119 Comments

1. DanM:

Driving to work yesterday to catch up on things, I saw this older Volvo with a handicap license plate. On the left rear window, high enough to be plainly visible, was a McCain/Palin bumper sticker. And, on the right, as plainly visible, a bumper sticker I’d never seen before – A large font “Obama” in one box and the line “Are Americans really that stupid?” in the other box.

This is something I’ve noticed in this election, at least in the deep South – a largely apathetic, fatalistic conservative base that has almost given this election to the opposition. John McCain has not aroused the base, Sarah Palin has. We don’t elect a future president’s Vice-President pick, we elect the beliefs and strategies of the Commander-in-Chief on the top of the ticket. This is what’s missing here, the emotional tie to the base. John McCain has 3 weeks to bolster that chink in his armor… He better hurry.

Obama – Are Americans that stupid? The answer, if you are to believe the polls, is “Yes”. To elect a newbie Chicago-Machine socialist is beneath our country. Or, maybe not….

Oct 5, 2008 - 3:55 am 2. Lifeofthemind:

Everybody knows that moment in a restaurant when you are over the line from mediocre service to a truly terrible experience. You have sat there to long, you are already into a drink or the bread, you know you should have already left. Then you finally get the waiter’s attention and they reply with something rude or even vulgar. They have already “Blown the tip.” They know it, you know it, you know they know it. At that point they have no reason to restrain their conduct. Any money they collect is a pure unearned gain. Their costs are already sunk. The Democrats are in the same position. They have already nominated an unqualified, race baiting extremist tied to extraordinarily corrupt financial manipulators. Their tools in the media have already participated in a campaign of slander and fraud so breathtaking as to lay them open to legal liability. They have already engaged in a pattern of intimidation and abuse and thuggery unseen in America in decades. At this point the Democrats have nothing to lose.

Oct 5, 2008 - 4:26 am 3. Dennis D:

Its nearly impossible to defeat Obama when the MSM is willing to front for his campaign. They have allowed him to stick this financial mess on the GOP.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:24 am 4. E. Nigma:

After Pearl Harbor, war was inevitable. The Left in America WANTED war with Germany due to the German invasion of the USSR in Jun of ‘41.
Likewise, I think, the HardLeft ‘netroots’ WANTS open ideological warfare with the Right, and this will fire up ‘the base’ of the Democratic party. The Media wants the fight to, but for somewhat different reasons.

So as you say, McCain doesn’t have much to lose now in ‘widening the war’, Obama doesn’t have much to loose hurling all his crap too.

Hard to say who this really helps, but perhaps Obama will make a fatal error in the ensuing free for all.
The earth will be scorched after this campaign, and good luck to whoever wins being able to govern.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:56 am 5. Hangtown Bob:

“The earth will be scorched after this campaign, and good luck to whoever wins being able to govern.”

Unfortunately, this has been the case ever since the 2000 elections. Never in our history has any President had to face the unrelenting and withering attacks that have been made on George Bush. If McCain wins, this will only get worse.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:23 am 6. Bob Smith:

Open warfare? Good!

Let’s get it out in the open:
Obama’s association with Ayers
Obama’s campaign financing irregularities
Obama’s strategic voting on earmarks (lots before this year, none this year)
The earmark he voted for that nearly tripled his wife’s salary
Obama’s secrecy regarding himself and his work
Obama’s proof of citizenship
Obama’s hard-core Marxist roots
His wife’s marxism
The racist religion he follows

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:23 am 7. F:

Hangtown Bob has it right: the level of personal vitriol directed toward George W Bush is unprecedented and really demonstrates how unhinged his opponents have become. Some in the Blogosphere have coined an apt name for this condition: Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). And I fully believe the same will be directed at McCain should he win this election (as unlikely as that currently seems).

But for Obama to authorize an ad questioning McCain’s honor goes beyond derangement — it is just plain untrue. I don’t think truth is a guiding light in this campaign any longer, though, so I suppose we’ll see even worse. I wonder if there’s a level of hyperbole beyond which people will just shake their head in disbelief and vote against such negative attacks? And I wonder too when McCain is going to stop being honorable and call Obama out for taking illegal campaign contributions, consorting with criminals, and lacking the experience for the job. F

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:39 am 8. 3Case:

“…the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.”

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:40 am 9. 3Case:

Having loaded their apparatus to “respond” to the product, and expected result, of the goading of Sen. McCain’s temper at the first debate, the Obama campaign fires anyway.

Obama
O
Zero
Zombie

The question being…who’s?

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:04 am 10. E. Nigma:

Do facts matter? Does reality matter? Is it a willing suspension of disbelief, or truly a derangement?

The psychotic loathing of Bush by the media and the populace has been fed and nurtured by this same pattern of suspension of disbelief and tormenting of reality. The more that comfortable assumptions are challenged by that ever cruel reality, the more people will look for boogie men under the bed or in the White House.
I was told that, ‘of course’, everything in ‘Fahreneit 9/11′ was true. I wouldn’t believe everything in any book (non-fiction) or documentary was absolutely true or un-challengeable, even if I agreed with the premise.
Some people WANT to believe untruths because it prevents them from confronting the deep contradictions between the reality between their ears and the reality that walks the earth every day. The anger and the groupthink re-inforces the notion that dark forces personally want to hurt them.

So the counter-battery fire from Obama may be meaningless in the sense of “truth”, but it feeds the notion of a separate reality, and feeds the anger and paranoia of the Netroots.

After every Presidential election that I remember, there is some room for reconciliation and bi-partisanship to work.

Sometimes months, sometimes a year.

There will be none of that this time, except in the minds of the Media should Obama win.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:12 am 11. JFSanders:

Obama
O
Zer0
Zombie
Zoros
Soros

The connection between Soros and Ayers is not readily seen. But I suspect it exists. Through NGOs or some Foundation or Trust. Most likely the Pew charitable trust as it is linked to almost all others.

Jim

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:19 am 12. JFSanders:

It would be enlightening if some person could ascertain the amount of money Soros has gained through the derivatives market. I believe he is the trigger for this recent unpleasentness in the markets. It is something he would exploit. Of course Mr.Buffet also made a fire sale purchase as well…

Jim

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:23 am 13. Lifeofthemind:

@JFSaunders,
Buffet also was on Charlie Rose at his most avuncular, explaining why taxes are to low and Obama is good for us.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:29 am 14. JFSanders:

@LotM

I saw that and you know it was a doggone good PR
piece. But I think most people who make it to the level of Buffet monetarily have two choices. Either they go Socialist due to guilt or a desire to uneven the field to prevent the next Buffet from eating their lunch. Me understanding humanity as little as I do. I tend to see the second choice as the one most taken.

Jim

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:39 am 15. Lifeofthemind:

@JFSanders.
My take is a certain arrogance coupled with a cynical, if unacknowledged, desire for social cachet. Buffet could really live as he advertises as a small town nerd in his little house in the middle of no where, or he could play Charles Foster Kane locking himself up in a fantasy world, or he can enjoy the fawning attentions of Charlie Rose and other literati, gliterati and politicati. If he didn’t own the game these people would not cross the street to talk to him.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:52 am 16. Vinny Vidivici:

Why would the McCain campiagn telegraph its intentions, unless luring its opponents into some trap?

McCain hasn’t made effective use of weapons at hand — naming Franks, Dodd, Raines, Gorelick and Johnson, tying Obama to Annenberg Challenge-type subversion of schools, the foreign money flowing into the campaign. All the more frustraing, since he has experienced first hand, and at great personal cost, what it’s like to confront an adversary with all the advantages who does not play by the rules.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:09 am 17. trangbang68:

One of the most indicting attacks McCain can make is to show the video of the Congressional Black Caucus shouting down the regulators in defense of Franklin Raines and the whole notion of home ownership in the hood.
In anything resembling a civil campaign, it would be easy to label that strategy racist but if the gloves are off, anything goes.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:10 am 18. Leo Linbeck III:

Vinny Vidivici,

Good question. Really good question. Telegraphing a punch is rarely a good idea.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:33 am 19. Paul:

Only in a few commercials has Mc Cain attacked Obama. In his debate Mc Cain clearly held back. The McCain camp clearly stifled Palin in her debate. She has since reverted to her normal style on the stump, and hit Obama with some zingers.

Mc Cain seems to have a problem telling the truth about the Democrats and their policies. He goes after only Republicans.

He is not the reformer he says he is. To be a reformer ,one must openly tell the trurth about government malfeasance whenever one sees it. So far in his career, Mc Cain has opportunistically outed and disparaged his fellow Republicans, when he thought it burnished his reputation as a “Maverick”. To reform ourgovernment Mc Cain would need to take on the leftist bureaucracy, something he has shown little inclination to do.
That is why this talk about the “predators” on Wall Street is so troublesome. His reforms of Wall Street will likely only retard economic growth when we desperately need it.

We’ll see if Mc Cain turns over a new leaf on Tuesday and actually attacks Obama face to face.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:37 am 20. Leo Linbeck III:

One of the cornerstones of representative democracy is that the loser accepts the results of the election, and behaves as the “loyal opposition.” This tenet is a crucial one; without that acceptance, democracy degenerates into a continuous campaign. The patient therefore remains open on the table, and the chance of infection skyrockets.

It appears that our political parties have given up the notion of loyal opposition. I think McCain, who comes from another time, is having difficulty adapting to this new reality – thus his reluctance to fully engage.

I’m not sure whether I consider this a positive or a negative character trait.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:41 am 21. Buck Smith:

Associated Press is saying Palin’s comments carry a racial tinge:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93KD6Q00&show_article=1

Palin should reply by making her charge more specific. Instead of saying this is not a man who thinks like you and me, she should say “This is a man who blames America for the cold war, who claims to be a champion of the middle class now, but went to a church which looks down on “middle-classedness,” whose spritual advisor does not say “God Bless America” but God damn America.”

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:46 am 22. JP:

As Palin said, Obambi is unfit to be President. He’s nothing but a smooth talking leftist lawyer with radical, muslim, communist, terrorist associations in his past and present.

I’m not the biggest McCain fan but he and Palin must be elected instead of a global-loving leftist and his snarky, fat-assed wife.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:51 am 23. Leo Linbeck III:

What do you do when confronted with an opponent who will tell outright falsehoods in order to gain advantage? Biden, in the VP debate, made a large number of outright misrepresentations. But he made them with such confidence that the average viewer was easily duped (I have to admit that I didn’t realize how many he made until after the fact).

Fighting back against this sort of behavior is very difficult. There are many alternative false universes, and only one true one. It is virtually impossible to prepare for every possible falsehood an opponent can throw at you. Your only hope is to have a very, very clear understanding of the true universe. Unfortunately, this is beyond the capabilities of most politicians.

Still, what accounts for Biden’s behavior? There are two plausible explanations:

1. He knew the truth, and lied.
2. He did not know the truth, and is ignorant.

Perhaps the Costanza Principle applies:

“Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it is true.”

In either case, he was pretty convincing. Fluent, forceful, confident. He was like an investment banker: often wrong, never in doubt.

Which would explain both the ascendancy of Joe Biden and the current financial crisis.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:01 am 24. steveaz:

So true, LJ,
This election will tell us all whether America’s voters can tell the different between sh_t and shinola.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:14 am 25. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:

I recall an article whose premise was that while politicians and the public all said that ‘clean’ campaigns were the best, those they most relished were the ‘dirty’ campaigns. Of course this is true. Two people having a reasonable discussion will hardly attract a passing glance. Two people having a fight draw a crowd in an instant. It is human nature, however much we claim the contrary. The Obama vs. McCain campaign is no different than any other. At the outset both candidates dedicate themselves to high mindedness, and in the end attempt to eviscerate their opponent.

Now is when it gets interesting. Now is when people will start paying attention. Let there be blood, and may the most bloodthirsty man win. Alas, I suspect that it will be the Socialist from the Cook County Machine.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:26 am 26. slade:

Whiskey opines that women are attracted to Obama for his edgy bad boy with street cred associations (you may have missed a promising career writing country music lyrics ::)). Of more concern should be his nobler instincts that could lead him down the path of good intentions straight into the bowels of hell. My confidence lies with the Founding Fathers and the checks and balances which is why the effort, funding, and focus belonged with the Congressional races. An Obama presidency is not the end of the line, but Democratic Executive and Legislative branches with exposed Judicial branch is nightmare waiting to happen.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:41 am 27. ricpic:

Notice that McCain will not say word one about Obama’s most damning connection: his connection to Rev Wright. Why? That would be racisss.

Think of it: rather than be accused of being racist, McCain is willing to leave America to the tender mercies of this hard core marxist and the merry gang of resentment filled blood thirsty hell bent on revenge thugs who surround him. Because there is nothing worse than being called the R word.

Which tells us that McCain has internalized lefty brainwashing.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:44 am 28. Konyok:

How does an all out Obama character/judgement offensive against McCain square with the junior senator from Illinois’ multiple “John is absolutely right” statements in the last debate?

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:52 am 29. buckets:

I think a growing number of us are feeling like the U.S. has suddenly veered off in a worrisome direction. We are being presented with a fait accompli – with the Leftists threatening prosecution for ideas they don’t like, the massive nationalization efforts we’re experiencing, and the media actively running inteference for the Obama campaign… what chance do we have?

Konyok- you see this, too, but want to spur us on to act and change the outcome. But conservatives/libertarians, for the most part, don’t like pushing their views on other people, and are rational enough to know they don’t have all the answers. I think with the strong libertarian streak that runs through this blog and conservative voters in general, our enthusiasm and evangelizing could never match the FANATIC efforts of the Leftists. Where belief is absolute, the ends will justify the means.

The good guys seem to have lost this battle. We’re going to get the leadership we deserve, and God help us for the next 4-8 years.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:08 am 30. NahnCee:

“…his snarky, fat-assed wife.”

I’m pretty sure that calling a black woman “fat-assed” would be considered racism, whereas “bootylicious” is considered to be a compliment.

And for me, Mrs. Obama is a step or two beyond mere “snarky” and into “acidly bilious”.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:32 am 31. Mike Sylwester:

There’s a month left until Election Day, and the McCain campaign intends to spend that time focusing the public’s attention on Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko. Dumb as dirt.

The primary elections are over. Now Obama officially represents the Democratic Party of the United States of America. He is one of the three most important persons in the USA right now. He now has far too much status and authority to be toppled with insinuations about Ayers.

And since the primary elections are over, McCain should start addressing the entire electorate with serious discussions about major issues. What are the major issues? What are the advantages of Republican policies and the consequences of Democratic policies?

Because President Bush is unpopular, McCain has been disassociating himself from the Bush Administration’s policies, but they are the Republican Party’s policies. McCain is supposed to be representing the Republican Party, but instead he is just representing himself as a holier-than-thou, know-it-all individual maverick.

It’s clear that a President McCain would veto earmarks. Great. But what’s he going to do to enable the US Government to pay for future Social Security and Medicare benefits? What major reductions of government expenditures does he plan? What should be the size of the Federal Government’s budget in relation to the Gross Domestic Product?

We all already know that a President McCain won’t do anything at all to try to control illegal immigration. Somewhere, some soldier’s grandmother still has not acquired a green card, so McCain will refuse to enforce any immigration rules against anyone at all. But McCain personally has a lot of honor, so we all should vote for him!

We need to face the facts that McCain has been running an effective, misdirected political campaign. In his first debate against Obama — on McCain’s home court, about foreign policy — McCain lost, according to public opinion polls. McCain didn’t lose because the MSM spun the debate, but because McCain debated ineffectively and deserved to lose.

I’ll again recommend that everyone read Andy Martin’s criticism of McCain’s performance in the first debate.
contrariancommentary.com/community/Home/tabid/36/mid/363/newsid363/275/Default.aspx

McCain needs to get serious fast and stop squandering the last four weeks on trivial issues like Bill Ayers.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:32 am 32. Konyok:

buckets,

You put your finger on a couple of real frustrating dilemmas.

For the most part, people don’t understand the libertarian part of the equation. The left is FANATIC because they really, truly fear that we are trying to impose a theocratic police state on them. I don’t know how to convince them otherwise, though I do find that a lot of them are more moderate on individual issues.

Perhaps their strongest tool, hand in hand with the liberal media, is to convince conservatives that the battle is already lost. Why bother confronting our opponents if there is no hope of success?

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:33 am 33. NahnCee:

Ohhhhh, good stuff, Maynard. Hot off the presses from InstaPundit:

“I JUST GOT THIS EMAIL: “Republican National Committee (RNC) Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross will announce today a complaint that the RNC is filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Obama campaign. The complaint will address foreign national and excessive contributions accepted by the Obama campaign that demonstrate it is operating outside of federal campaign finance law.”

The lesson of Watergate: Follow The Money.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:44 am 34. Mike Sylwester:

Leo Linbeck III:
“What do you do when confronted with an opponent who will tell outright falsehoods in order to gain advantage? Biden, in the VP debate, made a large number of outright misrepresentations. But he made them with such confidence that the average viewer was easily duped (I have to admit that I didn’t realize how many he made until after the fact). ”
————-

One consequence of nominating Sarah Palin as our Vice Presidential candidate is that we have a candidate who does not know enough about major issues to challenge such false claims about the basic facts immediately during the debate. If Biden had said that the capital of Lebanon is Cairo, Palin would not have challenged him.

I am dismayed that McCain and Palin have let Obama get away scot-free with Obama’s claim that he was right to oppose our Iraq War from the beginning. It now has become the common wisdom that McCain was right about the Surge but Obama was right about the Iraq War as a whole. If that remains the common wisdom, then McCain will lose and Obama will win this election.

McCain and Palin should be hammering Biden repeatedly for opposing our intervention to defend Kuwait from Iraq in 1990. Why did Palin oppose our military intervention in that war? What did and does Obama think about our military intervention in that war? Was the USA supposed to allow an aggressive, expansionist Iraq ruled by the tyrant Saddam Hussein threaten and invade its neighbors?

And then why did Biden change his position and support our invasion of Iraq in 2003? Was their any reason besides political expedience, because his 1990 position had turned out to be so disasterously unpopular? And why did Obama say just a couple years ago that there was practically no difference between Obama and Bush on the Iraq War?

The public needs to be reminded that the Democrat Party is essentially a pacifist party. The Democrats are reluctant to apply military force to any problem anywhere at any time. The Democrats will reduce our Defense Budget significantly. The Democrats will turn over the military security of the USA and of the whole world to the United Nations. The Democrats will watch passively as tyrannical regimes threaten, invade and destroy moderate regimes in the world’s most important oil-producing region. The Democrats might talk tough, but the whole world knows that the Democrats are soft and that the USA can be flouted whenever the US President is a Democratic.

But all McCain is saying is that he was right and Obama was wrong about the Surge. Obama’s response every time is that Obama showed better judgement in opposing the war from the begining, and McCain and Palin both give Obama a free pass on that response every time.

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:06 am 35. Konyok:

During the first Battle of Fallujah I followed a link from Instapundit and got hooked on the Belmont Club. I didn’t muster the courage to post myself until the invasion of Georgia.
I’ve learned so much from Wretchard and the regular posters here about the historical dimensions of the WOT. It has been an unalloyed pleasure to play armchair general.

By definition, this blog concerns itself with the strategic, global and historical context of our interesting times. There is enormous benefit in thinking about the big picture, but sometimes it enervates us.

Events in, and actions of, the United States often are the focus of this blog because at this point in history, the US is the hub of the global wheel. A sneeze in Washington can have enormous impact on a village in Mauretania, 9/11 teaches us that the obverse is true as well.

A downside is that our perception of American politics is increasingly becoming nationalized. We have such passionate feelings about the presidential race that we forget the simple fact that our system is basically bottom up. In the interplay between politics, culture and economics our influence as citizens and voters is potentially greatest at the local level. (Habu is suggesting that Congress be expanded to create more accountability to constituents. I tend to agree with him …)

Single issue conservative activists have had some success, most notably in gaining more acceptance of home schooling. But, general interest conservatives tend to be too passive about local politics. Too often we pause only briefly on local news, and then rush to the national and international issues that interest us most. This leaves the concentrated interests of the left with an open playing field to set policy, raise funds and develop leadership.

Sarah Palin is a wonderful role model for us. No, she’s not a foreign policy expert, but she has had a refreshing impact on the political arenas where she has worked.

We need conservative community activists to increase the societal margins that Wretchard speaks of. Indeed, think globally, act locally.

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:06 am 36. Mark:

Yes, follow the money.

And the cover-up is always worse than the crime. If Ayers isn’t just a ‘guy in the neighborhood,’ then why did Sen. Obama lie and say he was? Why indeed, people might ask.

Re. Michelle Obama: rude references above are really out of line. Especially the ad feminam ones. She has many impressive qualities, and I’d vote for her before voting for Sen. Obama.

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:10 am 37. NahnCee:

So it’s OK to call McCain “old” and Palin “stupid” but any reference to femme Obama is rude? Isn’t that, um, racist? Or sexist? Or elitist? Or just plain dumb?

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:53 am 38. Konyok:

Wouldn’t that be “ad feminae?”

Given the timbre of attacks against Hillary and Sarah, that phenomenon just might deserve a specific name.

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:55 am 39. Leo Linbeck III:

Mike Sylwester,

I agree with much of what you said, but not sure I’m with you on Palin being “a candidate who does not know enough about major issues to challenge such false claims about the basic facts immediately during the debate.” There were, to be sure, a couple of places I’d like to have seen her hit Biden harder, especially on his partition plan for Iraq.

But many of Biden’s most effective misrepresentations were beyond the capabilities of all but the most wonkish to counter. And any debater with Biden would face the problem that there were so many falsehoods that you couldn’t keep up even if you knew all the facts.

In addition, there is a generic problem when debating someone with no regard for the truth. Every time you counter them with facts, they can simply make up more stuff to debunk your debunking.

Biden: “We believe Iran is a threat.”
Palin: “But Obama said he’d sit down with Akhmedinejad without preconditions.”
Biden: “Barack never said that.”
Palin: “I watched the debate, and he said that.”
Biden: “But that was before the French kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.”
Palin: “But you took criticized Obama at the time.”
Biden: “That was because George Bush lied about his intentions to invade Iraq and tricked me into supporting the war.”
Palin: “But it was a War Resolution.”
Biden: “It was Bush and McCain’s war, launched over the objections of the Congress, and they botched it.”
Palin: “But John McCain supported the surge, which worked, and you and Obama opposed it.”
Biden: “But the Iraqis agree with our timeline for withdrawal.”
Palin: “John McCain believes in winning the war.”
Biden: “But McCain voted against funding the troops.”
Palin: “McCain has always supported our troops and was a supporter of the surge.”
Biden: “But our general in Afghanistan says the surge won’t work there.”
Palin: “That is not what our general said.”
Biden: :Regardless, we have to reach out to Iran. They’re not a threat, just misunderstood.”
Palin: “I thought you said they weren’t a threat.”
Biden: “Sarah, you ignorant, provincial slut.”

(I quote from memory.)

The point is that Biden appears to feel unconstrained by the facts. For every rebuttal, he spews forth additional falsehoods, said with confidence and vigor.

This is a tough situation. In the end, Palin was banking on her ability to connect with viewers, rather than catching Biden in a lie. In normal times, the media would follow through with true fact checking.

But these are not normal times.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:09 pm 40. sgi:

OK, this is the third and maybe the last time I am going to post this link to a mesmerizing blog about Obama and Ayers. Steve Diamond, a Democrat, has been on this story for months, but unlike most others, he has much more than just speculation. He was one of the sources for the NYT article and he’s pretty miffed at the author.

If the link by chance does not work, his blog is called “Global Labor and Politics”.

http://globallabor.blogspot.com/

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:11 pm 41. Konyok:

Thank you sgi.

I browsed around Diamond’s archive and satisfied myself that he’s the real deal – an honest progressive.

This link will be very helpful in nudging some of my Obamatron friends to vote for Nader. (The only “honest man” in this election.)

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:21 pm 42. Sam Wilson:

TRANGBANG 68 @8:10 AM
How can a true statement be racist ?

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:26 pm 43. whiskey:

I think Obama’s action is aimed not at securing victory for himself, but overwhelming victory for his party so he has no filibuster to contend with.

He’s already winning, he merely wants to go for the jugular and get a complete victory. To remake society according to his dictates.

Among them, btw, is a remaking of sexual mores. Frank Marshall Davis bragging about having sex with a 14 year old White girl? Well of course. That’s the whole point, and if you watch popular culture, that is exactly what the elites wish to do.

It’s not JUST the economy, switching from production to law/entertainment/media/finance, from jobs for American (mostly male) workers to high-end bigshots. Or the foreign policy. No, much of the fury IMHO comes from the alliance of the would-be Big Men and single women (who really, hate middle class “boring” men around them) to create the new utopia. Don’t underestimate this motive. It probably accounts for much of Obama’s shift in public opinion.

Blue collar Union guys would never vote for him, but single women of all classes and races find him their natural messiah, particularly the more celebrities worship him and cement him as the “Big Man.” Obama is just going for the jugular with these groups. McCain = “erratic?” That says, McCain is not the Alpha, Obama is.

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:29 pm 44. Leo Linbeck III:

NahnCee,

Obama’s funding has always struck me as puzzling. I admit it’s only a gut instinct, but consider the following (from OpenSecrets.org):

Obama’s campaign has reported 221,049 contributors who have given more than $200.
Obama’s campaign has reported that 51% of its donations have come from donors who have given less than $200.

If you do the math, this means that about 230,000 people have given less than $200.

Let’s assume that each of these people has given $199.99. This adds up to about $46 million.

But his campaign has also reported raising $220M from donations less than $200. Where did the rest of the money come from? This is no small amount of difference – $174M, the absence of which would wipe out the money difference between the candidates.

Alternatively, let’s say the number of contributors calculated above is wrong, but the $220M is correct. If one assumes a reasonable distribution of those <$200 donations, this means Obama has received more than 2 million individual gifts. Even in the age of the internet, this sounds high. Again according to OpenSecrets.org, Bush and Kerry each had about 77,000 donors who gave less than $200 in the 2004 election. I know Obama has reached out to a lot of new people, but 2,600% more? Doesn’t sound right.

If I believed in conspiracy theories, I could construct a pretty juicy one involving Soros, Iranian oil money, Swiss banks, and Pakistani call centers.

Curious.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:45 pm 45. sgi:

Konyok, you are most welcome. Anything I can do to contribute to Belmont Club University!

I am not American but I am one of your admirers from up north. Socialism will suck the life-blood out of your great country, just as it has mine. I despair at the mere suggestion that the United States will succumb to such a soul-destroying ideology.

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:50 pm 46. Mark:

Konyak writes:

“Wouldn’t that be “ad feminae?”

Mark responds: feminine noun, accusative case. Finally, a topic I know a little about.

Keep up your very fine posting.

Oct 5, 2008 - 12:55 pm 47. JP:

What we need is a healthy dose of common-sensed nationalism. We need to manufacuture more “stuff” and produce more energy DOMESTICALLY and put obsessive “free trade and globalism” on the back burne for a while.

We are losing our country, our heritage on the mantle of globalism. Most of the rest of the world hate us, so I ask my fellow Americans to respond in kind.

Lower immigration – across the board (legal, illegal, foreign students, “guest” workers, etc).

Increase domestic manufacturing and energy production. Keep most of the money here, domestically.

more to follow……

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:04 pm 48. Fouronefaith:

Sounds like alot of you are nothing but racist.Like it or not,Obama will win this election.Remember,there are not enough minority vote that making him lead,there are other races including your own who are voting for the guy.That’s the change alot of real Christian Americans are looking for and that is change from simple minded racist views.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:09 pm 49. Linc:

Barry Hussein Obambi is a “metrosexual” wimp lawyer, who at his core, barely qualifies as an American and is nothing but a smooth talker with very, very little experience in anything.

He and his “fat assed wife” are USA haters at their core, even though they are both well paid successful in the financial sense.

Everything up to this point is nearly meaningless. The campaign really begins now in October.

Moooslim name. Father was a moooslim. Step-father was a moooslim. Mother a whacked-out hippie chick. Pastor a USA hating nut-job. Good friend a USA hating terrorist. Real estate buddy a Syrian “immigrant” huckster.

Obambi is a far-left liberal with no experience other than the gift of gab. Damn, I don’t envy him the next 30 days.

McCain-Palin will win by a rather comfortable margin.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:10 pm 50. RS:

One big reason true conservatives have been yelling about out of control immigration is because the more arab/mooslims, illegal amigos, Asians we allow into this country, the more it will change to relfect their tribal, leftist cultures.

These people are not and never can be real Americans – their tribal cultures are not suited to Western culture.

Immigration matters. This election will come down to see whether or not the US remains American or just another polyglot, turd world “diversity racket” crap-hole.

Reduce immigration or else.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:17 pm 51. trangbang68:

Sam Wilson, I’m not saying that true statement about Fannie Mae oversight is racist, but the politically correct media will paint it as such and McCain’s de-balled operatives will be afraid to be labeled as bigots so will not tell the truth. A scorched earth campaign defangs political correctness.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:28 pm 52. no mo uro:

“For the most part, people don’t understand the libertarian part of the equation. The left is FANATIC because they really, truly fear that we are trying to impose a theocratic police state on them.”

Even though there isn’t a shred of real evidence that this is the case.

This is a MUCH bigger issue than anyone seems to understand. It’s nice to finally bring it out in the open.

This is the result of a)projection by the left and b)complete ignorance of the facts by pretty much everyone.

If you look around, what you see is the left actively promoting a secular/atheist police state, and not conservatives doing the same. We see hints of it all the time. Sen. Shumer has as much as said that devout Catholics need not apply for judgeships. Liberal celebrites like Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, etc., have called publicly for a government ban on organized religion, and nobody in the MSM said a peep of protest. Colleges and universites have actively sought to suppress Christian groups while funding secular ones under the guise of “diversity”.

The truths about “theocracy” are these:

1) The left, and not the right, is the engine behind forcing a police state which restricts religious belief and practice.

2) Not all Democrats are antiChristian bigots, but essentially all antiChristian bigots are Democrats.

3) The Democrat party seeks to limit enfranchisement and representation of all but the most exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity.

Unless devout Christians are very careful and very organized over the next decade, they could see themselves relegated to a position in society where the government dictates how, where, when, and why they can worship. And, ultimately, for how long.

It takes very little to go from celebrities and a few elected officials talking about banning religion to that coming to pass in reality.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:31 pm 53. Tony:

At Republican rallies, the crowd breaks into chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

At Democratic rallies, the crowd breaks into chants of “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!”

Bruce Springsteen gave a free concert on the Parkway yesterday to promote Obama. Here’s AP reporting the strange parallels between the Boss, the Eloi Choir Change Singers and the Cadence Marchers:

“I’ve spent 35 years writing about America and its people and the meaning of the American promise. A promise handed down right here in this city. Our everyday citizens have justifiably lost faith in its meaning.”

With that flourish, he launched into his de facto theme song for Obama, “The Rising.” The tune, originally written for the firefighters who died in the World Trade Center, has taken on an evangelical pro-Obama interpretation in the campaign. Springsteen sang and preached the Obama gospel, performing a solemn and rare acoustic version of the song.

To finish the uncharacteristically short set, Springsteen strummed his guitar to the crowd chants of “Yes we can!” which then morphed into Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

As Springsteen walked off the stage, he said, “It’s up to you now.”

I wonder how much of a following I’d get if I started up the “U-S-A” chant at a Bruce rally these days? After all, this land is my land, too. Fire at Will, expect Will to fire back.

Oct 5, 2008 - 1:54 pm 54. SteveG:

It’s obvious celebrities, the “news media” and others are and have been in the tank for the Messiah With A Thin Resume for a long time now.

The question is whether or not real Americans in the center of the nation, outnumber the leftists on the West and East coasts, along with naturalized citizens (former immigrants) as well as the voter fraud going on in places like Ohio by Barry Hussein cultists, the numeric comparison is going to matter greatly.

Barry, the “community organizer” (giggle, giggle), with practically no actual real world experience, is going to be elected President of the USA if McCain-Palin do not take off the gloves and stop treating this limp-wristed, leftist lawyer like someone who should be respected.

BHO is a joke, a frickin joke. But he may just win since he has 95% of the media (news and entertainment) on his side, masking his radical associations and his non-achievement record.

Oct 5, 2008 - 2:02 pm 55. Konyok:

no mo uro,

I am not a Christian myself. I will confess that I look for the nearest exit when people ask me if I’ve been saved.

However, I see the exact same persecution of believers that you do. The one group that can by attacked with impunity is Christians. Hollywood, the media, academia and various and assorted free agents belittle Christians with glee. (I find it especially disturbing that they are so solicitous of Islam …) All of the worst stereotypes are allowed in reference to believers.

Their rationale is that they are resisting the Christian campaign to impose their beliefs on everybody else.

Oct 5, 2008 - 2:13 pm 56. no mo uro:

Konyok:

One doesn’t have to be a believer to see what is happening, just honest, intelligent, and logical. Although I’m a Catholic, I’m not fond of the in-your-face, have you been saved? brand of Christianity. But I don’t hate or resent them, and I certainly don’t want to see them denigrated or disenfranchised in a de facto way like much of the angry left seems to desire.

In the U.S., the news/entertainment industry and the education industry are both controlled by, and largely populated by, individuals who are, as I said, deeply bigoted against all but the most exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity. Many of them are just as evangelical and closed-minded and ignorant as the bible thumpers. The difference is, the left elite has the money and the bully pulpit (mass media) which makes their ability to proseltyze much more powerful, even brutal.

In addition, the notion of the devoutly Christian being the ultimate danger in the universe is central to their core beliefs and their narrative. So much so that their means of resolving the cognitive dissonance caused by the juxtaposing of a few loudmouth televangelists with the evils of Islamic fascist terrorism is to say that devout Christians are equivalent to people who fly planes into buildings.

To believe otherwise would be to admit that their basis for life and the all imprtant narrative were completely wrong, something they lack the courage to do. And so the elitism, and the bigotry, continue.

A commenter upthread mentioned how many so-called Christians would support the party so heavily populated by this sort of bigot. Perhaps the commenter should study history. In the beginning, it would be the Falwells and the Robertsons who would be led off to the camps. In the end, it would be all Christians.

Oct 5, 2008 - 3:10 pm 57. fred:

The reason why the last two elections were so close owes to the fact that the country has been drifting Leftward, gradually and in stages, since Ronald Reagan left office. Now, the Left is lapping at its high water mark. Will they break through this time? I think they will.

Even though, if they want to use it, the Republicans have all kinds of legitimate information about Obama, the media will do its job and stuff it down. My best guess is that when the media is clearly hostile towards you, if you go negative on Obama you will come out on the bad end of it, not Obama.

I just have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. After November this is not going to be the same country again. We are crossing a Rubicon.

Oct 5, 2008 - 4:11 pm 58. whiskey:

One of the unspoken truths is that young women despise Christianity, and seek substitutes. Many of the Obama worshippers are young White women, such as the Smith College student, who wrote that she has come to worship Obama.

People are not made to have no religion. Christianity, while a useful and traditional religion, does put restrictions on male and female sexuality, and those restrictions are a horror to those who would construct a new aristocratic society of “coolness” consisting of Leonardo DiCaprio and other dubious celebrities. Obama being of course Celebrity #1. “The One” in other words.

Of course many white voters are supporting Obama. Most of them are women, Time Magazine points out a 17 point lead among women for Obama. Meanwhile men are likely to vote against him … but women have a Demographic edge. And unlike 2000 and 2004, married women are now a minority — demographic changes favor Democrats.

Obama is no fool. He knows that the more he paints McCain as the “loser” old-crazy guy, the more women will vote for him. But long term, as dividing lines along gender develop, Obama faces real risks, as do nearly all Western Societies. Matriarchal, female-based societies can’t face up to thugs. You can see this already in Western Europe — middle class men and women arrested for “racist dolls” in their windows, or young boys calling playmates names, but no reaction to threats of murder by Jihad.

Oct 5, 2008 - 4:20 pm 59. fred:

no mo uro,

Your post above mine is clearly one of the best I’ve seen posted here and elsewhere in a while. Agree with every word of it (I’m an RC too – a former Jesuit seminarian and Thomistic humanist). It still rankles to hear these people consider Christianity morally equivalent to the 7th century, savage worshipers of Satan (Allah). I’m not a biblical literalist, which means I don’t have a LOT in common with the evangelicals, but we actually do share many values in common. It’s just that literalism lends itself to some very odd theology.

The physicalist reductionists on the Left want to preserve their niches of hedonism, and consider traditional America a threat to their project to gradually tease our culture into European hedonistic nihilism.

Oct 5, 2008 - 4:21 pm 60. fred:

I agree with everything whiskey just wrote.

Let me defend him, and my approval of the views he elaborated on.

Neither whiskey nor I hate women. I don’t know what his marital status is, but I am married. I love my wife. I love my mother. I love my sisters and my female cousins and co-workers. I happen to love women, for all of their unique talents and abilities. I have no desire to hold them back or constrain how far they can take their abilities and hard work in life. I’m also a Roman Catholic Christian – a white guy who is considered somehow “the oppressor” of women in our Western civilization.

But I also have, for years, noticed a lot of truly frightful things happening with white women in our society. Some of it was not of their own making. Some of it definitely involves dysfunctional avenues of anger some of which is unjustified and mislaid.

People like John McCain, whiskey, myself, and so many, many good males really want what is best for our people and for the great civilization we are fortunate to be born under. We stand in the way of 7th century savages, who worship Satan and who would put women under a regime that is brutal, undignified, and severely oppressive. Only the most willful kinds of ignorance could fail to see and appreciate this. And the fact that there is so much of it infuriates men like whiskey and I.

European socialism is now laid bare to the eventual absorption into the Ummah. Its hedonistic countries, for well over a hundred years, have rejected a religious heritage that is at the heart of what was once a civilization that saw incredible improvements in the human condition. It really all started with the French Revolution, but advanced very, very rapidly in the 20th century during and after WWI. Now, Europe is a feeble shell of its former self. It is being invaded by people who are there precisely to conquer it by demographics and by legal and political victories.

If we go the way of Europe and sink into nihilistic hedonism, we too will see the darkness descend upon us. People who believe in nothing of a higher purpose will not give up their lives to defend what is worth defending. But this enemy is willing to fight and die for Allah/Satan.

Oct 5, 2008 - 4:41 pm 61. E. Nigma:

Tony,
That’s pretty rich coming from Springsteen, who has become a multi-millionaire pop-icon writing “about America”. His populist rhetoric doesn’t quite jive with his monetary acumen. And like most successful pop-icons, he is a pretty egotistical person outside of the public view. He was raised a Catholic boy, I wonder what he thinks of some of the above comments about the cultural attacks on people of faith?

He’s quite theatrical in it all, I’ve seen him in concert a couple of times (27 years ago last). But the juvenile notions that he promotes are pretty much out of sync with his real life, and most people’s real lives.. I out grew him a long time ago.

Like many other pop-culture figures, he says one thing in public, but practices quite another thing in his own life.

So as P.T. Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute. Many were in Philly today. So it goes.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:19 pm 62. NahnCee:

Whiskey and now Fred keep yammering on about how women are “pro-Obama” and how awful it is that single women refuse to hook up with “good men”. Yammering, I say, because it’s just nonsense.

Evidently they see some un-natural link between females who will vote for Obama and females who will not mate with “good men” (and I’m waiting for a definition of *that* too — no, on second hand, I don’t want to hear more yammering).

However, I have never once heard either Fred nor Whiskey comment on how men WILL NOT date “fat chicks”. Personals ads inevitably have the phrase “no fat chicks”. Or how about the age-old saying “men won’t make passes at girls who wear glasses”. That pretty much covers a vast majority of women in the United States right now, except for plastic enclaves in New York, Miami, and LA.

Given the current rates of obesity in the United State (among both women AND men), how many “fat chicks” do you suppose are sitting out there alone on a Saturday night? And how many of those lonely fat chicks do you think might be attending Democratic fund raisers as a chance to mingle and meet people? I *know* that a lot of single people see politics as a way to meet people, a social interaction sort of thing, and it might be attractive because (1) it’s not religious, and (2) there’s a nice feeling of doing something “good” or “green”.

I’ve heard young men and young women talking about attending the protest for this or that this coming weekend and who’ll they’ll be going with and what they’ll wear. There is very little thought given as to what their sign will say or who the speaker will be. AND the young men are looking for “hotties”. Yeah. Right.

But the point I want to make now is that if women aren’t attracted to “good men”, then are men attracted to women who don’t look like Brittany Spears complete with the Daisy Duke shorts, the long blonde hair, and the cute little giggle? I say no, and I also just cannot see where Obama comes into this equation of men seeking hotties and women not being hotties and so ending up alone and as a single mom.

I just think this is such a non-issue I can’t believe the two of them keep dragging it back through the kitchen door again and again and again.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:37 pm 63. trangbang68:

Whiskey , I don’t know what young women and what churches you’re talking about, but any given Sunday there are scads of young women in churches. Dude you need to get out more.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:40 pm 64. fred:

NahnCee,

You are caricaturing everything I have written on the subject here. I only make comment on two things, and only two things. The demographics that are cited in the polling data about Obama’s support – where it’s coming from. And the political-cultural nexus of values that tend to make up and undergird that support. I’ve said nothing about the things you’ve stated I’ve supposedly commented on.

I happen to agree with whiskey insofar as he’s, I think, accurately described the kind of milieu within which young females support Obama. And by that I mean the intellectual currents of post-modernism and socialism, inculcated within them and our young men in the education system.

Go and look at the statistics of the demographic data and tell me I’m full of shit. And by the way, I have gone to great pains to also state that his support among young males is strong too. Just not quite to the levels as it is among young women. I’m not attacking women as a sex or in general.

And gratuitous remarks about how I make judgments about the desirability of overweight gals for dates is worse than unfair. It says something about your character that you take out the knife in that way.

No doubt I’ll get ganged up here, as I have been on another topic, for standing up for myself against straw men arguments. Bring it on, folks.

Oct 5, 2008 - 5:50 pm 65. no mo uro:

Nahncee

Is the objection to “fat chicks”, to use your term, essentially esthetic in nature? I submit that it is not.

I’ll tell you something you may not realize. The objection to overweight women by men, in most cases, has little to do with esthetics and everything to do with a perception that fat people, generally speaking, are those who lack a certain type of self control. It is the lack of self control, ultimately, which is unattractive. Not the hip to waist ratio.

Oh, I know what you’ll say. How come men don’t hold each other to this standard? Simple answer: other men aren’t potential mates. Perhaps that’s unfair. But there it is.

So men do not want overweight women who they perceive as lacking self-control. You say that is bad, and it probably is in many ways. I would ask your thoughts, then, as to why no matter how much money educated women make, they overwhelmingly seem to want a guy who earns a great deal more than they do, and comment on the fairness of that.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:06 pm 66. Lifeofthemind:

Am I squaring a circle here? The arguments made by whiskey, fred and NahnCee do not seem exclusive to me. Society as a whole benefits from certain behaviors on the part of young men and young women. This analysis can shade into Social Darwinism if done crudely. It benefits society if young men learn to value physical courage, self discipline, team identification, obedience to authority and integrity, particularly when questioned within the group. We used to teach these behaviors by raising our young men on the works of John Ford and Howard Hawks and the Bible. Similar, sometimes the same, socialization tools aided in teaching young women how to value another, if overlapping, set of values. The Marxist value set that has been steadily gaining strength in our society actively weakens the ability of people to either project or to seek out in a partner those behaviors that would be of benefit to the society as a whole. It was my postulate that in doing so the modern socialist culture is building on alliances that are open to it with subcultures, gay or urban black, that were historically separate from that of the dominant majority. Under those circumstances the behaviors described by NahnCee make perfect sense.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:19 pm 67. no mo uro:

Whiskey-

You are dead on with your comment regarding the indoctrination of women to become antiChristian bigots in the U.S. today. Are there some who resist this? Certainly. The bulk do not.

And as a result of being stripped of the cohesive, civilizing framework of authentic Christianity, women are reverting to primitive, pre-civilization primate patterns of social organization. Alpha male with all the adulation and sexual rights to all the females, and all other males marginalized until one of them violently casts out the current alpha. And there will always be lawless males who will take advantage of this situation, thinking they can game it for their own good.

We see this in Europe, where the Western model of family – husband, wife, child – has largely been supplanted – by the old/new model of State/Alpha, child, woman. (Also sounds like a certain religion.)

The video of the schoolkids all wearing the same uniform singing for their LEADER, Obama, is indistinguishable from films I’ve seen of the Hitler Youth on so many levels. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s fact. Authentic Christianity has largely been a useful inoculation against this sort of thing.

Tear away Christianity from the West, and you’re left with the same brutal social organization of a pack of baboons.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:27 pm 68. OldSalt:

We don’t elect a future president’s Vice-President pick, we elect the beliefs and strategies of the Commander-in-Chief on the top of the ticket. This is what’s missing here, the emotional tie to the base. John McCain has 3 weeks to bolster that chink in his armor… He better hurry. – DanM

A lot of “centrist” Republicans misunderstand conservatives as badly as the political left. For example, many took Limbaugh’s negative observations about McCain stated in the primaries, as proof-positive that the GOP “big tent” was dead due to conservative litmus tests. In fact, Limbaugh’s major objection was this (to paraphrase): McCain can’t win. Given a choice between a Pubbie centrist and a liberal Democrat, folks included towards leftist values (e.g. economic, social, whatever) will pick the real liberal every time. Being a “Maverick”, screwing your own party, defeating the conservative legislative agenda is one thing. Getting the “independents” or “conservative Democrats” to pull the lever for a Republican requires a lot more than what McCain has to offer.

Second, McCain’s effort to “divorce” himself from Bush, and from every GOP policy for the last 8 years has played right into the Democrats hands. To be honest, I turned off both the McCain and Palin debates early, after I heard diatribe after diatribe, and lie after lie about Bush and the last 8 years and the worst economy in 10,000 years and .. and all other BS, and McCain and Palin let the charges stand. Getting elected President is relatively meaningless without an associated policy mandate. Other than war policy, what would McCain stand for that the Democrats would not also claim for their own. Damn little.

I’m voting for McCain not because of Palin, though she’s a welcome addition to the ticket, and certainly not because of McCain. I just hate liars. “Honor”, “Patriotism”, “Honesty”, “truthfulness”, have always meant something to me. BHO is an enigma wrapped in lies. BHO, 60 Democrat Senators, and a Democrat majority in the House, will redefine every historical concept of what it once meant to be a “free American”.

I’ll go one step further. If the GOP loses so badly, I don’t see the GOP returning to a position of influence or power in my lifetime. The GOP RINO’s and fatcat’s, along with a one-dimensional-patrician GOP President, have squandered credibility. It’ll be time for an entirely new party, how, when, or what, I am not certain.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:45 pm 69. whiskey:

Nahncee — I don’t understand what the obesity levels of men and women have to do with anything. Nor do I “lament” the fact that women, if left unconstrained, will reliably choose the most testosterone driven Alpha males without fail, on average. [Individuals may vary.]

Fact: single women are leaving Christianity in droves (largely over sex/conduct issues). I won’t link for approval reasons (in the queue) but you can Google this for yourself. Fact: Women approve of Obama by almost 20% more than men. Fact: Young women form the hard-core supporters of Obama (far more than young men).

Single motherhood is not going away — it’s only going to increase. Young women, particularly young White women are going to give Obama the Presidency. Just as women have given hard left governments in Europe their demographic edge. This is no surprise — go to TMZ or Dlisted or Television Without Pity or any discussion site not devoted to politics and dominated by women and see the attitudes displayed there. You can easily see for yourself and check on what I say.

Anonymous urban life and wealth, increased power and freedom for women all over the world create what Kay Hymnowitz calls the global girls club. Who hold the swing vote power in deeply divided Western-Asian nations. Young women HATE (with a passion) non-dominant men, have a huge aversion for any short-term risk particularly anything to do with violence. They favor “rehabilitation” over imprisonment, outreach over policing, and appeasement over military responses to terrorism, foreign or domestic or foreign-domestic. The only exception being “scary” White guys like McVeigh, Nicholls, that whacko in Waco, etc.

Men and women are neither “evil” nor “angelic” merely vastly different — we are however looking at something entirely NEW: men and women in very removed and separate realms. As single motherhood becomes the overwhelming choice of motherhood, women and children will be seen as the “Big Man’s” with nothing to do with them. Politically, these divisions are likely to be far deeper, more permanent, and more hostile. Misogyny (already a useless word btw post-Palin) is going to be a casual and inevitable fact of life for all women.

As far as marriage/relationship rates, men have a habit of finding whatever sex they can. The idea that men on average have suddenly gone on relationship strikes because they want supermodels and will not settle for the girl next door posits that suddenly, men’s behavior changed, over the past, for no reason at all. Far more likely that urban anonymous living, better economic positions, the Pill and Condom, allow women to pursue (and share, however uneasily) the Alpha men who have higher positions than them, more testosterone/dominance than other men, without costs, up front. Monogamy and the nuclear family are rather recent, fragile, and the exception in human history and society, rather than the rule. So this is not surprising. This is neither “evil” nor “good” merely inevitable in modern life, and carries with it costs that will be made clear.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:52 pm 70. no mo uro:

‘Young women. . . , have a huge aversion for any short-term risk particularly anything to do with violence.’

Hence their almost universal approval of banning the private ownership of firearms.

Oct 5, 2008 - 6:59 pm 71. Konyok:

Oh boy.

We geologists call this kind of speculative generalization “arm waving.” I guess that I’ll join in ….

Whiskey and his posse make a couple of provocative points, but, to extrapolate them to some kind of zeitgeist is a bit much. I understand Nahncee’s umbrage, because they make it sound like women are making some kind of lousy choice out of, what?, bad character?

I think it more likely that the things Whiskey and Nahncee describe are symptoms of a larger pathology.
Another piece of the puzzle is the downright crappy treatment given first to Hillary and then to Sarah. The criticisms haven’t been about policy, or, even character. They seem to have been more of the nature of deviation from what is deemed the *right* feminine appearance or behaviour. Critics right and left have fixated on Hillary’s pantsuits, “ballbuster” persona or excessive/deficient emotional expression. Sarah is either *too* pretty, perky, Stepford wife or calculating and sinister. These women are hardly ever judged on their merits as prospective leaders.
I think these are all aspects of the same social trends.

The pop culture has reduced women to two-dimensional images whose existence as sentient beings is only secondary to their status as sexual objects. Ironically, this doesn’t seem to be fruition of the senascent patriarchy, but a new wave of sexism emerging under the banner of progressivism. This is where Whiskey et al. would cheer. The imperative is no longer the maintenance of chastity and the protection of the legitimate bloodline, but the unrestrained marketing of products and memes. Whiskey and friends, however, are also complicit. By attaching blame to women for not adhering to *their* ideal of femininity they only add to the pop culture’s demands. The predatory manboy simply cannot deal with a mature woman.
That “fat chick” would be delighted to be with the “nice guy” if he would only turn aside from airbrushed “perfection” and open his eyes to beauty right in front of him.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:15 pm 72. fred:

I have always been opposed to the prevailing culture’s reduction of young women to sex objects. I’m not exactly a strict traditionalist across the spectrum of issues, but I’m definitely not at all even close to adhering to the post-modernist philosophy of ethics (no objective truths, et al.) I’ve always stood for the right of women to be equals under the law. Never deviated from it.

I take the view that young white women flocking to the banner of Obama flies in the face of their true long term interests, because a man who will appease Islamic regimes and accord totalitarian, Muslim thugs legitimacy is not someone who has women’s true interests at heart.

Some women do see this and act accordingly. Generally, they are older, more experienced, and more intellectually mature. They should be the examples to follow, ladies.

Oh, and I hold men to the same standards of sexual conduct as I do men. Catholic Christian ethics, practiced humanely and with some flexibility at the margins, apply to men as well as women. The nihilistic hedonism of Europe is nothing to emulate and no model to look up to. It weakens the character of the people and it also enervates the will to resist the coming Islamic totalitarianism.

I dare anyone to find something odious about what I’ve written here. You will lose the argument, and in embarrassing fashion.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:37 pm 73. fred:

Correction to the first sentence to my next to last paragraph: I meant to write “Oh, and I hold men to teh same standards of sexual conduct as I do women.” I should compose my replies on OpenOffice.org Writer first and then cut and paste here…

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:40 pm 74. Konyok:

fred,

I’m still scratching my head wondering why McCain hasn’t taken Sarkozy’s lead by emphasizing women’s rights in his campaign.

I am encouraged that the president of the LA branch of NOW has endorsed Sarah Palin. Not just for the bit of a boost to our side, but, because it might be a sign of a small return to sanity.

Oct 5, 2008 - 7:53 pm 75. fred:

Konyok,

John McCain has run a bad campaign. He has not been aggressive enough and seems like a stunned fighter. The only fighter on that team now is Sarah Palin. If John does not come out Tuesday night and KO Obama, it’s probably over. He has to show some fire in the belly.

My defeatism stems from the fact that I live in a very blue state (New Hampshire)where Sen. John Sununu is going to lose his seat to an airhead party hack named Jeanne Shaheen. And my Congresswoman, Carol Shea Porter, is also a moonbat airhead who looks to be keeping the seat she won in ‘06. So, I am just not in the optimistic frame of mind. The DNC has been spending cash here by the bucketload.

New Hampshire used to be a very Republican state, but has been gradually, inexorably shifting ever Leftward. The Democrats here are not moderates. They are left-of-center and the independents are too.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:13 pm 76. Konyok:

fred,

Is Shaheen the governor?

I live in the blue heart of Denver, still energized by the recent Obamafest. It is effectively a one party town, but I see a cavalcade of scandals coming down before too long. Unfortunately, the local Republican party is traumatized severely and seeking solace in a weird perfectionism. (Our county convention passed a plank calling for a return to the gold standard, for pete’s sake!)Almost all of my friends and neighbors support Obama.

So, I’ve been stumping for Nader.

I will be working as an election judge on Nov. 4 and will witness the processing and counting of paper ballots as an official Republican party observer. (It promises to be a very long day, indeed. If the election is close, Denver may very well be an epicenter of recount litigation.)

Among my projects is an effort to pressure my alma mater to remove books written or edited by William Ayers from the required reading lists of courses in the education department. There are six of them used now, including the inadvertently hilarious “Teaching Science for Social Justice.” I am circulating a petition among alumni and have 83 signatures so far.

I am seriously considering running for the board of directors of the local transit agency in 2010.

If Obama wins I intend to become very political.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:35 pm 77. Konyok:

fred,

I understand that you also used to be a leftist.

I was a dues paying member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (Trotskyite fourth international) from 1979 to 1990. There were a number of growing pebbles in my shoe, but essentially my apostasy grew from the equality vs freedom dilemma. I decided that American freedom was both a) the only successful revolution in history, and, b) the unique experiment that had not been tried anywhere else.

I have faith in our cause and in our people. Americans always muddle through.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:41 pm 78. fred:

Konyok,

Shaheen used to be governor four years ago. The current governor, John Lynch, is a Democrat and is actually a very good governor and a decent guy. I’m going to be voting for him (and I’m a registered Republican, been one since 2002). Shaheen has no imagination whatsoever. Average brains. She’s an NEA woman who managed to put this state in the NEA’s pocket.

If I had any connection whatsoever to my alma mater (the University of New Hampshire) I would lobby against William Ayers’ educational books and papers.

I would like to do some work for the Republican party in this state, but my job is quite demanding in terms of hours and sometimes in terms of travel (I’m a stock analyst for a small firm in Portsmouth, NH). Not sure how I could help them. I definitely would never run for political office of any kind. I’m just not a politician and don’t want to be. But I suppose I would do things to help out behind the scenes. My big thing is education reform, because that’s where the epicenter of the rot has to be challenged.

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:46 pm 79. Konyok:

fred,

Then get thee to school board meetings. Become the resident conservative crank. Start an initiative in your neck of the woods to excise Ayers’ works from our schools of education.

I myself don’t relish the prospect of campaigning, I am also shy in person. But, our transit agency has been horribly mismanaged by the *experts.* We are constructing an ambitious light rail system that has run into massive cost overruns. (Denver’s geography is the least suitable for a fixed rail system – a big, flat, sprawling square grid without any obstacles to naturally channel traffic.) The core bus service is in a tail spin and yet the agency wants to cut service, increase fares and the sales tax. I don’t have a car and ride the bus to work everyday. So, I would be an exotic candidate in that I actually use the system. (Another case of the elite making crappy decisions for the hoi polloi.)

Oct 5, 2008 - 8:56 pm 80. fred:

Konyok,

I did not belong to any socialist party. I was just an academic fellow-traveling intellectual through my undergraduate years, through my seminary years in the Jesuits (all three of them), and for a brief period after I left the Society of Jesus. The period roughly after I got out of the Army (1977-1987)until I just started at Boston College’s MBA program.

I wanted to be a philosopher-theologian and I had targeted for my work the problems surrounding the greatest obstacle to realizing the socialist utopia: human nature. When I was in college I took the critiques Michael Novak leveled at Liberation Theology and Marxism quite seriously. I used to have endless discussions with my professors and with other students, even grad students, about the utopian telos of socialist thought, and how could human nature change in such a way as to allow socialism to be possible. Is it compatible with human nature and human freedom? Mind you, I was more or less critically on the side of some variants of Liberation Theology (actually, I still admire the works of Juan Luis Segundo, S.J., especially “Faith and Ideologies”)that do contain systematic rigor. My project, as I saw it, down the road after all my training, ordination, and later doctoral studies, was to see if there was a way around the dilemma. I left the Society of Jesus over, believe it or not, some issues related to how we did not see eye to eye on the vow of obedience (most find chastity the stumbling block).

It was not until after I had left the Jesuits that I began to plunge into reading medical and scientific articles and books, about psychology, genetics, and neuroscience. Eventually, I came to the insight that evil itself has an organic basis and that has cosmological ramifications. That didn’t rattle my faith at all and still does not. There is the dark side; there will always be evil people who mess up the socialist experiments. I just came to see that socialism fails, always has failed, and ever will fail. It is incompatible with who we are, warts and all.

Capitalism works. It isn’t perfect. That’s why we have things like moral imperatives for private organizations to do charitable work. And it’s o.k. to have some modicum of a social safety net, but not one that requires onerous taxation that kills capital flow, business formation, and initiative. In other words, It is MY responsibility as a human being and as a Christian to give what I can to help those in need. Often, government is not very efficient or effective with that.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:01 pm 81. Konyok:

fred,

I covered the same ground from another direction. It was speculation about the evolutionary roots of human behaviour (Lorenz, Ardrey, Morris, et al.) that led me to lose my faith, as it were. Subsequent studies in fractal mathematics lead me to even greater skepticism about “planned societies.” Sprinkle in a dash of Taoism.

I believe that the genius of conservatism is that it honors the evolved wisdom of the people, ie. tradition, in an organic and holistic way. I think it was Burke that referred to tradition as the vote of generations past. I defer to the people.

This contrasts sharply with the progressive project that seeks improvement of the people through the expertise of the elite.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:46 pm 82. fred:

Konyok,

I liked your comments on the other thread. I just got my hackles up over how Cannoneer treated me. I am in total admiration for the patient and intelligent way that Wretchard dealt with my rebellious musings. He made sense. About Cannoneer, I don’t like the arrogant way that military officers can look down on us civilians. And I am an enlisted Army veteran and actually admire the military, up to a point. They have to understand that there is more to all of this than just the orders come down from imperium. And actually, since I’m a history buff, I am an admirer of the Roman legions and the work they did (not the bad stuff). It’s just that when presidents, emperors, and generals lose sight of the fact that they serve us and we all have a contract with each other called the Constitution, those political events and trends which trash parts of that contract are not looked upon as fortuitous.

Oct 5, 2008 - 9:54 pm 83. Konyok:

fred,

The glorious thing about our constitution is its flexibility. It’s been through a lot, but still ties us together.

Myself, I come from a long line of draft dodgers (Volga German). I don’t place a whole lot of stock in formal protocol …

It’s been my experience that Cannoneer is a good guy. He gives great intelligence. I do believe that he was trying to protect both you and the forum, as was I.

Do try to understand. It really isn’t anything personal.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:04 pm 84. NahnCee:

“That “fat chick” would be delighted to be with the “nice guy” if he would only turn aside from airbrushed “perfection” and open his eyes to beauty right in front of him.”

What s/he said.

This shall be my last comment ever on the subject of “what women want”. It’s just too stupid.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:13 pm 85. fred:

Konyok,

Then my apologies to everyone on the forum, including Cannoneer. Actually, that momentary lapse of reason and temperance is not at all typical of me. I really will be more careful in the future. And to Cannoneer I do publicly offer my apologies. Maybe he’s right; I did need to be hit upside the head on that one. But, again, I think Wretchard seemed to have the touch. My poor wife (she actually shares my political sympathies) has had to deal with my funk over how the elections are going.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:17 pm 86. Bob Smith:

Are fat women really worse off, relatively speaking, than short men? I doubt it.

As for women and alphas, it should be no surprise that stealing money from betas via the tax system and mating with the alphas is ideal for any woman who views men that way.

Oct 5, 2008 - 10:47 pm 87. Leo Linbeck III:

Konyok,

Are you familiar with Randal O’Toole? If you’re interested in rational public transit, you should check him out. He’s at Cato. Here is his web bio:

http://www.cato.org/people/randal-otoole

His latest book, Best Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future is fantastic and an easy read.

L3

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:39 pm 88. Pascal:

Fred,

You, more than most, may benefit from this cheery little report over at Ace’s.

Oct 5, 2008 - 11:55 pm 89. MaggieTheCat:

If the worst happens and Obama, et al are elected, don’t we still have the Constitution and the right to bear arms? Even with a majority in all three branches of our government and a veto proof congress, I simply can’t visualize Christians being marched off to Christian Siberian-type camps. I still own a 12 gauge Remington from my salad days, and even though I don’t hit the target quite as often these days, in close combat it’s hard to miss. I won’t go easily. I just won’t go. All of this depressing speculation. I’m placing my faith in good old fashioned fly-over country racism coming to the fore in the privacy of the voting booth.

MTC

Oct 6, 2008 - 12:06 am 90. sgi:

obamama

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_obama.html

Oct 6, 2008 - 12:24 am 91. lael:

One (or maybe 2, or 3) racist moby(s) up above. Pathetic– have they no sense of integrity at all? (“Moooslim,” for example, tends to be a good indicator.)

And I agree with Nahncee– I wish some of you guys would lay off the facile psychoanalyzing of women as a gender, in order to explain their being pro-Obama. (I say this as a single girl, who will very enthusiastically vote McCain/Palin.) And even if there was a plausible gender-based explanation, that’s so not it: Obama adulation, the Obama messianic idol-image, is so *not* about the “bad boy.” Quite the opposite, he’s more like the sensitive, caring, all-perfect boyfriend, healing & redeeming all your wounds, all the sins of men (exes). McCain’s the supposedly “aggressive” one, not him. That’s why he’s so careful to delegate nasty attacks, Axelrod tactics, to surrogates, all the while maintaining a ridiculously pristine image of high-mindedness. He’s shocked, shocked! that the McCain campaign would descend to smears and negative attacks (especially by that racist, fascist, brain-dead fluffy bunny)…

Actually, I’d say the attraction of the bad boy radical fantasy thing is more at work among *men*– e.g. the Kos-ites, the trolls, the astoturfers, the ones spreading misinformation, the ones using strong-arm tactics to silence or inhibit speech, the ones possibly engineering voter fraud e.g. in Ohio– i.e. the soldiers of Obama who relish doing the ‘dirty work’ (even if it’s something as pathetic as mobydom), so their leader needn’t be sullied– I’m sure have the fantasy of being rebels with a cause, radicals with a mission, doing ‘bad’ things which are completely justified because they serve Good in a battle against Evil, or the Man, or whatever. All the more ironic when the Man– or the most entrenched, conventional, fuddy-duddy authorities in our society, the ones most in control of the dissemination of information– e.g. the institutions of the mainstream media, academia, corrupt corporate CEOs ala Freddie & Fannie, the Hollywood establishment, Madison Avenue ad agencies, etc.– are in the tank for Obama. The fantasy of the brave, radical, bad boy for Obama is as ridiculous as a “radical” for, I don’t know, the Nike symbol, or MTV, or Oprah. (On the other hand, the fantasy is real, insofar as– like others who fall for the romance of radicalism, the lure of the Che t-shirt, the Marxist slogan, the anti-American banner–or the Michael Moore documentary–they can do real, albeit not fatal, damage to us, in acting out their fantasy.)

Finally, I really don’t trust the polls as indicator. Haven’t we learned anything from past elections? When the Republican wins it’s always a huge, unexpected shock (which then must be explained as a stolen election); and this year more than ever, the media will do everything it can to skew anything it can to help Obama (cf. Soledad O’Brien)– they’re just going with the script. (I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people doing the polling are, as it were, ‘Obama youth’. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people avoiding pollsters or keeping their opinions to themselves will end up going for McCain– not because they’re racist, but because they don’t want to through the hassle of being accused of racism.)

So I find a lot of the defeatism, here and elsewhere, misplaced. Besides, enough of the defeatist voices are mobys and astroturfers, there’s no need to help them. There’s no question, McCain/Palin *are* the underdogs– in what should be historically a Democrat’s year, with an unpopular Republican incumbent, economic turmoil, running against an unremittingly hostile media, unprecedented in its bias & total abandonment of journalistic ethics. And a few weeks ago, before Palin came along, no one (including me) felt McCain had any real chance of winning; an Obama presidency was a foregone conclusion. That the race is so close, the possiblity of winning so real, against all the odds, all-out war by the Obama&Axelrod-colluding media… seriously, I’m excited. I love kick-ass Sarah (she’s actually *talking back* to the media, holding her ground, it’s awesome), and I wouldn’t underestimate McCain. Even if they lose the election (and I am preparing myself for that likelihood– unlike the BDS sufferers, I’m not deluding myself, don’t foresee needing therapy for election depression), they’ve started to put up a hell of a fight, and Sarah is a wonderful augur of the future of the Republican party. And the *joy* if our 2 underdogs win, against all those odds, against the tidal-wave of smugness, wall-to-wall media propaganda, the lowest of weapons (the completely cynical accusations of racism)… I still have a lot of hope, and will be voting with a song in my heart (and I say that as someone who lives in the Bay Area, where my vote is as futile a gesture as there can be).

Oct 6, 2008 - 2:34 am 92. davod:

They can hit Obama on his Ayers connection by going back to the Ananberg Chicago Education project.

$160 million spent for education.
No change in education in Chicago.

The money went to organizations like ACORN to organize.

$160 million wasted, imagine how he could waste the federal budget.

Oct 6, 2008 - 5:10 am 93. fred:

lael,

Your post was thoughtful and provocative. But, in defense of myself and the extent of my comments about the female vote all I ever did was to cite the demographics of the approval ratings for Obama (and I went to great pains to also qualify my remarks with the citation that young men favor Obama too, just not in as overwhelming a statistic). The other thing I did mention on other threads was the effect that certain influences now dominant in our educational system and institutions seem to have on females. And that’s it. I did not “psychologize” women.

The female voter has got to arrive, at some point in critical mass, at the grasp of the reality that appeasing Islamic jihadists or pretenting that Islamic jihad does not exist is not in their best interests. Obama is not a healer. He’s something else, but that something else is not something he’s going to fess up to.

A very good cipher for the real Barack Obama is Harvard professor Samantha Power, who was compelled to resign from his campaign and who is the one person, it is said, who is in DAILY communication with Obama. Look her up. She is well known as a vile Jew hater. She wants the U.S. military to interpose itself on behalf of the Palestinians AGAINST our ally, Israel. It’s a very insane notion, but this is the swill bucket that Obama feeds from.

Samantha Power is a revolting creature who should not be on any academic faculty, especially one with as many Jews on the faculty as Harvard.

Oct 6, 2008 - 7:08 am 94. Mad:

There was a comment about Constitutional scholars and their “non-Constitutional” bent earlier. One of the authors of one widely used Constitutional Law text used at law schools was admitted to Harvard Law School by the recommendation of Lawrence Tribe. The Percy Sutton interview in which he talks of Khalid al Mansour approaching him to talk to Harvard Law School to reccommend Obama is very typical of how some people are admitted to this institution. The Harvard Law degree holds a lot of sway, particularly in academics and the publication of texts, so as long as instructors such a Lawrence Tribe were able to control some of the admission policy to enroll like-minded acolytes the attitude toward the Constitution changes over forty years in a very dramatic way.

Oct 6, 2008 - 7:53 am 95. slade:

Even with a majority in all three branches of our government and a veto proof congress, I simply can’t visualize Christians being marched off to Christian Siberian-type camps. – Maggie The Cat

Except for the quality issue that lingers that ripe Limberger cheese. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again. I am not a critical person by nature – mild-mannered outside of the phone booth, but something funny happened on the way to the quorum. 2005 was the turning point – the F&F accounting scandals were exposed and immediately disguised. Quality left the building, Blue Suede Shoes Dancin’ like the Devil in Disguise in some Happy Days abyss.

In that world, a veto-proof Congress is the last line of defense.

Or to step back from the rhetorical cliff, “really important.”

Oct 6, 2008 - 8:04 am 96. Orphaned Son of Liberty:

I don’t understand the vitriolic responses by (mostly) women to what fred and whiskey have posted. The observation that the majority of women, further of young, single, white, etc women are Obama supporters cannot be challenged. What is left is to determine why this is so. Nahncee, e.g. and lael object and of course provide shinging counterexamples to the general statement about women supporting Obama. So why, ladies, do you think the observable fact that a significant majority of women support Obama is true? What common thread ties women in such a statistically significant way to vote for such a man? Since you object so strongly to others’ attributions of motive, you must surely have a replacement?

Oct 6, 2008 - 8:31 am 97. davod:

women and Obama. Just another pretty boy?

Oct 6, 2008 - 9:16 am 98. Hutzul:

“Maverick! Engage! Do you read me? Engage!”…Goddamit they shouldn’t have sent him!”………………….eternity……….”This is Maverick, I’m going supersonic, I will be there in 2 minutes!” It might be that simple.

Oct 6, 2008 - 9:38 am 99. slade:

You know, for a “programmer”, he has a way with words.

As a Biologist, well, I have a way with frogs.

Let me try to put an exclamation point behind programmer’s earlier paragraph somewhere upthread or beyond.

If people insist on delineating a gender gap, you’re looking in the wrong direction. The “appeal of Obama can’t hold a candle to the repugnance directed at the current crop of Republicans in Congress. They failed – not once, not twice, but left a trail of insouciant breadcrumbs that even a blind (wo)man could follow.

That’s glib and flip but I can only hold so much rage at one time. To paraphrase (Rufus @ Elelphant Bar), we (esp. the 50-60 demographic I would add) are well and truly f^cked.

Get used to it and get over it.

Oct 6, 2008 - 9:43 am 100. slade:

And just to head off the “they (Republicans) tried and tried so hard but they (Democrats) wouldn’t listen” – they didn’t try hard enough.

Either Party.

Oct 6, 2008 - 9:53 am 101. NahnCee:

Clinton was the first Boomer President. The thought occurs to wonder if, demographically, Gen’s X, Y and Z are all ganging up together to boot the Baby Boomers completely out of the picture because they’ve just had it with hearing about them and their bulge in the python.

Oct 6, 2008 - 10:46 am 102. Pascal:

Explain that NahnCee. Obama is a late boomer, and McCain is pre-boomer.

Oct 6, 2008 - 11:25 am 103. Tony:

I just saw McCain on TV – he has engaged, missiles away.

Oct 6, 2008 - 1:00 pm 104. fred:

NahnCee, et al,

Please, let me – although I am going to describe this in generalities from anecdotal experience – dispel a myth about the Boomers. Some describe this generation in terms of two cohorts: the Older Boomers and the Younger Boomers (yours truly being one of the younger ones). The Older Boomers came of age in the Sixties. The Younger Boomers came of age in the Seventies. Let’s set the record straight about the Older Boomers. Among them are very many men and women who served in the Republic of Vietnam and elsewhere. They went and did their duty. There were very many also who supported them, but overall, on balance, the majority in that generation tended Leftwards. Maybe that is still the case. Perhaps it breaks down about 60% of that cohort is Soft Liberal/Hard Left. The Younger Boomers saw all of this happening and also was caught up in the late stages of that vortex in American society, but during the Seventies gradually gravitated over towards Reagan against Carter in 1980. That was most of my classmates at UNH my sophomore year in college. I did not leave the Left until 1987, but that was a journey that, strangely, took me down some interesting paths intellectually and I probably benefited from it in ways I could never predict. Probably 60% to maybe 70% of the Younger Boomers are more conservative, ranging from center to slightly left of center to right of center. So, on balance these two cohorts more or less balance each other out.

My experience with the GenXers is sort of mixed, but overall I think that generation, small as it is, cuts more in a conservative direction, once they grew up and got more life experience.

Now, it is the generation after the GenXers that is very strongly left of center. Most are still very young and they are the ones who got full bore cultural Marxism in school and later on in the universities. I get very angry at the people in my generation who got tenure and then proceeded to participate in the ruination of the education of these kids. It breaks my heart, and I am now thinking about getting involved in my local school board for that very reason. I have had enough of this shit, and want to do my part to put cultural Marxism in abeyance.

Oct 6, 2008 - 1:37 pm 105. cedarford:

Fred – She is well known as a vile Jew hater. She wants the U.S. military to interpose itself on behalf of the Palestinians AGAINST our ally, Israel. It’s a very insane notion, but this is the swill bucket that Obama feeds from.

Samantha Power is a revolting creature who should not be on any academic faculty, especially one with as many Jews on the faculty as Harvard.

Poor dumb Fred doesn’t understand that if any group is held in fouler aroma than Neocons at Harvard, it is dumb Christian Zionists like Fred. News to Fred – most people do not believe it is their holy mission as Christians or Westerners to say “how high” when Zionists ask them to jump and place Israel’s interests above their own nations. Or that that fact makes them “vile Jew haters”.

Samantha Power reflects a view that the majority of the West believes on human rights, law, and international conflict. Including, I dare say, a preponderance of Jews on Harvard’s faculty. Whereas, toady boy Fred would be an object of intellectual disgust there, from the Left. As well as those members of the Right in academia who believe the US foreign policy role involves a bit more, for the sake of America’s vital interests – than “never 2nd guessing” what the Likudniks demand of us.

Like it or not, the Zionists hosed the Palestinians pretty good, and only American politicians, bribed by Jewish money and cowed by Jewish clout in media and other institutions – block efforts to recompense Palestinians for Zionist land thefts, Geneva violations, and human rights violations. And, as Power has said, the Palestinians are hardly blameless parties, with their own long list of wrongdoing…which she and other scholars agree makes a fair settlement very problematic..

Oct 6, 2008 - 2:06 pm 106. fred:

C-fudd never, ever goes off script with his tired old memes. He just cannot break the addictive high of Jew-hatred. It is hard-wired into his neural networks, like the brain of a cocaine addict or a crack addict.

My guess is that he is allowed here because Wretchard sees some value in allowing the Devil his due. There is instructive value in letting him showcase his vile hatred. If it is repulsive, it might serve as a warning to others of what can happen when you open the door a crack.

Oct 6, 2008 - 2:15 pm 107. fred:

“Samantha Power reflects a view that the majority of the West believes on human rights”

“believes on” is a poor grammatical construction. Is English C-fudd’s second language? If so, has he all along been an Arab living in American society, learning our language, politics, culture, and history?

Samantha Power is an embarrassment to the academic and diplomatic community in this country. She should go back to the Irish bog she crawled out of.

Oct 6, 2008 - 2:34 pm 108. NahnCee:

What Fred said. McCain is not GenXYZ or Boomer which is why a lot of people on the left see him as being irrelevant. My feeling is a majority of Gen XYZ are progressive left, although I’ll cede to Fred about Gen X, maybe. Personally, I do not see B. Hussein as being a Boomer. Consistently, he is described as “young” and for “change” — a metrosexual. (Are Boomers ever described as being metrosexual?)

Now if I were to define the “change” that he is trying to bring about it would be that of kicking Boomers like Bill and Hillary out, and oh by the way, McCain, too, who is (after all) irrelevant because he is “old”.

Oct 6, 2008 - 2:45 pm 109. home is not here:

So has the Obama campaign developed a new political ploy?

Imply that somebody is an advisor, use them as one, but they’re actually employed by somebody else. Then when it becomes necessary, they can throw them under the bus and claim it never happened!

Robert Malley was the first really obvious one, and they’ve gotten a lot better at it now, but it looks like the same story with Franklin Raines.

Oct 6, 2008 - 7:56 pm 110. tanarg:

The only thing to do if the traitor is elected is to refuse to cooperate, in any way we can. How about a refusal down the line to pay the government a dime? Unrealistic? Well, what’s a better way to resist and get rid of a monster who’s hypnotized his way into the White House?

Oct 7, 2008 - 12:49 am 111. Karen:

I, too, come upon Whiskey’s pronouncements on women and groan to myself, “Oh no, not again!”

While I concede the fact he cites – that women, especially young women, are overwhelmingly for Obama, I just can’t stand the harping on the high-testosterone Alpha male as the never-failing chick-magnet while all the Beta-boys are contemptible. The reason why I hate it so much is because it portrays women as if they’re merely responding to some pre-determined biological imperative. It makes women sound sub-human. Like animals. Answering the call of the wild, or whatever.

The first time I ever saw photographs (probably in some nauseating National Geographic) of African tribal women with their necks grotesquely elongated by the gradual addition of metal rings; or photographs of some other tribe’s women with preposterously and weirdly distended lower lips achieved by the insertion of wooden(?) disks; or the first time I ever heard about the old Chinese practice of hobbling (crippling) women; or the first time I ever heard about female genital mutilation in the Muslim world… well, that’s when I knew that culture trumps all else. Can’t you just admit that the toxic culture women grow up in has everything to do with their bad choices – and not all of them do make bad choices (miracle of miracles).

Whiskey himself admits that men have a “habit” of taking whatever sex they can find. Now we’ve had a generation’s worth of exhortations to women to be more like men – finally! men get to have it their way! – and suddenly the breakdown of society is all women’s fault due to single motherhood.

Nevertheless, it depresses me greatly that so many women are all gung-ho for Obama. But then again, it depresses me greatly that so many of whatever gender are all gung-ho for Obama.

Oct 7, 2008 - 1:06 am 112. Belmont Club » Attack at dawn:

[...] Obama is ready to pay McCain back in his own coin. As I wrote, it’s now Fire at Will. Read | [...]

Oct 7, 2008 - 3:01 am 113. 10-07-08 | Drive Time Happy Hour:

[...] Richard Fernandez: Fire at will…It’s called going pre-emptively negative.  [...]

Oct 7, 2008 - 11:03 am 114. lael:

I just wanted to second Karen. I don’t think my previous post was “virulent” (and in fact I appreciate fred’s response, and take his point). And I’m not saying all speculative psychologizing is to be rejected out of hand, I engage in it myself. I just found the specific explanation proposed here implausible. And yes, I admit that, like Karen, I do sometimes bristle at what seem (to me) overbroad or reductive generalizations about women, as a woman… when I find that their explanatory function in a certain case doesn’t ring true (to me). And in the context of political argument, it’s grating– to find women portrayed as “responding to some pre-determined biological imperative,” i.e. their judgment deprived (for the sake of argument) of full autonomy. (I realize none of us mortals is “fully autonomous,” but as a matter of ethics/politics we should regard each other as such, in principle, insofar as we are interlocutors in political argument.) Just as a matter of political tactics, and tact, it doesn’t seem the best way to persuade women to your side. After all, wasn’t Obama psychologizing when he tried to explain the behavior of those “bitter clingers”?

Yes, there is a real statistical phenomenon to be accounted for. But is the women/men ratio re Obama/McCain that different from what it’s been in other electoral years re Dem/GOP? It’s a genuine question; I don’t know. But if the phenomenon is more general, then it’s unwarranted to conclude it’s something specific about how women respond to Obama, no? (On the other hand, look, I don’t deny there’s a lot of Obama-infatuation going on… but, as Karen says, there’s plenty of Obama infatuation among men, too. Cf. the tingles running up Chris Matthew’s legs…)

Oct 7, 2008 - 1:38 pm 115. Bob Murphy:

@lael
Ponder, if you will, the sub-intellectual basis for some of Sarah Palin’s popularity among “Joe six pack” types.
It goes two ways.
I’m far more concerned with the underlying values that give people proclivities to choose an Obama.
He and his wife seem to reject the tradictional values that formed the foundation for this great nation (notwithstanding its faults).
They make me fear for the future of this country but many if not most Obama supporters do not consider the likely consequences of him getting elected.
Democracy is traditionally based on the notion of the reasonable man. Without reason and a certain amount of probity it can’t survive.

Oct 7, 2008 - 10:51 pm 116. Bob Murphy:

And that assumes you have a system that does not reward hucksters, thieves, murderers and that sort of thing at the expense of that reasonable man, of course.

Oct 8, 2008 - 1:54 am 117. lael:

Bob: Ha, yes, I also thought of the male response to Sarah Palin as parallel to the female response to Obama. And the analogy holds: on the one hand, no doubt there is some truth to a “reductive” reading of that response (a component of her resonance as a candidate among men has something to do with their biological maleness); but on the other hand reducing her popularity to that or explaining it away in those terms would be distorting and insulting to male voters. (And I’d be in the position of Chris Matthews: as a woman, listening to her speech, I was a little infatuated myself.)

I agree with the rest of what you wrote… The problem is, the attraction of Obama for many voters (i.e. not so much leftist as centrist-moderate) does draw on good, traditional American values (if it didn’t he couldn’t attract enough of the middle to win)– the problem is that this Obama is a mirage, stage-managed by an obsequious media & a shameless campaign (e.g. not above using the race card in the most cynical way, using strong arm tactics to suppress or block free speech by the opposition, etc.). I do worry that we may well have as our next president a man who has found congenial company (& mentorship, ideological affiliation, political collaboration, spiritual sustenance) among the most virulent, radical, hateful, extreme anti-Americans imaginable. I shudder at the thought. (How is it psychologically possible for a human being to be, as he presents himself, completely untainted & intellectually detached– indeed, intellectually/ spiritually opposed– to all that, the milieu of his political & ideological development, including those who are to this day (or at least to the start of his candidacy, e.g. in the case of Wright) his friends & peers? How is that possible unless you’re, like, a sociopath? (It says something that I’d prefer that to be the case… that our likely president be something of a sociopath… to the alternative…)

Oct 8, 2008 - 8:18 am 118. Bob Murphy:

@lael
Nicely put.
I agree.

Oct 8, 2008 - 3:05 pm 119. Expressions:

People only believe the attacks are negative because the mainstream media illuminati paint that picture in people’s minds. If they only cover the liberal side, you will believe it’s all negative. Don’t be bias, be fair.

Oct 25, 2008 - 11:34 am

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