- I managed to catch a first place this week at OTB’s Caption Contest [1].
- for the last week or so, we’ve brought up John Edwards and his scandal. Kaus has been watching this for a while too, all credit to him. He says the LA TIMES is burying the story. [2] Gee, why would they do THAT, do you suppose?
- It appears Iran is having some problems with opposition… physical opposition… to it’s activities. It’s all very hush hush, but stuff is now starting to slip out [3]. All very encouraging.
- McCain is making some serious gains in battleground states. Also very encouraging.
- Mona Charen is someone I need to pay more attention to. Here’s one of her columns… [4] Will someone please explain to me why anyone with a pair of braincells to rub together will try and put forward the idea that there is any moral equivalence between the “Palastinians’ and the western world, including Israel? Look, I’m going to catch some flack for this, I know, but how many of these stories do we have to read before we come face the idea that this is the only way to deal with this business? This is not a situation where we’re going to get them to like us by being nice to them. These are vermin, and should be treated as such; With extermination. And yes, you’re damned right I’m angry.
- A slow news day, today, mostly. Either that or the press is too busy trying to think of lauditory things to say in their relarks on Obama’s speech in Germany yesterday… which seems likely, given their main focus of late has become making Obama look good. Even the New York Times admits [5] Obama’s speech as at best vauge on the issues. Clearly, this was all show and no go, this speech. But with the press being as willing as it’s been to promote Obama, that’s all he needs, apparently.
- Should we be mentioning that about 3/4 of the costs involved with Obama’s visit to Berlin is coming from German taxpayers, and not his own coffers? Moral questions aside… What about it, legal types? Is this a problem with legaity as regards campain funding?
- What else that very few people are saying much about, is that there were a number of restrictions on people who showed up there. Reports I’ve seen, for example from Deutsche Welle say that people attending were told not to bring placards and signs they had made. Apparently there are those in the Obama campaign who would rather not see anti-American slogans or any particular demands about the middle east being made. Again, all showmanship.
- So, now we have Obama’s photo-op of Germans stacked a mile deep supposedly to hear him speak. forget the free food, the rockbands and beer, as I said last night. By the way, I made that comment at OTB yesterday… and was promptly asked:
You’re saying that if the rockbands, beer and food were there but Obama wasn’t that there would still be a million people showing up?
I suggested he ask Max Yasgur about that. You see, I find the lines drawn to Woodstock very apt, given the leftist / Rock star status that Obama seems bent on cultivating, here. It’s also a fit when you consider the politics attached to both events… they are not unlike. Nor are the destructive capabilities of each, in terms of the social and the economic. My point about the general politics of Europe lately from yesterday affecting all of this apparently didn’t fall as flat as I thought it would. In another thread over there, when I comment on the relative right turn in politics over there of late, James reminds me that right and left there, are…
…relative terms, though, Bit. The Democrats and Republicans would easily fit into the definiton of “right” in any of the major Western European “conservative” parties.
James is of course correct. My thrust there was not quantitative, but more the direction of travel of the politics in general there of late. Merkel and Sarkozy’s elections in Germany and France, respectively, would seem an indication of this change of direction. Still, his comments go directly to my point that Obama went there to find a sympathetic crowd. And, find it he did. Try a little thought experiment with me, though. Say you’re a hard leftist… far more to the left than most of your countrymen here in the states. What better place to go to than Europe, where the politics there are as James describes them… way off the left end of the American scale… and where there are a large number of people even farther to the left even on the measurement of the European political scale, who are feeling disaffected by the relative rightward shift of things in their homeland. Offer free food, beer and concerts. Does anyone suppose that Obama would have a hard time finding a sympathetic crowd there? The press, though, very seldom mentions those dynamics. It’s always how the crowd was eager to see and hear Obama.
- But let’s also remember, folks, that it was four years ago we were dealing with the incredibly French-Looking John Kerry. Once the Euphoria over this speech settles down, we’re going to figure out, I think, that we don’t really give a damn if the European leftists like us. Indeed, That entire experience with Kerry put a spotlight on the fact that our interests are not bettered by European approval.. in fact the reverse tends to be true.
- Final point on Obama; When even Useless Toady wonders [6] why Obama can’t admit what everyone else on the planet already knows… that the surge worked… there’s soemting serious going on.
- I don’t know what to say about this bit with Ed Mitchell. [7]My gut reaction is to pass the whole thing off as a raving looney. What Mitchell describes would require a conspiracy of such a depth as to be impossible to maintain any degree of secrecy at all, particularly for this long. Think, people, We live in a titme when secret stuff is getting blasted across our news wires as a matter of routine. Does it strike anyone as reasoable that we’d have been able to keep this stuff under wraps?
- Donna’s desktop caught an update last night, which totally fouled up networking. I thought at first my router had blown up with the thunderstorm we caught. Turns out the failed pacth was in response to a problem you need to know about. [8] I withdrew the patch, but will be looking at reinstalling it shortly. Possibly was a bad download.
- Nice to see Danny Glover suffering from his own ploy. [9]
- Mick Jagger [10] is 65? Ummm…. Good night, nurse.
- Camping trip this weekend, and the Thunderbirds are in town. I’ll have pictures, and perhaps video of both Sunday night, or Monday.