COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, August 29, 2008

Chancy Obama



A Speech to the Delegates

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 29, 2008
DENVER NYT

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.

We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero.

We meet today to heal the divisions that have torn this country. For we are all one country and one American family, whether we are caring and thoughtful Democrats or hate-filled and war-crazed Republicans. We must bring together left and right, marinara and carbonara, John and Elizabeth Edwards. On United we stand, on US Airways, there’s a 25-minute delay.

Ladies and gentleman, I never expected to be speaking before you today. Like so many of our speakers at this convention, I come from a hard-working, middle-class family. I was leading a miserable little life, but, nevertheless, overcame great odds to live the American Dream. My great-grandfather fought in Patton’s Army, along with Barack Obama’s great-grand uncles’ fourth cousin once removed.

As a child, I was abandoned by my parents and lived with a colony of ants. We didn’t have much in the way of material possession, but we did have each other and the ability to carry far more than our own body weights. When I was young, I was temporarily paralyzed in a horrible anteater accident, but I never gave up my dream: the dream of speaking at a national political convention so my speech could be talked over by Wolf Blitzer and a gang of pundits.

And today we Democrats meet in Denver, a suburb of Boulder, a city whose motto is, “A Taxi? You Must be Dreaming.”

And in Denver, we Democrats showed America that we have cute daughters who will someday provide us with prestigious car-window stickers. We heard Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsement of “the weak-looking thin guy who’s bound to lose.”

We heard from Joe Biden, whose 643 years in the Senate make him uniquely qualified to talk to the middle class, whose family has been riding the Acela and before that the Metroliner for generations, who has been given a lifetime ban from the quiet car and who is himself a verbal train wreck waiting to happen.

We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life.

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country.

No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope!

For as Barack Obama suggested Thursday night, wherever there is a president who needs to tap our natural-gas reserves, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a need for a capital-gains readjustment for targeted small businesses, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a president committed to direct diplomacy with nuclear proliferators, I’ll be there, too! God bless the Democrats, and God Bless America!

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden."


17 comments:

  1. " Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

    Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd. The air of unease at the Democratic convention this week was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments -- bearing even fewer witnesses."
    -Charles Kruathammer

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  2. Welcome to the New Age America where the Vacuous enthralls the Ignorant.

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  3. Obama is as phony and as hollow as the plastic Ionic columns that stood behind him, metaphors for the empty vessels that lauded his nothingness. The speech was an epic reduction of dribble drizzled on an empty plate.

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  4. ...and if that is not bad enough, Wretchard's train wreck of a new website now features smiley faces. I guess he will paint one on his tip jar.

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  5. ht's are out also:
    I sent him that Vietnam Boat piece, no ht, no reply, odd.
    ---
    Hurricane Afghanistan - Michael Yon

    I sent this comment from Trish to steve @ threatswatch.org

    Trish said,
    "There was a meeting I guess a few days ago of us and the Pakistani general staff.
    Concerning the border.
    We're probably looking to create a buffer zone so we can proceed in Afghanistan.
    The next big thing
    ."

    Steve's reply:

    They met with Kiyani. Not with Mr. Benazir Bhutto, not with Nawaz, not with PM Gilani. President sent Petraeus, Mullen, etc for Kiyani. On an aircraft carrier in the Indian.
    Pak mil & para's have kicked it up a notch in the past week, and they met last week.

    Aside: Kiyani was put in charge of ISI under Musharraf. Incorrect to link him (via ISI) to Talib/AQ rise circa 2005-2007. Think of Kianai as Pak Intel's Porter Goss. And recall the success (cough) of porter goss purging Intel.

    Second aside: Note major Talib attacks in Afghan: First, US position last month, then French, now a Japanese killed. Look for a similar attack on Dutch/German forces.
    They are trying to wedge the coalition.
    A PSYOP on civilian leadership/public via ambush deaths. Trick in getting the Dutch or Germans is getting to them. They are so far removed from hot activity, the trek is 75% of Talib battle.

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  6. Sent him that too, we'll see what the Pajama Machine has in store.

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  7. Can't remember where I got these links:
    ---
    More Proof of Obama's Socialism. In 1996 he ran as member of New Party
    excerpt: [Obama won his State Senate seat as a member of the New Party, an extreme left wing group run by a former Jesse Jackson campaign manager. Its mind-blowing that Obama could have got to the top of the Democrat ticket without at least one wise man screening him.

    Well the Dems made this bed, now they must live with these shocking truths about the type of communist-like changes Obama would bring to the America.] New Party (USA)
    excerpt:
    [Some of these chapters — such as those in Chicago and Little Rock — had their main bases of support in the low-income community organizing group ACORN, along with some support from various labor unions (especially ACORN-allied locals of the Service Employees International Union).]

    ACORN's Nutty Regime for Cities ACORN — a Sixties radical group sponsored by George Soros commits election fraud
    ps:
    it really should be no mystery as to why Ayers of all people was the one to crack the champaign bottle over Obama's maiden voyage into the political waters..
    ---
    Michelle Obama Quotes Lines From Rules For Radicals In Her DNC Convention Speech.

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  8. Now that the finals of American Idol are over and the skinny guy with the big ears won, I guess we can watch the bloopers real to see all those stars sing off key...

    Nothing says redemption better than sheryl crow singing....

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  9. Michael Yon is always fixated about his expenses. He is the one who needs a tip jar.

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  10. Friday, August 29, 2008
    Not Credible
    Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 1:04 AM

    "Put aside all the theatrics of the night, however over the top. Obama sunk his own speech when he began to talk of how he would confront Russia and defeat al Qaeda.

    He doesn't have the qualifications to run a battalion, much less the entire military. No corporation would make Obama CEO, and few states would elect him governor on his resume. It is all talk, all wind.

    The idea of Obama defining American policy vis-a-vis Putin or Ahmadinejad is at best, deeply disturbing."

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  11. Barack Obama, Aspiring Commissar

    The station, WGN, has made a stream of the broadcast available online, here, and it has to be heard to be believed. Obama’s robotic legions dutifully jammed the station’s phone lines and inundated the program with emails, attacking Kurtz personally.

    Pressed by Rosenberg to specify what inaccuracies Kurtz was guilty of, caller after caller demurred, mulishly railing that “we just want it to stop,” and that criticism of Obama was
    just not what we want to hear as Americans.”
    Remarkably, as Obama sympathizers raced through their script, they echoed the campaign’s insistence that it was Rosenberg who was “lowering the standards of political discourse” by having Kurtz on, rather than the campaign by shouting him down.

    Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling
    for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation.
    Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.

    Obama's skewer-the-messenger strategy ( Saul Alinsky taught tactics for Community Activists )

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  12. The conventional wisdom is we don't know this guy.

    The truth, imo, is we know him better than most candidates.
    (thanks to his books, which can be parsed, and his openly anti-American associates)

    It's just that the Dems and MSM do not acknowledge most of what we know to be true, given that it is almost all bad.

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  13. Being There, The Jerk, The Big Lebowski, and Strangelove, 4 of my favorites.

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  14. Life imitates art for Duchovny

    LOS ANGELES — David Duchovny has entered a rehabilitation facility for sex addiction.

    In a statement released yesterday by his lawyer, Stanton Stein, the actor said he did so voluntarily, adding: "I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family."

    Duchovny, 48, plays a sex-obsessed character on the Showtime Series "Californication."
    The show's second season begins Sept. 28.

    The actor appeared in the film "The X Files: I Want to Believe" earlier this summer. He has been married to actress Tea Leoni since 1997. They have two children.

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  15. Doug, your comment from a previous post caught my attention. I threw up a clip that catches the essence of your point. I cannot find it but it related to you speculating about the feeling of Jews over the Obama outdoor political spectacle.

    I apologize for throwing up two similar threads but I will bump up the one that garners the comments.

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  16. Leaving Invesco Field at Mile High as confetti was still falling and the crowd still cheering, Maui delegates to the Democratic National Convention said they were pleased with and proud of presidential nominee Barack Obama in his acceptance speech Thursday night.

    "I think he did an amazing job. . . . Incredible," said Wailuku resident Kari Luna, who is also the vice chairwoman of the Hawaii State Democratic Party. "(It was) just exactly what America and the voters needed to hear to make their decision for those who are undecided."

    Luna, interviewed in a phone call minutes after Obama completed his speech, said that while Republican nominee John McCain offers rhetoric and theory, Obama in his speech laid out what he's going to do "to make it better" for everyone in America.

    "I think he hit the right note," said Wailuku attorney Gil Keith-Agaran, who was an alternate delegate.

    Keith-Agaran said Obama touched upon many things in his speech, answering the cynics on his promise of hope and change as well as emphasizing that the campaign involves all Americans.

    Keith-Agaran's wife, Kallie, who was a pledged Obama delegate, called her time at the convention an "experience of a lifetime."

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  17. german complaints on how they were treated in WWII kinda coincides with their hope of BO being elected. I can imagine him being sympathetic to their grievances and so could they.

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