Thursday night thoughts
Lindsay Graham did well to remind us of how wrong Obama was on the surge, how close some of the Congressional votes were, and how right John McCain was. But Graham is incorrect when he says that Obama has never acknowledged that the surge was a success. He did, but far too late to have done any good, after he fought against it and then denied it for so long.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Palin’s husband is very hunky. And Alaska is even more photogenic than the Palin family, which is saying a lot.
Did Cindy McCain marry a guy like her father? Dad was a fighter pilot who was shot down in WWII.
Cindy herself has a few facts in her bio that surprised me: she’s a pilot as well, and a pretty good auto mechanic.
All the iffy parts (for example, the fact that John was still in a troubled marriage when he and Cindy first met) are of course left out of the bio, which after all is a promo.
Cindy McCain gets points for the color of her suit, but not the style. She’s got a model-like figure; why hide it?
Every time they show a clip of McCain’s mother sitting in the crowd, I’m amazed anew that the oldest guy on earth has a living mother. Plus, she looks good, with chiseled features not unlike wife Cindy.
This is a very Western ticket. Even that word “maverick,” that we’re hearing so often, is Western.
No matter how many times I see that footage of McCain as a young wounded POW it never stops being moving.
“The stars are aligned, change will come?” I know, I know, it’s a riff on Obama, but I don’t think it works.
McCain speaking. Oh no, what’s up with the awful green background? Not again!
Wow, some kind words for President Bush, the man who isn’t there.
McCain’s mother stands. Unbelievably vigorous at ninety-six.
Camera pans away from McCain, and that green background is revealed as some sort of huge photo of a field of corn. Or a field of something.
Thank goodness—they just switched it to plain blue. Someone’s on the ball with this.
McCain ad-libs (as a demonstrator is removed)? You see for a moment how much better he is off the cuff than in a prepared speech.
Introduces Sarah, who stands and waves. Oh-oh, might the cleavage question that so bedeviled Hillary might be arising once again?
McCain is like a proud papa when he talks about Palin. He seems more energized, too.
Showing, not telling, his ability to criticize his own party by mentioning that some Republicans lost the trust of the American people by being corrupt. “We’re going to change that,” and “the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, is going to get back to basics!” Roosevelt? Teddy, that is.
Here comes the obligatory laundry list.
Drill, drill, drill. Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without nuclear power—but Americans know better than that. Touche.
“Americans lead.”
Bipartisanship: “I have that record, and the scars to prove it. Senator obama does not.” The scars, in this case, are metaphorical. But the phrase can’t help but remind us of his literal scars.
“I was blessed by misfortune.” Great line, and his voice sounds emotional and sincere as he describes what happened to him when he was captured, and the deep changes within that it wreaked.
We understand why “country first” isn’t just a facile campaign slogan for him.
“Fight with me,” is another excellent line. He has set himself up as a fighter, but now he makes it clear he’s not a divisive one.
McCain is not known for his oratory, and this certainly won’t change that. But the emotion built and it was a strong finish.
Oh, goodie! The balloons descend!
Chris Matthews calls McCain’s castigation of his own party a “brilliant move.”
Bill Kristol points out that McCain is now soft-peddling experience and emphasizing being fighters, something he and Palin share.
The heckler was beyond annoying, disrupting free speech IS NOT free speech! My Atheist buddies, I was in chat room with the TV in the background, thought it was cute and funny; half of them not all. I had to remind them how shameful it is that their disdain of liberalism and complacency of militant Islamism is beyond contemptible, and how self-betraying and cowardly it is, again some — not all. I was watching on MSNBC for the fun-to-watch Olbermann-squirm factor yet again, he compared the convention to a “Chucky Cheese” at one point, and made several remarks about imperfect annunciation (É™-nÅn’sÄ“-Ä’shÉ™n). The lil’ creep reminds me of the album cover of “Oh No, It’s Devo!”
One thing McCain did well was to show how he can be a maverick and at the same time a team player, that is, not alientate his conservative base. It was remarkable.
Man that was a dreadful speech. The only exciting part was when those protesters crashed the party. That was funny as hell. Seriously, the only chance the GOP has now is the Bradley effect, particularly if the race is within ten points. I have no doubt a couple of states that look comfortably blue now are actually more purple than they appear considering how racist this country is and has always been.
I really feel for you guys on the other side, a feeble, geriatric candidate with bad teeth who can barely read from the teleprompter in front of him against a young, vibrant and charismatic rock star with a megawatt smile. I suppose it explains why there was all this forced excitement over Palin’s screed last night. I find it funny how hard the GOP sought to belittle Obama’s magnetic appeal with people before the Palin pick, and now they go on and on about how Palin is “our Obama.” Unbelievable. Just shows how envious the so-cons were and continue to be of “Lord Obama.”
I really feel for you guys on the other side, a feeble, geriatric candidate with bad teeth
His good teeth were left on the floor of a bloody cell in Hanoi.
Regardless – it is an entirely different race than 1 week ago.
Whether his teeth were a casualty of his time as a POW or not, you’d think that if his wife can afford the $280,000 earrings she wore tonight, then she could certainly afford a dentist to provide him with caps that look better than that. How the GOP can rip into “Lord Obama” for being an elitist when their nominee’s wife is wearing the value of a fine suburban home on her earlobes is yet another example of the hypocrisy that has infected their party. Hypocrites!
Nick!, does your mother know you are on the computer?
There are too many Nicks in our country.
We’re getting extermely decadant … which means that the nation is hurtlng toward a calamty before things reset.
fyi: According to one commentator, that “awful green background” was courtesy of a photo of the grass (the lawn variety) at my former middle school–Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. The convention planners should keep off of it.
Cindy McCain gets points for the color of her suit, but not the style. She’s got a model-like figure; why hide it?
It would look a bit awkward with her on the stage with her adopted sons and daughters, wouldn’t it?
Nick, don’t become an enemy of humanity by attacking Cindy’s efforts to raise up individual human beings from low to high. If you do, watch your back. People like you can survive by sacrificing others, like the Vietnamese, only for so long before such things catch up to you.
Concerning McCain’s conciliatory message to Obama and Biden, Leftists like Nick only sees that as weakness, just like Arabs do.
And for Palin and criticisms against Obama and Biden? Well, that certainly must be stopped via lies and deception.
Nick, hypocrites aren’t necessarily wealthy people, who came about their money quite honestly, and enjoy diversity and dressing nicely, rather than perpetually drab pink. Don’t forget the legions of people who are employed and families supported by markets created by the fashion industry, ie. miners of gemstones, and jewlers, pearl divers, ad infinitum. Personally I’m glad everyone isn’t uniformly poor, just wearing Mao suits or some other black or brown party uniform… Hypocrites are people who deal in double standards, ie. when Oprah Winfrey, or Barbara Streisand, or any number of ladies representing the Kennedy clan, or the famous Hollywood left don their finest for a special occasion, what do you call that? That’s why it’s you Nicky, maybe projecting, who is in fact the supreme hypocrite, a bonafide Obamadork… Enjoy sonny!
Darrell:
Getting to you am I? Just take it brother, that’s the least you can do for all the horrors your side has inflicted on this country over the last two cycles. At any rate, one thing I do like about that sleep-inducing speech he made tonight was his decision not to engage in too many personal attacks on his opponent. The fact that he chose to refrain from this in his speech proves either one of two things. His polling indicates that the snarling condescension from Giuliani and Palin aren’t tracking too well, or he simply decided to reject the advice of Steve Schmidt and company who most certainly had them at the ready to include in his address.
Look I know how difficult this is for you guys on the other side. Believe me, I remember the eighties, when Reagan was killing us with that avuncular style of his and that effortless teleprompter-driven delivery he had honed from decades in Hollywood. Well we have a monopoly on that now, not to mention a guy who’s far more cosmopolitan and actually writes his own speeches for a change. We have the advantage for this cycle and likely the next, and you’ll just have to learn to live with it, as we did 20 years ago. I have no doubt that the pendulum will swing your way once more in ’16 or ’22, but for now, just take it. Trust me, it’ll go down easier that way.
McCain did two things right, as I am currently listening to him.
McCain contested the Left using their own terms. The Left are full of fake liberals but the Left likes to call themselves progressives and liberals. They are fake progressives and fake liberals and vicious fakes at that.
They want to claim certain terms, positions, and what not as their default bases. Destroy those bases and take it away from them. Don’t let them build up an army there.
The second thing McCain did was to make an explicit threat to members of Congress that he will use the power of the Presidency to expose them to public opinion and get them un-elected.
Bush never did this. Bush was always looking out for members of Congress. That’s why the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats walked ALL over him, Neo. Over and over. Obstruction after obstruction. Why not attack? Bush ain’t going to do anything to them any ways.
Tom Daschle got taken out by his own state, without one direct or indirect action by Bush to support that cause. How pathetic is that?
Just take it brother, that’s the least you can do for all the horrors your side has inflicted on this country over the last two cycles.
When you guys stop producing slaves, chaining them, buying them, and selling them, then you can talk about this country.
Trust me, it’ll go down easier that way.
You want us to give up like in Vietnam and what you said was best for people in Iraq.
A convenient way to execute all the POWs, when there is no threat of retribution from a side that has just surrendered.
No, it is not about “trust me”. It is about this: we will not surrender to enemies that have no honor nor mercy.
Here’s where little Nicky, representin’ the truly geriatric left/libs of the country, is coming from:
Believe me, I remember the eighties, when Reagan was killing us with that avuncular style of his and that effortless teleprompter-driven delivery he had honed from decades in Hollywood. Well we have a monopoly on that now,…
Ooh, I don’t think so. Nicky’s Obama had four years on the national stage, two years of doing nothing but run for President, months leading up to a climactic speech in front of faux Greek columns in a sports stadium to accept his Presidential nomination — then Sarah Palin came out of Alaska four days ago and made a speech accepting the Vice-Presidential nomination, and nearly outdrew his television audience (despite being carried on just a little more than half his networks). So you can see what Nicky and his ilk are so frightened of. Just keep whistling, though, Nick.
I wonder what the average guy in Haitti thinks about our people describing the past 8 years in the U.S. as economically horrible?
Theres a little part of me willing to tolerate horrible economic times, just for the satisfaction of seeing every childish democrat beg for an adult conservative to be in power.
This is a must see program on Obama’s Marxist plan for the US. Glenn Beck on CNN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd-JeeNcTig
Before you get too smug Nicky,you might want to take a stroll thru some of the PUMA blogs like The Confluence, Reclusive Leftist, Count us out and Shakesville…The Hillary people are just livid at the way they and their candidate were robbed by the machinations of the corrupt Chicago style political machine behind the Messiah…And they think Sara is just fine……
Glad to see you’re still in the driver’s seat. ‘Tis the season for beating a lame elephant.
Nick, your not getting to me at all, I just get this visual of a 14 year old when I read your comments, cant help it.
That Nick certainly adds quite a bit to the discourse. Fortunately we have a mop and disinfectant.
I just couldn’t help thinking Bob Dole the whole time. The awkward and beaten body was so noticeable every time he moved.
Clinton beat two war heroes on what? Youth and speaking skills? I’m just seeing a rerun here. Sorry.
Goodness, Nick. Do tell us about the “horrors.”
My kids watch this Disney show called Wizards of Waverly Place. In one episode, the two main teenage characters accidentally end up in a horror movie in which a psycho is chasing a bunch of screaming sorority girls all over the place. The psycho is – no offense intended to the stature-limited – about four feet tall, wearing a black “I-Am-Death” robe and a translucent mask, and carrying… a hair dryer. Is this the kind of “horror” the last eight years has inflicted on you? Because the last widespread horror I recall was when I was eight months pregnant and whimpering on the couch, watching the second tower fall.
I sure wish people would look up the words they use, just to make sure.
When it comes to describing the clothes of the Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin, did you notice they were very much cut in the same style? A style I think was designed to cleverly conceal their bullet proof vests. You might have noticed a certain flatness across the back.
Son, Obama’s speeches are written by Ja team of speechwriters, headed by Jon Favreau.
But in cognizance of your intellectual gifts, we’ve set aside Wednesday, November 5, for you to avoid the lines when you cast your ballot.
One thing I really like about John McCain is that he chooses tough women who are not afraid to look good — the feminism I fought for, not the malodorous post-modern variety that’s in fashion.
Speaking of fashion: As for Cindy McCain’s earrings and general appearance, Cindy McCain may have done more for humanity as a private citizen this year alone than those earrings. I say she’s earned them. Think what she will be able to do when she can speak from the bully pulpit!
And, Nick, before you go there: Yes, Cindy McCain was broken, too. Pain will do that. I teared up last night to hear him say it, and the shame with which he said it. You will never understand why that makes me respect them even more. My vote is decided, and the pacifier wing of the American electorate can go hang.
Hey speaking of hypocrites, anybody see Rove, O’Reilly, Dick Morris and others get totally nailed on the “VP experience,” “teen pregnancy” and “gender bias” issues.
Delicious.
“We’re getting extermely decadant … which means that the nation is hurtlng toward a calamty before things reset.”
And when the reset comes I am hoping it will be no worse than the Great Depression, but alas I suspect that it will.
A friend of mine once told me that change does not happen until the pain becomes great enough…a truth I have experienced this truth in my personal life.
I believe that a really big change is coming in the not-to-distant future.
Hey Nick,
I too am curious about the ‘horrors’, what are they?
Are you familiar with the old story, the princess and the pea? Well that’s pretty much what you sound like, the princess who has had it so easy, that a pea under 30 mattresses can spoil her sleep as she is so sensitive having never actually experienced real hardship. Younglings like you tend to think that turning the childhood that was better than most childhoods in history, into some horror for status, is actually living hardship.
I had this long post but I deleted it. there is so much to teach nick that it would take so long that everyone would hate me.
I will instead just skip to something. results
I orignallly brought up the war in iraq, and I know that nick thinks that the ending of the war in Vietnam was good. as he would love to have us never in iraq, or run away, just as in Vietnam.
I had paragraphs from a document on the practices at the Hanoi Hilton, but realized that in nicks life, those things are made up horrors from mocies and cant be real.
Nick doestn really know real horrors, and that is evident in that he can equate disparate things as being similar. There was nothing in the past 8 years that reflected any of the horrors of the past 100. however, nick cant see that or understand that.
Whats worse is that nick and his ilk are the instigators of a lot of that misery.
I will just leave you an example nick and then ask what your real values are.
Are your values that the horrors that man does to man should stop? (I presume yes).
Are your values that as long as its not you doing the horrors, you don’t care what others do to other people? (you would say no, but your actions say yes).
Nick certainly knows how to blindly run to a political system that has accomplished the worst mass horrors in the entire history of mankind, but he doesn’t pay at all attention to those who lived it and were willing to die to get away from it, or even to never experience it.
As a guard said at Hanoi Hilton: “Dying is easy, we will show you how hard it is to live”
You want us to pull out of iraq, as we did in Vietnam. Which means that you think that pulling out of Vietnam was the right thing. why?
Remember my two questions above. if someone was beating on someone and killing someone, do you interfere with that? if a state intends to do that to thousands of people or is already doing that, do you walk away?
Well, you guys walked away. all you cared about was some kind of statement that ended up being meaningless other than as an example that if you push hard enough you can make America hurt itself, and abandon others to murder, torture, starvation, and so forth. even worse, you abandon the average person to that.
Do you remember the Vietnamese boat people?
Well after we left, the communists swarmed in. you know, the people who have the same kind of government your working to have!!! 1 million people were then imprisoned without any formal charges (why does that no bother you?). 200,000 were sent to re-education camps (gulags).
I want you to take a good hard look at this photo:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Boat_people_family.gif
the woman and the three kids, abandoned by the US government to the communists, got on a boat and tried to sail away to some other place. yes, she knew what was coming more than you do, and so she left. she was rescued by an American navy ship.
Thousands more died at sea…
Here is another boat person you don’t care about:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vietnamkrieg_Bootsfl%C3%BCchtling_1980.jpg
But the REAL HORRORS didn’t stop there… no.. the Vietnamese then ran into Cambodia. America having just pulled out of Vietnam and gave up on protecting people like that woman and children above, couldn’t protect the Cambodians. After all, once we left, they were free to do what they want.
That resulted in Cambodian boat people….
But even worse… the American left, but removing the forces, are directly responsible for the khmer rouges killing fields. Just as the actions of America in wwii meant that many more jews would tno be exterminated, the abandoning protecting the weaker people meant that there was no one to stop the racist deaths that would come as the Cambodians exterminated the Chinese (till the communist military came in).
countries that accepted most of the Vietnamese refugees were:
– United States – 823,000
– Australia and Canada – 137,000 each
– France – 96,000
– Germany and UK – 19,000 each
50,000 americans died in Vietnam, and we got a million people to replace them from what happned after.
These are people displaced from homes that made it to a nice place. more than 4 million died of various reasons spanning torture, worked to death, murder, dying at sea, and even evidence that some were used as science experiments.
And the killing fields… do you know about them? probably not much, or something revisionist.
At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge[1] (while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million).
Look aroudn you… now imagine that one third to one half of everyone you see were murdered within 4 years by the government. a leftist collectivist governmetn like your working to create here thinking they are so nice. never asking yourself, what do you lose if your wrong.
I wonder if you would have survived… do you wear glasses? Can you read? Did you go at all to college?
Did you ever do something for money? Mowing a lawn, babysitting, etc? well you would have been forced to confess your crimes against socialism, and communism, and perhaps be worked to death.
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.
Here is a photo of childrens bones from those who were killed..
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Killing_fields_bones.jpg
you see, even if you didn’t meat any of those things above, if either of your parents did, you got wasted too.
the thing is that your so sure of what you think you know, you are going to help create hell on earth. as every utopian thing has ever become. You think the US is bad, but I will say something about that.
russia built a wall between east and west germany… and people risked their lives to get over it to get out. they went to extremes. Through the sewers, jumping off of buildings, even soldiers running for the fence, hang gliding and a hot air balloon.
America is building a wall too, except everyone wants to climb it to get in.
Everyone except idiots like nick that think its so bad, but not bad enough to leave to a country that already practices what he wants.
I would suggest that nick first go live in venezuela, that way he can see how things change once the kinds of people he likes gets the power that they crave.
People are being rationed food now… and children are starving and malnourished as never before… its becoming much like the soviet union, and cuba.
Anyway.. nick will not realize that he is the enemy of the party he supports.
He thinks he will get more by siding with them, but in every case, under socialism, we all get less and less and less till we are all in poverty… except the state people.. they get to live like middle class americans do now.
He and others will have to find out the hard way… I hope that that’s after I die of old age as my family has experienced these people first hand over several generations.
That was the SHORT post?!! 🙂
I just couldn’t help thinking Bob Dole the whole time. The awkward and beaten body was so noticeable every time he moved.
Yeah, serving your country can be hell on you physically: my knees are shot and I’ve had surgery on my legs to strip out veins. I look like hell in shorts now…. Crap, I’m only 40….
Bob Dole got shot up in a pivotal battle of WWII. Lots of young guys out there are in worse shape….
McCain could have stayed pretty like Biden if he had taken 5 deferments out of Vietnam and gotten some chia-pet hair.
Having never served your country, or anything greater than your own appetites, I imagine you are still in wonderful shape….
No, Nick, I feel sorry for YOU. Because once again, you are going to be blindsided when your candidate loses.You will stomp your feet, whine and cry about how the election was stolen, just like you have in the past. And the election wasn’t stolen. Your candidate lost because they could not appeal to the voters you despise. It’s too bad. Most people in this country understand that they are hiring someone to do a job. And once they’ve made that choice, they move on with their lives. But for some of you, this is a substitute for religion. You seem to have this need to force people to agree with you. That’s why you are posting on this blog today, just like the posts I’ve seen on similar blogs. You are going to be taught a hard lesson, that Americans find John McCain and Sarah Palin to be more like them and more trustworthy to govern this country. You are also going to be shocked to learn that the Democratic party is running conservatives in southern states. When they win, the party character is going to shift, and you will find yourself out on the fringes again.
I can understand the joy of black people, in seeing one of their own being considered for this high office. I just wish they’d put that trust in someone with better experience or character. It’s one thing to say that you want to bring about change. The problem is that the only way to make that change happen is to work with people that you disagree with. And that is why McCain will be elected. It may not be popular with the Republicans, but he has proven that he will work with anyone to get the job done.
“Having never served your country, or anything greater than your own appetites, I imagine you are still in wonderful shape….”
To be fair, I kinda agree with Kungfu and I certainly do not intend that to be a slam. I rarely pay attention to names on posts (I find it causes quite a bit of pre-judgement and I would rather read it otherwise) so I do not know if this person would normally mean it as a slam or not.
I don’t think McCain was *that* awkward – Dole certainly was. I don’t know how much I agree that this influenced the election very much – both Dole and Bush Sr. ran some bad campaigns that seemed to just assume that they would win.
However I do VERY strongly agree with “Clinton beat two war heroes on what? Youth and speaking skills? I’m just seeing a rerun here. Sorry.”. Clinton had, and still has, nothing outside of his speaking skills (he no longer has youth). Of course he didn’t really *do* anything either so I guess that wasn’t that big a deal.
Are we seeing a rerun? At least on the lefts side I agree, though Obama is no where near the speaker Clinton was/is. I don’t think so on the right – McCain is running a different campaign and Palin changes things quite a bit. Amusingly enough the Obama camp not only allowed that comparison to be made but helped it along – they have a hard rode ahead of them now to convince people it is not McCain/Palin as a whole vs Obama with just himself. I can assure you that Clinton would have *never* made that mistake.
I just watched Obama’s acceptance speech this morning. I was struck with the contrast between it and McCain’s. I’d heard, of course, that McCain’s setting was being changed to give a more intimate character, to play up the phony-Greek-column thing, but the speeches themselves were so different – Obama’s so highfalutin’ in places, so focused on McCain’s supposed similarities to Bush and his “other” “failures” in others, McCain’s so intensely personal, so much a call for all Americans to rejoice in their country and to recommit to its welfare (and by doing so, to recommit to their own).
Naturally I’m biased. (Does it show?) But Obama’s speech left me cold and with the sense that Obama was “running against” rather than “running for“; McCain’s, in spite of his less-effective delivery, made me feel glad to have the right to vote and glad (to my surprise, since I wasn’t a big fan of his in primary season) to have the chance to vote for McCain.