politely but firmly, then listen. She would not turn her comedienne's stage into a bully pulpit. Further, it's not as if explanations of pro-life positions aren't readily available. It's just that seeking them out would mean Bernhard would have to do some legwork to understand how somebody who disagrees with her thinks.

Bernhard's claim that she wishes Palin no harm is highly disingenuous. Of course she wants Palin "harmed": humiliated (which all threats of rape are - humiliations - in this case even more so because it's public) as a preliminary step to being politically diminished, neutralized, and - if possible - banished from the national stage. As for physical harm, what Bernhard means is, I wish that Palin comes to no physical harm as a direct result of my comedy routine. Shit, then I'd be in real trouble!

That trope of  criminally rebellious black men (or boys) being Bernhard's "brothers" - as rapists-on-call or as a tangental, amorphous punishing force or as some kind of Black Avenging Angels - is contemptible. It's worn-out "black Orpheus" or "white Negro" attitudes that poisoned the Western intellectual well the moment Sartre and Mailer poured them in over 50 years ago. In short, Sandra Bernhard needs to grow up. Finding her own power will have little to do with put-downs that trickle down from "Fight The Power." But if she insists on buying in to the myth of demonic, black moral and sexual potency (or supremacy), then emptor caveat: Give V.S. Naipaul's Guerillas a go before going any further, girl.

Oh, and Governor Palin went back to Alaska because that's where her home, her job, and her family are. Of course, I realize that what Bernhard means is Get the hell away from New York!

This is timely, Gentle Reader. At stake right now is that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is insisting on representing America, alongside certain New York Jews and in solidarity with the State of Israel, to castigate the Islamic Republic of Iran for its nuclear, jihadist, and genocidal ambitions. So don't let any media hype surrounding Sandra Bernhard, nor any other snobby, liberal Jews in New York, divert you from what Governor Sarah Palin, one righteous gentile, is trying to do.
.

Share

Wasilla Remembers Sarah

* Welcome, Conservative Grapevine and Little Green Football readers! *

Yesterday evening I had a remarkable encounter with a man here in California (let's call him “Hank”) who had been a resident of Wasilla, Alaska during the years when Sarah Palin served as city councilwoman and then mayor. He and I chatted for half an hour, completely off the cuff. More than most mainstream media stories about her life and career, Hank's memories, impressions, and opinions – of Wasilla as much, actually, as of Sarah Palin – are indeed a breath of fresh air. They lend credence to the persona that the McCain-Palin campaign is projecting: a frontier, hockey mom with “a servant's heart.”

First, Hank said that most Americans will find it difficult to understand many particulars of Alaska small-town life. Wasilla is small by head count, but it's spread over a wide area with many miles between it and the nearest cities. Yes, it has “sprawl,” but growth merely peppers (not plasters) its way toward adjacent boroughs. (“Boroughs”: the category for unincorporated land outside the city proper.) Out there neighbors often live at a distance from each other, but these individuals also learn to make do with each other -- and especially with nature -- out of non-negotiable need, not choice.

Hank never mentioned “environmentalism” or “hunting,” but instead spoke of “game management.” Area game (or, if you prefer, wildlife) seems to coexist with the citizenry in a pragmatic, managed equilibrium. Certain technology, he said, tracks the number of moose or fish that pass through certain areas. The environs can only support so many number of this or that animal, so often it's a good (and prudent) thing that hunters and fishers are issued more licenses, and get out and bring in big catches. Never forget that many Alaskans count on outdoor kills for basic sustenance. This includes roadkill – when a big animal goes down on a road or highway, a local church will receive a call and then send out members to haul and properly strip the carcass. This has to do with sustenance and community service, not with sport and spoils. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.

This also has to do, as Hank described it, with a “pay-as-you-go” way of life. Since there are few state taxes, Alaska government remains small and usually in the background, even if services are scarcer and more expensive. For example, the state university is relatively expensive as state universities go, but that's because only students pay in to it. More bureaucratized states like California and New York fund their state universities by taxing the entire populace. Hank also wanted me to note that there's a fair amount of home schooling in Alaska. (I have to add, the tenor of these remarks reminded me of an old Dinesh D'Souza anecdote: Ronald Reagan, back in the 80s, received D'Souza as a guest at the White House. Reagan pointed out the window to a large structure, not too far off. “You see that building?” he asked. “Yes.” “That's the Department of Education. Do you know what they do over there? “No,” D'Souza acknowledged, "I don't." “Neither do I,” Reagan declared.)

Back in Wasilla, during Palin's time in office an effort took hold to incorporate his outlying borough, but Hank was wary because he knew that the city wouldn't be able right away to keep up roads and provide fire department services as he'd been used to. It was a trade-off, but one brokered in open (if close) quarters. Just as former Alaska senator, Democrat Mike Gravel recently said, Hank said he didn't always agree with her decisions, but he tended to respect them. He said she always carried herself confidently, as when she had Wasilla's chief of police replaced.

In this and other ways, Hank said, he formed over the years strong, up-close impressions of Sarah (whom he always referred to as “Sarah”). As Sarah gave birth to new children, the town paper ran items about them. She and her husband gave them funny, marvelous names – “Piper,” he explained, is named after the piper cub airplane (a fixture in long-distance Alaskan transportation). Sarah typically attended Wasilla's high school's graduation ceremonies, including his own child's graduation. Her mayor's office was “a shack.” When years later she put a former governor's plane on eBay, he said it didn't surprise him one bit. Did Hank watch her recent vice-presidential nomination acceptance speech? “It was 100% her,” he said, without hesitation nor undue emphasis.

Now that I think about it, I didn't even ask Hank whether he's registered to vote with any party, nor whether he is planning to vote for McCain-Palin in November. It doesn't much matter, since his opinions and input regarding Sarah Palin are based mostly on her no-nonsense fulfillment of two non-partisan offices. What a world of difference this is from the dozens, even hundreds of liberal journalists and Democratic operatives who – like Kremlin commissars dispatched to quell defiant Soviet republics – have descended upon Alaska to try to destroy, by any means necessary, the hard-earned, hard-nosed reputation of America's most popular vice-presidential nominee, the woman who will forever be remembered by her former municipal constituents as “Sarah.”

.

Share

Obamafada Watch

* Update * WSJ op-ed, "Obama is Stoking Racial Antagonism"

* 2d Update * The native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with. To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires; to flout their striving idly is to harvest a brutish crime and shameless lethargy in our very laps.
- W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

Is a litmus test whether one is racist or not whether one votes for Barack Obama or not? What are the burdens those of us will bear, we who freely and carefully decide that John McCain is the better man to be president?

Philly print columnist Fatimah Ali (who is black) sees "race war" already here, after saying two weeks ago that race war would arrive on the heels of a McCain-Palin victory: If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!... But when Obama wins the White House, we may just see a revolution....

Harvard law prof Randall Kennedy (who is black) asks "What If [Obama loses?]" and answers "bitter disappointment" and "stark rage" for blacks at large, plus "feelings of dejection, anger and resentment" for himself.

Occasional commenters wax incendiary about race riots. Mostly, though, look for more obfuscations -- whether aggressive (like Ali's) or laconic (like Kennedy's) -- which obscure the race-, class-,  and religion-warriors who've hitched themselves to Obama's bandwagon.

So, we're supposed to believe that an Obama defeat -- after what will be 20 months of steady public exposure to and evaluation of  his (brand) name -- would be an outrage comparable to the assassination of MLK or the acquittal of certain LA policemen? Last month Dennis Prager (who is Jewish) recommended to shoot-to-injure graffiti taggers. How about against Obamafada taggers, vandals, rioters?

Pity any misguided blacks (and others) who might take to the streets (or worse) on Nov. 5. Pity anyone who tries to wrest guilt-concessions from mainstream Americans over this subject -- before, during, or after the election. Pity anyone who falls for it.

A Tale Of Two Standards In Presidential Politics

Summarized by Victor Hanson in "Target Palin":

The Geraldine Ferraro Democratic Vice Presidential nominee appointment was an inspired stroke of genius that advanced the cause of feminism; Palin’s was tawdry tokenism.

Edwards was a social reformer brought down by the tabloids; Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is white trash and fair game.

Insulting “small town mayors” and “good looking” women is funny; suggesting that “community organizing” is often a farce is a felony.

Obama’s violation of drug laws with a “little blow” was youthful exuberance; Palin’s husband’s DUI was more proof of a working-class messy family.

Joe Biden bravely continued as Senator after the tragic death of his wife and daughter left his injured young sons with a single parent; Sarah Palin selfishly shorted her children by running for VP and endangered her infants by flying while pregnant.

Criticizing Clinton’s engaging in sex in the oval office and lying about it to the American people were once “the politics of personal destruction”; lying that Sarah Palin might not have been the mother of her 5th child is the mere overreach of the blogs caused by the improper vetting of the McCain campaign.

This all reminds me of the 2000 campaign when the media beat the dead-horse of Bush (Yale BA, Harvard MBA) as the lousy, lazy C-student, when, in fact, Al Gore’s undergraduate record at Harvard was full of C’s, F’s at Vanderbilt Divinity School (dropped out), and C’s at Vanderbilt Law School (dropped out). The point is not that quitting professional schools is necessarily a sign of anything, but rather once again that the media is shown to be bending and inventing facts for their higher purposes of liberal utopianism— a continuation of some half a century when we remember the “dumb” Ike floundering before the  “brilliant” and “witty” Adlai Stevenson (who flunked out of Harvard Law School, a fact hidden from the public for decades.)

# # #

The Womanization Of America, c. 1962

Late Night Thought #231 re Norman Mailer (updated):

Often tagged as "reactionaries" or accused of being unthinking apologists for the "radical Right," many so-called "neoconservatives" simply (but doggedly) preserve or re-examine or simply call attention to sometimes forgotten, often virile strains of 20th Century American liberalism.

One thing that often gets lost in today's culture war over persistent claims being made for gender and sexual identity(-ies) is the fact that men need to become men. In the 1950s Simone de Beauvoir dared proclaim that One is not born a woman, one becomes one. In 1962 Norman Mailer offered an indirect reply (or simply restated the case) in "The Womanization of America," a series of comments that appeared in Playboy magazine:

Masculinity is not something given to you, something you're born with, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men. The mass media, for instance .... give people an unreal view of life. They give people a notion that American life is easier than it really is, less complex, more rewarding. The result is that Americans, as they emerge from adolescence into young manhood, are very much like green soldiers being sent into difficult terrain ignorant of the conditions. A lot of virility immediately gets massacred.

Particularly famous for the punch and circumstance that couched his career, it's also been pointed out that there wasn't a whole lot in Norman's oeuvre that was astonishingly original -- the originality, on the whole, was to be found in his life. His writing style could be indebted quite nakedly to recent precedents, as it was to Dos Passos and Drieser in The Naked and the Dead. This was true later, during his high-Beat and Camelot phases, when he cribbed a bit clumsily from an American literary scene claiming to know God through sex, drugs, and jazz, and an absurd French one which proclaimed God dead, then  moralized on every subject under the sun. A lack of originality lingered even later, as when he undertook long projects to re-examine Marilyn Monroe or Henry Miller or Pablo Picasso or Jesus Christ. 

Still, as the above quote suggests, this buffalo in the china shop of post-World War II American letters (in fact, he middle-named one of his sons "Buffalo") could spill shelves and smash dishware as much as any bull.

Like W.E.B. DuBois, Barack Obama Is Either A Genius Or A Fool

For those of us who oppose Senator Obama for president, his candidacy is a curious -- and absolutely necessary -- study. The very reasons why enthusiasts welcome and worship him are why the rest of us are wary and worried: opposition to maintaining the Iraq front against Islamic terror ... a resume reeking of Rules for Radicals Saul Alinsky (by whose tactics Obama seeks to reframe issues in terms of community "empowerment") ... and that "breath of fresh air" facade, behind which we skeptics sense, blowin' in Obama's wind, storms of soft jihad.

What to do?

Classical liberals and committed conservatives alike must plot Illinois's ambitious junior senator on a moral grid in the way he so richly deserves. This moral grid is formed by two axes, "Hope and Hype" and "Humility and Hubris," strains of which already reveal themselves. For my part, I've made sure to read his two memoirs, the aw-shucks Audacity of Hope and the unevenly introspective Dreams From My Father. Next I read Shelby Steele's A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. Recently I picked up David Mendell's Obama: From Promise to Power. Elegaic and informative, it is chock full of first-hand anecdotes (including access to all of Obama's men, and his woman) and offers occasional glimpses of his shortcomings and vulnerabilities.

Now on my plate is to discern just whose cloth Obama cuts himself from, including which swaths and what size. African-American history is the best place to start, I figure, since that's his primary identity. I've started with legendary NAACP-founder and Communist propagandist, W.E.B. DuBois. Like Obama, DuBois was partly of white ancestry but never shied from identifying with African-American community. Like Obama, DuBois completed (with distinction) graduate work at Harvard, which gained him immediate notoreity. Like Obama, DuBois was an educator as well as a political organizer.

Also like Obama -- such is the case his opponents seek to compile -- DuBois lent his name and his mind to the propagation of America's reigning sworn enemy. In DuBois's time that was Soviet Communism, and in ours imperial Islamic jihad. Leaving a finer comparison and contrast of the two men for another day (e.g., DuBois entered the political fray during the Jim Crow era, when lynching was rampant; Obama has done so in the post-Civil Rights era, when black-on-black crime is rampant), here's a brief excerpt of a notable passage from DuBois's Autobiography (aptly subtitled, "A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life..."). One of DuBois's reflections on turning 25, or something like it, has no doubt been thought by you know who:

I rejoice as a strong man to win a race, and I am strong -- is it egotism -- is it assurance -- or is it the silent call of the world spirit that makes me feel that I am royal and that beneath my sceptre a world of kings shall bow. The hot dark blood of a black forefather is beating at my heart, and I know that I am either a genius or a fool.

Did I say that Barack Obama is either a genius or a fool? What I meant to say -- to prudently, shrewdly not misunderestimate him -- is that Barack Obama may be both a genius and a fool.

What's In The Left's Closet

A top-ten list compiled, annotated by Daniel Flynn:

10. Ayatollah Khomeini

Reflexive anti-Americanism initially moved the Left to embrace the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Mother Jones, for instance, in 1979 predicted that “if Khomeini or his followers take power” then “democratic reforms, freedom for political prisoners, an end to the astronomical waste of huge arms purchases, and a constitutional government” would follow. The Nation, Michel Foucault, and other pillars of the Left similarly projected their ideals upon Khomeini and company.

9. Manson Family Values

“I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and sparkling eyes on TV,” hippie guru Jerry Rubin professed. “His words and courage inspired us.” Weatherman hoisted “Charles Manson Power” banners, adopted a spread-fingered greeting to symbolize the fork with which the Manson murderers impaled a victim’s stomach, and even boasted a cell nicknamed “The Fork.” Weatherman matriarch Bernardine Dohrn infamously proclaimed: “Dig it: first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild!”

[Read the rest]
(05/30) Link corrected - thanks Obi's Sister for the heads up.

Married to the Mob

Pat Buchanan's world is "Post-Christian America" and we're just living in it. He may be an incorrigible antisemite whose "America First" stances are too stark. He also firmly puts his foot down against gay marriage:

Homosexual marriage is not in the California constitution, else someone would have discovered it in 160 years. Where, then, did the state Supreme Court find this was a right?

Four of seven justices unearthed this right by consulting what Orwell called their "smelly little orthodoxies." They then decided to overturn the expressed will of the voters, declare their opinion law and order the state of California to begin recognizing homosexual unions as marriages. And they did it because they know the Times types will hail them as the newest Earl Warrens.

Related: Gay Patriot asks whether he's a Nazi sympathizer?
Previous JMK post on Buchanan.

Contemplation

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Totalitarian tyranny is built not on the virtues of totalitarians
but on the vices of liberals.
-- Albert Camus

.
The drawing I did back in 1993. (The model was written up most justly in the book The Undressed Art.) The quote is from Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, "Why Spain?" (p. 301), reviewed by Erika Dreifus.

It Takes One To Know One

Who's a monster?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Well, well. The true face of Obama foreign policy brain trust shows itself.

First thought: If only all partisan liberals took responsibility for their attitudes and actions in a like manner.

Second thought: It's more damage control than responsibility, however. She's a well-heeled intellectual, ideas are her currency. She doesn't need to be officially on board to still influence Obama's foreign policy or his other advisers.

Last year Men's Vogue fawned over the (well-stiletto-heeled) "Genocide Chick" (click for pic).

"He Was A Good And Decent Man"

Rick Perlstein on why William F. Buckley, Jr. was his role model.

"A Tribute to the Master" from the Center for Visions and Values at Grove City College.

Between friends: Charlie Rose hosts Buckley who reminisces about Joe McCarthy, Whittaker Chambers, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan .... It's impossible to defend McCarthy and it's super-impossible to defend his critics .... weighs in on Bush: He has not entirely succeeded in declaiming his own mission.... He has not successfully mobilized public sentiment on this issue [Iraq]. On conservatism: There isn't at this point a solid challenge posed by [i.e., to] conservatism.

William F. Buckley, Jr. vs. Gore Vidal: "It Is Really Unprofitable To Talk About Camelot, Since We Don't Live In Camelot, But In The Good Old U. S. A."

The late William F. Buckley, Jr. weighs in on the 1968 presidential election, along with Gore Vidal.

Buckley: [The next president of the United States] shouldn't be too naive. For instance, when the president of the Soviet Union informs him that the Communists desire world peace, the next president would ideally tell him to cut the horse feathers. He shouldn't crave the idolatry of world opinion. For instance, when criticized by the United Nations for taking a position he feels he needs to take in the best interests of his country, he should feel free quite ostentatiously to turn off the national earphone.
.

Note Vidal, with calumnious alarm -- expectorated drippings whence waft a whiff of the nauseous mal de vivre Jean-Paul Sartre cooked up -- referring to the American Empire and to the race war, intoning that the 37th president of the United States could very well be the last president. Picture yourself in the 1960s. Militantly touting its cult of "social change," the Left has taken to the streets, it conspires and boasts of revolution, its most ruthless individuals (a Communist and a Palestinian) assassinate, first, a president, then a major presidential candidate -- and that "malevolent fantasist" Vidal suggests that fascism  is just around the corner. ("Malevolent fantasist," a phrase borrowed from Roger Kimball's farewell to Buckley.)

It may have been. Yet let us recall, Gentle Reader, that whatever be the hard, sometimes bitter (and, yes, sometimes bloody) costs of preserving the political order, upheavals threatening that order come typically from the Left, sometimes with popular approval. During the Roman Republic's shaky final decades Caesar decided early on that the Populares, not the Optimates, party would best translate his indecipherable genius into real power. In a later era Bonaparte and Hitler each enjoyed, for dreadful seasons, enormous popularity when they provided order where the institutions that had guaranteed order had collapsed. Truly there is more to be said on the subject -- yet Vidal, for his seemingly moderate erudition and insight, agitates more than penetrates the subject. His final phrases identify a generalized, troubled sentiment (a queasiness, if not a nausea) but they do not indicate an issuance from that sentiment. "Law and Order" is strong medicine, mind you, strong for good reason and to good ends.
.

In this second video Vidal (below), an American blue-blood just as much as Buckley, tosses out more dour, veiled threats, perceiving himself no doubt as some kind of tribune, some kind of messenger: Very soon the poor, black and white in alliance with the young, are going to challenge the old order, and if Nixon does not respond with intelligence and with compassion, then there will be such revolution in these United States as has never been before.... Not all of the police and national guards combined will be able to withstand the eruption of those without hope or means of redress save through violence.

 

Nader '08: Obama Not Left Enough

The left has its complaints, too, against Barack Obama. in this clip (comparatively) late-entry candidate Nader accuses him of "self-censuring" and "protective imitation."

Count on leftists like Amy Goodman and Ralph Nader -- two of the cootiest "old coots" around -- to tug and even claw at Obama as he continues to vie for the presidency.

Chillin', Not Trillin (No. 9) - "The O-Bomb Threat"

.
The O-Bomb Threat

That prickly old pear Uncle Sam
In '45 finally proved, Yes, we can
Crush foe Jap and German.
FDR's war was finished by Truman
Who acknowledged the next one
By dropping A-bombs on Japan.

Times today are as hopeful as grim
When enemies without and within
Swoon for "change" adorned by Guevara.
This makes Uncle Sam wanna holler
O America -- I ain't yo' Mama!
As all 'round Obama fallout descends.
.

* * *

Previous "Chillin', Not Trillin" here.
What's "Chillin', Not Trillin"? and Why? here.

Obamamania! ... Obamamania?

Rick Moran's long post is a good one, rounding up even liberal complaints about the quasi-religious, at a bare minimum uncritical, fervor extended toward the candidate.

Billary, Grotesque Valentine

Left-liberals occasionally hit the right note when critiquing their own.

While best known for his political cartoons, and while his sculptures disgust me with their lumpy, leaden forms and gunmetal sheens that belie artery-hardened (and -hardening), leftover socialist realism, Paul Conrad pulls off a good, almost very good, caricature with this Janus-faced bust 0f Bill and Ms. Rodham Clinton.

The head conveys much truth about America's preeminent, not just symbiotic but Siamese, power couple. They think as one, indivisible, with Bill the major, more stalwart partner. The penile Pinocchio (like a thumb, no?) peers hard into the past, whereas she of steely smile and more poised coif beams eagerly ahead, buttressed -- always -- by Bill.

* * *
btw, Gentle Reader, my instinctive, lip-curling aversion to Conrad is not unlike the one I bear toward George Segal -- particularly his Willy Loman-esque Holocaust forms. Exposition of that, however, will have to be for another time...

The Hillary Obamistas Know

Posted today by Atlanta, GA-based Obama backer Lawrence Muhammad on the "Community Blogs" page of Barack Obama's campaign site:
.

TOP 10 CLINTON CAMPAIGN FOUL UPS

.
1. HILLARY STAFF MEMBER RESIGNS DUE TO FALSE EMAIL ABOUT OBAMA BEING MUSLIM CIRCULATED

2. HILLARY SENIOR CAMPAIGN ADVISOR RESIGNS DUE TO "SLIP" OF REFERENCE TO OBAMA'S YOUTH DRUG USE

3. HILLARY SAYS JOHNSON SHOULD BE MORE CREDITED WITH CIVIL RIGHTS LAW THAN MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

4. BILL CLINTON CALLS OBAMA CAMPAIGN A "FAIRY TALE"

5. HILLARY MAJOR SUPPORTER BOB JOHNSON APOLOGIZES FOR REFERENCE BARACK DRUG USE

6. HILLARY RUNS OUT OF MONEY MUST LOAN CAMPAIGN 5 MILLION DOLLARS

7. HILLARY CAMPAIGN MANAGER QUITS

8. HILLARY DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER QUITS

9. HILLARY LOSES DELEGATE LEAD, POPULAR VOTE AND STATE WINS COUNT

10. HILLARY RUNS NEGATIVE AD AGAINST OBAMA

.
As opposed to the Hillary Clintonistas know.

How To Describe An Obama Enthusiast?

I know one self-described Obamista
A deadhead for Obama is an Obamahead
A robotic platitude spewer would be an Obamotron

What else?

The Change Cult

Fair enough that "change" is the magic word right now. It's an open presidential election in which a two-term Republican president "enjoys" 30-something percent approval ratings -- and a Democrat-led Congress 20-something. Mitt pronounced the word, Hillary's qualifies it, and Obama channels it.

But is it time now to call the Democratic Party The Change Cult? Two blogs press the question: Is Barack Obama the Messiah? (pick a post, any post) and The Macho Response "Zombies, Part III" (follow its links).

La Bandera De "¡Viva Obama!" Sea Lo Mismo Que El Asesinato De La Democracia

* Update *

Welcome Seraphic and Atlas readers!

(Everyone, please don't let your alarm and disgust at this "Chebama" image interfere with the longer, harder work of parsing Obama's own words and deeds. Exhibit A: Stephen Hayes. -JMK)

.
Watch for these and other anti-American signs in Obama's campaign. Larwyn emails: You think if Mitt had a Hitler poster in one of his campaign offices it wouldn't be FRONT PAGE.  How about just a POPE poster? (Photo from Obama campaign office in Houston, found at Don Surber's site.)

Let's point out that Ernesto's evil ideology killed 100 million human beings while Hitler's evil ideology killed maybe a quarter of that. At every step of the way card-carrying liberal elites were fascinated by Ernesto's evil ideology. They were captivated by it and sometimes even directly adhered to it. Recall also that Ernesto's evil ideology was the final hope and ambition of the assassin of Democrat John Kennedy -- Kennedy, in whose image Obama's is being burnished. But Alas! both the irony and criminality are lost on today's Democrats.

Had Oswald somehow lived to see Ernesto emerge in world affairs, he would have been slamming his tin cup against his cell's steel bars to celebrate El Comandante's "exploits," first before the bloodied execution walls of Cuba, then amid the humid heights of the Bolivian jungle.

(Photo from Political Party Poop.)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Meanwhile, from "Obama's Politics of Collective Redemption" at the American Thinker:

Consider these numbers on  recent Google searches using only Obama's name plus one other word:

* Obama + messianic  75,200
* Obama + savior  226,000
* Obama + prophet  312,000
* Obama + Christ 504,000
* Obama + change 4,540,000

Cash Ex Machina

In a fresh sign of ferment in the Democratic race, campaign officials disclosed that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month, at a time when she was struggling to keep up with Sen. Barack Obama's television advertising in Super Tuesday states.
-- posted by David Espo for AP/Yahoo! News

It's not a crime, but it contrasts sharply with the $30+M Obama raised in a historic surge of Internet-driven, post-Edwards etc. January fundraising. As Obama struggles to find a form for his multicultural populism, Ms. Rodham Clinton's $5M edge of yesterday stands to become his $5M wedge-issue of tomorrow.

Hillary: "Security Is Not Foremost On The Agenda"

At around :30 through:

Evangelicals Say, "Mitt's No Savior, He's Just Another Caesar"

That's my only explanation for Huck's continued progress -- not toward the nomination, of course, but toward becoming kingmaker at the Republican National Convention. His victory in Iowa was the iceberg hitting the hull; crushing victories today in West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia constitute the crack-up of the luxury liner S.S. Romney, now going down during its maiden, transnational voyage. Romney's forces, if that's not too strong a word (for he vows to keep on) might broker with other factions at this summer's convention, but -- barring a brokered convention that doesn't break in his favor -- McCain is the man for this season, likely for this fall, and just possibly next winter.

Huck's evangelical votes fill the void of confidence left not just by Romney's record in Massachusetts but by the Bush Administration's tepid accomplishments in their regard. Bush often took evangelicals for granted, except when it became impossible to do so (e.g., when Miers was forced to step down from SCOTUS consideration). Somewhat like Obama's deep support tonight among Southern blacks (which might serve notice to the Clintons to deliver better there), it's payback time for lifetime, beltway Republicans. Professional Republicans who backed Romney and who are also professing Christians have a lot to think about. Or pray about.

Preacher credentials aside, does anyone mistake the former Arkansas governor -- a fisher of votes -- for a fisher of men? It's just that, in flocking to Huck, Southern evangelicals are saying, "Mitt's no savior, he's just another Caesar."

* * *

More:

Conservatives to begin a strategic retreat within the GOP
(Right Wing Nuthouse)

Podhoretz fils differentiates between a party and a movement
(Contentions)

.
As for the Democrats:

[T]he bitterness of [Hillary Clinton's victories in the Democratic primaries] may have done irreparable harm to relations with African-Americans..
(Contentions)

If Democratic superdelegates end up securing the nomination for Ms. Rodham Clinton, [t]he African-American vote would see this as a stolen nomination and could walk away from the Democrats.
(Ed Morrissey)

Beware Obamamania

It’s long past time that we pause, take a deep breath, and evaluate the presidential candidates using concrete criteria as opposed to vague pronouncements that this or that candidate can “unite” the country or “transcend” this or that division, whether it be racial or political or what have you. It may be that Barack Obama is the best candidate at this moment in time; ultimately, of course, that’s a purely subjective question. But I fear about the emotional baggage that people have invested in his candidacy, and what his most fervent supporters will believe about American democracy should he lose. The country will, in short, become irredeemable.
- Jamie Kirchik, "Obama: The New Princess Diana?" at Commentary

Imagination Is Funny, It Makes A Cloudy Day Sunny

America's Poet Laureate Voted For John Edwards

Beware proponents of "the common good":

Did you vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary last month?
Yes, for John Edwards. I like a lot of things that he said. Greed is going to do us in — stupid, selfish greed. We have essentially squandered the wealth of this country and forgotten the whole idea of the common good. Now, I know he doesn’t have a chance.

.
Not surprising when "[no] particular demographic ... glommed onto Edwards' message."

Vota Por Hillary In The Mexifornia Democratic Primary

A glowing (if recycled) portrait of Ms. Rodham Clinton dominates the cover of this month's TV Espanol, a Spanish-language only advertising circular distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Tucked deep inside among the many ads for beauty salons, personal injury lawyers, real estate brokers, and even Oriental massage parlors is a two-page profile of the candidate. Making the cover of TV Espanol is nothing to take lightly -- at 170 pages thick it outweighs every other freebie I've seen, from left-of-center rags to Jehovah's Witness mags. Ms. Rodham Clinton is a true estrella in the Mexifornia firmament.
.
(Note: This image is not photoshopped.)

Update: "The Evita Factor"

The DoW of Pat Buchanan, The SoW of James Burnham

Fans of Liberal Fascism, unite!

Earlier this month, before dropping over $30 for the debut of Jonah Goldberg's (so far, wildly popular) Liberal Fascism, for $5 at a used bookstore I picked up for the first time ever a Pat Buchanan title, The Death of the West (2000).

I'm glad I did. It's a summary of the cultural, demographic, and economic trends that are the downfall of Western Civilization. It makes no particular case against militant Islam, although it does identify some of the harm it had already caused American interests; hence it cannot be accused of being particularly "Islamophobic" nor "isolationist." It identifies a culture war within American society, unappeasable and unavoidable -- very much as others, post-9/11, have acknowledged the jihad with Islam.

Rarely, however, do I notice Pat mentioned by name by post-9/11 counter-jihad pundit-authors. To pick a few, Mark Steyn in America Alone, Melanie Philips in Londonistan, or Claire Berlinski in Menace in Europe. Yet several of his basic observations and ideas pop up in their work -- declining Western birth rates, for example, or plummeting church attendance in Europe. If a schism exists between Pat and the rest, it seems to me everyone involved would benefit from a spirited debate that identifies just what are their (our) common interests. (In LF Goldberg devotes a few pages to him, btw.)

With an indecisive GOP primary season afoot (uncertain, weary, and chaotic all at once; "the party's falling apart," says Dick Morris) someone's got to ask: Where is American conservatism headed? How well (or poorly) is the Republican Party its "home"? And since the November election will be, in part, a second referendum on "The Bush Doctrine": Of the flagrantly liberal aspects of Bush's record -- nation-building abroad, government expansion at home -- which are worth keeping, amending -- or dismissing?

In The Death of the West Pat is neither grim nor optimistic, just diagnostic. For all the pitched partisanship and great American romance that make up a presidential election, it would be good also to administer a dose of Pat's "DoW-ism" to the Republican and national discussions already underway.

* * *

A pleasant surprise of DoW is its more than occasional literary references. In a way that in no way relies on the academiklatura (something which would surprise and annoy them, would any deign to read it) Pat clearly is well-read in American letters. He quotes from novels and essays only to illustrate his political points, but also -- mirabile lectu -- Pat believes that Western literature should be read (and written) to bolster, not undermine, the West. History -- not "the text" -- is literature's proper reference. In today's culture war that's radical. (That also helps to explain why so much contemporary scribbling may be many things, but certainly not literature.)

One of Pat's sources is James Burnham's The Suicide of the West (1964). It's out of print, but not impossible to track down in used form. So after finishing The Death of the West, I ordered a used copy of The Suicide of the West. It does not disappoint.

A heartening passage about modern literature runs as follows:

It is also ironic that liberalism -- so prevalent among modern intellectuals and so widely regarded as the truly creative outlook in modern society -- has failed to attract any of the major creative writers of our century. Professor Lionel Trilling [described by a former student here] who seldom deviates from the liberal line on specific political or social issues though he is mildly heterodox in theory, discussed this little remarked but surely significant fact in an article published in 1962 by the magazine Commentary. He pointed out that none of the major writers has been a liberal and that most of them have been anti-liberal; and that there is no great twentieth-century literary work infused with the liberal ideology as De Rerum Naturae, the Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Faust, and War and Peace were infused with other ideologies. In the twentieth century, Professor Trilling declares, there has been "no literary figure of the very first rank . . . who, in his work, makes use of or gives credence to liberal or radical ideas." Many secondary writers and a substantial majority of critics have been and are liberals; but Henry James, Marcel Proust, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, T. S. Eliot -- all of whom the liberals so much admire, so frequently imitate and so endlessly comment on -- have all been, often explicitly and scornfully, anti-liberal. (pp.135-136)

* * *

Search inside this book!

.

Rush's Caucus Night Roundup

Short takes on the long picture. Phoned in last night to Fox.

Huckabee is tapping in to a sentiment of someone who is a straight-talker, or who appears to be ....

Found at Political Party Poop.

Australian Woman Asks Right Questions Re Bhutto Assassination - Plus, The Thot Plickens

* Update (01/03) *

A pathological and bizarre script, no? Or am I missing something here?;
Irshad Manji on the exceptional leader Bhutto wasn't.

.
As a supplement to last week's visceral, visual, and musical reaction, here's Pamela Bone in The Australian of January 2:

If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.

* * *

Fausta continues to round up probing links, video clips, including a link to the source of this image:

Show Us -- Not Your Tits, Hillary -- Show Us Your Blood!

(Update 12/31) Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth."

* * *

Benazir Bhutto becomes an unwilling (including far from perfect) martyr for representative democracy, and is it just me who thinks Ms. Rodham Clinton is out of tune with the day the Muslim music died?

If she had the right stuff, if she were a great leader waiting for History and not just a politician waiting for opportunity, Ms. Rodham Clinton would be making the Speech Of Her Life about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Muslim jihad, about the sanctity of the democratic process and women's eligibility for politics, about the savagery of the mortal enemies of freedoms we habitually take for granted, and about the shining moral, political, military compass that the United States of America is (or should be) to the entire world. She'd be making the Speech Of Her Life and the whole world would be watching. Instead of frigid heiress to the highest office she'd be an avenging Amazonian androgyne -- Jack Kennedy, Maggie Thatcher, and Athena rolled into one -- if Ms. Rodham Clinton had the right stuff.

But she doesn't, so she's not.

Instead she's calling for "an international, independent investigation" into the assassination. Yes, let's investigate al-Qaeda. That'll teach 'em! The leading Democratic presidential contender is a one-worlder machine pol who once a decade will wow a women's conference in an imperial capital, but ... chug upriver into the heart of History's darkness?

Not on your life -- and not on Benazir Bhutto's death.

In the wake of Bhutto's assassination every hour that passes without a great intervention by the woman being sold to the American electorate as a genius, as a compassionate heart, as a champion of children and the disadvantaged, etc. etc. is another reason why "Hillary" is indeed a brand name, is another reason why she's a cranky, overeducated, cuckolded White Hausfrau and not a majestic statesman.

On behalf of all prospective voters, I gotta say, Show us -- not your tits, Hillary -- show us your blood!

That's what Benazir did.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.
.

Show us what you're made of, old gal. At this arresting moment in world history, we have a right to demand of The Woman Who Would Be Potent POTUS Over Us, What the hell flows through your veins? and What are you willing to do to prove it's for real?

While she's miscalculating an answer, waiting for a cooked up cue during a cardboard Q&A, I'm gonna cue up a little Tina ...

.
... then a little T & A.

.
Aside: Found at Andy Cooper's weblog, intellectual boytoy Reza Aslan speculates that the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein -- and Ms. Rodham Clinton's initial support for it -- led to Bhutto's assassination. Says who? Says Obama's people, says Aslan.

Related: Brando via Coppolla & Milius via Conrad, "Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared." (scroll down)

Lisa Schriffen @ NRO on the USSR's long shadow over, MSM's "deathwatch" in the subcontinent.

The most pitched and informative takes on Bhutto, Paki politics rounded up by Pamela and Fausta.

Diana West Reaches For Her Hillary Archives

In order to keep the heat on Ms. Rodham Clinton:

It's as though Hillary Clinton believes she has no past to reckon with; no broken trust to mend; no reason to acknowledge that, to name one example, amassing hundreds of FBI files of Reagan and Bush (I) officials for political use in the White House is a Bad Thing, even if neither she nor anyone else in the White House was actually indicted for it. And it's as though everyone else agrees.

Titles she mentions in "Don't Close the Book on the Clintons":

Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment
by David Schippers
The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton
by Peter Baker
Friends in High Places Our Journey From Little Rock to Washington, D.C
by Webb Hubbell
State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton
by Jerry Oppenheimer
Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton
by Barbara Olson (d. Sept. 11, 2001)

America Is More Christian Than Israel Is Jewish

When I point out that Jews have enjoyed unprecedented freedom and prosperity in a Christian nation -- namely, the United States -- my friends insist that it's not Christian. At which point, I have to laugh.

The fact that we're not a theocracy does not make their case, no matter how loudly they may insist on it. When we say that Turkey, for instance, is an Islamic nation and that India is Hindu and that Italy is Catholic, although none of them is a theocratic state, how can we deny that America, whose population is overwhelmingly Christian -- and is only 2% Jewish -- is Christian?!

September 11th Is A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Partisan liberals are gearing up for their "stop Rudy" campaign. I can feel it.

Here are some choppily edited video clips, found at Dana Goldstein's blog (who found it at Talking Points Memo), of Rudy Giuliani's frequent invocations of September 11th during interviews, debates, and campaign appearances. Dana calls this a tick (as in, a nervous tick), whereas I would say it's a tack -- a strategy to remind Americans of his own leadership, certainly, and by extension of the leadership of many other Americans on that awful and awe-inspiring day.

.

.
People who take issue with a leading presidential candidate, one who oversaw the most intense locus of that day's crisis -- oversaw it more directly than either the president or vice president -- should have to answer the following:

"September 11th is a date which will live in infamy."
Do you agree , or disagree, with that statement? (Yes or No.)

.
If recalling September 11th really is distasteful to the good folks at TPM, I guess I could placate them by trying to convince Giuliani to invoke some other date. Say ... February 26th? That day in 1993, on the watch of then-President Bill Clinton and then-Mayor David Dinkins (both Democrats), saw the first attempt by Islamic terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center. The savages' spectacular plan included the intended release of cyanide gas into the tower's ventilation systems -- plus the wishful thinking that the tower's collapse would bring down its twin. So one good that conceivably could come out of a ticky-tacky discussion of whether to invoke or to not invoke September 11th would be to connect it back to February 26th.

February 26th turned out, as a matter of luck, not to be catastrophic -- loss of life and property were minimal -- though it was a precursor to September 11th. For Khalil Sheik Mohammed, an uncle and adviser of one of the plotters, went on to become the chief coordinator of the September 11th attacks. The lessons KSM learned from February 26th were: Never send a fanatical homicide bomber to do a fanatical suicide bomber's job and America might send in spooks and prosecutors, but she won't send in the Marines. What was for the civilized world, at the end of the day on February 26th, effectively a reprieve from catastrophic terror should in hindsight have been a clarion call. Whereas for Islamic fanatics it was a casting call.

Something often omitted from remembrances of September 11th is that, like February 26th, only strokes of fate and luck made that day somewhat less catastrophic than it otherwise would have been. The desperate courage and determined outrage of a few dozen passengers successfully (if tragically) diverted United Flight 93, which had been piloted (targeted) at the Capitol or the White House. That many WTC employees hadn't yet arrived to work when the first planes struck (and that many who had also had time to evacuate) drastically reduced the number of human casualties on that day.

All this is to acknowledge (and perhaps the Talking Points Memo crowd will find common ground with me here) that Giuliani's leadership should not be permitted to eclipse the near unimaginable bravery and stoicism of the many thousands gone on September 11th. Where we diverge is that I believe Giuliani is within his rights -- moreso, his duties -- to invoke our national memory of it. Actually I welcome the kind and gentle, but firm manner by which he speaks for all of us -- he exhibits a fundamental remembrance and pride, plus the littlest hint of grief and a whiff of defiance. And of grapeshot.

I have to wonder, what would partisan liberals prefer Rudy Giuliani do than revive memories of September 11th? Do they wish that he discuss Ms. Rodham Clinton's unreliable mentions of her daughter Chelsea's whereabouts in lower Manhattan on that morning? If that is the case, there may yet be an occasion for Giuliani to do so.

As American Thanksgiving Approaches, Think About The Islamic Colonization of Europe

From "Fjordman's Farewell to Little Green Footballs":

The [European Union’s] policy of deliberately Islamizing the European continent represents one of the greatest betrayals in the history of Western civilization. There is no other continent on the planet today where the indigenous peoples are being systematically deprived of their heritage, displaced in their own cities and subject to violence and abuse with the active involvement of their own authorities, yet where this is celebrated as a good thing in the media....

Later in the same post:

Islam isn’t reformable. The only possible solution then, apart from a global war to the death which nobody wants, is to separate ourselves from the Islamic world as much as possible. And by “we” I mean non-Muslims in general, not just Westerners. This entails completely and permanently stopping Muslim immigration in any form. However, in the USA, Canada and Australia, and certainly in Europe, simply stopping Muslim immigration is no longer enough. Some of the Muslims who are already here need to be expelled. There is no way around this. No, I have never suggested expelling all of them, but the most hardcore ones who push for implementing sharia laws here need to be deported, yes.

* * *
A related discussion underway across the Atlantic: In NYRB Ian Buruma critiques Norman Podhoretz and World War IV.

* * *

And some Norweigian backbone:

As Europe’s Islamization proceeds apace, the gap widens between ordinary folks’ growing recognition of the outrages that are going on all around them and the movers and shakers’ cynical insistence on pretending that everything’s just hunky-dory....

Fortuyn’s murder should have put an end to the character assassinations of the advocates of freedom. Nope. Instead they’ve only grown more sophisticated.

It's The Power, Stupid

An aging "idealistic" Democrat spills the beans about Clintonian leadership,  whether it pertains to her campaign, his presidency, their party, or our country. (Quoted at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.):

The establishment Dems are made up of baby boomers ... of which I am one.  Like many other things my generation loves, power is utmost.... Make no mistake, this is about control and power.  My generation will likely not give up either without one whale of a fight.  Watch HRC's dismissive demeanor when she puts [Barack Obama] down ... just as a mother might to a wayward, troublesome son.

C'mon Hillary, It's ... Chinatown, Part II

Michelle Malkin cuts to the critical heart of the matter over Ms. Rodham Clinton's Clintonian controversy over corrupt Chinese-American campaign contributions:

The only ones guilty of irresponsible behavior here are the political apologists for Hillary and the media organizations that would rather kowtow to political correctness than follow in the journalistic footsteps of the [New York] Post and the Times. The Clinton campaign is counting on left-wing editors to capitulate under heat from Asian-American groups who want to deflect attention away from suspicious foreign donations.
.

Previous: "C'mon Hillary, It's ... Chinatown"

Why Become A Republican?

.Serious.

.Sexy.

.Silly.
.

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Bork

Jonah Goldberg serves up salient recollections of the demagogic obstruction of one of the most qualified men, of any philosophical stripe, from taking his rightful place on the Supreme Court -- Judge Robert Bork:

[Senate Judiciary Comittee member Ted] Kennedy’s assault rallied left-wing interest groups to the anti-Bork banner for an unprecedented assault on a man liberal Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger dubbed the most qualified nominee he’d seen in his professional lifetime. As Gary McDowell noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, that time span included the careers of Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter.

* * *
His supreme jurisprudence may have been thwarted, but his cultural influence can still be felt. JMK highly recommends Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.