…shouldn’t throw stones.
But sometimes they do, and this is what they get in response:
The Obama campaign must think they had a winner, casting McCain’s remark that he didn’t know how many houses he owns as evidence he doesn’t understand working Americans. Continue reading →
Wow. I didn’t know you could buy babies at the Farmer’s Market (see paragraph two).
Obama’s purchase of biscuits, zucchini bread, pound cake, bread, tomatoes and peaches makes him a health-food nut compared to earlier Presidents.
We all are familiar with chow hound Bill Clinton. But do you recall the partician Bush Senior’s difficult-to-believe (and to stomach) predilection for pork rinds? Reagan liked jelly beans, and Nixon’s comfort food was cottage cheese mixed with ketchup. Yuk.
They were called “novelty songs,” although I didn’t know it at the time. They occupied a special niche that doesn’t seem to exist anymore in this far less innocent age: a nonsensical bubble-gum type of music/lyrics, meant mostly to amuse in the lightest of ways. They were silly even back when they first came out, in the 50s and early 60s of my youth.
Here are the ones I remember best (and believe me, they’re memorable—good for an earworm or two, or perhaps three or four): Continue reading →
Blogger Baldilocks has a fascinating story on her own. But it’s even more fascinating these days because it runs roughly parallel for a while to that of none other than Senator Obama, although it then veers off rather dramatically from his.
Please take a look at this LA Times interview with Baldilocks, aka Juliette Ochieng. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite: Continue reading →
I hereby object to the obvious pulchritudinous inequities of the Olympian sport of beach volleyball.
To wit: why is it that the women’s torsos are relatively unclad while the men’s are coyly covered in tank tops? Continue reading →
As Norman Podhoretz points out in his essay “If Orwell Were Alive Today” (written in 1983), the highly regarded political writer George Orwell was often misguided in his specific predictions about the future. He also was wedded to socialism his entire life, once he converted to it at the age of thirty, although his life didn’t last that much longer (he died at forty-six).
Orwell was, however, such a keen observer of the political side of humankind and especially the danger of totalitarianism, that many other “isms” (including Podhoretz’s own neoconservatism) believe that, had Orwell lived long enough, he surely would have come round to their point of view. Continue reading →
Joe Lieberman is poised to be this year’s Zell Miller.
I loved Zell’s fiery speech at the 2004 Republican convention. Lieberman is considerably less colorful (as are most people). But I’m looking forward to his address anyway. However, I’m going to go out on a limb right now to say that LIeberman won’t be McCain’s VP choice, although I haven’t a clue who it will be. Continue reading →
…need to read it.
You might also want to send a link to your friends who support Obama and see what they have to say about it.
I’ve noticed that in conversation and interviews, Obama seems to have a perpetual head tilt (mostly to the right), both when he listens and when he talks:
It is so pronounced that it was present during virtually his entire Saddleback interview. Continue reading →
Used to be people stayed put and didn’t venture onto mountains unless they were an especially hardy breed of adventurer—or goatherders or sherpas or Heidi.
But somewhere during the 80s and 90s, perhaps due in part to the growing popularity of indoor rock climbing gyms, more and more daytrippers began venturing unprepared where they should be fearing to tread.
New England has its share of peaks, and although it lacks an Everest it does have one that calls most seductively to the foolish: Mt. Washington. The weather down below can seem benign, and the mountain doesn’t look all that high or dangerous—after all, it’s only 6288 feet, and there’s an auto road, for goodness’ sake. How bad could it be?
Very, very bad. Continue reading →
I watched about twenty-five minutes of the Saddleback interviews with Obama and McCain, and although I’m hardly an objective viewer, and it was only a “snippet” (to use one of Obama’s favorite words) of the whole, my perception is that McCain came across better than Obama.
It seemed that McCain was believable, direct, understandable and intelligent, whereas Obama was rambling and confusing, slick and wordy. McCain’s answers—whether one agrees with him or not—dealt with weightier issues than Obama, whose responses appeared to evaporate almost on hearing.
Obama sounded almost as airy as a Miss America contestant when he named his wife and grandmother as two of the three wise people whose counsel he would seek as Chief Executive (the third was his very typically “nuanced” refusal to choose a third). Continue reading →
It’s official: neo-neocon is taking a vacation!
A short one; I plan to return to blogging either this Sunday or Monday. But I’m going away today, and get this: I will not be taking my computer with me! I intend to have a relaxing time, and maybe I won’t even look at the news for a while, who knows?
So the two essays for today that are posted below will have to do you for the next couple of days. And then there’s always the voluminous archives. Have a good weekend, everybody.