That’s what I’m going to call him. Because inspiration strikes me, often, before the first streaks of gray loom over the eastern sky.

Practical as the Lotus and Sprint network are (despite the latter’s mounting financial troubles), I’m so taken with the iPhone’s bells and whistles—and especially its brilliant interface—that I’ll tolerate AT&T’s abysmal wireless service. The cute Lotus is on its way back to Sprint, and I’m waiting on my next dropped call…

That’s exactly what our 44th President is. The famous “Clinton wireless service” we got to know so well, and then voted away two or three times — repackaged with large, friendly buttons on a morphing keyboard and “bells and whistles” galore.

A perfect fit for the iDecade. As I wrote back in February…

…we are designed to find ways to contribute as individuals. It matters not if we’re told day after day, hour-to-hour, that we’re loved unconditionally even should we fail to do this. We want to succeed. We want to justify our individual existences.

Notice how every hot luxury item now, the thing you get your significant-other to show how much you love them, has a name that begins with a lowercase “i”. There is deep psychological symbolism involved in this. “i” is a pronoun we use to reference ourselves…as individuals…usually capitalized, but here, curiously, not. It’s as if we have been conditioned to think less of ourselves. Lowercase “i”…as in…”i’m so glad i have this personal music player because i wouldn’t be worth much without it.” Or, “i hope people will think better of me now that i have a phone that everybody else would like to have.”

That little i will take its sweet time finding its way to the Hallway of Regrettable Trends, in the space between the pet rock and the Ouija board…but it’ll get there. I find the deep psychological symbolism fascinating. Without my iDevice i mean very little and i no longer deserve caps, therefore i must not mean very much with it, since i cannot depend on it to keep my phone call in progress when i call someone.

I doubt like hell that Melissa Clouthier has these kinds of ego issues. And she certainly hasn’t become drunk on adoration for our iPresident-Elect, however she may feel about her iPhone.

But his appeal to his iFans seems to me not much different from the appeal this overly-expensive, semi-working iPhone has to its dwindling numbers of iCustomers. I’m envisioning an iDevice pulled out of a box in an attic with twenty years of dust on it — how snazzy will that look, then? I’m recalling how cool and techy a digital watch used to look…the old kind, with ones with the RED numbers.

When people say “oh yeah, that’s from somewhere around the OBAMA administration” will that name sound too much different from the way the name “Carter” sounds right now?

The iPresident…for the iDecade. When we care about how things are packaged, and not about what those things do once we unpack them and plug ’em in. Before we became fed-up with style and hungry for function.

I’m not predicting the future. I’m making an easy call.

Update:
It’s happening already.

Let’s just clarify a few things here.

 • I am not in favor of anyone losing, or being jeopardized in, their position of employment because of their political beliefs. To clarify further, I wish there were a few more Obamatons who felt so protective of me and people like me. In my experience, that has not been the case.
 • If His Holiness and His Holy Supporters and Minions come up with an idea that will be good for the country, I will sacrifice things to help get it implemented, should such a necessity or opportunity arise. If they come up with some knuckleheaded ideas but at least intend to help the country, I will sacrifice things to help get them educated.
 • I cannot recall seeing evidence of the two scenarios in the previous bullet, having come to pass…not too often. I haven’t seen positive ideas out of them, and I haven’t seen positive intent out of them.
 • This is the House of Eratosthenes, named after a library administrator who paid off some nameless walkin’ dude to pace out the distance between Alexandria and Syene, to figure out the circumference of the earth. In this place, we think what we know; we think what we’ve seen; we think what we’ve computed; we think what we’ve concluded from process-of-elimination. We do not think what we are told to think here! Go to Huffington Post if that’s what you want to see. And so far, all we’ve seen out of Obama and people backing Him, is a lot of dizzy nonsense, a few servings of America-loathing bile, and a great abundance of bullying-around that I should perceive patriotic sentiment in those who’ve shown no evidence at all of any such thing.
 • Thomas Jefferson said if a nation desires to be ignorant and free, it wants what never was and never can be. I say, if you’ve figured out Obama’s the guy for the job and you happen to be well-educated on the facts involved, but you haven’t given any thought at all to how a reasonable mindset could draw different conclusions from seeing the same evidence you’ve seen — you’re still ignorant. By that definition, nearly all Obama supporters are ignorant. I’m calling that out based on what I’ve seen. They’ve digested a nugget of news about WMDs and Iraq, about Hurricane Katrina, about Enron, and from these things they’ve come to a conclusion they should vote for The Chosen One. I don’t begrudge that, quite so much, but too many of them never once considered that some of the things they’ve seen might possibly mean something else. They haven’t pondered it; it never entered their minds. That’s ignorant. You can’t be ignorant and free. Not for long.
 • Just for the record, it is my personal wish this woman gets a good talking to, maybe a written warning, but then is allowed to keep her job. I’m as disturbed about it as the next guy when someone falls into a momentary lapse of judgment, and suffers career-death over it. I don’t think she deserves it.
 • Also for the record, I’m willing to bet a large amount of money that if she was commenting on me, and I was in the situation she’s in now, she would not have the same attitude about me and my job. I think she’d want me to lose my job even if I had not been guilty of exercising horrible judgment about anything. I think she’d want it to happen to me just because. Since I dared to oppose her Messiah.
 • Furthermore, there are a lot of Obamatons just like her who have that same problem. That one, you need not consider to be a “large wager” from me. It is a testament to empirical observation and a chronicling of personal experience.

Obamatons are dangerous. To themselves and to those around them. To many of them are thinking, and behaving, like religious fundamentalists. In fact, in too many cases, that’s exactly what they are.

I do believe this nation has not ever seen, going back all the way to that stuffy summer in Independence Hall, a strain of citizen less enlightened, less intellectual, less curious, less skeptical, less introspective, less scrutinizing, than the Obamaton. So if you know one or two of ’em…it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever read this — certainly unlikely they’ll read it before voting tomorrow.

They know what they know. They wanna do what they wanna do. They’re like your kid sister who waits until you start your shower before knocking on the bathroom door right that very instant because they gotta go RIGHT NOW. They want what they want when they want it. They are the living, breathing model of the unthinking human who makes every decision by vibe.

But what the hell. Let’s run it. Give ’em a chance to prove me wrong. The stakes are high.

 • One question about Obama that has never been satisfactorily answered is “What has he ever accomplished?” The best his supporters can come up with is “He was elected to the U.S. Senate.” So was John McCain … several times. Besides, take a look at his election. He had two opponents self-destruct with scandal. The GOP had to go to Maryland and talk Alan Keyes into moving to Illinois to run against Obama. Trust me, that win was no sterling accomplishment.
 • Don’t argue with me here. You’ll lose. There is NO constitutional right to vote in a presidential election. We’re going to learn in a few days just how smart our founding fathers were in this regard.
 • Obama is a product of the Chicago political machine. Several times during his political career Obama had a chance to either cast a vote or make a statement against the corruption that permeates Chicago’s machine. Never – not on one occasion – did he do so.
 • The fact is, Obama has benefited from corruption (Tony Rezko?) but has never fought it.
 • Do you know how Obama won his first election in Illinois? He had campaign operatives go to the voting office and work hundreds of hours pouring over petitions to have his opponents thrown off the ballot. I guess that means that this is the first real election battle he’s ever been in!
 • I guess it’s just me, but all this time I thought that the government used its power to seize property … i.e., to tax … in order to fund the necessary and appropriate functions of government. Now, under Obama, we’ve learned that one of the appropriate functions of government is to take from those who have and give to those who have not. I prefer a different phraseology: Take from those who achieve, and give to those who achieve not. Karl Marx was of a like mind.
 • Obama’s “spread the wealth around” mantra means that he believes that we do not leave our homes every morning to work for ourselves and our families. We leave our homes to work for the government. We belong to government, not to ourselves. The government will determine how much of the money we earn we deserve to keep .. the rest goes to people the government believes to be even more deserving of the fruits of our labors.
 • Obama’s candidacy would have faltered before an educated electorate. Why do you think Democrats love government schools so much? Do you want examples? I’ve got examples.
 • Obama says he’s going to give tax cuts to 95% of Americans. Americans don’t realize that over 40% of their numbers don’t pay income taxes; and since they don’t realize that, they aren’t asking themselves how Obama can give a tax cut to someone who doesn’t pay taxes.
 • Obama has effectively change the definition of “tax cut.” From now on any government handout to any worker is a tax cut. Changing this definition may well be one of their greatest accomplishments in this election and that new definition will cause us problems for decades.
 • Obama constantly rants about those dirty corporations who shipped “our jobs overseas.” An educated voter knows that those jobs belong to the employers, not the employees. Workers look for jobs. Employers with jobs look for workers. Pretty simple, really.
 • Obama also tells us that 95% of small businesses out there will not have their taxes increased. The only reason this line works is because our government educated voters cannot grasp the idea that it isn’t the percentage of small businesses hit with tax increases that counts; it’s the percentage of small business employees represented by the unfortunate 5% that counts. Tomorrow thousands of workers – perhaps tens of thousands of workers – employed by what we call “small businesses” will cast a vote that, a year or so down the road, will cost them their jobs.
 • Over the weekend Obama promised to bankrupt the coal industry if they tried to build any more coal-fired power plants. Can any of you think of a time when any president has ever made an overt threat to bankrupt a large American industry?
 • Obama says that his “cap and trade” policy for controlling greenhouse gas emissions is going to cost electricity prices to “skyrocket.” Oops … there goes some of that middle class “tax cut.” Guess he’ll have to transfer some more wealth to help his constituents pay the increased price.
 • There are literally millions of Obama supporters out there who think that once Obama becomes the president their lives are going to become sweetness, roses and light…
 • Remember Obama’s 30-minute infomercial? If a foreigner with no knowledge of our country or our people were to see that program they would think that America was a country mired in abject misery and depravation. Thanks, Obama, for the nice positive message.
 • How long after the election, whether Obama wins or loses, do you think it will take for that America-hater Jeremiah Wright to surface?
 • The top 10% of income earners in this country pay over 70% of all income taxes. The top 1% of income earners earn around 19% of all income, but they pay almost 39% of all income taxes. When these people don’t want to give up a larger share of their earnings Obama call’s them “selfish.”
 • When someone is content to sit on their butts and wait for Obama to transfer some wealth from someone else to their pockets they are not “selfish.”
 • Every one of the points I am bringing up here is “hate speech” to an Obamacon.
 • The great Democrat goal is to have more than 50% of the voters living, at least in part, on the efforts of the minority of voters. When we pass that tipping point … and we’re nearly there … game over.
 • In every election since 1952 Democrats have told the voters “vote for the Republicans and they’ll take your Social Security away.” In every election after 2008 the Democrats will say “Vote for the Republicans and they’re going to make you pay taxes.” Then if Obama wins again, in every election after 2012 Democrats will say “Vote for the Republicans and they’ll make you pay for your own Social Security and Medicare.” How long before we hear: “Vote for the Republicans and they’ll make you work for a living!”
 • Obama will definitely destroy your right to be armed outside of your own home for your own protection. The question is whether we count the time until he accomplishes this in days, weeks, months or years.
 • Do you see now why politicians, especially Democrats, aren’t fond of the FairTax? Without playing his tax scam and wealth envy card Obama would have been toast by Super Tuesday.
 • Surveys in Israel show that 76% of Israeli citizens want McCain to win. American Jews will vote for Obama by pretty much the same percentage. What do Jews in Israel know that Jews in America do not?
 • Peter Nicholas is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He has been traveling with Obama for almost the entire campaign. Nicholas writes “After all this time with him, I still can’t say with certainty who he is.” Nicholas doesn’t know him, but so many voters are so sure they do.
 • Obama wants a national civilian security force that, in his words, is “just as strong as our military.” Who would they serve under? What would their mandate be? Would they be unionized? (oh HELL yes!). Would this be like the Soviet Union under Communism where neighbors ratted on neighbors for anti-government statements? And what does he mean “as strong as our military?” Would this national civilian security force have nukes? Tanks? Fighter planes? Are we just talking about a glorified national police? (Show us your papers!)
 • Obama has talked about reducing spending on our military. One leading Democrat Senator has suggested a 25% spending cut on defense. Do you feel comfortable with that? You do know that all of the savings would be spent on buying votes, don’t you?
 • Do you home school your children? Obama has called home schooling a fraud. Put him in office and you’ll be putting your kids back in government schools for their indoctrination.
 • Do you run a small business? If Obama wins start planning immediately to lower your work force. The best way to do this would be through efficiency measures and temporary staffing agencies. Not only is Obama going to make it easier for your workers to unionize … he’s going to expand onerous measures such as the Family Leave Act. You will end up paying your employees a good portion of their salary to lay out for weeks on end.
 • Maybe you shop at Wal-Mart. Get ready for higher prices. Obama’s instant unionization bill will surely result in the unionization of Wal-Mart’s workforce. In fact, as much as Democrat politicians hate Wal-Mart, it’s safe to say that Wal-Mart is target number one. The result? Higher prices for you. If Obama can call a government handout a tax cut, we can call higher prices a tax increase. This will be Obama’s tax increase on the poor and the middle class.

I’d like to add a couple to this list.

First of all, the more potent one. It’s become a foregone conclusion that the democrat party will hang on to both houses of Congress. Hillary is even hoping for a filibuster proof Senate. You knew that, didn’t you?

Main Street America…not blue-state America, not red-state America, but centrist, middle-of-road, salt-of-earth America…is leery of one-party rule. And rightfully so. This is the wedge to be driven between democrat party bosses, and the people who would vote for them.

The democrat party wants that point-of-commitment to pass on by. They want the power locked in, so that nobody can take it away, even after people yearn for a resurrection of the checks-and-balances process that has been surrendered. What’re they hidin’. That’s the question.

According to American tradition, if the democrat party is going to have this kind of commanding lock on the legislature — Obama must lose the election. For the good of the nation. Yeah, it’s an uphill battle to try to get the message across to Main Street USA that Sarah Palin might not be that dim, or that Joe Biden might not be that bright — but no salesmanship is required for the idea that power should be shared. People understand that value. It’s one of the few articles of the true American legacy that has survived as well as it has, for this long.

That’s the first thing I’d like to add.

Here’s the second.

It has to do with Obamaton Number One…Sen. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. That guy and his curiosity, or lack thereof.

I’ve been hearing, like a constant drumbeat, for eight solid years now — that George W. Bush is a spectacularly non-curious executive. It’s become quite the popular talking point, and what this depends upon, but is often unstated, is that this is a primary consideration in declaring him undesirable. People in positions of power should be curious…so we’ve been told. They should be nuanced thinkers, we were told four years ago. They should show a willingness to change their viewpoints from time to time, to comport with newly refined or discovered evidence.

Whatever happened to that?

Can anyone name for me a single instance in which Sen. Obama has showed this quality of curiosity? I’m not talking about very much curiosity at all…I’m not even talking about sincere curiosity. The first sentence of this paragraph is a great example of my inquiry — here’s a spec of something I’m waiting to see, does anybody have a lump of evidence that will fill it. That’s what I wanna see out of Obama’s mouth.

When’s he ever talked like that?

I saw him call for a dialog ONE time — and that wasn’t even sincere. He was supposed to be asking for a “dialog on race.” He didn’t want it. He didn’t follow through. He was just trying to rub out the tracks leading to Jeremiah Wright…drag a red herring across the trail…and it worked. No dialog ensued, nor was one ever supposed to.

Since then, he could’ve “called for a national dialog on” a whole litany of other things as well. He doesn’t work this way. He doesn’t want a dialog on whether we’ll do better as a country if & when wealth is spread around. It’s just the same nonsense he always spews…Barack’s made up his mind. Barack says this is the way it is. And you’d better believe it’s going to keep working that way after he lifts his hand from the Bible on January 20.

In short, there’s no reason whatsoever to think we’ll be hearing about President Obama looking into the possibility of doing this, that, or some other damn silly thing. There’s been no sign that Joe Biden has had any input on any of these things…or Michelle Obama…or even Rev. Wright. It seems to be just Barack pulling things out of his butt. So that’s the way it’ll work. He’ll just announce this is the way it is. Obama says this thing is good and that thing is bad. He woke up that morning, and decided it.

Curiosity.

Whatever happened to all that hunger we were supposed to have for it?

…with the world’s biggest boobs. You know, to help take the edge off your dreary Monday morning. I put it behind a link because I know you’re looking at this at work, or will want to send it to someone at work…

Hat tip: Gerard.

James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column, reminds us that this stuff called “fact-checking” isn’t quite as cut-and-dried as it’s represented to be sometimes. There really isn’t any good way to tease this so I’ll just lift it all in.

Here’s one of the most hilariously hair-splitting “fact checks” we’ve seen so far this campaign. The Washington Post gives John McCain three “Pinocchios” for something he said on “Fox News Sunday”:

“[Barack Obama] said [William Ayers] was just a guy in the neighborhood. He wasn’t just a guy in the neighborhood. We need to know the full extent of that relationship.”

Wait, didn’t Obama say that about Ayers? Not quite. According to the Post, he did not say “just”:

Obama was questioned about his relationship with Ayers in a Democratic primary debate in Philadelphia back in April. He described Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” He made the point that he was “8 years old” at the time that Ayers committed his “detestable acts” while acknowledging that they had served together on the board of an education fund.

In other words, Obama conceded that he had a casual relationship with Ayers, a truthful statement. Had he said what McCain says he said–“He’s just a guy in the neighborhood”–and left it at that, that would have been an untruthful statement.

If you look at McCain’s statement closely, it’s not even clear that he was quoting Obama when he said “just.” He was speaking rather than writing, so we have to punctuate the sentence for ourselves, but one plausible punctuation is: “[Obama] said [Ayers] was just ‘a guy in the neighborhood.’ ”

Clearly McCain’s point of contention is not whether Obama used the word “just” but whether there was more to his relationship with Ayers than he claimed. The Post seems to believe that there was not, but solely on the basis of Obama’s say-so. That’s not fact-checking, it’s campaigning for Obama. [emphasis mine]

That comes very close to winning the latest Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award.

What comes next on this subject of Obama’s menagerie of America-loathing friends, easily snags the Best Headline I’ve Seen Lately award…in blogger friend Rick’s opinion, as well as my own…

I was 5 when they killed Sharon Tate, but I wouldn’t hang out with the Manson Family now

Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! …Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.

Heath Ledger as The Joker, Dark Knight (2008).

Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Ezra Klein, at the beginning of the year (H/T: Is Barack Obama The Messiah?).

I wept.

“Anonymous,” commenting on Ezra’s post.

The Joker’s right. People really don’t care that much about the goal of a plan, or whether the consequences that follow naturally from a plan are in harmony with the stated goal of the plan — just so long as there is one.

I keep hearing, from time to time, this thing that Obama calls us back to our higher selves, that he is a more evolved being, summoning us to the next higher plane of evolution. Question: How many species in the animal kingdom are built around just one instance of the species occupying the hub of a communications network, Obama-style, while the lowly underlings abandon whatever passes for rational thought and slavishly perform whatever tasks they’re called to perform by this hub-overlord? Drones, that take solace in the fact that there’s a plan…never mind what it’s supposed to do, just so long as there is one. I can think of quite a few such species that aren’t very evolved at all. Ants. Bees. Wasps. A little higher up on the tree, there are pilot whales. Lemmings. That’s about it, I think. The Borg-like behavior tops out at the lemming species.

Unless one accepts that the Obama supporter is more evolved than the lemming.

I wonder how evolved the electorate is, as a whole. How prevalent is this voter who doesn’t care what the plan is supposed to do, so long as there’s a plan. This human bug. Maybe that’s a minority; a paper tiger. Who knows, maybe McCain could wrap this whole thing up right now by going after the “dammit, I want to know what my next President is going to DO and he won’t get my vote until he tells me” vote.

The Chosen One has eased off somewhat on all the Messiah nonsense since January, when Klein wrote his piece. Somewhat. A little. But measurably; somewhere, there must be some polling data that told Him that would be a smart thing to do. Perhaps, even in 2008, you can’t lead our nation without at least making a show of spelling out what your plan is, as opposed to repeating over and over again that you have one and that it involves “change.”

But perhaps you can. Obama’s talked somewhat about pulling our troops out of Iraq, and offering a tax cut to everyone except Joe The Plumber…other than that, if he’s elected, he will be perhaps the most commitment-free President since — well, ever. It will be quite bizarre. He could do just about anything, and nobody would be able to say any of it is directly contradictory to any campaign-trail promise, anywhere. And forget about ever criticizing him about anything. That would be racist.

H/T to blogger friend Rick for the graphic.

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano.

New responsibilities have caused a slowdown in my commentary, at my place as well as at Cassy’s during my guest-blogging stint there (about which she was forewarned). And maybe that’s good, because I wanted to see the impact of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, and at the time he actually made it I was running into difficulty obtaining a complete transcript of his remarks.

Now that I’ve seen it from beginning to end, I must say I’m much more concerned than I was before. And that, in itself, is interesting. From time to time I have been commanded by the prevailing viewpoint to believe this-or-that personality was a Being of Greatness, when this was my opinion of such a person already. I notice, at such times, disappointment is assured. Colin Powell used to be the exception to this. Since I watched him command the military all those years ago, the first time Saddam Hussein had to be taken down a peg, I have been greatly impressed with him. Based on what little I personally knew about him, he struck me as something of an Omar Bradley, a “soldier’s general.” The guy at the top who keeps things real.

In fact, I would not have been called-upon to reconsider that, had the prevailing viewpoint not happened along to imperiously intone that I should worship Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell, then Secretary of State Powell; that I should start thinking what I was already thinking. But the prevailing viewpoint is a wonderful reverse-barometer.

When the prevailing viewpoint tells you to think what you’re already thinking, it’s a pretty good indication you should start re-thinking.

And I’m sad to say, that’s exactly what’s happened here. I don’t know what race Secretary Powell has been watching. I don’t know what Barack Obama he has been watching. The points that stood out for me, the most:

 • That Barack Obama is symbolism and substance;
 • That he is “intellectually curious”;
 • That he has the ability to inspire, to be a transformational figure;
 • That the McCain/Palin ticket has drifted “toward the right” and become all about Obama’s supposed relationship to William Ayers;
 • And, the implication that there is something significantly influential about the murmuring that Obama is a Muslim.

On that last one, I do agree with Powell about the underlying concern. This is an American value that goes all the way back to the beginning, that you should be able to run for President — or any high public office, for that matter — with whatever religious faith you exercise in your personal time, that you deem most appropriate. I agree with him a hundred percent that “Barack Obama is not a Muslim!” is not the correct retort (although it’s true), since this implies that if he was a Muslim, he’d be just as unfit to serve as if he was nineteen years old, or born in India.

On the other hand, as a fighting man, General Powell knows better than this. In a country attacked by Mongols, there would be a stigma attached to being Mongolian. Even if it was a misguided Mongolian sub-sect that did the attacking, the stigma would remain, and running for President of that country with even a hint of Mongolian heritage would be quite out of the question. That’s not racism. That’s a reasonable survival instinct. It is, to coin a phrase, an “attribute of sovereignty.”

But Powell overestimates the importance of this charge. Perhaps he has reason to; he cites remarks from people he knows, whom I don’t, who he says are responsible for peddling this myth that Obama is a Muslim. Whatever — it reads like Obama campaign talking points. It isn’t just Bill Ayers. Obama has a long history of associating with people who have lots of bad stuff to say about the country he seeks to lead…and not much history of associating with anyone with good things to say about it. I say again…a history. Not just an oopsie here & there.

As far as the intellectual curiosity — and halfway in between, there was something about unifying people, shared values, trying to make things work for everyone…can’t remember the exact words — who in the world has Powell been watching? Nobody I know.

Senator Obama, the one I’ve been watching, seems determined to make America work for that definition of “everyone” that has become, unfortunately, popular of late:

Everyone (modern):
1. Exact opposite of the classic definition. An elite class, which carries an identifying attribute that excludes others.
2. Me (as in, the person speaking).

Everyone is sick of this. Everyone is tired of you. We need to come up with a tax plan that works for everyone. This was the only time and date for this meeting we could find that would work for everyone (sorry you can’t come).

This is a symptom of the pestilence visited upon our modern times, that we have so many people running around in positions of power, babbling away with that word “everyone” and meaning something exactly the opposite. Keep your eyes and ears peeled in the days ahead, as we wind up the last two weeks of this campaign season, when people start talking about “everyone.” There’s always a definition. A distinction. Something that sets apart the “everyone” they really want to discuss, from the real “everyone.”

Obama wants to make our tax structure work for “everyone,” as an example. He means the opposite. To get to the “everyone” he really means, you have to mark off all the high income earners who justify compensation worth more than 250 thousand in a year, and break ’em away — Obama’s “everyone” is whoever’s left over after that exercise.

“Everyone”‘s values — that doesn’t include some of us. It doesn’t include people who feel abortion is wrong, that it’s murder. So if you have a religious or personal problem with subsidizing this procedure with your tax money, then congratulations, you are officially outside the “everyone” Barack Obama likes to talk about.

On the intellectual curiosity. I’d love to see Secretary Powell sit down, in front of a small audience, and try to justify this. When has Sen. Obama ever been curious about anything? Ever? Oh yes he’s gifted at saying what he thinks ought to be done and ought not be done. I’ve been watching that guy all year long, and I haven’t seen him qualify any of it, even once. By that I mean, start to logically explore what’s likely to happen if we do what he wants done…or don’t do what he wants done. He’d probably have more reasonable opinions about things if he were to engage in that (see, I just did it myself). But he doesn’t do that. He just intones. He just commands. We should start doing this. We should stop doing that. Should, should, should. Must, gotta, ought to.

Sorry, that’s not being intellectually curious. That’s being a control freak.

I’m not a spring chicken anymore; in my early forties, I like to think I’m somewhere in the belly-button midpoint between crib and crypt. With the life I’ve already lived, I’ve spent all of it building things or participating in groups of people trying to build things. Every single month out of every single year, minus a brief sojourn here & there.

And I must say it bothers me mightily to see someone who’s shouldered so much responsibility in defending our country, engaging in this classic confusion between the following two:

1. “Style and substance”;
2. The readiness, willingness and ability to put a soothing and forceful voicebox behind an arbitrary opinion first.

That worries the dickens out of me. Believe me, I’m in a position to know: The first opinion voiced, is not necessarily the best one. It’s usually not. And it’s usually the most damaging opinion, because it tends to be the opinion that draws support, and the accompanying resources, when it lacks the merit to justify them.

I have seen so many people, do so much damage, that way. By chiming in, Obama-style, on their opinion of what’s “right,” while others in the room are more thoughtfully weighing the other alternatives, and the likely benefits and consequences of them. Powell, to me, represented the thoughtful presence in the room, the guy who was thoughtfully weighing likely benefits and consequences. If he has that much admiration for the guy who speaks up first and ends up running things, I guess I must have been wrong about him. Now I have an answer to my question about how he rose to the top so quickly — like all contradictions, it was ultimately resolved by my checking my premises. As Professor Hugh Axton promised, I found one of them was wrong.

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano.

Perhaps, Barry. Perhaps. We’ve been debating it hotly for the better part of a century. Some say it’s indisputable. Some say the “supply side economics” of the Reagan era, with the Laffer curve, and all that stuff has been “discredited.” Some will try to pull a global-warming-type fast one and insist “all the world’s economists agree” that a society thrives in an economy most helpful and robust when everyone has the same standard of living.

Well, here’s a question.

If the “science is settled” on economics and informed economists have long ago concluded that wage gaps and net-worth gaps are inherently toxic to the performance of a local economy…that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody”…how come when we vote in favor of that, it’s only for a little while? And if this is how economies work all the time, how come we only vote it in when the time is right? War protests. Republican scandals involving congressional pages. A clean and articulate young guy from Chicago…or Hope…or Plains. How come so many tumblers have to be tripped before the lock on that Pandora’s Box is opened?

How do you explain all these episodes in our nation’s history in which we gave this wealth-spreading the ol’ college try…and never once, in the aftermath, have we gotten together and said “Well jolly good, that settles it! Let it never be questioned again, now that we know that’s how it works!” Why would we continue to retreat from this if it isn’t a cul de sac? How come nearly every “fan” of Jimmy Carter’s that I find, was born after the day we fired Carter?

How come I have yet to have a job or paycheck offered to me by a poor or middle-class person?

When Reagan put a stop to that and let the evil rich keep their filthy lucre, we did not see a decade of blight and poverty. No, today the liberals tell me that was a “decade of greed.” Which means prosperity. Where, in our history, did we “spread the wealth around” so it would be “good for everybody,” at the advent of a similar decade of prosperity? When did that ever happen?

You say you’re going to cut taxes for 95% of everybody. And yet the government you’ll be running will collect more revenue. Which means you’re going to be whacking the other five percent more than twenty times as hard as the amount by which the average among the 95 will see his taxes go down. That’s just sixth-grade math, isn’t it?

So what you’re asking us to believe is…some folks will be hit with tax increases, thirty or forty times as large as the other folks’ tax cuts. And, in the wake of that, they will not be changing their plans. Particularly with the businesses they run, and the jobs they would have been creating. Even a tiny bit. To the contrary, those businesses will be expanding more, with less capital, because you’ll be…uh…er…ya know…uh, telling ’em to.

H/T for the video to Gerard.