CHRIS MATTHEWS: Obama “Carteresque.”
Archive for 2009
November 22, 2009
A BUNCH OF interesting food links.
SAVING JFK.
Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:
“The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”
Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”
But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”
The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.
I don’t understand that, but then I never got the Bush- or Clinton-hatred either.
Related: Ed Driscoll: Just NBC The PDS!
HEY, MAYBE I SHOULD ANNOUNCE FOR Tennessee’s 29th Congressional District.
UPDATE: Reader Jeff Bangle writes: “I fully support your bid for office in Tennessee’s 29th Congressional District. I have maintained a virtual residence in this District for several parsecs, ever since moving there from Kessel. If you can get your name on the ballot, I promise to donate the maximum number of quatloos allowed by law to your campaign.” The momentum is building. Steamroller, baby!
I LINK TO JERRY POURNELLE’S SITE FROM TIME TO TIME, and if you like his stuff you might consider donating or subscribing.
ED DRISCOLL: All The News That’s Fit To Bury.
MORE ON CLIMATEGATE in the London Times: “Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.”
JEEZ, IT REALLY IS THE CARTER ERA ALL OVER AGAIN: Three Mile Island radiation leak investigated.
SHOCKINGLY, people with guns do better against pirates. But often get shafted in the press.
GEORGE WILL: Awash In Fossil Fuels.
STEPHEN GREEN: The Week In Blogs.
THE BEST BOOK COVERS OF 2009.
MODERN PARENTING: Local dad spoke only Klingon to child for three years. “Does the fact that Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics explain anything — or excuse anything — here?”
2009 HURRICANE SEASON a bust. You know, after Katrina they promised that global warming would be bringing us more and more super-hurricanes.
UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:
It should not pass unstated that the predictions you allude to of increasing strength and frequency of Caribbean hurricanes were based on models. These models were based in part on data acquired by the CRU and others, but are based and rely to an even greater extent on a host of other assumptions. It is one thing to model global mean temperature; it’s quite another, and more complicated matter, to mathematically model planetary climate, as distinct from weather, over long periods of time. It’s been claims regarding the later which have driven the political and policy disputes surrounding these issues. If current models have difficulty predicting or explaining the progress of global mean temperature, why should anyone have confidence in models that claim to be predictive of the more complicated system of planetary climate? This is very much the stake in “Climategate”.
Indeed.
LONDON TIMES: Barack Obama dream fades as China visit fails to bring change: Even his allies feel let down by the president’s lack of progress both in Asia and at home. “Obama’s Asian adventure perceptibly increased the murmurings of dissent when he returned to Washington last week, having failed to wring any public concessions from China on any major issue.”
Well, he brought about some change: A funny skit on Saturday Night Live.
MAUREEN DOWD: If only Obama were more like Sarah Palin. “The animating spirit that electrified his political movement has sputtered out. . . . Like Reagan, Obama is a detached loner with a strong, savvy wife. But unlike Reagan, he doesn’t have the acting skills to project concern about what’s happening to people.”
I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that’s over, and they’re stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there’s not much there to fill out the suit. As Ann Althouse says, “I think what Obama seems to have become, he always was.”
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY of crisis opportunism.
POLITICAL ADVICE FROM ROBERT HEINLEIN:
Your object… is to win elections, not arguments. If you will always remember that, you can’t go far wrong.
The second thing to remember is that elections are won with votes; those votes are out in the precincts, not down in the politico-financial district, not in political clubs, not at political rallies.
The third thing to remember is that a vote for your side never becomes a reality unless you see to it that the holder thereof gets down to the polls and casts it. This should be printed in red ink and set off with flashing lights.
The fourth thing to remember is not to waste time arguing with a hard case. In the years I have spent in politics I cannot honestly say that I recall ever having persuaded anyone to change his mind about how he was going to vote on an issue or for a candidate if he had already made up his mind when I approached him. Yet I know that I have influenced and sometimes changed the outcome of elections through my own efforts.
It’s good advice, and his book, Take Back Your Government, is still pretty good. The technology is obsolete — though not as much as you might think — but the basic approach is still good.
SEX ADVICE from Dungeons and Dragons players.