Category Archives: Scribbles

Let My Sarah Go

Posted on September 28, 2008 | Comments Off on Let My Sarah Go

Just once I’d like to see a presidential/vice presidential candidate with the guts not to defer to the nitwit talking heads. Why not turn the tables on schoolmarm Gibson looking bored over his reading glasses or Couric-the-shrew who argues rather than interviews? Respond to their juvenile gotcha games with some of your own, as in Mark Steyn’s humorous example? Sarah would be the perfect one to start it.

It’s probable that the first "debate"’s low viewership (apparently smaller than Bush-Kerry in ’04) is due to its being held on a Friday night, when people have better things to do than watch the boobtube. But it could also be that people are finally fed up with seeing candidates for the most powerful office in the world defering to biased, blow-dried "journalists," as though these overpaid, supercillious twits were the ones with their fingers on the red buttons. Show some guts, people!

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Barry another Adlai Stevenson?

Posted on September 28, 2008 | Comments Off on Barry another Adlai Stevenson?

Here’s a take on the first debate that resonates, though the bogus polls already are giving Barry the win:

"Obama lost because he comes across as a smug, arrogant, self-important, smart ass. His style is condescending constantly pointing fingers, frequently raising his fingers to eye level, jabbing constantly, make’s one feel he’s lecturing us – because he thinks he is smarter than us all."

Unfortunately, you could also say that Mac was condescending, with his words, if not his fingers. But it could be that Barry is another Stevenson, whose loss to Eisenhower (twice) often is credited to his professorial, smarter-than-you style. Too bad there were no "debates" in those days to compare.

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The Dems’ oinky rescue

Posted on September 27, 2008 | Comments Off on The Dems’ oinky rescue

Why the GOP is holding out on the latest buyout/bailout bill: It’s loaded with pork, such as:

"Rather than returning any profits made in the long-term from the economic rescue package, Democrats want to first reward their radical allies at ACORN for their (often illegal) help in getting Democrats elected to office."

Other beneficiaries on the Dem Christmas Tree: trial lawyers, D.C. labor bosses, mortgage industry shills.

UPDATE: Sunday morning, the GOP seems to have succeeded in quashing the pork, but the pending bill is still verbal, has not been committed to paper yet. Looks, however, that ACORN is definitely out of the bill. No word yet on the other Dem ornaments on the Christmas tree.

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Paul Newman, R.I.P.

Posted on September 27, 2008 | Comments Off on Paul Newman, R.I.P.

His movies seem dated to me now. Like me, I suppose. We’ve used his salad dressing for years. The jokes on the labels were some of the first that Mr. B. could read, and he insists on buying more whenever we shop for groceries. I also liked his wife. Didn’t everyone?

MORE:  I used to write obits, but I would never have attempted a movie star. This one is good.

UPDATE:  Glad I missed this aspect of him, however: "President Jimmy Carter appointed him as his delegate to nuclear disarmament talks at the United Nations…In 1995, Newman bought a controlling interest in The Nation, a liberal political journal, and even began writing for it occasionally….Newman is also on the board of Cease Fire, a gun control group funded by prominent celebrities…."

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Obituaries, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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McCain won, I think

Posted on September 27, 2008 | Comments Off on McCain won, I think

I didn’t watch much of it live. I have seen several clips, and I followed some of the live-blogging, and read the conclusions of others–some of whom thought that, while Barry may not have won, he didn’t lose, either. Mr. B.’s mom, whose job it is to watch such things, thought it was a tie. She thought Mac won on content but Barry won on style. Style. Like an Olympic gymnast. Sigh. In some of the clips I saw, he was clearly irritated. I thought it was Mac who was supposed to have the temper?

All in all, I don’t think any of these "debates," are very meaningful, since the participants seldom say anything imaginative. Just their stump speech points. Nor do I think they have much impact on the elections. On the Big Media and the soundbite collections, sure, but how many people do they persuade? I think Biden and Palin will be more fun to watch and I won’t miss that one.

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The bogus polls

Posted on September 26, 2008 | Comments Off on The bogus polls

Hard as it may be to do, these last few weeks of the presidential election are the time to ignore the polls. Many of them will be phony from here on out, as the polling companies weight their results on the Dem side to satisfy their clients, usually partisan-Dem Big Media.

If mystery-man Barry somehow proves more compelling than "reporting-for-duty" Kerry did in 2004, and the turnout on election day is wholly different (packed, for instance, with bright-eyed Dem youth), then the polls might be meaningful. Otherwise, there’ll be a repeat of 2004, when the polls showed right up until election day that Kerry was going to take it. Then he lost by three million votes. There’s already some indication that Barry could lose by a lot more.

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Dems use bailout for radical pork

Posted on September 26, 2008 | Comments Off on Dems use bailout for radical pork

I had a suspicion the Dems would want to prolong the economic agony as a way to help their presidential candidate. When the economy falters, as the saying goes, the voters turn to the party out of power. Hence liberal Big Media’s partisan assertion all year that we are in a recession, despite the lack of statistical evidence for it.

But it never occurred to me the Dems were so cynical as to try to use the bailout bill to benefit the very groups whose radical missions (in pursuing no-money-down minority housing loans) helped create the mess. No, not Freddie and Fannie, but La Raza, ACORN, and the Urban League.

The Seablogger calls it "a kind of creeping civil war, conducted through politics, in accordance with revolutionary theory," which Mac probably knew about and was determined to thwart when he pulled his return-to-the-Capitol-to-look-presidential stunt. Presidential politics has always been fierce, and 2008 seems especially so, though I suppose if we’d lived in the 1850s, in the runup to the real, shooting Civil War, we might think this was all pretty tame.

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