B

eing a consummate politician is hardly rare, but being one with an electrifying personality is, so with credit to his presence, Barack Hussein Obama will assume the most powerful mantle in the known universe from George W. Bush today – and I suppose I wish him well. At least a little.

I certainly wishes he survives his presidency.  Around the world, people who know even less about Obama than we do are thrilled to see what America has accomplished in electing someone black, young, exciting … and not Bush.  There is an opportunity for Obama to do well with that, to increase America’s credibility.  Lord knows, we have more than enough power; it’s credibility we’ve been running short of lately, in large part because the left and the media have made it so hard for Bush.

Obama will be excused from that scrutiny, so when he wants to follow something like Bush policy overseas, he will be able to get away with it, and in that I wish him well.

That’s about it.  On everything else, Obama’s doing well is a nightmare.

If he does well with his economic  policy, he will expand the federal government, raise taxes and impose new entitlements that will forestall recovery, cripple our motivation and immerse us nostrils-deep in debt.

If he does well politically, the GOP will flounder and will lose again in the 2010 mid-terms and in the 2012 presidentials will get no closer to the White House and see more slippage in Congress.

If he does well with his domestic policy, generations of Americans to follow will hold him and his vision of big government high, and a 58 year-old like me may not see a return to sane fiscal policy and small (even smallish) government in my lifetime.

If he does well on military policy, the forces of jihad will have time to heal their wounds and rebuild their networks, we will wound and not continue to build our military and intelligence resources, and the war against suicidal fanatical Islam will last longer than it needs to.

If he does well internationally, the U.N. will continue to build up repressive regimes, will remain powerless in the face of genocides it can’t quite bring itself to call genocides, and will squander far too much money and deliver far too little aid.

If he does well personally, he will be influential for decades to come and ultimately, we will be carving another face into Mt. Rushmore, which means, as I said above, our country will take a long, long time to come back from the social democratic brink, if it can, if it does.

So, God bless America for being an open democracy where Barack Hussein Obama can become president without a blood coup, and God bless Barack Hussein Obama and grant him a long life, a natural death, and most importantly, wisdom.

Because if he doesn’t get some wisdom sometime soon, I just can’t wish him well.

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I

n an otherwise useless, GOP-slapping, Dem-loving bit of blathering reporting on the Blagojevich insanity, Salon’s Joan Walsh passed along this gem in her coverage of yesterday’s too-short press conference:

Obama looked like the happiest man in history ever to be called a “m—–f—–.”

But a more significant line might be this one from Capt. Ed, about the clip below, made even more significant now that Rahm Emanuel isn’t showing up for work because of “death threats.”

Emanuel has been acting like someone advised him to keep quiet to keep from making incriminating public statements, and this may be the reason why.

Here’s the clip – all about Emanuel’s many conversations with Blagojevich about filling Obama’s’ Senate seat.  Sure, Emanuel would be the point man on such a deal … but just as sure, he wasn’t forthcoming about it, and he’s just another Chicago pol who’s been swimming in the Chicago political cesspool throughout his career, and he’s next to the prez-elect.

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W

hat sort of people go into the rubber biz?

There was a terrific essay in Esquire about a couple decades back called, as I recall, 20 Years on the Rubber Route, about a scummy, low-life of a guy whose job it was to refill the rubber machines – they weren’t condom machines yet back then – in bars and truck stops around the country. His was a life of stinking restrooms and dirty dives and syphilis and wombs that just couldn’t get impregnated.

Welcome to the world of people who go into the rubber biz. It hasn’t changed a bit it seems, even with the new, phony aura of decency that comes with their vaunted new task of saving bathhouse gays and guy-a-minute porn stars from AIDS:

LifeStyles Condoms wants Miley Cyrus to be its spokesgirl.

The company says it has offered the 15-year-old Disney star — who has said she won’t have sex until she’s married — $1 million to represent the brand.

“Pop culture proves that teens are more ready than ever to discuss the subject of sex,” says the company’s VP of marketing, Carol Carrozza. “We believe that Miley is both influential and relatable to this afflicted set — and is the obvious choice to get the message of safe sex out to teens across America.” (Fox News)

What kind of filthy mind thinks of offering a condom gig to a 15-year-old pop star whose appeal is with an even younger demographic? The obvious answer is a mind that thinks it’s not enough that they profit from high schoolers on up, that it’s time to expose eight and ten year olds to the joy of a little nookie in the back room.

And as one would expect. LifeStyles’ VP of marketing can’t even get a sentence out right, as her mind’s probably too much on her product and its usefulness to her lifestyle. What the heck does she mean “Miley is both influential and relatable to this afflicted set?” Relatable? Afflicted with what? STDs? Already?!

Oh, and finishing the news: Miley’s people said they never even got an offer, so the whole thing is a disgusting proposition wrapped in a lie, and she would have rejected it in any case.  Good thing; I don’t want to ever have to rename this series “Our Crumbled Civilization.”

Hat-tip:  Jim

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“I

‘m Paris Hilton” says the well-recognized celebrity, chihuahua in tow, “and I approve this message because I think it’s totally hot.”

So ends the celeb’s response to the ad from the campaign of the “old, wrinkled white guy,” which I’m having trouble embedding but you can see here. It’s not particularly clever, but it says an awful lot about how much campaigning has changed with 2.3 million hits on the ad since it was posted 16 hours ago. (The McCain ad has “just” 1.6 million hits on the spot I found it although it’s posted all over the Web.)

The ad has stopped Obama’s momentum like a brick wall, putting to waste the Herculean effort of BO’s globetrotting photo op, all at minimal cost to the McCain campaign. The Hilton spoof is tougher on McCain than Obama, calling him “the oldest celebrity in the world … like super-old,” so we have to ask if it will have a negative impact on his campaign.

Probably not. Besides, there’s a much more essential question that’s unanswered in all this: Where’s Britney?

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B

y now you’ve heard about, read about and no doubt seen this McCain ad:

What you may have missed in the whole “Obama as a tacky celebrity” to-and-fro is this critique of the ad from that fount of political commentary, E! Online:

Oh, John McCain.

First, you side with Heidi Montag in The Hills catfight, and now this? In your new campaign ad, you suggest Barack Obama is a celebrity more popular than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

That’s hardly fair. Those two are too busy these days with other concerns to worry about being at the top of the boldfaced heap.

If you want to get tough on Obama, why not compare him with some really hot celebs. Take Christian Bale—have you seen the box-office figures for The Dark Knight? Huge! Or Miley Cyrus? She’s massive. And for that matter: Why not compare Obama to enduring stars like Will Smith, Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks?

You could even pit him against some of your supporters: Jon Voight, Erik Estrada or Spencer Pratt? That’d be interesting.

But Paris? Come on, there’s gotta be a better comparison. You’d almost think you were trying to belittle him or something.

Exactly.

You won’t find political commentary that probing at Politico, Bub. And BTW, to wrap up celeb reaction to this ad – which is absolutely great for feeding its viral reach – there’s this:

Hilton has blasted the MCCain camp for using her image without asking for permission.
A spokesperson for the star says, “Miss Hilton was not asked, nor did she give permission for the use of her likeness in the ad and has no further comment.”

Her proud parents donated $4,600 to McCain. No word on how much they gave to BO.

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Saul Alinsky’s Playbook

What do you make of a quote like this, from Mike Huckabee?

“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives … were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”

As a Christian social conservative, I think it’s just not true, since there are a lot of conservative Christians in the GOP in positions of authority. President Bush, for example. At NRO, Mark Levin feels the same way, and has found the right way to put it:

Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee’s tactics and candidacy so deplorable.

In the primaries, we are not voting for who we want to win our local primary; we are voting for who we think should be our next president. That’s why Huckabee is not even on the margins of my consideration for the Cal primary.

As much as I wish Huckabee was the pastor of my church, were he just a pastor, I wouldn’t have him as the pastor of my church, given the dishonorable way he’s running his campaign. (hat-tip: memeorandum)

France Offers Atoms To Arabs

Give ‘em an inch of nuclear technology, M. Sarkozy, and they just might take a mile.

Nicolas Sarkozy might be a Bush ally of sorts — after all, he’s touring the Middle East at the same time W. is — but he has that cavalier Gallic attitude about selling nuclear technology. If it brings money to France, how bad can it be? Read this from BBC and ponder:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a Gulf tour, during which he is due to sign an nuclear co-operation deal with the United Arab Emirates.

He has arrived in Saudi Arabia and will go on to Qatar and the UAE over the next three days. All three are seeking to develop civilian nuclear programmes.

Mr Sarkozy has said the Arab world should have the same rights to such programmes as other states.

France has already signed nuclear agreements with Algeria and Libya.

Mr Sarkozy said the sale of such technology could foster trust between the West and the Muslim world.

Or a terrifying thermonuclear nightmare of obliterating consequences. Your choice.

But if that’s the way it’s going to be, then any nation threated by the thought of Sunni theocracies having nuclear power — be it bombs or reactors — should also have it. Ethiopia, the Balkan states, Central African states like Kenya and the Congo Republic.

Fine and dandy. Atoms for all. But just this, Nicolas, mon ami, the first time one of ‘em screws with an inspection, the whole program must be withdrawn and their facilities destroyed. No more Irans, no more North Koreas.

All That Glitters

Here’s a long list of celebrity contributions to political campaigns. Yes, folks, it’s true: Movie stars like Obama best. The contribution edge over Dem runner-up Clinton includes such glitterati as Jennifer Aniston, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry, George Clooney, Larry David, Morgan Freeman, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Shields.

Almost completely, black entertainers are lined up behind Obama. Starlets overwhelmingly put race ahead of gender … you don’t really think they’re poring over the issues with the intensity they pore over scripts, do you? Exceptions (not counting those who contribute to multiple campaigns) are: Quincy Jones (Clinton) and … oh, that’s it; Quincy Jones.

GOP donors? Well, that’s pretty easy: Pat Boone (Brownback and Romney), Jerry Bruckheimer (McCain, natch), and Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein, all for Giuliani.

It’s not at all curious that the most curious contributor was SNL major domo Lorne Michaels, who gave $4,600 to Dodd and $2,300 to McCain. I’m trying to figure that one out.

Now Be Nice!

Sacramento, like many cities around the country, is facing fiscal hard times: Budget shortfall, huge and costly infrastructure needs and various local controversies that are stymieing the city’s vision and future.

So here’s what Sacto mayor Heather Fargo said in a State of the Downtown speech:

We each need to change one light bulb to a compact fluorescent because it’s good for the environment. Oh, and be sure to walk more and drink tap water to promote a “green Sacramento.”

If politicians think Greenie platitudes will fix anything, they should ready themselves for legions of voters who are green around the gills with Greenie platitudes. Or, as SacBee columnist Marcos Breton put it:

There is no political risk in promoting the idea of a “Green Sacramento.” It’s like saying we should all be nice to each other.

Ouch. Breton is right on here, but way off course here:

When you have a room full of large-scale developers, as Fargo did, why not use your pulpit to educate them on how “green” building materials can be cost-effective too? Why not show them that they can still make their money and build projects that are better for the environment?

The arrogant little pencil-chewing twit! Who knows more about the economics and benefits of green development than builders? They started the movement in the 1970 energy crisis, putting their existing and planned buldings through rigorous energy audits and investing in more energy technologies that would pay for themselves.

Who do you think has saved more energy in the last couple decades, free market building owners who are seeking lower costs, or power-hungry bureaucrats who are seeking to force their view of reality on the world? Of course, a newspaper columnist, so far removed from reality, would wrongly think the latter.

Curses, Foiled Again!

Fars, the Iranian Propaganda Ministry news service, is not a trustworthy news source to put it mildly, so I’ll give US fencer Ivan Lee the benefit of the doubt, but hardly a pass, on the comments he made while participating in a fencing competition in Iran recently. According to Fars, here’s what Lee said:

“If the Iranian people and government posed a problem (for us), the US fencing team would never take a second trip to Iran,” Ivan Lee, who is currently in Iran to attend the 2008 International Fencing Competitions in Iran’s Persian Gulf island of Kish, told FNA on Sunday.

“Everyone analyzes issues by using his own mind and logic; we know that all the negative propaganda against Iran is unreal and, thus, we attended Iran’s international competitions for a second time,” he said.

Feint is the word, Ivan, feint. The Iranians showed you something that wasn’t real in order to make you miss what was real. Anyone who thinks for a moment that a repressive, totalitarian regime would let any visit get a brush with reality has had one too many épée hits on the cognitive organ. (Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Lee is a saber fencer, but épée is such a cooler word.)

And Now From The Euro-Libs

It’s not enough that some SCOTUS members think it’s just fine to cite European Community law in their American legal decisions. Now Euro-Libs are asking for the right to vote in US elections. From an editorial in the Brussels rag De Standard, courtesy of Brussels Journal:

American presidential elections are not “home affairs.” American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.

Hence, the world should be given the right to vote. Because the current situation is a blatant case of taxation without representation, against which the Americans rebelled in 1776.

Never mind that Brussels would be a Nazi nation were it not for decisions we Americans made as part of our “home affairs” sixty years ago; Europe can do no harm. It does not pollute, it does not have financial woes, it has never seen its currencies falter. Its efforts to impose a multicultural political mindset on the planet, and to spend our way out of the alleged human causes of global warming does not, apparently, also represent taxation without representation.

Did we have a say in any of that foolishness? Not that I recall. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

A Chair By Any Other Name

The must-read read of the day is Armando Iannucci’s column in The Guardian on Barack Obama and American politics. By the time you read this, at the beginning of the third paragraph …

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it’s because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere.

… you’ll be hooked.

Iannucci does a lovely spoof on Obama-speak by suggesting that this is how Obama would rhetoric to death a chair:

‘This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl’s behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America’s huddled arse.’

The problem with Obama and all our politicians is that that’s enough; one must never bother with the harsh facts of what you’re actually going to do about the chair, or be brave enough to say nothing needs to be done by government about the chair; one only has to stir the feeling of “chair” that’s in all of us.

I can share two more lovely lines from the essay without giving away too much of your future enjoyment of it:

American politicians take time out from their busy lives to makes speeches that sound empty; British politicians fill the emptiness of their lives with words that make them sound busy.

And

The chair, by the way, was made in China.

We’re All Gonna Die!

And I’ll be 40,000,057 years old when it happens, according to this report in Science Daily.

Well, actually, that will be when Smith’s Cloud impacts the Milky Way (the pink burst in the image above). Our sun is noted a bit to the right, so I’ll probably have a few more years to spend with the grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grandkids.

Smith’s cloud, which if flush with hydrogen (enough to fire up a million suns), is a bit bigger than a puff in the sky: eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. It’s 8,000 light years away and is rushing at us at 150 miles per second (a tad faster than my German V8).

And that’s something that’s close to us. No wonder SciFi writers have to invent hyperspace and worm holes to get their heroes from here to there.

It’s really too bad we won’t be around when Smith’s Cloud hits, since this is what it’ll look like, according to astronomer Felix Lockman:

When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it’ll look like a celestial New Year’s celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy.

Shoot. It’ll be a real shame to miss that!

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Hugo (No, you go) Chavez has nationalized oil companies, obliterated freedom of the press and imprisoned and tortured opposition leaders. He uses brutal thugs and bribes to the poor keep himself in power.

Che, whose picture Chavez is holding, was a Marxist revolutionary who didn’t just kill during revolutionary battles, but also after them, to support totalitarian regimes, as he did when he ran Cuba’s prisons after Fidel Castro’s rise to power. There he oversaw the slaughter of the former Batista leadership (in violation of the Geneva Conventions).

And in the back seat, behind those dark, dark glasses, is Sean Penn.

“I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country,” said Penn. “I’m just hear to take it in like everyone else.”

Everyone else? There’s your proof (as if you need it) that Penn and the mentally dull glitterati like him live in gilded cages with “IDIOT” emblazoned over the door. No one but the Penns and Glovers of the world goes to Venezuela these days.

I’m sure Chavez showed him a great country … and I’m just as sure that he’s too stupid to know that there’s an ugliness behind the slick facade Chavez showed him.

hat-tip: LGF

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I was in a meeting today from 8:30 to 6; hence the dearth of posts. Story of my life lately — blessed with work; deprived of posting time. A fine dilemma, all in all.

The team at the meeting is quite senior; most of us are in our 50s, one in his early 40s, a couple in their 60s. It takes that kind of expertise to deal with the shenanigans of the California Coastal Commission.

So, imagine my humored reaction when the team lurched to a stop in mid-document review when someone said, “I wonder if Paris is in jail yet.”

I’m the computer savvy guy there, and my laptop is wired to a projector, so I whipped onto Breitbart and popped up the latest story — the hand-cuffs (not fur-lined!) the heiress screaming “MOM!” and “It’s not right!”

All eyes locked on the screen … and then the laughing began.

Not chuckles, mind you; it was loud guffaws and spontaneous, choked reading out loud as the guys and one gal — all of whom have worked hard to reach success in their professions — felt … what? Relief? Vindication? Justification? Satisfaction? Revenge?

The sheer joy of watching the spoiled little girl who has it all suddenly realize that she’s merely a citizen like us coursed through the cerebra of the group and we all were simply flushed with good humor.

Not that it lasted. After all, we work for our money, and the California Coastal Commission wasn’t going to go away no matter how loudly we pout-cried “MOM!” and “It’s not right!”

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Not being a celeb-watcher, I wouldn’t recognize Brittney Spears if she upchucked in front of me — and I certainly wouldn’t recognize her with her new hairdon’t, shown here.

According to the breathless and brainless reports, Ms. Spears buzzed her own hair because she didn’t want people to touch her any more. Her family is said to be “in full intervention mode” and rehab is a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile, the pop movie starlet Lindsey Lohan reportedly has checked out of rehab and is taking things one day at a time. And Paris Hilton is … who knows what? Drinking, drugging, sexing, aping for any camera, anywhere.

My three girls don’t think much of this crew of awful role models; they have other interests and other influences, most quite good, some bad, but none as bad as the drinking, drugging, slutting lot that captures the media’s eye.

I just asked Incredible Daughter #2 , who’s 18, what she thought of them and she said, “Nothing. The media over-hypes them, but they’re disgusting.”

“So they’re not role models to you?”

“Oh yeah, I want to be like Paris, a ho with a lazy eye.”

I could ask for better phrasing, but basically, Phew!

But all over America, in millions of households it’s different, as young girls take on the personna of these partying, puking, pandering pieces of human garbage.

Incredible Wife saw a number of young girls who are influenced by these shameless hussies interviewed on Dr. Phil this week. She reported that they were vacuous, lost and utterly without morals.

They were, in a nutshell, Secular Relativism’s ultimate glory, it’s crowning achievement. They see nothing wrong in their behavior because they have no moral guideposts to give them the combatting senses of guilt and honor.

The media might as well dress up in a crimson body suit with horns and tail attached on this one, because the sensationalization of the news fuels the celebrity sluts, which in turn fuels the cameras, which in turn fuels the imaginations of the young and misguideable.

The other night as I was packing my briefcase and readying for bed, the late night news had stories on a man who threw a barking Chihuahua over a fence, a woman who discovered her Shi-tzu’s ear had been cut off by a groomer, then superglued back on, and a piece on Anna Nichole’s body, baby and hangers-on. Lacking a car chase that evening, that’s what constituted the news for most people today.

Not a story of significance in the bunch.

The only fortress against this onslaught is a tight family with a solid center. The slut brigade (and those boys who are very, very happy because of this turn of events) doesn’t stand a chance against a foundation of love, interest and discipline.

Where are those families? Lost, unfortunately, to Secular Relativism. Divorce, affairs, parental drinking and drugging, money above love, anger because control doesn’t feel good, saying yes because saying no takes effort, as in the case of Lindsey Lohan’s mom:

“As a parent, you tell them what you can tell them, but she’s 20 and I’m not gonna say, ‘Stay home and don’t go out,’ that’s a ridiculous thing to do.”

Really? You’re daughter is 20 and self-distructing and it’s ridiculous to intervene? Why? Because the money might dry up if she’s just run-of-the-mill?

The media is not interested in positive role models, so if America is going to stop this slide before the next generation gets even worse, we have to change the media. Are we mad as hell, and not going to take it any more?

Dunno. Seems like a lot of work … and besides, who’s to say who’s right?

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