October 31, 2008

Incongruity


The liberal mind is an interesting thing to study. It defies logic on such a regular basis that it belies classification. It is slave to neither logic or emotion exclusivley. Rather, it toggles between the two at will, depending on the demands of the particular argument at hand. Truly a unique and mind-bending specimen, the Liberal mind.

Apparently there is a video tape that depicts Barack Obama in attendance at a 2003 send off banquet honoring Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar and activist. This video tape was given to the LA Times who have suddenly decided not to release the tape to the general public claiming that they are under an obligation not to air the tape.

The McCain campaign is demanding that the Obama supporting LA Times release the video tape.

My question is: Who gives a video tape to a major media outlet, and then demand that they not release it?

The LA Times excuse for not releasing the tape is very implausible, and stinks to high heaven of media bias.

In the tank for Obama anyone?

If that blatant example of media bias weren't enough, Obama supporting liberals are now simultaneously arguing that Obama's relationship to Khalidi is no big deal and then in the next breath, argue that the tape should not be released.

Well which is it? Is Obama's relationship with Khalidi no big deal?

Then what, one wonders, is the harm in releasing the tape?


At some point here, the last thread of logic is lost.

Just release the tape, LA Times, and this thing goes away.

So long as there's a tape that exists still unreleased, there will always be this additional unresolved partial-revelation about a man who, as we learn more, has a veritable tapestry of shady and/or questionable associations that all share more or less the same sort of anti-American and/or anti-Zionist bent.

But in the new Stalinst 'Obamerica', we're not allowed to ask such questions or have such concerns, I guess.

No doubt the comrades in the MSM will succeed in suppressing any further evidence, including this video tape, that may depict Obama in even the slightest of unfavorable lights.

Here's to hoping that there's something left of America in 2012.

October 22, 2008

not a single school of thought

John Fund, of opinionjournal.com, asserts that there's not a single school of economic thought that says that you raise taxes in a recession.

Yet that's precisely what Barack Obama and this Democratically controlled Congress propose to do, he goes on to point out.

This critique makes so much sense, it must make a liberal's head spin like a top.

You wanna make a recession a depression: Vote Obama.

Hack


It's clear to me now that Joe Biden is a hack.

I'll confess that I didn't know all that much about Biden before he was selected as Obama's running mate. Secretly I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. All I hear from the mainstream media is what a genius he is, so I couldn't just conclude the opposite until presented with sufficient evidence one way or the other.

The new wave of various Biden gaffes have been catalogued for weeks now and yesterday reached a crescendo with the outrageously candid confession that Obama would face an international incident within 6 months of being elected and react slowly. See my previous post.

But for me there is a rhetorical moment where someone reveals themselves to be an intellectual hack. A final "Jump The Shark" moment.

In a campaign rally today Biden discussed the exchange in the recent debate where McCain turned to Obama and said, "I'm not George Bush, if you wanted to run against him you should have run four years ago." An effective line to be sure.

Biden's response to this line today was, "Methinks he doth protest too much." How original... quoting Shakespeare. Only, if you find yourself to be a political junkie like myself, you know that this exact turn of phrase was used just yesterday to describe Biden's own phony outrage that his own patriotism has been questioned one too many times.

The discussion goes like this: Why is it that Democrats are always whining about people questioning their patriotism? Methinks they doth protest too much. That turn of phrase was used in a recent article, I don't remember where at the moment, in reference to Joe Biden's vociferous phony outrage about people questioning the patriotism of Democrats. Awww... people question the patriotism of leftists. Cue the tiny violins.

It appears as though Joe Biden is essentially back to his old plagiarizing ways. This time not whole passages of text at least, but he must have heard the Shakespearean turn of phrase applied to him just yesterday. Surely some aide showed him the article that called to task his phony outrage by effectively invoking Shakespeare.

But because Democrats like Biden are generally rhetorically unoriginal, he must have thought that it was a turn of phrase worth "borrowing" I suppose. But then he massacres the saying by using in an unconvincing fashion. It really is the height of lameness when you rip off the exact turn of phrase that was just used effectively against you, only to have it not make much sense and in turn, not resonate.

Many McCain supporters were wondering when McCain was going to more forcefully attempt to separate himself from President Bush for months now.

The Obama campaign strategy, for its part it seems, was written when Bush won the last election four years ago: Vote Obama because (insert the Republican candidate's name here) is another four years of Bush.

And the Democrats, with their getaway driver the mainstream media, have been routing for things to go badly in America for as long as I can remember at this point in order to drum into the heads of Americans this as their 2008 winning campaign theme.

Things go badly in the war: good for Democrats. Things go badly in the economy: good for Democrats.

So now that McCain has for the first time pointed out that he is not Bush, after months of letting the charge go unchallenged, he's protesting too much?

What???

If you're going to purloin rhetoric, you should at least employ it in an effective manner. To not do so is a blatant example of intellectual hackery. Many have followed Biden for years and have drawn their own conclusions. It now seems that it was largely a function of time, but I now join the chorus that declares Joe Biden to be a hack.

Together with the voluminous body of work of his constant gaffes, his previous history of plagiarism, his propensity to play fast and loose with the facts, and his ongoing rhetorical unoriginality the truth is clear now.

This guy is a joke, a hack, a charlatan.

October 21, 2008

a gaffe a minute



It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.


-Joe Biden

Say it ain't so Joe. But thanks for the candor.

October 16, 2008

dissembling acrobatics

Greg Sargent, a prominent Obama supporting blogger, wrote the following in response to McCain's correct assertion during the debate that Obama voted against a bill that would have explicitly required a doctor to do whatever he/she could in order to attempt to save a baby's life after surviving a botched abortion attempt:

Desperation: McCain Claims That Obama Voted To Let Babies Die

Sheer desperation: John McCain hits Barack Obama for allegedly voting to let babies die.

The reference, of course, is to Obama's opposition to a measure in Illinois that would purportedly have provided care for babies born amid abortions -- something that was already legally required, anyway. The bill was widely viewed by critics as a sneak attack on Roe v. Wade.

To our ears, this is a more despicable smear than just about anything we've seen, worse than Ayers or anything else. It wreaks so overwhelmingly of desperation and dishonesty that it's incredible that McCain actually agreed to it when Steve Schmidt or whoever told him it would work and he really, really would score big points if he lobbed this attack tonight.


Obama himself attempted to perform the same sort of dissembling rhetorical acrobatics during the debate on this issue but the fact remains that the statement that Obama voted against this particular piece of legislation is a correct statement. Mr. Sargent here states that, "The bill was widely viewed by critics as a sneak attack on Roe v. Wade.". So Critics saw it as an attack on Roe v. Wade?

Conclusion: Due to political pressure from the far left pro-abortion lobby, Obama voted against a bill which would have spelled out what was required when a baby was somehow born alive during a botched abortion attempt. This does seem to be an extremely pro-abortion stance and, as McCain stated, out of the mainstream.

There is at least one documented case that I am aware of where a down syndrome baby was left to die in a laundry closet.

Legislation was brought about to prevent further incidences of this sort of thing.

Barrack Obama voted against this legislation.

To point this out is not some scurrilous charge that is outrageously beyond the pale.

It's very simple, either Obama did or did not vote against this piece of legislation.

There, all dissembling has been reassembled.

October 14, 2008

the politics of grievance and resentment



In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.


After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.


-Thomas Sowell