May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Main
Speaking of Fareed Zakaria, I found the following passage in his column this week puzzling:
"The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies." (Emphasis added.)
Leave aside the silly idea that only neoconservatives are driven by ideology, whereas "realists" are "pragmatic." Where in McCain's speech did he "declare war" on Russia and China? Nowhere. And if he had, wouldn't that have been, you know, major news?
Exaggeration and distortion - it must be an election year!
George F. Will on Michelle Obama:
"Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans' lives have 'gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.' Since 1960, real per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor's degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2 percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled ..."
From the Wall Street Journal editorial page:
" ... Mr. Obama can be forgiven if he wakes up at night thinking he's in one of those 'Terminator' movies where the machine in the form of a human being just keeps coming. Nothing – not Bill Clinton's gaffes, not the Bosnian sniper-fire fantasy, not even being outspent 3-to-1 – has been able to stop her."
Years ago, Tom Bethell coined the phrase "strange new respect" to describe the media's treatment of conservatives who turn left as they spend more time in Washington. Lately we've been seeing a strange, new "strange new respect," in which the conservative media (grudgingly!) acknowledge the merits and tenacity of ... Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Paul Auster, looking back at the 1968 Columbia University student uprising: "I am 61 now, but my thinking has not changed much since that year of fire and blood, and as I sit alone in this room with a pen in my hand, I realize that I am still crazy, perhaps crazier than ever."
From a Bay Area protestor's sign:
Would we allow Nazi Germany to host the Olympics?
No. Of course not.
....except for that one time.
Happy Pennsylvania primary day. Since this is the first Democratic primary in weeks, here are two - count 'em, two - quotes from Democratic voters that may spell trouble for Barack Obama in November:
"I originally started out with Barack, but the more and more I learned about him, the less and less I liked him," Michael Hunt, a 55-year-old Indianapolis day trader, tells the Wall Street Journal this morning.
And from today's Washington Post:
"I don't care too much for Obama," Maria Norgren, the daughter and granddaughter of steelworkers, said in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle shopping center here, near the Obama rally.
"I don't even think he's American," added her husband, Edward, who lost his job when the steel mills closed and now mans the counter at the Puff Discount Tobacco and Lottery shop next to the Giant Eagle.
"His father's from Nigeria, right?" asked Maria, wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt.
Actually, Obama's father was Kenyan. But that's not the point. The point is that the Democrats need the white working class vote to win in November, as Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz argue here. With Obama as the nominee, they might not get it.
Just when you thought MoveOn.org's massive PR blunder was fading into the shadows, HuffPo rescues it from irrelevancy:
General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then -- as it would be to repeat the charge now.
Definitely, buy the full page ad in the New York Times (and don't forget to demand the anti-American discount!).
HT: Hot Air
The Quote of the Day (So Far!) is from Christopher Hitchens, and it's a 'beaut:
Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together. Fishing exclusively from this tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions, it ought to be possible to drive all thinking people away from the arena and leave matters in the gnarled but capable hands of the professional wordsmiths and manipulators. In the new jargon, certain intelligible ideas would become inexpressible. (How could one state, for example, the famous Burkean principle that many sorts of change ought to be regarded with skepticism?) In a rather poor trade-off for this veto on complexity, many views that are expressible (and "We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America" would be really quite a long sentence in the latest junk language) will, in turn, be entirely and indeed almost beautifully unintelligible.
Sounds like it's about time for someone to update Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas.
David Brooks:
"His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we've been here all along?"
Maybe we are the change we have been waiting for that now we can believe in?
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