It’s 9:50. The Chicago Marxist has 200 electoral votes. I don’t have much to say.
I know I won’t watch any Grant Park Triumph-of-the-Will gloatfest.
This was such a glorious country. We showed the world so much about freedom and possibility and dignity and how to create prosperity.
I think I’m going to go to bed.
During the primary season, when it looked increasingly likely that John McCain would be the GOP nominee, it was hard not to despair. Except for the never-in-the-running Ron Paul, none of the candidates was further away from a consistent and robust conservative vision. Where is a succinct defense of human freedom, American exceptionalism and common sense going to come from, we howled into the darkness.
Once he was nominated, things didn’t improve until that late Friday morning in Dayton when Barracuda made her national debut.
She was, and remains, a repository for our principles, values and passions, but it quickly became clear that her persona was too fraught with particulars for the focus on her to remain on the level of ideas.
I’ve - and I know I speak for millions of us - have been walking around in a state of combined numbness and nausea for the last few weeks as McCain has proceeded true to form. Lame debate performances, poisonously harmful crud about how “you wouldn’t have to be afraid of an Obama presidency,” a muddied message on the roots of the current economic mess. When I could muster up enough hope to pray, it would be for some vessel from which to dispense the conservative message with unmistakable and instantly appealing clarity to any and all Americans still capable of actual thought and mature reasoning.
He came along this week. It started with his question to The Chicago Marxist about raising taxes, which pointed up in less than fifty words the naked socialism of what TCM’splan is about more forcefully than all the blog posts devoted to the subject here and at hundreds of other freedom-loving sites. Then came his round of appearances on various MSM outlets yesterday in which he got the chance to share his - our - views on a few other subjects, such as immigration.
Then this morning came Biden’s inevitable attack. What’s the applicable word here? Arrogance doesn’t do it justice, nor does hubris. What’s the proper way to characterize the mockery of someone who stands up for the right to keep his own hard-earned money rather than turn it over to the government for the furthering of totalitarianism?
We know just enough about Joe. He’s healthy fit, smart, articulate, good at what he does, and ambitious. If ever there was a public figure, which he now is, about whom family arrangements, tastes in food sports or music, mode of transportation, or even level of formal education was not relevant to the thunderous undeniability of what he said that made him famous, it’s Joe the Plumber.
He wants the America we’ve had for 230 years, not a socialist dictatorship.
Again, a figure perfectly suited to populist rallying has emerged to give John McCain yet one more shot at, as Rush puts it, “being dragged over the finish line.”
That these out-of-nowhere lifelines keep appearing despite McCain’s indifference to the only vision that can prevent the end of the American experiment I take as evidence of a God who is indeed on our side.
What is there to say? McCain is saying the good stuff where the good stuff needs to be said. Low taxes for everybody. Awful where you’d expect him to be. Global warming is real. Reach across the aisle and get things done.
Obama is being his Stalinist, redistributionist self.
No surprises as of 9:47, which means I’m not too encouraged.
Tom Brokaw is kind of fun to watch with this “gentlemen, I’m just trying to adhere to time rules you both signed off on” thing he’s got going.
UPDATE: Turns out I do have more to say. The Chicago Marxist is saying health care is a right. Can’t say how he’s going to pay for the “lowering of costs” for small businesses’ health benefits for employees.
The Chicago Marxist is standing by his opposition to the Iraq invasion. Oh, jeez, here comes the diminished-respect-in-the-world crud.
Now, I’m getting bugged at Tom Brokaw. He comes up with his own question about “non-combat use of military forces.” What a nonsensical distraction. For God’s sake, everybody, Iran is weeks away from having a deliverable nuke. Russia is collaborating militarily with Venezuela. Can we leave the “humanitarian” stuff to the packers of boxes of powdered milk?
Intelligent audience question about Pakistan’s sovereignty. The Chicago Marxist begins his response with that eye-off-the-ball-by-getting-preoccupied-with-Iraq meme. He says a few things - help the new government of Pakistan, etc. - and winds up saying that should push come to shove, yes, you go in after al-Qaeda.
Actually, that is indeed the deal, but McCain is right that it’s a bit premature to bluster about it.
I’m so often wrong about how these debates are going when I make my real-time assessments, given that I generally have a snoot full of cocktails and dinner wine by the time they get going, but this looks like less than the degree of decisiveness McCain needs tonight.
Well, now, hold on. McCain is getting into Petraeus’s success and The Chicago Marxist’s refusal to admit being wrong about the surge. Maybe Mav is kicking more ass than I’m taking into account. NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
THe Chicago Marxist gives a pretty doo-dah response. “We need to see these challenges before they happen.” Kind of like the warnings Clinton and Gore issued about Saddam Hussen ten years ago, Senator?
Tom asks, “Is Russia today an evi empire?” A doo-dah waste of debate minutes if I ever heard one. I do like McCain’s answer: “Maybe.”
Oooh, good question. Navy guy asks about supporting Israel if it has to go after Iran. Mccain stalls, treads water saying “Iran is a threat with its nuclear program.” Well, duh. Tough sanctions to modify Iran’s behavior. We can never allow a second holocaust. Nothing substantive in the way of an answer to the Navy guy’s questions.
Ditto the Chicago Marxist. Blah blah blah.
Talk to the bad guys.
Ah, I see there’s still a half bottle of that California zinfandel left.
It was such a great 230-year run.
POST MORTEM: John McCain is a tired old has-been with a half-baked, weirdo worldview who probably isn’t up to saving America from an interim period of Stalinism, followed by defeat at the hands of ourenemies.
The only real problem for me, and all my homies here at BN, being that our freedom, and this Western civilization that has made our lives so liveable, goes down the tubes if you don’t get a clue, and pronto.
This s— of not letting your campaign bring up Rev. Wright is not just suicidal but genocidal.
Independence Day finds BN waxing reflective like many another punditry outlet. The word “paradox” keeps surfacing as the most apt characteristic for the juncture at which this marvelous country finds itself on the 232nd occasion of the signing of Mr. Jefferson’s thunderous document. Comparatively speaking - compared, that is, to other nations, and to other periods in time - we’re doing great. We are, however, beset by some unique and unprecedented challenges, some of which ualify as threats requiring a sense of urgency.
I can’t argue with such sunny perspectives as those of Ed Fuelner’s Townhall column, or Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO piece. Such problems as high oil prices, the mortgage-market upheaval, and even the array of undeniably hostile countries and forces on the world stage aren’t making much of a dent at this moment in our ability to exercise our freedom, enjoy our prosperity, invent, consume, wander, wonder, form and raise families, worship, not worship, become civic leaders or become hermits. We’re comfortable, secure and free beyond the imaginings of most human beings alive either today or at any time in the past.
To call that the end of the matter, however, is to turn a blind eye to some glaring aspects of everyday life. We are not okay.
Our most immediate threat is moral and intellectual atrophy. We no longer have any idea how our circumstances came to be, their real value, or what’s required to preserve them.
The most handy piece of evidence to offer in substantiating this assertion is the Democrat candidate for president: a member of the Senate for three years, an Illinois state senator before that, and a “community organizer” in the mold of the radical Saul Alinsky before that. His radicalism, his ambivalence (at best) about America’s greatness, his ties to both Marxists and corrupt Chicago-machine figures, his cultural elitism, and his phony religiosity are well enough known that in a country with solid intellectual and moral bearings, he would be an embarrassment with no chance of going past a couple of primary races.
It’s not as if anyone were offering a hopeful alternative, either. The current administration is apparently going to let Iran build, test and use a nuclear weapon, and let North Korea keep its asernal of same, along with its uranium-enrichment capabilities, and its network for proliferation. It’s also the bunch that is determined to get Israel to allow a state to a group of people dedicated to its obliteration. Obama’s opponent in the current race to succeed this administration is a vacuous, tired and stubborn has-been who thinks we shouldn’t drill in ANWR and has a problem with corporate profits over some arbitrary level (at which they become, in his worldview, “obscene”).
Our preoccupation with silly, fabricated non-issues that distract us from what ought to be our real concerns is another manifestation of our atrophy. When corporations and universities alike rush to form “diversity councils,” when federal judges find “rights” to homosexual “marriage,” when developers rush to build “green” housing units and commercial structures, it is clear our ability to muster rigor and clear-sightedness is slipping away.
When you opened your web browser home page just now, you saw yet another ominous sign of our emaciation. Where were the headlines dealing with issues of economic challenge, jihadist design or nuclear proliferation? Well underneath coverage of the attire or the sybaritic antics of celebrities who have no more qualification to be pop-culture icons than Barack Obama has to be a presidential candidate.
Yes, our most pressing problems - after this breakdown of our moral and intellectual health - could be solved fairly easily, but that’s a lot like saying the stroke victim could easily reach the water glass beside his bed.
It’s a fine Fourth. I’ve seen happy people all over town as I’ve driven and biked about. I’ll be throwing a T-Bone and a mahi-mahi filet on the grill this evening. I’m about to pour myself a sparkling cocktail. Checks are in my mailbox and gigs on my calendar. I know lots of people who love the one true God and who understand free-market economics. Somehow, though, it all has the feel of the last tune the orchestra on the Titanic played before dance partners in the ballroom started to say to each other, “Did you feel that?”
He’s doing a “climate change tour,” and he’s going to speak to the anti-American reconsquista group La Raza. Michelle Malkin has the full skinny on both debacles. (The La Raza story is the top link in the “Related” column on the right-hand side.)
