From the moment Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for POTUS, I assumed that he would win.   The Clinton machine was worn out, and there were social forces and irrefutable facts that no “conservative” candidate could overcome.  Everything was in place when it came time to vote.  Briefly….

First, demographics:  Immigration and generational changes have eclipsed the Euro-centered, Post WWII electorate.  The young don’t care about Bill Ayers or radicalism any more than my generation cared about Tokyo Rose and Henry Wallace; the world of the young today is so bizarre and free-wheeling that nothing as tame as Jeremiah Wright can stand out and get serious attention.   Immigrants - most of whom have come here from despotic or chaotic countries - are seeking advantage through political power, and Barack Obama poses no threat to their conception of liberty.  They also don’t give a damn about Ben Franklin or Paul Revere, if you get my point.

Second, The Welfare State, or the same thing by other names:  Has grown in every administration since 1936, with a lapse during WWII.  All administrations have supported and expanded Human Resources and Defense ”superfunctions”, until it accounts for almost 62% of federal outlays since 1940 (adjusted for inflation). Everyone gets a piece, including those who call themselves conservatives.  Arguments about The Welfare State are window-dressing, because no faction or party seriously argues about its existence, and none attempt to define its sufficient size.

Third, popular conservatism itself, today, is a side show.   Buckley’s generation-long efforts to make conservatism respectable expired along with his sincerity, good sense and originality.  His heirs - like the bore George Will,  have made the essential muscularity of conservatism into a watery, disgusting gruel fit only for bow-tie wearing drama queens.   George W. Bush’s incoherence and government by passive silence has earned the detestation of almost every political perspective, especially the paleoconservatives.  Compassionate conservatism appeared to be ritualistic soul-cleansing, where things not belonging to you could be freely given to others.  Watch Barack Obama on this issue, too.

On the radio side, conservatism is dished up in the same old tropes, accompanied by country music, audio cuts of Ronald Reagan’s speeches and Wright’s squeals, and endless hammering on the anvils of American Exceptionalism and Rugged Individualism.  Together, their conclusions about why conservatism is moribund, is that voters dismayed by Republican cowardice and cupidity, punished them by voting for liberal Democrats.  Brilliant.   With analysis like this, we can win the T-Shirt slogan contest and forget the battle of ideas.

Speaking of ideas, that was McCain’s fatal problem.  He didn’t have any; he had a maverick personality, a biography, and expected us to generate ideas from there.  Obama projected plainly liquid and uncertain ideas, and his persona expanded like a Macy’s Parade balloon while McCain turned into a homunculus. Why this happened is unclear, and material for another post.

Right now I’m damned angry.   We’re exchanging one set of fools and poltroons who are clueless about the rationale, modes and aspirations of conservatism, for another set who are clueless about life, human nature, and the dangers in the world at large.  Great.

Check out this headline at Newsweek: “FACT CHECK: Obama charges against McCain debatable”:

Democrat Barack Obama’s “closing argument” speech Monday included a sweeping accusation against GOP rival John McCain: “Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy.”

But the charge is debatable — McCain has several ideas that are different than Bush’s policy, which he touched on as recently as a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

So, it’s not really debatable as much as it’s a lie, right? But leave it to the loyal Obama media to add some “doubt” that the Messiah might be wrong.

A better headline might have read, “FACT CHECK:  Obama charges against McCain so facile they might turn your brain to mush”.  Even if I accept the rediculous idea that McCain and Bush have never differed, it’s completely irrelevant.  Tell me about how you and he differ, not the guy who can’t run again.

The latest meme being pushed by the media elite is that Republicans are angry and that this is somehow unheard of in presidential campaigns.

There were shouts of “Nobama” and “Socialist” at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

[snip]

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of “Country First” but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation’s economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

I’m shocked, absolutely shocked!

Who would have thought that McCain/Palin supporters think Obama is a socialist and that the biased mainstream media is for all intents and purposes the enemy.

Isn’t it funny how you never see media reports about all the moonbats comparing Bush to Hitler or spouting their insane September 11th conspiracies. Since the media ignores them, I’ll just repost one picture from a protest during the 2004 election.

I’ll take our angry republicans over their moonbats any day.

Right Wing Nut House has more here, including this:

I can’t tell you how much contempt I have for the Post and other media outlets who have been pushing this meme – that it is somehow dangerous, or racist, or indicative of something horribly ugly in the mindset of GOP supporters to show strong emotion at the mention of Obama. Not when similiar outbursts happen at Democratic rallies. Not when Democratic party partisans on the internet and elsewhere have whipped up a frenzy of hate against John McCain.

Has there ever been someone who screamed out about McCain “Kill him!” at an Obama rally? We don’t know because the idea that the press would report what one, lone, idiot shouts out at a rally of thousands is ludicrous – except if it is a McCain rally and then it becomes front page news.

Update: Stephen Hayes finds “unhinged democrats”. At least that is how the media would describe them if they were republicans.

A little bit of the pork from the Senate “sweetners” to help the bailout bill. We all can get a toot on to forget the reaming the government is giving us. There was no pork for Vaseline help in the bill. Need to ask Barney about that.

Business & Media will keep you abreast of all the shenanigans.

Congress depleted this weekend administering anesthesia to the taxpayers; the actual fiscal bailout device is a suppository wrapped in #60 grit sandpaper.

Please use these to prevent severe lower back injury from sudden attempt to stand erect. Secure wrists and ankles before BAILOUT is administered!

No irritation protection necessary, this will take your mind off the insertion!

For this, what do we get? Bad paper, paper the banks don’t want and no ONE can sell. What anchors this paper? Foreclosed houses, which cannot be sold now, will not be sold in the near future and after standing empty, become even more desirable, correct.
Has anyone ever seen abandoned or closed government property? Slums have higher resale value. What do you think a stripped house is worth as collateral to John D. Taxpayer?
This is what your collateral will look like, euphemistically called a “fixer-upper” by your friendly Realtor.

Imagine a $400,000 mortgage securing this wonderful three story country farmhouse with mountain views on a country lane.

Listen to Chris Dodd or Barney Frank, or your congressman/woman entertain you with caring tales of past sensitivity to taxpayer plight. In a pig’s brown eye they do. Paulson certainly doesn’t. Bush read his idea of a good deal off the teleprompter. Bail out my buds and all is swell. (Paulson’s idea of getting along)
However the mushwits in DC tell us we need to jumpstart the housing industry, get them going to put the economy “back on track.”

” HUH?” What are they smoking?

Call your congress critter; tell him/her to be generous. Let the banks and Wall Street keep their great deals for themselves. We need this crash to get people off this insane living on this house of credit cards. Credit tightens up, people drive beaters (just like the Jones’) and they’ll take jobs the illegals won’t do.
Let Paul pay for his sins now. Leave Peter’s pockets alone.

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
Andrew Jackson

Have a good look at what is happening in DC now.

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

Robert Heinlein

Lede in today’s NYT trumpets the flight of investors into “safe” places for parking money.
Like T-bills, which were paying about 1.5%, but now in demand, pay under 1%. Revisiting the golden age of the Weimar Republic, our fearless leaders busily reproduce history by fabricating the “Weimar T-bill” just in time to crush the economy ending 232 years of successful existence. After this last round of bailouts, the inflationary spiral will start.

As soon as these idiots realize they aren’t making any money in T-bills, out of the “safe” place the money comes and back into the market it goes where it is at risk.
NOW, where does the government get the money it is using to pay off the incurred debt? Remember no T-bills; does the government jack up the interest rate, which slows down the housing market or does it default on the debt?
Neither, the Treasury just prints more money, boosting inflation.
Oil is back over $100 a barrel. Food is not coming down in price, thanks to the clowns putting corn in gas tanks. Now the government is giving the taxpayer all the toxic debt and the fat cats their money back. We are the proud owners of some where north of a half trillion dollars of crap.
Personally, I rather see the fat bastards jump out windows after they lost everything.

Excerpt from Paper Money by “Adam Smith,” (George J.W. Goodman), pp. 57-62.

Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914.[snip]

Germany abandoned the gold backing of its currency in 1914. The war was expected to be short, so it was financed by government borrowing, not by savings and taxation. In Germany prices doubled between 1914 and 1919. [snip]

America is off the gold standard too since 1971. We’re on a system of fiat money. So much for full faith and credit, since that change, we too have become a debtor nation,

But the bourgeois habits were very strong. Ordinary citizens worked at their jobs, sent their children to school and worried about their grades, maneuvered for promotions and rejoiced when they got them, and generally expected things to get better. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18. There were complaints about the high cost of living. Professors and civil servants complained of getting squeezed. Factory workers pressed for wage increases. An underground economy developed, aided by a desire to beat the tax collector. [snip]

The nervous citizens of the Ruhr were already getting their money out of the currency and into real goods — diamonds, works of art, safe real estate. Now ordinary Germans began to get out of Marks and into real goods. [snip]

The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items — bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren’t safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn’t need and used them to barter — a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a “witches’ Sabbath” atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save, and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old. [snip]

Sound familiar? Put it on plastic, live for now. In debt to the eyeballs and no hope of paying it off.

Barack Obama has said he considered joining the United States military when he left school but decided not to because the Vietnam war was over and “we weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point”.

Mr Obama was asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s “This Week” programme whether he’d ever thought about military service and replied: “You know, I actually did. [snip]

“And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honourable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”

Phew!

All male American citizens are legally required to register for Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

Mrs Palin’s eldest son Track, 19, is due to leave for Iraq on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the September 11^th attacks on America and exactly a year after he joined the US Army as an infantryman.

John McCain’s youngest son Jimmy, also 19, is a lance-corporal in the US marine corps who served in Ramadi, deep in Iraq’s Sunni triangle, last year. His other son Jack, 21, is currently training to be an officer at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Beau Biden, 39, elder son of Senator Joe Biden, Mr Obama’s running mate, is scheduled to go to Iraq early next year. Beau Biden is attorney general of Delaware and a captain in the legal corps of the US Army’s National Guard. [snip]

Biden’s job is to prosecute any trooper that locks and loads before coming under automatic weapons fire.

Voters often fault Democratic candidates on issues of patriotism and support for the military. Bill Clinton was vilified by Republicans as a Vietnam draft dodger, though he defeated two Second World War veterans, President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

But Al Gore, a US Army journalist in Vietnam, (Gore served in the Conex Corp) and John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who won a Silver Star while serving in patrol craft on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, both lost to George W. Bush, who avoided active service in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard.

Mr Obama is more vulnerable than most Democrats on the patriotism issue because of his exotic life story, his past radical associations, his previous refusal to wear an American flag pin - though he has since relented and is now seldom seen without one - and inaccurate smears that he is a Muslim. [snip]

(Obama speaking to Stephanopoulos) “Let’s not play games,” he said. “What I was suggesting — you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you’re absolutely right that that has not come.”

The Illinois senator’s maternal grandfather Stanley Dunham served in the US Army in Europe during the Second World War.

His maternal great uncle Charlie Payne helped liberate Ohrdruf, a part of the Buchenwald concentration camp network - though he was criticised for misstating this on the campaign trail as an uncle who liberated Auschwitz. [snip]

Note to Obama, this stuff doesn’t rub off, you got to do it yourself.

But these military connections pale in comparison with Mr McCain’s fabled biography as the son and grandson of admirals who spent more than five years in the Hanoi Hilton prison after his jet was shot down over Vietnam.

Mr McCain took as his Republican convention theme the slogan “Country First” and both Mrs Palin and Rudy Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York, mocked Mr Obama’s time as a “community organiser” in Chicago when he was in his twenties.

Hillary Clinton, who Mr Obama defeated in the Democratic primaries, was ridiculed in 1994 for stating that she tried to join the US marines in 1975, the year she married, but was rejected because she was too old and had poor eyesight. Her husband Bill said this year that she had tried to join the US Army.[snip]

Probably she did, in what country?

 ”Understand what I did as a community organiser. When I got out of a college as a young person, 24, 25 years old, I moved to Chicago and worked with churches, who were dealing with steel plants that had closed in their neighbourhoods, to set up job training programmes for the unemployed and after-school programmes for youth.”

He also tried to “deal with asbestos in homes with poor people - community service work - which John McCain has been talking about, putting country first and extolling the virtues of national service”.

According to Obama, he had to make a steep dive in, level out and zig-zag to the buildings while receiving fire from asbestos junkies in an armed ‘hood. “They had everything but tanks.” “This is why I believe in the 2^nd Amendment but only if no one has guns.”
The only salvation for these people is Elijah Muhammad in the guise of BLT.

All make sense doesn’t it? Reading the entire article just roils the mud.

The Palin pick is interesting on a number of levels.  Tactically, it was a brilliant stroke.  McCain undercut any Obama bounce from the DNC quite nicely.  He took advantage of the media’s natural love of “buzz” and gave them a fresh target to work on for a couple of news cycles.

Strategically, although it blunts arguments about Obama’s lack of experience, it was absolutely necessary.  Don’t get me wrong, Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden put together, but my guess is the general public won’t view it that way.

But how much does experience matter in this election?  The inexperience charge has been floating around Obama since he first started running.  Hillary Clinton couldn’t make it stick.  And McCain wasn’t making much headway either considering that Obama leads most polls and is competitive in some unusual states.  So, why can’t anyone make this point stick?

In Clinton’s case, I don’t think anyone really gave her presidential credit for Bill’s Oval Office tenure.  That left only 2 Senate years difference between the two and a much weaker argument for her. 

Personal experience isn’t the problem for McCain.  The American people’s experience with the compassionate conservative, AKA George Bush, and a badly damaged GOP brand is.  If your perception is that the GOP experience hasn’t been good, you’re much more likely to give a fresh, inexperienced guy a shot.

And that’s why McCain had to shake up the race.  Status quo picks like Romney or Pawlenty weren’t going move the needle.  When you’re ahead, you have the luxury of picking a Biden to run out the clock.  Picking Palin (or something similar) and seizing a reform agenda was smart and necessary when you’re playing catch-up.

So why does Barack Obama continue to oppose the surge in Iraq even though it’s effective?

“These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult,” he said. “You know, hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is that, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.”

In that inarticulate mess of an answer, what he’s struggling to say sans teleprompter is that he opposed a person and never examined the policy.  The man who’ll unite us thought he’d change the “debate” with an emotional gut reaction instead of logic.  But the thing that really blows me away is that even after the surge is effective, Obama is still opposed.

Bush waited too long to implement the surge, but at least he finally changed course.  It’s pretty sad when you do have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and still can’t adjust.

I suppose they might be forgiven for THIS, and its artistic merits,  because the effort is a compliment.  Still, in an earlier age,  stereotypes like this were used to turn tigers and Pat Buchanan into butter.   

THIS one is another matter.  Accurate human typology isn’t a strong point over there.  I blame George Bush. 

The sinister George Bush has given away Earth’s moon to the running dogs of recreational space travel, Transorbital.   In creating Big Moon Travel, Bush has shown himself to be the tool of rapacious, mass-increasing, moon destabilizers….Transorbital proposes commercial visits to the moon, with HDTV images broadcast to Earth. One plan is  to furnish proof of the Apollo landing to the bizarros who claim the moon landing was a studio stunt.

Democrats.Com had this to say about cackling capitalist Bush’s venture….

…His Heinous [Bush] has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called Transorbital that has a far-reaching, frightening agenda for the corporate domination of space….The Transorbital venture could be disastrous for the globe - no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure, or removing mass, via mining, will effect the delicate interplay between Earth and its only satellite…

Read the whole article.  Chimpy McBushitransorbitravelagency strikes again!

I also came upon THIS recently, and immediately knew that some primeval George Bush snatched our extra moon, sold it,  and commenced the fortune that led to Big Cheney, Big Raul, Big Moon Travel, Big Helium and the subprime hanky panky that enabled Big Chris Dodd.  

This doesn’t show a great track record of Progressive largess. True to form however, they talked about it so that’s what matters.
Take note that the Clinton’s filed an extension; this allows for “corrections” to the tale if she wins the nomination. If not, no more forms see the light of day! I wonder if the underwear deduction is there?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years, an ascent into the uppermost tier of American taxpayers…[snip]

The idea that charity begins at home seems to be the Clinton motto.

During that time, the Clintons paid $33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for $10.2 million in charitable contributions. The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy. [snip

“Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people,” she said. “As a matter of fact, my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House, by doing what he loves doing most — talking to people. But we didn’t ask for George Bush’s tax cuts. We didn’t want them, and we didn’t need them.”

But they made sure they took the deductions. Much akin to Warren Buffet belief Americans should pay more taxes. He didn’t write any extra checks either.
Like most Liberals, when it comes to action, the only part moving is the mouth.

Sometimes I just shake my head wondering how I voted twice for George Bush.  Those were some really bad Democratic candidates.  Fortunately, the president’s Supreme Court appointments saved him from committing a miscarriage of justice.  Chief Roberts and Justice Alito joined a 6-3 vote against his attempted intervention in the death penalty case of Jose E. Medellin.

Mr. Medellin, human refuse, gang member, and rapist/murderer of 2 Texas teenage girls wasn’t informed that he could seek help from the Mexican embassy.  The International Court ruled this was a violation of the Vienna Convention.  The president, siding with Mexico and the IC, asked the Texas judiciary to reconsider the case.  God Bless Texas, they refused, and after today’s decision, prosecutors are pushing for an execution date. 

Why would the president try to interfere with the Texas judiciary on behalf of a murderer?  And, not being satisfied with no, drive it to the Supreme Court?  I simply don’t buy the excuse he was trying to fulfill our international obligations.  He ignored every international body conceivable to start the Iraq War.  As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, it was his duty to do the same here.

                                                      Worm News

Many years ago a grade school teacher told me that the common earthworm we use for bait in the Northeast, the nightcrawler, came to this continent with Europeans.  They’re hard to find in the sandy soils of the South, so maybe she was right.   The lowly invertebrate we dissected in school, threw at cute little girls, pretended to eat and wove onto fishing hooks, is POLLUTION!

But what about THIS specimen?  George Bush is determined to wipe them out, the monster.

Denial of protection for the earthworm is all too typical of the Bush administration, which has protected the fewest number of species under the Endangered Species Act of any administration since the law was passed.

Hello?  Is the list finite?  Is it saturated with more BS than Science? But this is liberal logic, isn’t it?  And get this:

In 1897, the giant Poulouse earthwork was described as “very abundant”… 

By whom?  And for what reason?  Did the observers gather the little spitters for stir-fry?  And what is “abundant”?  They saw three in twenty years?

Today, however, sightings of the species are few and far between.  The only recent confirmed worm sighting was made on May 27, 2005….Before that the worm had not been spotted for 17 years.

It’s three feet long, smells like a flower, moves quickly, lives in permanent burrows 15 feet underground.  The silly screed doesn’t say whether any have been seen since 2005; if not, ONE worm has been observed in twenty freaking years!  Yeah, let’s give the nitwits who propose these control measures more power.

Anyway, in other Worm News, This guy in a beautful Halston Dress,  and This guy, who has his own annual Worm Festival, is for real boys who are numb with the repetititive, infantile pantywaist crap on Public Television (take cover!).

And finally, a teaser from the world of Drugs and Spider Research.