Take Five

1. Oh I get it now, see, if you don't support Obama, you're supposed to really go off on his speech, never mind that it was possibly one of the greatest high-profile speechifying efforts given by an American politician in a generation, and certainly better than anything we've ever heard from Bush I, Clinton or Bush II.

Me, I'm with Charles Murray, who has borne more than his share of race-baiting slings and arrows:

I read the various posts here on "The Corner," mostly pretty ho-hum or critical about Obama's speech. Then I figured I'd better read the text (I tried to find a video of it, but couldn't). I've just finished. Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.... But you know me. Starry-eyed Obama groupie.

Seriously, I really wonder about today's conservatives. Have we gotten to the point that we can't even appreciate a great speech, even when it's given by someone we oppose?

2. Along these lines, Wes Comer really isn't very thoughtful is he? I honestly had some (waning) hope for him ever since he started gracing us with his presence, but I've now officially given up. (By the way, what's with the getup Comer puts Obama in? What's he going for there?)

3. Hey! Wes was a big supporter of Mike Huckabee. Wonder what he thinks about this quote from his guy:

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Mike! You sell-out!

4. The other thing I'm finding really irritating is this conservative-ish "defense" of Geraldine Ferarro, which, I suppose to be fair, is less a defense of her than it is an excoriation of political correctness and so forth. "Well, it's true!" is the going refrain.

Well, yes...and no. There is no doubt that part--indeed a big part--of Barack Obama's appeal is his race, in the sense that his election--even his mere nomination--would be a history-making enterprise. But to suggest that, essentially, his race is the whole reason for his appeal, which is where I think she goes in her statements, trivializes him and his candidacy to nothing more than some black guy who happens to be running for president, as though just any black guy could accomplish what he has by virtue of nothing more than his being black.

And to draw the comparison between herself in 1984 and Obama now doesn't help either. He's working for his shot all on his own. She was just tapped by some old white guy to be his running mate in a largely doomed campaign for no better reason than that she pees sitting down.

5. Well, John, all of this is helping you quite a bit, isn't it? Good. Go out and raise some cash.

Wow

Now, that's what you call a speech.

Damn he's good.

Hi Ho Cherry-O!

Of all the defenses coming from Barack John Wilkes Booth Obama supporters regarding Rev. God Damn America, this whole bit about "cherry-picking" is some pretty weak sauce. These excerpts are not just little dinky cherries. These are some big ass ripe-'n-juicy cherries. Any one of these statements by itself would pretty much mark the speaker as a radical in the eyes of most reasonable people. Taken altogether? Well.

But...but...but...are parshioners responsible for what comes out of the mouth of the fella in the pulpit? No. But this is a little different from, say, your wacky uncle. You cannot, after all, pick your family. But you can pick your church.

By the way all you Obamaphiles: I actually like the guy. But this is some serious stuff. Do you honestly think that, come "let's-choose-the-head-of-the-American-government-not-to-mention-the-Commander-in-Chief" time, the average American voter is going to go for a fella whose long-time minister/friend/sort-of-mentor preaches "God Damn America!" to his flock?

That ain't gonna fly in flyover country.

Is It Over?

This kind of thing is what people in the business world would call a "dealkiller."

You want to know what the killer quote in the story is? It's not even anything the minister says. It's Obama himself, to wit: "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial."

Uh-oh. The Sister Souljah train came......and there it went.

There had to be something out there that the Clintons knew about and were counting on to come to light that would justify their continued arrogance as the "real" frontrunners. Maybe this was it.

Take Five

1. Predictable. Not to mention pathetic. And boring. At least Stacey Campfield has some entertainment value.

2. If you're someone who left a message on this woman's MySpace page...really now, shouldn't you find something better to do with your time? I especially enjoy the commenters calling her a "homewrecker." Riiiiight. First, she's a prostitute (and a singer!), not a mistress. Second, he's the homewrecker, not her. If it weren't for people like him, there would be no market for people like her.

3. I saw Geraldine Ferraro on television last night and her reaction to this whole thing is fascinating. She really doesn't seem to grasp just why she got stuck in this particular briar patch. I think she truly believes that just because she's one of the "good guys," that she's allowed to say stuff like that without the usual opprobrium.

Rush Limbaugh is enjoying himself over the whole matter. And he has every right to do so.

4. Of course, it's the Republicans' fault. I knew somehow it had to be.

5. The Tennessean uses the power of the Web to put forth an investigatory examination of the state of local education.

Take Five

1. Who's "we" Kemo Sabe?

2. I finally watched this video. I wonder how many people would even know that that's John D. Rockefeller at the end of the morphing sequence (right before it reverts to Barack Lee Harvey Oswald Obama)? Or care? Seriously, what kind of person, here, in 2008, gets worked up over John D. Rockefeller?

3. I meant to say something about this a while back, but I ran across an exchange between Rush Limbaugh and a caller who was whining (and, yes, "whining" is the correct word) about John McCain. Her main point was that she was tired of hearing over and over about McCain's sacrifice and heroism in Vietnam. Rush agreed (naturally--one of the enduring myths about conservative talk radio is that callers are always blindly echoing the host; in fact, it's usually the other way around) and said he was tired of hearing about it, too. It's not relevant, blah blah blah.

Is this really the road we want to go down? Are we that deranged? Anyway, what a load of crap. Experiences relating to the Vietnam War seemed to be awfully relevant to right-wingers in 1992 and 1996 (Bill Clinton's draft dodging), in 2000 (Al Gore's life in the "trenches" as a wartime "journalist"), and, lest we forget, and most notoriously, in 2004 (the Swift Boaters' whacking of John Kerry). Now, all of a sudden, Vietnam doesn't matter? When did that happen?

4. You know who really pisses me off? J.P. Morgan.

5. Snow. Finally.

Take Five

1. Lost in all of this hoo-ha, I think, is one salient point: Barack Hussein Obama's name (which I put in full here because it is contexually relevant) is a major political liability. Now, before one of you half-wits go off saying Abramson's ripping on Obama's name and thinks it's a problem, let me assure you of this: it's not a problem for me. Nor is it a problem for many people. But it will be a problem for some people, more than enough, for instance, to swing an election.

In politics, the name is the brand. Just as people buy goods and services based on the brand name alone, so too do they consider the "brand name" in the voting booth. This is especially true in presidential politics, which attracts a lot of casual voters, i.e., voters who wouldn't know (or even care) about the details of Barack Obama's health care plan but do notice that he shares a name that is eerily similar to that dude who got those crazy people to fly those planes into the World Trade Center as well as a name that is exactly the same as that Saddam guy in Iraq.

This, not personal offense, is the real reason that the Obama camp is miffed about this stuff (I would imagine that, at this stage, he is well beyond being personally offended by shots at his name): because they know it matters at the gut level to many people. That's also the real reason it gets brought up by his opponents: it's low-hanging fruit. Doesn't make it right, but it is effective.

2. The idea of Andrew Sullivan getting a scolding by the likes of David Oatney is laughable. I often wonder whether some of these people ever really take a step back and read what they write.

3. Have I ever mentioned how much I like this guy?

4. Rob Huddleston has become a much more tolerable read of late. And even though he still shows signs of an overly inflated sense of self-importance (see, for example, "After the Roger Clemens hearings last week, I advised Members of Congress to lay low for a while..."), overall, he seems to be a lot more grounded than usual. Maybe fatherhood has had a positive effect.

5. Speaking of fatherhood, as the father of a five year old, I know A LOT about Hannah Montana, more so than I do about, say, the multiplier effect. Not proud of this; I'm just pointing it out.