Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
From the few glimpses I caught last night, and reading I’ve done this morning, I’ve picked up the impression that they’re going full-bore with the tried-and-true “don’t be a meanie cow” approach. Which works like: Hey, it would really hurt Barack Obama’s feelings to replace Him with someone else so don’t do it. But I call this “tried and true” because it’s been tried a lot of times and it always fails. Aw c’mon, Bob Dole is a Great American, he’s waited so long and darn it, it’s his turn. John McCain is a Great American, it’s his turn gosh darn it, and it’s now or never.
The track record of failure here is most impressive. I’m glad they’ve gone this route.
If you really want to win: It isn’t about the candidate needing the office, it’s about the office needing the candidate. This is one of the few things Americans do right with their elections. It makes a lot of sense. What kind of a loser can’t face the day unless he’s been elevated to the highest office in the land? That’s your guy, really?
So Michelle’s speech, in summary: My parents sacrificed everything for my education, and I do mean everything. And if I’m married to some loser who can only win four years as POTUS, it will all have been for nothing. Is that what I was supposed to have gotten out of that?
If you take her remarks seriously, what they tell you is that we’ve got to do whatever it takes to get Mitt Romney elected. Because, that way, Michelle will go back to the salt mines and she’ll use her ample talents to secure some other high-paying gig in the Chicago Machine or some other high bastion of egalitarian fairness, thereby making the most of the education for which her parents sacrificed so much. Which beats the stuffing out of the situation as it is now, with her wasting these abundant opportunities by way of her frequent shopping excursions in Barcelona or wherever. I mean, it’s no contest. Show some proper and decent respect to the sacrifices Michelle’s parents made, vote Romney in 2012.
The other thing that made an impression on me was when they started panning the crowd to show the audience reactions. Lots of smiles, lots of nods, lots of tears. A couple weeks ago we had a liberal gadfly buzzing around these parts making much about the “definition” of left-wing, seemingly unable to comprehend the simple concept of defining such human-experience situations by their peripheries. There is no other way to define left wing in this day & age, it’s a hot mess of irreconcilable contradictions and it can only be defined by the wall that surrounds it; it is a very, very high wall indeed. The road to being inducted into the fold, and converted out of it again, is long and hard because this wall is impenetrable and insurmountable. Consider the core message: People are good and people are deserving, all equally so. Therefore, we’ve got to get those dirty rotten bastards and make them pay, pay, pay. That is the bi-fold message that drives everything else, it is confused, self-contradictory and unworkable. That we’re all in this together but there’s this “us-we” and a “they-we,” and let’s-get-even-with-’em.
This all showed up — somehow — in those weird smiles. Liberals should not try to smile on camera. It’s creepy. How much anger can you manage to work into a smile? It reminds me of the Terminator Chronicles when they started belaboring the point that Terminator robots can’t really smile; like that. They have such joyless, pained, resentful smiles.
I saw a lot of good reasons last night to drum Barack Obama out of office, but perhaps the very most convincing one out of all of them was this: The people who surround Him, are all invested ears-deep in this culture of “If you do not fully support the solution we’ve developed, you must be in favor of allowing the identified problem to continue, for we recognize no middle ground between those two extremes.” There are those who will say this is insensitive of me, and perhaps they’re right, but it’s true nevertheless: In this country, that attitude is a bigger problem than any health insurance mess. In fact I would say that problem has a parental relationship to the health insurance problem. It got to be the way it is now, because of that. “Us magical and special uniquely-wise elite people, who have no names, have figured out this year’s answer to the problem in some smoke-filled room somewhere, now are you going to support it or not?” That’s what has created the health care access problem we see today, and that’s a fact.
Why anybody wants more of it, is beyond me. As I said, the walls surrounding this mystery play-doh-land are very tall and it’s as hard for me to see into it, as it must be for those within to see the light and find their way out. Both efforts are many years in the making with progress so slow that it seems, at times, to be at a complete standstill.
But I know the country’s best days are still ahead of her.
I also know, that particular “do it our way or not at all” attitude has to be buried good and deep, or at the very least toppled from power, before it happens.
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I liked Krauthammer’s take on Shelley’s speech: “If I hear one more story about people walking eight miles in the snow without shoes, uphill, both ways, I’m going to start longing for a little Clint Eastwood spontaneity out here…” He went on to say Shelley was describing Gandhi, not The One. Great good (and typical) Krauthammer.
- bpenni | 09/05/2012 @ 10:41Tangentially related:
Michelle Obama vs Ann Romney word cloud – http://www.soopermexican.com/2012/09/04/michelle-obamas-speech-in-word-cloud-guess-what-word-she-used-most/
The visualization is very interesting to see even before you dig into the content of the speeches.
- pdwalker | 09/06/2012 @ 00:47