Old snowmen never die, they just melt away.
John Kerry on Obama’s unique attributes
Even though it happened a couple of weeks ago, John Kerry’s bizarre assertion that an Obama Presidency could help the cause of moderating Islam around the world simply because he is a black man bears revisiting.
Here’s the clip (and for a longer excerpt, go here):
I think the Kerry quote is important because it illustrates a number of principles: Continue reading →
Obama as Macavity: lies vs. “misleading generalizations”
Commenter Martin Bebow writes, appropos of yesterday’s post in which I cite an example of Obama lying about Karl Rove:
I think the use of the word ”˜lied’ is excessive in this case. He did say “people like Rove’ after all. I generally agree with most of what you write neo (except the Juno review) but I think it is important that we be restrained in dealing with the opposition. Obama’s real mistake here is making a misleading generalization. We need leaders who can look beyond generalizations and think clearly about what needs to be done now. We need to hold both Republicans and Democrats to a stern standard of honesty about the problems we now face.
I think Bebow’s point is a good one. And I must say that, in that instance, I did miss Obama’s sophisticated verbal circumlocution.
Which actually makes Obama’s statement more pernicious, not less. Continue reading →
Obama lied, the press sighed
Hey, even if Karl Rove says it, it can still be true.
What’s Rove saying? That Obama is an arrogant liar.
You might ask what’s so strange about a politician lying? Don’t they all? (And I’m sure some would say, about Rove, “takes one to know one.”)
Well, there is a general tendency in the direction of politicians and what we might call deception. But since Obama makes a point of being a different sort of politician, his lies make him a supreme hypocrite as well. Continue reading →
The liberal Obama and Humpty Dumpty: belief in the power of words
I’ve written previously about Barack Obama’s masterful use of words as a smokescreen. His lawyerly skills serve him well in this regard.
But Peter Wehner has been on his case lately as opposing counsel. Obama has been spending time distancing himself from Reverend Wright without actually answering the real questions that would put the issue to rest. Wehner has suggested ten questions Obama should answer, for starters. Oh, would that Obama actually decided to tackle them, or that the unchallenging MSM saw fit to ask them of him!
Now Obama wants to distance himself from the appellation “liberal.” Once a proud term, in recent decades it’s become somewhat of a dirty one—not in Cambridge or Berkeley, of course, but in national elections. Continue reading →
Breaking news: Al Gore will run as Ralph Nader’s VP
What does a man who’s won, not only the Nobel peace prize, but—far more impressive—an Oscar, do for an encore?
Al Gore could merely rest on the very considerable laurels he’s earned as Bill Clinton’s two-term Vice-President, and in the cause of promoting global warming (ooops–that is, promoting the news about global warming). But this man feels the continuing need to serve his country and the world (and not as a waiter, either, although he would look good in the outfit).
Yesterday I noted widespread speculation that he just might be about to step in to break the impasse that’s tearing the Democratic Party apart, and finally offer a true People’s Choice for President: himself. After all, we know that he really won in 2000, and that it was only his extreme politeness that caused him to defer to George Bush in the post-election brouhaha.
The rest, as they say, is history. Al Gore has learned his lesson: no more Mr. Nice Guy, he says.
And so today Mr. Gore has rejected his role as savior of the Party, ignoring all the pleas from distraught Democrats. He has a higher calling.
At a news conference this very morning, Gore dropped the shocking bombshell that he is running for the Vice Presidency. Again. But not with Hillary Clinton, which would have been a historical first: the same person as Veep to both husband and wife. Continue reading →
A mind isn’t such a difficult thing to change, after all
So far it’s taken me something like 200,000 words—and still counting—to explain my change of political mind.
But Gerard Vanderleun shows you how to do it in one easy step.
Maya Plisetskaya: a dancer like no other
How old do you think this woman is?
Or this one (hint: it’s the same woman, around the same time)?
Or how about this one?
All three are pictures of Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. She’s eighty years old in the first two photos (see this and this) and eighty-one in the third (see this). Continue reading →
Worst idea of the day
Obama didn’t go to law school for nothing
Law requires an exceedingly precise use of language. People who are attracted to the profession often already have this tendency, and then they are schooled further in the honing of the ability.
Bill Clinton was reviled for his lawyerly use of language in the service of weaseling, of parsing his words so carefully—especially when in the service of self-defense—that although they seemed to say one thing they really said another. Listeners learned not to take his words at face value, but to scrutinize them the way a lawyer would the language of a contract about to be signed.
Now comes Barack Obama, another lawyer, not an unusual profession for politicians. Not all lawyer-politicians are up there with Bill in the word-parsing competition, but Obama is revealing himself—far more than Hillary—to be Bill’s true heir in that department. Continue reading →
More on Obama and courage: affirmative action is waiting in the wings
Whether it was a joke or not, Obama said he wants us to have an epiphany and vote for him. Well, I had one about him yesterday, and it’s that he has a major deficiency in the realm of moral courage.
It explains a lot about Obama. His inability to definitively break with Wright, for example. Continue reading →
Obama, Hillary, McCain, and courage under fire
I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the main themes of the coming election isn’t just “change.” It’s guts.
Why else would Hillary lie about having come under fire in Bosnia? Surely claiming there was physical danger involved in her trip twelve years ago wouldn’t have padded her foreign policy resume in a substantive way. Nor is being under fire (in anything but the metaphoric sense) something that Presidents usually have to deal with, except in assassination attempts.
Instead, what her statements really padded was her claim to have the intestinal fortitude—in other words, the cojones—for the Presidency. It’s ironic that this was the topic she was caught for lying about because, really, cojones is one characteristic that most people already grant Hillary. Continue reading →