1. Gus van Horn has cogent thoughts on the McCain/Palin ticket.
2. The Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has a new podcast up on September 1. He discusses sex with prostitutes, can a whore have a heart of gold, is the absence of evidence not the same as evidence of absence (an argument for God), can one be a Howard Roark or John Galt and still believe in God, why does Roark says he would sacrifice his life for Wynand, does faith lead to better health, and reading Rand's fiction or non-fiction books first.
3. Hm. Susan Estrich slams the media for attacking Palin, as does Howard Wolfson. Geraldine Ferraro might vote for Palin. Via Two-Four we see that someone called Spengler thinks Obama lost the election with his acceptance speech.
What do all these Democrats have in common? They are Hillary Clinton supporters.
You don't think the Clintons could be quietly encouraging their people to attack Obama and support McCain...?
Nah, it couldn't be. After all, we have their word that they want Obama to win in November.
This post at Democratic Underground points out,
If Hillary went on the offensive against the Palin/McCain ticket, she would help a lot & raise a lot of $$$
This is true. And if she does not go on the offensive, what does that tell you?
4. Chicago is twice as dangerous a place as Iraq?
An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.
Information from wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.
According to the Defense Department, 59 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.
In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.
If we had a pro-American press, it would be conventional wisdom that the war in Iraq is a success.
5. If we needed another reason NOT to vote for Obama/Biden, the VP candidate gave us a good one yesterday:
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
His leftist base will thrill to these words, but he is threatening to criminalize politics. Any prosecution related to Iraq would hamper our future will to take the fight to our enemies overseas. The ramifications years from now of the spiteful left's persecution of Bush could be the weakening of American resolve and its ability to defend itself against foreign aggressors. And that would truly be a crime.
One of the great unwritten stories of our time is how the Democrats have made America weaker by opposing any assertion of our national self-interest. Yes, I am aware that Iraq, like Vietnam, is a tragically mixed bag and fundamentally altruist, but that is not why the left opposes it.
Or perhaps that story has been written.
6. David Horowitz is right:
I've been thinking about the attacks on Sarah Palin and her children. I am the first to recognize liberals' penchant for being uunprincipled, bigoted and vicious in political combat. But the assaults on Sarah Palin and her family are extraordinary even for this crowd. What accounts for them? The obvious answer is fear.
First of all fear of the 'Other' -- Palin is a gun-toting, believing Christian. In a word: the anti-anti-Christ.
But an even more powerful force driving them is fear of defeat. I think what liberals fear in Palin is that she doesn't look like or talk like their stereotype of the religious right. She looks and talks like the best of them. She's articulate, she's pretty, and she has stolen the thunder of their Chosen One. She can provide McCain with the youth and charisma that he can use to beat them.
This arouses in them the nastiest instincts -- envy, resentment, hate. They need to destroy her and can't afford to wait. I think I'm going to feel sorry for them.
This is why I have to be careful. For over a decade I have voted Republican mostly as an act of justice: to punish the left for its irrationality and venom. To vote against the "envy, resentment, hate." I get tremendous emotional satisfaction from this. But the right has deteriorated so much that I have to step back and subject my emotional responses to reason. I am voting against the left, yes -- but who am I voting for?
I believe there are many uncounted Republican voters exactly like me. They vote primarily against the evil of the left, not out of any great love for the Republicans. If the Republicans remain a party of big government and Christianism, they will lose more and more of us.
5 comments:
Yes, Biden did give a good reason not to vote for 'Barry,' but there is a still scarier reason. Obama is up to his eyeballs in associations with avowed enemies of this country and outright traitors, like the terrorist Bill Ayers. Just think: such people will have access to the highest levels of government if Obama becomes Commander-in-Chief - during wartime, no less. Their guy will be in the Oval Office. That is scary. Going after political opponents for "crimes" would be just for starters.
(If Hillary) does not go on the offensive, what does that tell you?
It tells me that she realizes Obama is a born-loser, and has prudently hopped in the first life-boat to be lowered before the ship begins listing and the panic begins.
When the stern is a hundred feet up in the air, she doesn't want to anywhere near it.
Chicago, with a population of 2.7 million people has 123 murders over the summer. During the same period, the 140,000 US troops in Iraq had 65 casualties. And this proves what, exactly?
You can't draw a conclusion by comparing those statistics. My point is that the media can create what reality they want to by selective focus. If they want to, they can make a war look like a quagmire by reporting American casualties every day with no other context. If they wanted to (and I'm glad they don't), they could probably make Chicago look like a terrifying war zone.
Venezuela, which is almost exactly the same size and population as Iraq, had a murder toll estimated at over 18,000 last year, well in excess of the total death toll of Iraq war in the same year. Kids ride around on motorbikes and gun each other down all day long.
Yet Chavez has created paradise!
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