The Senescent Man

Lookie-here!  Zogby - no friend of McCain - has the race a dead heat again after the Sarah Palin announcement!  Essentially, McCain's astonishing pick for VP neutralized Obama-Biden, the big speech and the Demcrat convention bump in one fell swoop, and he goes into his own convention at a virtual tie.  Now he has to gain some momentum, though it will be tough to get the message out with Gustav and Hanna chasing him.  Let's see how creative the McCain team is in dealing with the storms while trying to convene their quadrennial.

Labels: 2008 Election

In my last post, I had heard a rumbling to the effect that McCain was giving heavy consideration to Kay Hutchison.  Though I didn't have it right, I was on the right track.

Regarding McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for Veep, a number of thoughts and observations:

She is a governor of a state with a lot of geography.

She sold the state plane on eBay because she thought it excessive, again in a state whose size is about a third of the continental US.

She's got spunk and guts, and she's is an overt corruption buster, opposing bigwig rats from her own party - a McCain maverick kind of person.

Though she is in her early forties, she has five kids, one of whom is a Downs child.

She owns a gun and likes to hunt.

She's also a pretty regular person and a "Hockey" mom.

She doesn't use TelePrompTers, yet she is one heck of a speaker.  Obama without a TelePrompTer is toast - wait until the debates with McCain.

No doubt, when Palin debates Biden, he will try to work in the statement that "I know Hillary Clinton.  Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine.  Governor, you're no Hillary Clinton."

Which will be right, because at least Palin has governed, albeit a state with a small population, she has nonetheless faced the kinds of things a president faces on a smaller scale.  Voters prefer governors over US Senators for that reason, and now the McCain-Palin ticket has something built into it that the Obama-Biden ticket does not.

I think this exciting, and it changes the game, and it is exactly the kind of thing that McCain needed, and he timed it exceedingly well.  In fact the McCain operatives were very good at holding the secret until the time they wanted to leak it, about 10:15 AM yesterday, that it drove up the suspense, and it became a media event that nearly eclipsed the Obama drama the evening before.  In and of itself, it said a lot about the cleverness of the McCain team.

Labels: 2008 Election

Kay Bailey Hutchison may be McCain's pick for VP!

Labels: 2008 Election

John Fund at the Wall Street Journal picked up on something in Hillary Clinton's speech last night that I thought about as well:

(1) It was probably the best speech she ever gave, and

(2) It was reminiscent of the speech given by Ronald Reagan in 1976 that generated the reaction that, "ooh, we nominated the wrong person."

Here's what Fund had to say about it:

Ms. Clinton's speech was so effective it invites comparisons with the last great convention speeches made by losing primary candidates - those of Edward Kennedy in 1980 and Ronald Reagan in 1976. But Ms. Clinton did more than either man to make it clear that the party should unite behind its fall standard bearer. Mr. Kennedy famously never raised hands together with President Carter after his speech and Mr. Reagan was also a little standoffish with President Gerald Ford.

The audience's reaction was such that some Democratic delegates on the floor no doubt felt much the same way that Republican delegates felt after Reagan's memorable remarks at the 1976 convention. Many delegates left that gathering convinced they had just nominated the wrong person. They corrected that mistake four years later. No doubt some of Ms. Clinton's aides are privately hoping that some delegates leave Denver feeling the same way.

Hillary said she was supporting Obama, but gave no compelling reason to support him.  Just do what I am doing, (paraphrasing) and vote for the guy [with some reluctance], like I plan to,...

She leaves the door ajar now for 2012 or 2016.

Hillary supporter, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania remarked in an interview that he likened Obama to Adlai Stevenson in 1952; i.e., an intellect, well liked, running against a war hero (Eisenhower); and we know how that election turned out.

My thinking is that any bounce Obama gets from this week will be classified as a "dead cat" bounce.  I.e., he get's a small one that has no periodicity to it.  McCain could actually pull this off, but the race is Obama's to lose.

Labels: 2008 Election

Yes, that was the underlying message of Michelle Obama last night at the Democratic party's convention, to the delegates, staff, media, nation, and world: It takes a family to raise a child, and that family consisting of both a father and mother, and if it happens, cooperating siblings, all working on their own initiative, all dedicated to the task at hand, working diligently, loving totally.

I thought the tribute she paid to her dad was touching, how he worked at a "filtration plant"--by which I assume she means a water treatment plant, and how he continued to do so even after he was physically diminished by disease. He altered his routine, taking longer to get ready for work, so that he could continue to support his family, which he saw as his duty, so that his wife could be a stay-at-home mom. Michelle praised he mother for that, and seemed to feel having that mom at home was important to her upbringing.

The relationship between Michelle and her brother (didn't catch his name) also seemed important, based on their dovetailing testimonies. She influenced him to stay with coaching, and he influenced her to pursue public service as opposed to a Big Law partnership. Any parent would be proud to have such children, and feel that they had done something right in their raising.

Look at what was absent in Michelle's speech concerning the influences in her life: neighbors, neighborhood, extended family, government programs. She mentioned her neighborhood, the south side of Chicago, but did so in almost derogatory language. You got the sense that the neighborhood would have pulled her down if the family hadn't propelled her up. It appears, from Michelle's words, that the government had no influence at all, either positive or negative.

A last impression I got was the positive influence Michelle has on her husband and children. As stable and positive as her raising was, Barack's was turbulent: absent father, mother who seemed unstable, frequent moves, raised by a racist grandmother, experimentation with mind-altering drugs. Maybe Michelle helped her husband settle down and end the wild days of his youth. She is likely having that same influence on their daughters.

So, thank you Michelle, for that positive message, exactly what this nation needs to hear today, and echoing that of Bob Dole in 1996: To raise a child, it doesn't take a village; it takes a family.

By the way, Michelle, have you discussed this with Senator Clinton?

What did I tell you?

Check it out.

Labels: 2008 Election

There are rumblings emanating from on the floor of the Democrat Convention in Denver that a movement is afoot to overrule Obama's choice of Joe Biden for VP with Hillary Clinton because she would provide a likelier margin of victory in November against John McCain.

Could the Clinton's pull it off? How would the delegates react?  How would America react?  What if they fail trying?

I've been to national conventions, and it is quite likely the rank and file on the floor of the convention don't even know that the rumors are being touted.  But what if this alleged movement actually gets some legs??

Labels: 2008 Election

I've got to think that this issue is festering with Pro-life folk who are not all that fond of John McCain.

Here's what McCain had to say about Obama's "above my pay grade" response to Rick Warren question last week on when life begins (from Commentary; HT: Weekly Standard):

Here was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, asked for his position on one of the central moral and legal questions of our time, and this was the best he could offer: It’s above his pay grade. He went on to assure his interviewer that there is a, quote, “moral and ethical element to this issue.” Americans expect more of their leaders. There seems to be a pattern here in my opponent’s approach to many hard issues. Whether it’s the surge in Iraq that has brought us near to victory, or the issue of campaign reform, or the question of offshore drilling, Senator Obama’s speeches can be impressive. But when it’s time for straight answers, clear conviction, and decisive action, suddenly all of these responsibilities are — well, as he puts it, “above my pay grade.” As mottos of leadership go, it doesn’t exactly have the ring of “the buck stops here.”

But McCain didn’t stop there. He explained (to those who may have been deprived of any meaningful MSM coverage) the Born Alive Infants legislative history and then argued:

At Saddleback, he assured a reporter that he’d have voted “yes” on that bill if it had contained language similar to the federal version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Even though the language of both the state and federal bills was identical, Senator Obama said people were, quote, “lying” about his record. When that record was later produced, he dropped the subject but didn’t withdraw the slander. And now even Senator Obama’s campaign has conceded that his claims and accusations were false.

All of which raises questions not only of Obama's ability to make decisions at critical moments, but also the barbarism of his absolutist position on so-called abortion rights - to the point of infanticide, a view not widely held by an Americans by any stretch of the imagination, and rightfully so.

BTW, you can tell McCain's comments are more thought out on this subject, leading one to believe that he shared them after now having heard what Obama actually said in the forum, underscoring the position that McCain did NOT hear Obama, and was not prepared for what Obama had answered.

Last week I was in Washington D.C. listening to public radio where a host of liberal commentators wanted to string up McCain for purportedly having "cheated" by unfairly listening in to Obama's remarks while he was supposed to have been in a "cone of silence."  This recent feedback from McCain, I think, lends a hand to the position that McCain didn't cheat, because had he heard these remarks, he would have answered in a manner similar to the above.  But what is fairly amazing to me was the level of scandal they claimed was committed by McCain, and without an iota of proof.  I mean these people were hooting and hollering, but they were and are way off base.

Labels: 2008 Election

From knoxnews.com (HT: Instanpundit):

"If my pick were Biden...

...I'd wait until late Friday night to leak it, too.

It seems appropriate to wake up to that and Saturday morning cartoons."

I guess I am comforted by the remark made by McCain at the Rick Warren forum last week: "I will chase him down to the gates of hell if I have to." "And I know how to do it."

Labels: 2008 Election

What is it with people of some races that they feel that they need to demean their own kind.  Take for example what Sen. Barack Obama had to say about U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas.

"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas," he said at Lake Forest, CA in the interview with Rick Warren on Saturday, "I don't think that he, [sic] I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution."

About that, this is what the WSJ will say tomorrow:

The Democrat added that he also wouldn't have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

But read the whole thing.

Oh and I forgot: here as well.

Where did this moron come from?  Is he kidding, or what?  Time for Cafferty to hang up his "file."

If there is any doubt of the difference, go here, here and here.

Lincoln Chafee was on a conference call today announcing the formation of "Republicans for Obama."

Chafee made it known he was supporting Obama over McCain back  in February, but he also made it known that he was severing his ties with Republicans too.  He can't have it both ways.  He is NOT a Republican in support of Obama.  He is merely an independent citizen in support of Obama, and he is one very confused individual as many of us had known when he used to call himself a Republican.

Frankly, his "et tu Brute" approach to McCain is startling, really.  McCain was one of only a handful of Republicans who made an effort to remain loyal to Chafee over Steve Laffey in 2006, even though he hardly represented traditional Republican views.  But McCain remained true blue to Chafee, and visited RI to support him more than once during Chafee's campaign.  McCain can now consider himself officially stabbed in the back a second time by Chafee (the first time being Chafee's announcement in February to support Obama for President).

Chafee is no Republican for or against anyone because he is not a Republican, period.  He probably should have come out of the closet and told his Dad that he wasn't a Republican back in the days of his mayoralty in Warwick.

I just think for Chafee to go out of his way like this against his old friend is a supreme insult.  He could have sat it out on the sidelines. 

Labels: 2008 Election

Labels: 2008 Election

Russia decided it wasn't going to impress us at the Olympics, so it seems it has another conquest on its mind.  The following is from Newsweek,...a not often referenced periodical on this blog:

"When Russian airplanes dropped bombs on Gori, Georgia, Monday morning, 26-year-old Nikri (who was afraid to give his last name) rushed home to check on his family. The carnage that awaited him was almost too much to bear. A woman's severed hand lay by the entrance to his shattered apartment building. Upstairs, he found his wounded wife and one of his daughters alive. But his 2-month-old daughter was dead, the victim of a piece of shrapnel that hit the wall above her bed."

Read the rest here.

This is one reason why it is not wise to goad American athletes.

"C'est le sport," said one of the French racers, Fabien Gilot, afterward, which means literally, "It's sport," but which, in this context, really means, "That's why they race the race."