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That’s not going to be good for business

Inshallah.

Posted: September 7, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Under: Obama | No Comments »

Not much, you?

This was Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air,

Update: Charles Martin at Explorations has the list of debunked slurs and innuendo, and it’s getting pretty lengthy.  Coming up next: Sarah Palin is an extraterrestrial looking to infiltrate human society!  Where’s the Weekly World News when you need it?

Update II: Just spitballing here, but what stereotypes of naughty women have the media and the lunatics missed?  So far, they’ve made her out to be a slut, a b***h, a beauty-queen airhead, and an unfit mother.  She’s obviously not frigid, so that smear won’t work.  How many other demeaning gender-based slurs can they throw her way?

How many? Well, here’s one more.

Certainly, Palin is Example the Umpteenth of how a Christian conservative gets treated when they dare walk in the public halls of government.

I’m a fan of Michael Feldman’s show Whad’Ya Know?, which is a PRI show, and airs live on Saturdays. I’ve listened for years, and while it is a public radio show, and is sympathetic to the left, it usually isn’t too political.

Today’s show, though, started off with a bit on Sarah Palin. First, they played this snippet from Palin’s speech to the RNC.

And in April, my husband, Todd, and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.

That’s how it is with us.

Our family has the same ups and downs as any other — the same challenges and the same joys.

And then, they played a bit of the old Irving Berlin song from Annie Get Your Gun, Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly, and the part they played had these lyrics,

Folks are dumb where I come from,
They ain’t had any learning.
Still they’re happy as can be
Doin’ what comes naturally (doin’ what comes naturally).
Folks like us could never fuss
With schools and books and learning.
Still we’ve gone from A to Z,
Doin’ what comes naturally (doin’ what comes naturally)
You don’t have to know how to read or write
When you’re out with a feller in the pale moonlight.
You don’t have to look in a book to find out
What he thinks of the moon and what is on his mind.
That comes naturally (that comes naturally).

So, what? Palin is a dumb, uneducated hick who just knows how to breed?

Keep it up, public radio types. You’ll get a sense of how receptive Regular America is to your brand of tolerance at the ballot box in November.

Posted: September 6, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Under: Palin | 2 Comments »

Stop when you’re ahead

The Wall Street Journal reports that members of a hand picked audience at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania hit Barack Obama with an unwelcomed question about his position on guns.

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

A canned answer that doesn’t match his record, but just might play with this bunch of bitter clingers.

But then the truth comes out:

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

“Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’  Whoa.  Who among us hasn’t used a variation of that line when we really want something but it’s just barely out of our reach?  Isn’t that the same as saying “I want to, but I can’t…right now”?  Doesn’t the Second Amendment get in the way of Congress doing anything like that anyway?

“Can everyone hear me in the back?”  That’s usually not a good tone to take with the voters.  Condescension is not a good political tactic.  I’m sure they heard him just fine the first time and hopefully know all about his record, which doesn’t match his recent rhetoric.

Obama would do everything possible to decrease gun ownership and be an enemy of the Second Amendment.  With a Democrat majority in Congress likely to be expanded in 2008, if he’s elected president, he just might get enough votes to “take them away” as he says.

Let’s not forget what Democrat senator Diane Feinstein said in 1995:  “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in — I would have done it.”

Posted: September 5, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Under: 2nd Amendment | No Comments »

A compelling tease

Drudge is posting the following headline tease with no link yet available.  While I an an enthused Palin supporter, I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing when you veep is more popular than the top of the ticket.

RASMUSSEN: Palin More Popular Than Obama or McCain… Developing…

Eerily prescient TvM flashback:  “Who could have imagined that the most compelling personality of election ‘08 would NOT be Mr. Obama when it was all said and done?”

For the slower among us, “compelling tease” refers to the Drudge headline, not Ms. Palin.

Posted: September 5, 2008 at 9:22 am
Under: Palin | No Comments »

Red vs. Blue and ‘the hair lick’

Early this morning I posted about a YouTube link to a moment I characterized as “precious” during Governor Palin’s acceptance speech last night — that endearing moment when young Piper Palin licked her hand to smooth the hair of her dozing baby brother.  No disputing it was cute, right?

Wrong.  This YouTube video of the exact same moment was characterized by the person posting it as “The Other Palin Daughter’s Odd Behavior:  The Hair Lick”.

If you don’t think there is still a red state/blue state cultural divide in this country that is growing, not shrinking, you are not paying attention.  The good news is that we’re making babies.  They aren’t.  You do the math.

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Under: Palin, The face of the Left | 1 Comment »

“Not overly impressive”

That is what Der Spiegel said regarding Sarah Palin’s speech on Wednesday night.  This after the Obama lovefest for the past three months, but what would you expect from the land that wants him to be the president of the EU.

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Under: Palin | 3 Comments »

Did I miss the reinstitution of the draft?

Apparently:

The Anti-War Committee, which is organizing Thursday’s march, urged others to join in and denounced the increased presence of police in riot gear and acts of “intimidation” in the streets of St. Paul.

Tracy Molm, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota, urged students to get involved.

“Students in this country are angry. We’re angry because it’s us that are asked to fight and die in this immoral and unjust war,” Molm said Wednesday. “Bring that anger to the streets, because that is how social change in this country happens.”

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 9:43 am
Under: The face of the Left | 2 Comments »

Politics Masquerading as Science

Patrick J. Michaels, research professor of environmental sciences, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and former program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, wrote a scathing review of the latest “Synthesis Report” draft coming out of the United States’ Climate Change Science Program:

Trash the entire report. It’s neither scientific nor logical. It’s a political document. Send the product lead back to Asheville and the senior editor back to Hollywood.

Pretty strong words from a climatologist with such impressive credentials. He doesn’t mince words:

Virtually every sentence can be contested or simply ignores published science that disagrees with CCSP’s preconceived message. In its own words: “Aggressive near-term actions would be required to alter the future path of human-induced warming… future generations will inherit the legacy of our decisions.”

If “future generations” and “legacy of our decisions” sound more to you like politics rather than science, you’re correct. The CCSP report isn’t a science document at all. Not unless global warming science is a virtually one-sided world where almost everything is bad and getting worse, and where a moderate response dishonors our progenitors.

Of course, this can’t be. Global warming lengthens growing seasons. Carbon dioxide, the cause of (part of the) warming (dormant for 11 years now) clearly improves crop yields in a world where stupid global warming policies (like burning our food supply in cars) are increasing food scarcity. If they have the money, by and large, Americans move to a warmer climate. And so on - which is why the CCSP document and the delete key should become intimate friends.

How did such a remarkable distortion see the light day? The “product lead” is Tom Karl, who heads the Commerce Department’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. He is perhaps the most political and politically savvy climate scientist in U.S. history. When Al Gore was vice president, he would issue monthly briefings on the horrors of climate change. When Mr. Gore exaggerated some local flood, or claimed Florida would burn because of global warming, Mr. Karl stood by and remained mute. But now, with the prospect of an increasingly Democratic Senate, and a president who will go along with the madness of climatically futile policies (Barack Obama or John McCain on global warming? Pick em!), Mr. Karl and CCSP have picked up the scent.

. . .
Want more evidence as to the perfidy of the CCSP process? The senior editor is no climate scientist; it’s Susan J. Hassol, who wrote the HBO global warming “documentary,” “Too Hot Not to Handle.” Laurie David, the force behind Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” was the executive producer. This isn’t science, it’s science fiction.

The first illustration inside the front cover gives away the spin. It’s a picture of people of as many races and sexes as possible holding hands. What that has to do with climate change science is a mystery, but it certainly reflects a political view.

The draft CCSP report knowingly uses Photoshopped imagery of a flood, uncritically publishes a misleading temperature history, which splices together two completely different sets of climate data, and generally assumes people are stupid.

There’s a wonderful picture on Page 55 of two senior citizens, captioned: “The elderly are especially vulnerable to extreme heat.” If that’s true, then there must be massive and increasing numbers of heat-related fatalities in hot cities with old populations. In fact, Tampa and Phoenix have a disproportionately elderly population and very few heat-related deaths; statistically, Tampa has the fewest of any major U.S. city.

It may shock the CCSP, but when heat waves become more frequent, people change their habits and localities adapt their infrastructure to better deal with the heat.

Cross posted at www.steamvalveblog.com

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 9:36 am
Under: The Warming | No Comments »

Ya know…

If Obama actually got a community like Chicago organized, maybe he should be President…

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 9:17 am
Under: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us | No Comments »

Conversations I never had before kids

John: Smell my feet.

Me: No.

John: Pleeeease. I’ll be your best friend forever if you smell my feet.

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 7:41 am
Under: family | 2 Comments »

Loose stools, cont.

Macleans:

It was that good. No, she’s not qualified, and the substance was thin, but my God — that was perhaps the greatest bit of political theatre I have ever witnessed. Her critics in the media and in the opposition may regret having piled on quite so enthusiastically, and with so little heed for who they hurt — or angered. Watching the tumultuous, ecstatic reaction in the hall, I was reminded of the famous words of the Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Posted: September 4, 2008 at 6:55 am
Under: The face of the Left | No Comments »

Been a Long Time Comin’

I remember many years ago when I was young, feeling an indescribable elation when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated as vice president. It was a first. It hit me at a gut level. A woman. Up there, speaking about our country. Could become vice president of the United States of America.

I hadn’t followed politics before that, and knew virtually nothing about the issues that faced our country at the time. What I’m talking about is just a visceral reaction that I hadn’t expected.  Of course, at the time I had been reading feminist writings, and was taken with the idea that women could become leaders like they hadn’t been before. It made me feel a sense of potential that I’d never felt before.

The only other time I remember feeling like that was when the Twins won the series three years later in 1987. They’d been the underdog, nobody expected them to win but they did. Their victory sent an electrical energy throughout the twin cities. You could feel it. It made everyone in the twin cities feel like anything was possible.

But not until tonight have I seen a woman actually fill in the outlines of what I had dreamed of back in the last century.

I already admired Sarah Palin when I read that she had the guts to sue the federal government over the polar bears. But tonight I saw her take the shape of the future that feminists had only envisioned back then.

Except, now I have been following politics, so now it’s much more than just seeing a female take the stage at a party’s convention. It’s so much better.

I see and hear a woman stand up and give one of the best political speeches I’ve ever heard. The tears started coming down my cheeks even before I knew that it was going to be a good speech well delivered. By the time I realized that, I was feeling the same indescribable elation I felt back in 1984. Only this time, I know what the issues are and, on a rational level, I am also elated at the thought of this real-life, gutsy woman becoming vice-president.

I can’t help but think that there are many other women out there who, watching this gutsy hockey mom get up on the stage tonight and start talking, also had tears running down their cheeks just at the thought of Sarah Palin becoming vice president. And the fact that the MSM is following the lead of the soros machine in trying to pillory this woman ASAP is only making the drama so much more riveting.

I told my husband, “You have no idea what this is doing to women.” We were seeing some of their faces on the tv screen during Palin’s speech. Ecstatic. She was so good.

Cross posted at steamvalveblog.com

Posted: September 3, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Under: politics | No Comments »

Loose stools

are not in short supply at Obama HQ this evening.

The two best convention speeches I have ever seen were Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” speech and Mario Cuomo’s Democratic keynote the same year — 1984. That was the first year I paid serious attention to politics.

This was the most effective convention speech I have seen by any nominee (let alone veep nominee) in the quarter-century since.  I include Senator Obama’s excellent speech of last Thursday.

I second all the folks who were smart enough to acknowledge that a star was born tonight. Simply put, we have seen the genesis of what may prove to be one of the most consequential political candidacies in a generation. Who could have imagined that the most compelling personality of election ‘08 would NOT be Mr. Obama when it was all said and done?

Remarkable.

P.S.  And tell me this wasn’t the most precious thing you ever saw.

Posted: September 3, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Under: conservatism | 1 Comment »

Be Jubilant, My Feet

One of my most favorite books is Peace Like A River, by Leif Enger. A wonderfully written story. You might gather I was so taken by it I took the title as the name of my humble little personal blog.

The next to last chapter is as moving a description of the other side of the River Jordan as I think you’ll find. Here’s an excerpt…

I waded ashore with measureless relief. Stay with me now. The bank was an even slope of knee-high grasses, and I came up into them and turned to look back. It was a wide river, mistakeable for a lake or even an ocean unless you’d been wading and knew its current. Somehow I’d crossed it and somehow was unsurprised at having done so.
…
But I was drawn on. Conscious now that something needed doing. I moved ever higher on the land, here entering an orchard of immense and archaic beauty. I say orchard: The trees were dense in one place, scattered in another, as though planted by random throw, but all were heavy trunked and capaciously limbed, and they were fruit trees every one of them.
…
A man in pants. Flapping colorless pants and a shirt, dismal things most strange in this place. He was running upslope by the boisterous stream. Despite the clothes his face was incandescent, and when he saw me he wheeled his arms and came on ever faster. Then history entered me, my own and all the rest of it, more than I could hold, history like a heavy rain, so I knew the man coming along was my father…
…
He was beside me in moments, stretching out his hands. What cabled strength! I remember wondering what those arms were made for, no mere reward, they had design in them. They had some work to set about. Meanwhile Dad was laughing, at my arms, which were similarly strong. He sang out, You’re as big as me! How had I not noticed? We were like two friends, and I saw he was proud of me, that he knew me better than he’d ever thought to and was not dismayed by the knowledge….
…
Let’s run, he said. It’s true both of us were wild to go on. I tell you there is no one who compels as does the master of that country, although badly as I wanted to see hin, Dad must’ve wanted to more, for he shot ahead like a man who sees all that pleases him most stacked beside the finish. I could only be awed at his speed, which was no effort for him; indeed he held back so that we traveled together, he sometimes reaching for my hand, as he’d done a thousand times in the past; and the music and living language swept us forth across the plains until the mountains lay ahead, and up we climbed at a run.

Posted: September 3, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Under: people | No Comments »

We mourn with those who mourn

One of the greatest joys of blogging has been establishing friendships that I would not have otherwise have enjoyed.  First among equals has been John Swon, a.k.a. “First Ringer”.  I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with his wonderful father and mother.

Today, as John explains below, his father lost a brief but heroic battle with bone cancer. 

John, everyone who reads this blog sends you and your dear mother our love and prayers.

Posted: September 2, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Under: miscellany | 2 Comments »

“Riding on a smile and a shoeshine”

It was Arthur Miller’s immortal line that “attention must be paid” that captures the hearts of all those who are salesman (and moreso, those who lived with them and witnessed their triumphes and tragedies), but it was a lesser line that defined for me the numerous professions I saw my father in as a child. “A salesman is somebody way up there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.” After 28 years of watching him toil with constant optimism and, yes, a smile for pretty much everybody he met or knew, I lost my father to somewhere way up there in the blue today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: September 2, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Under: miscellany | 5 Comments »

CBS headline writer flogged, film at 11

From CBS News…

Dubai Beach Sex Pair Seek Quickie Trial

Posted: September 2, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Under: Fun with Headlines | No Comments »

Report from (near) the front

Here is your specially credentialed blogger, reporting from his convention post here in Blaine, MN. City streets are quiet in my neighborhood, haven’t seen any anarchists today. (Unless you count the guy with the motorcycle down the street.)

I made it through breakfast without getting pepper sprayed. Am thinking my dog might look cute with a dye job.

Ok, that’ll do it for this report. Back to you at TvM World HQ.

(See True North for posts from bloggers in and around the convention.)

Posted: September 2, 2008 at 8:59 am
Under: Fun with Headlines | No Comments »

Columns I didn’t finish

And Nick makes his first appearance here…

There were not a lot of delegates among the marchers Monday. But there were thousands of ordinary Americans, carrying a message that two-thirds of America agrees with. Those kids and bluehairs may be annoying, but they are right: The war was a mistake, the country is in deep doo-doo.

Posted: September 2, 2008 at 7:25 am
Under: Columns I didn't finish | No Comments »

Well…it was fun while it lasted…

Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant.

Posted: September 1, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Under: miscellany | 2 Comments »

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