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Nightly Ramble:midweek

  • Busy watching the Sabres beat up on Tampa Bay, so I didn’t get to this until late. PLayoff time, you know… and it looks to me like they’ll be there. IN this win, they entered the third with a 4 to 1 lead for Tampa Bay, and Buffalo responded to this situation by pounding 6 goals in about 12 minutes. Yikes!
  • And anyway, I wanted to hold the comments on Cone close to the top. The traffic we’re getting suggests it’s a topic that won’t go away soon.
  • Speaking of Obama and such, something Bruce wrote earlier today [1] tripped my trigger, a little. He quotes Thomas Sowell:

    Someone once said that a con man’s job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.  Accordingly, Obama’s Philadelphia speech – a theatrical masterpiece – will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters.

    Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama’s speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the “useful idiots” useful.

    Compare this to what I said a couple days ago:

    I think the biggest concern of the Obama camp is their base slipping. They’re acting like their internal polling numbers are telling them they have a serious hemorrhage in supporters. It seems to me that the base are the ones who take this race card thing far more seriously than does the electorate as a whole. The Obama base got involved because they thought he race thing was finanly beind them. Imagine their thought processes as they find that their hero, centers his entire campaign on it. In the end it’s that anger he’s dealing with more than anything today.

    Obama can give a great speech when he feels the need. The question that now is being asked is whether or not anyone will believe him, anymore. Some of the “true believers” probably will. they were already predisposed to believe him anyway. It’s not going to take much convincing to get them over this hump. As to the rest of the American voters, I to question that won’t be answered. For some time, November specifically. Assuming he gets quite so far.

    I told them, over there…

    Admittedly, I’m engaged in a SITYS dance. It’s nice to see someone you admire, paralleling your own thoughts on what has become a major issue.

    But there’s more to this comment….

    If two people of rather diverse backgrounds, and educational levels, and ways of thinking can see this speech as what it is, why can the press, who gets paid to think about such matter, cannot?
    Admittedly, as McQ points up ABC’s vaguely aware there’s something wrong with things. But is this as good as our vaunted press corps comes?

    Is it that they’re afraid to get tagged as racist?

    Of course the question is rhetorical, and the answer an unequivocal ‘yes’… but more, I think it’s because the press still hasn’t figured out which direction they’re going to go. The Democrats are split on this one at as near 50/50 as no matter, so they’re going to be floundering for a while at least.

    One of the commenters there offers that obvious answer and makes the observation that we can stick a fork in Obama, now. He suggests this is a transitional moment in this campaign. I respond:

    Certainly, this is a transitional moment, but to what? Hillary Clinton?Thinking aloud, here;

    I hadn’t been quite ready to break out the fork, yet, because the question in my mind has been if Dick Morris is correct when he says there’s no way Hillary Clinton will ever get nominated now, because of the way the Delegate mess has evolved. The delegates are already counted, after all. They can’t very well ‘do over’ the whole country, which is essentialy what it would take.

    Which leads Obama to the nomination, the way the numbers look now, problems or no… but because of those problems, he gets defeated by McCain… indeed, my read is Mccain will have an easy time against Obama, now, assuming Morris is correct and Obama gets the nod.

    The question is, will the DNC react to all of this, and how? Do they contrive something so as to go with Hillary Clinton? Seems to me the Democrats have been trying with all hey had to avoid her being nominated, and now may no longer have much choice in the matter.

    OTOH, I figure McCain isn’t gonna have much problem with Clinton, either, so what difference would such gymnastics on the floor of the convention make, in the end, other than even more serious warfare within the Democrat party?

    And that, I think, is the question that is going to be asked forever when the subject of this cycle comes up in future.  For all the chater about the damage people like myself and David were doing to the Republicans and their chances because of our reaction to McCain, and his not being a real conservative (He isn’t, but he’ll have to do) this situation the Democrats have found themselves in is far, far, worse, and will likely do nothing but accelerate beyond this point. You know, I’m almost sorry when I bust up the game like that. I don’t know as the point I seized on was the central point Bruce was making, though in this case, I don’t think the point I made ran afoul of Bruce’s.  But I focus on this particular point of Sowells because it shows a rather cold and calculated political move, that if people actually identified as such, would most certainly backfire on Obama.  Well, Sowell ID’d it as such, as did both Bruce and myself, and I suppose, a load of others. But why is the MSM so silent on it? That, too, is a political move, cold and calculated. And there, to my mind is the most alarming thing at all, through all of this.

  • I haven’t made any comments on Heller, yet, because I honestly don’t know how that’s going to turn out. Based on both the constitution and the questions, it would seem to me to go toward the ban being overturned. But the court has gone against freedom too often before for me to make a pronouncement. So, I’ll wait the 6 months it’ll take to form an opinion.
  • Arab women, can be among some of the most beautiful women in the world. So how do the Saudis respond? With a Camel Beauty Pagent. [2] Sorry, but you guys need to work on sorting your priorities.
  • A third place in OTB’s caption contest [3]. I’m number three. (No, not Client number three.)