Maxine Nightingale, "Right Back Where We Started From"
Abba, "I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do"
Yvonne Elliman, "If I Can't Have You"
KC and the Sunshine Band, "Get Down Tonight"
KC and the Sunshine Band, "Keep It Comin' Love"
The Delfonics, "La La Means I Love You"
Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, "The Love I Lost"
I'm straight. No, really. I'm straight.
(You'll note that "I Will Survive," "YMCA" and "It's Raining Men" did not make the list. I have standards.)
John McCain's worst enemy is John McCain. Both Obama and Clinton are so inadequate and weak that they don't pose much of a threat to McCain.
Obama, if he ends up the Democrat nominee as most people think probable, will be the least distinguished nominee of a major party in my lifetime, and perhaps in American history. He is the emptiest of suits, a mediocrity who ascended through Chicago politics by networking, going to a church shepherded by a raving leftist anti-American and socializing at the salon of aging radical terrorists. He is an effete liberal who views America as a foreign country and longs to transform it into France. An Obama presidency would look much like Jimmy Carter's, with a naive, appeasing President being bitch-slapped into reality by a mean world that wants to destroy America.
Clinton has high "negatives," the touch of death in a profession that lives on votes. Not only that, she has a way of energizing her enemies, who see her as the Wicked Witch of the West, Mussolini and their mother-in-law rolled into one woman.
All John McCain has to do is smile, kiss babies and stand tough on America's defense and he can waltz into the White House against either of these losers. Unfortunately, he seems determined to prove he is as bad as any Democrat.
McCain wants to take on the highly speculative, dubious problem of "global warming."
McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.
Industries would be given emission targets, and those coming in under their limit could sell their surplus polluting capacity to companies unable to meet their target.
Now, for any reader who might think there is something to all this global warming talk, consider this from Walter Williams:
Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
Why is it that environmentalists never put global warming in the context that Dr. Williams provides? Could it be that they're trying to scare us with bad science? Could it be that their real goal is state control of the economy and the destruction of capitalism?
John McCain doesn't give a damn about capitalism and freedom. He loves state power; he holds sacrifice to the collective as the moral ideal. He thrills to the idea of mandating vast regulations on industry in the name of "saving the planet." As a man who has confessed his ignorance of economics, it doesn't matter what the actual, practical effects of his regulations will be; all that matters is his feel good fantasy and massive sacrifice. To altruists the gesture of sacrifice is an end in itself unconnected to any practical benefits. Nay, practical benefits would make sacrifice more of a selfish long-term trade, and where is the morality in that?
But McCain being McCain, he has to take the dishonesty of his proposal a little further by calling his massive regulations a "free market" solution. (In reality his "cap and trade" policies will amount to K Street lobbyists buying off politicians to get favors for their clients.) He does not understand that a market dictated and controlled by the state is not free. Laissez-faire capitalism is the separation of state and economy. The word for McCain's vision of private industry dictated by the state is fascism.
On the heels of this environmentalist nonsense, as if McCain were on a mission to rub the nose of small government Republicans in shit, the word comes out that he is considering Huckabee as his Vice President running mate. Could he make a worse choice than a religious nanny-stater? (Maybe he wants Huckabee at his side because the Arkansan is the only prominent Republican who makes McCain look smart about economics.)
I am struck by how blind the left is to Obama's weakness as a candidate. They have their usual rationalizations for every criticism from the right.
Obama's father was a communist? McCarthyism!
Obama is not electable? Electability is a code word used by racists!
Obama has terrorist friends? Ayers is a distinguished academic. So what if he had a radical youth -- who didn't?
Obama's preacher is an anti-American conspiracy theorist? White America cannot understand black rage!
It seems that Obama himself does not understand the criticism against him.
Obama denounced what he called the Republican campaign plan: "Yes, we know what's coming. ... We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas."
The attacks are just name calling? This is the kind of self-serving delusion that keeps the left from realistically assessing the American electorate. Voters are smarter than the Democrats think they are; they understand that there are ideas behind the names and the labels.
If Obama is surrounded by far-left anti-Americans, is it not logical to wonder if maybe Obama agrees with them? Is he trying to BS his way to the presidency without revealing what he really thinks?
His wife raises even more suspicions in the minds of voters who are of the far left. She has some sense of humor:
"Asked how she feels about Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairytale" to describe her husband's characterization of his position on the Iraq war, (Michelle Obama) first responded: "No."
But, after a few seconds of contemplation, and gesturing with her fingernails, she told the reporter: "I want to rip his eyes out!"
Noticing an aide giving her a nervous look, she added: "Kidding! See, this is what gets me into trouble."
This unpleasantness comes on top of her anti-American statements and her altruist-statist-collectivist vision of widespread sacrifice:
...Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.
There are profound ideas involved here, and questioning them is not name-calling or McCarthyism. People are justified in wondering just how Barack Obama intends to make them work.
It looks to me like we are in for a dreary autumn season of the left demonizing anyone who criticizes Obama as they strive to shift the focus from his ideas -- anything but an honest examination of what he really believes -- to the evil character of those who would oppose him. The left is projecting its own postmodern contempt of reason onto its enemies. This is the road to defeat for Obama, as I must not believe the American people are yet so dumbed down and corrupted that they cannot see beyond names and labels to the abstract ideas that words denote.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." --Groucho Marx
I always knew our politicians were Marxists.
1. The worst songs of the '80s.
(HT: Big Blue Wave)
2. Poor Obama. He is befuddled on the campaign trail and at times doesn't know where he is or what month it is. He seems to be a little overwhelmed. Critics noted that he looked tired in his denunciation of Reverend Wright. He made that waffle comment. Worst of all, he won't debate Hillary Clinton again.
And Obama’s the youngest candidate in the race. He’s the one who should be showing energy, enthusiasm, and presence. Instead, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have shown more of all these qualities, especially of late. If Obama can’t stand the demands of the road as well as the other two candidates, what does that say about his stamina if elected President?
My impish side thinks that is exactly what we need in a President: a midget too incompetent and passive to get anything done. Remember, our standard these days is to elect the candidate who will do the least harm to American liberty. By this standard feebleness and mental sluggishness are nothing to sneeze at.
3. Miley Cyrus, 15, posed topless (sort of).
Although I wonder if some of the hysteria over this reflects the neo-puritanism of both the feminist left and the religious right, I have to agree that 15-year olds should not be used in sexually suggestive photographs. Were I father to a teenage girl, I would insist she keep her clothes on for pictures until her 18th birthday.
Since the pathbreaking success of Madonna, I suspect there has been pressure on pop singers to adopt a "bad girl" image. (I wonder if that pressure had anything to do with Britney Spears's mental illness.)
Acting the whore is not a repudiation of religious values, but like Satanism is a perverse acceptance of them. Religion devalues worldly pleasures such as sex; promiscuity -- indiscriminate sex unconnected to serious values -- does the same. One of Ayn Rand's great insights is that sex is too good and important to be taken lightly or approached as a mindless slut. One's sexuality should be treated with the serious reverence that the religious reserve for the supernatural realm (that does not exist).
4. Questions about elections in the internet age.
How is the internet changing elections? Does the New York Times still set the agenda, or do blogs?
Another question: Could the homely Abraham Lincoln, who was once called a "baboon," have been elected in the television age? Does our modern process deliver better politicians than we had in the 19th century?
5. On HB List Jim May notes this harbinger of inflation -- consumer electronics prices will rise.
Inflation is the politicians' favorite tax because, due to the abysmal ignorance of economics, they don't get blamed for it. Moreover, they can blame business and use inflation as an excuse to meddle further in the economy and increase the power of the state.
I excerpt Henry Hazlitt's explanation of inflation in this post.
6. For your entertainment pleasure, I link to this clip from Kiss Me, Kate. The song is one of Cole Porter's best, "From This Moment On." Unless my hearing is mistaken (as it sometimes is when I analyze melodies in my head), the melody shoots up an octave from fifth to fifth then bounces back and forth between that high fifth and a fifth sharp. It is an expression of ecstatic joy, and it fits the lyric perfectly.
Bob Fosse, one of the dancers, created a style of his own. Interesting to note that Noel Coward's first response to this musical was that Porter's lyrics were too dirty. Coward was old school -- Edwardian old school.
Here is an interesting signpost of how America is changing. Up to the '70s, one heard "goddamn" in polite conversation. It might have been considered salty, but it was something adults said regularly, kind of like saying "hell." You can find the expletive in Ayn Rand's novels.
I remember being surprised in the early '80s the first time a religious man asked me not to say "goddamn." I could hardly believe this person took the idea of God so seriously as to object to a meaningless swear word. Hell, I was an atheist saying the curse. It's not like I meant "Let a supernatural creature come forth and consign thee to the everlasting bonfire!"
Today the word has become less common. I think it has joined the four-letter words as a dirty word one should not say. I take this as another indicator that religion is taken more seriously today.
Lawrence Auster objects to the use of this word in the title of a book by William F. Buckley. 30 years ago, Auster would have been dismissed as a puritanical freak. Today I fear he is the future of conservatism.
What do we conclude from Hillary Clinton's 10-point win in Pennsylvania?
I don't think it matters which one wins, Obama or Clinton -- they're both Dead Democrats Walking. Neither can beat McCain. Clinton carries more baggage than a Greyhound bus. Obama, if he won the nomination, would be the furthest left-wing candidate for a major party in history.
More is coming out about Obama's terrorist friends, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. They remain anti-American to this day; four decades of experience have failed to dent their radical premises. Dohrn is the only prominent voice who expressed approval of the Charles Manson murders. These are the people Obama chooses to hang around.
The more I watch Obama, the less I think of his intelligence. This is not something the MSM talk about at all. I suspect his vapidity and lack of substance come from a slow mind. The way he got rattled and incoherent in his last debate is more evidence. The guy is not sharp.
Obama makes Clinton look experienced, competent and of sound judgment. So Obama has accomplished something remarkable in his life after all.
I base my thoughts about Obama's hopelessness on what we have seen in Presidential elections since 1972. One big X factor could prove me wrong: have the American voters changed significantly? Is there a new "paradigm"? We keep hearing about these new voters, the Millennial Generation, who are always reported as the most altruist-statist-collectivist (and therefore, I would add, stupid) generation in history. These young Americans, we are told, are not afraid of the government, unlike those cynical older generations.
I wonder if liberal reporters are not projecting their premises on the Millennials. They see young people, who are typically idealistic, and think, "If they're idealistic, then they must be liberals, because right-wingers are selfish and immoral."
Leftists have always hoped to change human nature and form people who act as selfless cogs in the state machine. In the USSR they strove to create homo sovieticus. In the Millennials, they hope they have found the novo homo americanus.
But. But... maybe they have succeeded in creating voters so lacking in independence and pride that they will go along with the mob at the orders of a dictator. Young people are voting for Obama over Clinton, for whatever that's worth.
Of course, this election is complicated by the Republicans electing a big government candidate, John McCain. It's still too early to decide -- I intend to wait at least until Labor Day -- however, at the moment I think the candidate who would accomplish the least amount of damage to American freedom would be Hillary Clinton. It would not be for lack of trying on her part, but that she is so widely hated that she would have little support for any big sweeping changes. And the Republicans in Congress would be energized to fight her every step of the way.
UPDATE: Jackie and Dunlap discuss the Pennsylvania primary. Too funny to miss.
"When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."
-- Jimmy Carter, explaining the benefits of meeting with Hamas terrorists in Syria
All the people struggling to survive in dictatorships have been betrayed by this buffoon of a peanut farmer.
What a long, steep decline it is from Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter!
1. Boortz juxtaposes two quotes, one from the great economist of liberty, Frederic Bastiat and one from Michelle Obama. It's too good to pass up:
"The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay ... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system." - Frederic Bastiat
"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." - Michelle Obama
Therein lies the great political conflict of the last few centuries, the fight between laissez-faire capitalism and statism.
3. A cop on dope.
4. Obama and McCain voted (correctly, IMO) to prohibit confiscating guns during a disaster. Hillary Clinton was one of 16 nay votes, meaning she thinks the state should be able to confiscate guns in a disaster.
5. What is this fish?
6. Hamlet 2. Also, the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time.
Bonus Link: Watch out for Wikipedia: zealots control the content on controversial issues such as climate change.
