One day later

One day later, after McCain's fatherly speech, Sarah Palin seems even more significant. She is the future. I suppose that's what others see in Obama. Thatcherites like me are projecting their hopes onto her as liberals project onto Obama. Suddenly, if McCain loses, Palin is front-runner for 2012 nominee. In a way we want to hurry up and get there, skipping over the honourable old man, but the chemistry between McCain and Palin may be special enough that this VP has real power. She'd be an operator with a mandate and a hinterland. This piece by the admirable Barbara Amiel, who is going through her own Purgatory as is Thatcher, makes interesting play with the Thatcher/Palin idea. It reminds me of François Mitterand's aperçu about Thatcher: she has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe.

McCain's speech

I gave up after 24 minutes. He's not wrong, just boring, which may be effective in the context. My mind kept drifting to McCain's betrayals of conservatism like the Gang of 14 and shamnesty and Global Warming and offshore drilling (against, now for) and ANWR (still against) and populist slurs on speculation and Big Oil. I trust his sincerity, but not his understanding of the abstractions which underpin good, stickable, co-ordinated policy. That appreciation took Thatcher through fire. Let's face it, President McCain will need perpetually to be corraled by conservatives, but I don't know what leverage they'll have. Maybe McCain's finally internalised that the msm is a pit of snakes rather than a political base, so that he'll get his kicks from sticking it up them instead of sticking it up conservatives.

A star is born

Piper Palin has my heart. She's almost as scrumptious as my youngest. Seeing her lick her hand to wet down Trig's hair made me want to lean into the screen and kiss her.


This whole process is like watching a body that seemed beaten start to fight off a wasting disease. A lot more is being played out here than a Presidential election in America.

Snobs' corner

I've let myself be drawn into battle with British liberals here in a thread about the US election.

Over lawyered

VDH points out that:

every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections — except Gore, who dropped out of law school to run for Congress — has been a lawyer.

Can't resist it: You have a rifle, 2 bullets and face a lawyer and a charging tiger. What do you do? You shoot the lawyer twice to make sure he's dead.

Ping pong is coming home

Most of the show around the London Olympics makes me cringe, especially the pc propaganda for 'diversity', cripples as athletes, ant-like communitarianism, wrinkly heavy metal, effeminate male performers, visual cliche's of London buses and bobbies and so on. So the Mayor of London to the rescue in Beijing last night, effortlessly upstaging the PM, David Beckham and Seb Coe:

The audacity of verbosity

So where did Obama do his on-the-job training? Berlin? Maui?

I've been wrong in all my 2008 election predictions so far (Romney, Bayh, Kaine, Hillaryputsch), tho I may yet be right that McCain will sweep all 57 states. So here's my instant assessment of Biden as Obama's running mate, based as usual on 5 minutes research:

Now I understand what 'vetting' means. It means picking an admitted plagiarist (both at law school and running for the Presidency), an admitted multi-point liar (running for the Presidency), a man who has no resume' other than in the US Senate where he's been pontificating since 1973...that's his adult life, a US Senator for 35 years...a man with no charisma, no executive experience, no cross-party appeal, no appeal to Clintonistas, he's not a woman, he's a faux-Catholic with a 100% NARAL rating, a noted gasbag and gaffebag who says Obama isn't ready to be commander-in-chief. 'Vetting', eh?

Obviously picking Biden says that Obama feels his own main deficit is zip credibility in foreign relations, but no-one in his party has any whiff of credibility in foreign relations except Hillary, so he should have gone for someone who could charm the Hillary wolves ladies a little...any of Sebelius, Bayh or Kaine...because the pack's going to howl for McCain now.

Update: I just replaced a different video clip with the one above from Team McCain. There's blood in the water now. How do you feel if you're a Democrat waking up to this news and that video? You see Obama's eyes slowly close like a man hearing a death sentence, you realize that Obama has thought long and hard and yet chose Biden, knowing this clip is there so he must be desperate, you realize that Team McCain are pretty competent at sliding the blade between Obama's ribs, the blade he's just given them, and you're waiting for the Obama comeback, but it isn't there, nothing's there, only "a speech that he gave in 2002", and the Convention's convening and the Clintons hate Obama and it shows. A politician doesn't die from knife wounds, but from the gangrene of ridicule. Obama's hair will be white come November. Maybe there will be a Hillaryputsch after all.

Update 2: It's funny how Obama made the VP announcement in European time, giving me the drop on my merely American colleagues. This is fun. Every conservative comment is happy, every liberal comment is wary or rebellious. I didn't realize Biden has hairplugs. It's over, folks. All McCain has to do is not pick Lieberman, Ridge or Michael Moore or Hillary Clinton for veep...even then.

You read it here

Been chatting with a RINO friend (just teasing, Chris) who's been chatting with a liberal friend. The image of Obama opposite Putin disqualifies Obama plain and simple in their eyes, so I confidently forecast that McCain will sweep all 57 states.

The least of my brothers

Barack Hussein Obama:

I think America's greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we still don't abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.

George Hussein Obama:

"When you have a brother who wants to be the number one most important person in the world, it obviously gives you a lot of inspiration," Mr Obama, 26, said at his corrugated tin shack in a Nairobi slum.

Talking heads..

..and exploding heads:

Print the t-shirts

1.

Obama's the One

        

c/f

2.

Obama - Raise taxes, kill babies.
McCain - Kill taxes, raise babies.
from comments here

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