Complaints versus Results

I was just struck by the difference between an unemployed housewife and the most powerful man in the world. Both have confronted intractable problems in recent weeks. A troublesome neighbor is like a stone in your shoe. And Sarah Palin has discovered that one of the herd of jackals who have viciously attacked her and her family, an accused plagiarist, has moved in next door.

A disturbing trend in American leftist political strategy is to intimidate one's targets by staging protests at his's residence (as seen here). In that case, the union thugs just wanted to shake down the bank to forgive their loans (and didn't realize the next-door neighbor could blow the whistle).

Mrs. Palin complained, but then she did something that the most powerful man in the world hasn't figured out. She did more than talk.

On the other hand, the most powerful man in the world, Barry Obama has a problem. Unlike Mrs. Palin, he is deep in the pocket of Big Oil, BP to be precise. (Incidentally, this is why the Bushies hate Palin.) Though Barry talks tough and has his minions talk about putting their boot on BP's neck, he nevertheless cashed a lot of checks from BP. The problem isn't that he sleeps with big oil and gets up greasy, it's that while the Gulf of Mexico is being polluted, he's going to Earth Day celebrations or arranging for BP to bus in props for photo ops.

Let's be fair. We have no reason to expect competence, the ability to get results, from someone who's never made payroll or produced anything of value in his life. Is a Community Organizer anything more than a professional complainer? The electorate voted for change. Competence wasn't on the ballot. Barry's talked, and organized, and instigated, and agitated. And he's never learned the lesson of King Cnut and the sea. There's a difference between having a fancy title with a lot of lackeys and getting something done.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska. Suppose you've got a troublesome neighbor who's moved in with the intent of spying on you and writing a book about it. What do you do about it after you've complained? (Aside from finding the home address of his editor at Broadway/Random House, then busing in a few hundred Palin fans.) The Palin family put up a fence.

Passing the torch

Seems the cranky old man who gave us President Barak Obama is anxious to assist in his re-election. George Bush betrayed the Reagan revolution. And the Republicans passed the torch to John McCain who, in turn is fundraising for Mitt Romney.

That John McCain's support for Mitt Romney should assure Barak Obama's re-election may seem counter-intuitive. But it bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Michigan gubernatorial politics. Ms. Granholm has run Michigan's economy into the same hole that Mr. Obama is sending the national economy. But she got re-elected.

She did so by being a class-warrior and the Michigan Republicans obliged her by putting a billionaire who inherited his wealth up against her.

You can see it by way of an analogy. Imagine you're a black man running for Governor against Lester Maddox or George Wallace. These guys made a career of exploiting hatred against people because of an accident of their birth. They had non-governmental organizations such as the KKK to fan the flames of hatred and organize direct action while maintaining plausible deniability for themselves and their political parties.

If you're a guy (of any color) who inherits billions running against a class warrior, it's like being a black guy running against a racist. It's just a different "accident" of your birth.

When Rich DeVos ran for Governor he was demonized as an exploiter of the working classes. This turned Michigan's cruddy economy to Ms. Granholm's advantage. This gave an unpopular Jennifer Granholm a second term. Should Mitt Romney run against Barak Obama, he'd lose by the same dynamic.

Mitt Romney is the son of George Romney, a successful Michigan politician and former President of American Motors Corporation. He has no doubt inherited many good things from his family. Including a pile of cash. This makes him vulnerable to accusations of being a child of privilege.

Moreover, Mr. Romney has added to his family's wealth by his successful career in Finance. Finance, that's the subject of the movie "Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story." If you think that won't be used against Mr. Romney in a general election, ask Mr. DeVos what was said about him and "outsourcing."

I'm not saying Mr. Romney is a bad man or an inept administrator. He brings several demonstrated skills that are sorely lacking in the current Chief Executive of this country. But he's vulnerable to attack from the left. Either the economy will improve: whereupon Mr. Obama will claim that Socialism works and he'll promise to tax and spend even more. Or it won't, and he'll point fingers of blame at everyone who has money and promise to punish them for their greed. That evil Romney is just another fat cat exploiter Michael Moore is telling us about. That's why Mr. Romney will be like a black man running for Governor of Alabama or Georgia against a Segregationist.

Another troubling thing about Mr. Romney is the Massachusetts health care law that he signed into law. It bears many similarities to ObamaCare that no Republican will admit to. Let's suppose Mr. Romney runs against Mr. Obama and tries to make ObamaCare an issue in the campaign. You can be confident that the Massachusetts health care law will NOT be ignored by the Obama campaign.

This will take away the sharpest weapon in the Republicans' arsenal. And I can see a couple million Tea Partiers finding no reason to vote for the Republican candidate. Like they did last time. Why vote for a Republican who promises the same big government that the Democrats are foisting upon us?

This brings us to the "Maverick" who handed the election to Mr. Obama. Disloyalty is not a good leadership trait. Mr. Romney, happily, does not share the single worst character flaw of John McCain. That he should host a fundraiser for Mr. Romney instead of his own running mate reflects his poor political judgment and his inherent disloyalty. We're well rid of him.

Where can I go to find another Ronald Reagan?

Can We Trade?

It is only getting play in the foreign press. But it seems there was a disagreement of opinion between our Dear Leader and the French President. This isn't the first time these two have been in the news as being less than sympatico.

I think I know why and I have a proposed solution. Sarkozy has the nickname in France of "the American" and his pro-American attitudes are incongruous in a French leader. He has forcefully resisted rioting Moslem youth in his country. And he's been the first non-Socialist in the recent history of French presidents. Pretty much the opposite, at every point, of what the Dear Leader would do.

The first thing Sarkozy did after he got the job was to get a spouse-upgrade to a smoking-hot model.

As for our Dear Leader and the First Lady, I'll say nothing you don't already know. He has been running the country after a fashion reminiscent of French socialism.

So, France, here's the deal: Let's trade Presidents.

Barak Hussein Obama, you're no Joe!

I thought the country was in trouble last year when late in the primary season all three surviving candidates were SENATORS. You know, the guys whose jobs consist of doing nothing but talking and voting. Not a lot of administrative or governance involved in that gig.

I also thought the Republican Party was in trouble last year when it had a radioactive/toxic lame duck President Bush who talked like a Conservative, but governed like a me-too Socialist. (Same destination, more leisurely pace.) And the Republicans were led by a "Maverick" who's sole demonstrated competency was stabbing his allies in the back for headlines. The one bright spot was a now-unemployed housewife who has been reduced to posting the occasional essay on Facebook despite being called a Cancer by various and sundry "Conservative" commentators.

But government propaganda is no substitute for competent leadership. Turns out King Barry wasn't the clean, articulate numinous black man like Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. No, he's a lot further left of the moderate candidate that a lot of Democrats, Independents and Republicans voted for. So sorry, too bad, we got your votes and you've been had. (I feel your pain: I voted for a Conservative and got a Bush instead.)

King Barry is also unlike Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty because, (to his dismay) in that he is not God. Unlike King Canute, our President apparently believes his own propaganda. He's the guy who promised the oceans would stop rising. Stand aside, Canute, watch Barry...

...fall on his face. Barak Hussein Obama, you are no Joe Stalin! Say what you will about the brutality and murderous character of the old Soviet union--never more brutal nor murderous than when Uncle Joe ran the show. Joe didn't make the trains run on time, he did something more difficult. He made the Soviet bureaucracy jump through any hoops he set before it. He knew how to pull the strings and make things happen. And the Soviet bureaucracy became a finely honed instrument of Joe Stalin's will.

The Good News is that investigation of ACORN will be performed by the Federal bureaucracy. Barak Hussein Obama can command the investigations to cease, but he lacks the administrative skills and experience of the youngest governor of the smallest state of the Union. If he shuts down investigations, there will be leaks. I don't think it's a coincidence that the bureaucracy has been ahead of everyone else in cutting off ACORN at Commerce and Treasury.

If I were a Democrat, I'd be ashamed to have anything to do with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization. But I'm curious about ELECTED Democrats. How many of them lie awake at night thinking these words "...you're going down with me."

This seems to be the thinking behind the suit that was brought by ACORN against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart. Here's what lawyers have explained to me: When you sue me, I get a fishing license to go through all your records in a process called "discovery." All I have to have is a reasonable expectation that you have information that will help me defend myself. Now, this shouldn't be a problem if everything's on the up-and-up, but if you're a politician with, say, 20 years of history with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization, you might not want that. Let's hope the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy can hire a lot of lawyers and data miners to go through ACORN's underwear drawer. (And this little scandal has demonstrated that Breitbart, et al. are playing chess and thinking a few moves ahead.)

Conversely, if you're a politician with, say, 20 years of history with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization, and also the head of a major political party, a lot of members of that political party will want to make this law suit go away just to stop discovery. Will the state of Maryland dispense marsupial justice in the case of ACORN versus Breitbart, et alia?

Hard choice, I figure. Canute-on-the-Potomac may command it, but the Federal bureaucracy has an institutional-will of its own. If you're IRS or DOJ, you really don't want to let tax cheats (who aren't in Congress or the Cabinet) get away with openly advising tax evasion. And you really don't want them to get away with child-sex-trafficking. Not because you love the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but because it makes your job harder.

Also hard, because elected officials (unlike Joe Stalin) you have to stand for re-election. If you're explaining why you helped ACORN perpetrate a travesty of justice, you're not accusing your opponent of taking No-Doz. Or demanding he condemn the boiling of rubber frogs.

Perhaps his imperial royal highness King Barak Hussein Obama can issue pardons to everyone involved in the ACORN suit. Pardon's didn't hurt Bill Clinton. and they didn't hurt Richard Nixon, either. (Not the ones he granted, the one he got.)

If you're a Conservative, it really is good news that our Emperor-God is so incompetent at runningthe bureaucracy. Thank God, Barak Hussein Obama is no Joe Stalin.

On Public Health Care

The last time the Democrats controlled all three branches of US government, they tried to push through HillaryCare. At the time, I thought it Fascist. Not in the sense of German Nazism, but in the sense of Mussolini making the trains run on time. I.e. private ownership of the means of production, but state control thereof. (No, I didn't call anyone a Nazi.)

Next time the Democrats got control, we got the Porkulus bill, and the Government/UAW bail out (or should I say buy-out) of GM and Chrysler. And when the American electorate realized that Porkulus would not create any jobs any time soon, Mr. Obama's popularity took a dive. (Note to politicians: if you vote to spend a trillion bucks to create jobs, create jobs. Don't just print road signs about "recovery.")

With Mr. Obama's flagging popularity came some real push-back to ObamaCare. During the August recess many politicians were reminded that some of their subjects are laboring under the impression that they are citizens who elected representatives. How provincial of them.

Like any good PR campaign, the White House had a narrative ready for the state-controlled (soon to be state-owned) channels: The opposition to ObamaCare is mere astroturfing.

Trouble with that. About the same time they were running that con, the White House, we learn, was marshaling the efforts of America's artists. Nobody gives as much money to artists as the National Endowment for the Arts. And the White House really would like some pro-ObamaCare art. Not that anybody offered any provable quid pro quo...

Or maybe that's what the guys at BigGovernment.com have up their sleeves. Look at what happened recently. Every day we got to see ACORN in another city, acting like a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization. And before ACORN could say "spin cycle" the Commerce Department had announced that someone else would work on the census and the Senate & House had separately voted to cut funding. (Not that they won't try to sneak it back in under cover of darkness.) State-controlled (not yet state-owned) media tried to ignore it as Faux news, but at some point even New York Times readers grow curious about what's going on... But I digress.

Suppose that in addition to the NEA conference call tapes that Glenn Beck played on the air a couple weeks back, there is some hidden-video of "payola for propaganda" sitting on Andrew Breitbart's staging server?

Wouldn't that be a nice October Surprise.

Even if not, imagine the PR strategy:
1) claim anti-ObamaCare is just Astroturf
2) fund Soviet-style propaganda that is pro-ObamaCare
3) use it to counter those people you're calling Astroturfers

Is the White House so stupid that they don't realize that pre-printed signage that coheres to a single theme looks like Astroturf whereas hand-painted signage looks like real grassroots? Those guys with hand-printed signs, getting roughed up by purple-shirted SEIU thugs. They were the astroturfers, not the guys with pre-printed signs and t-shirts. Right. Maybe folks wouldn't have made that connection, if you hadn't been talking so much about astroturf.

Did You Vote For Tiger Woods or Al Sharpton?

One comparison has been omitted when regarding the Obama-as-promised and the Obama-as-realized. And that is one Tiger Woods. Mr. Woods is as multi-racial as Mr. Obama and extremely good at what he does and highly sought after as an endorser of luxury goods. He's a person of enough-color-to-be-regarded-black who is regarded as sensible and prosperous. He realizes what Mr. Obama (or whoever penned Dreams Of My Father) wrote describing the non-threatening black man. I think that many of the 53% who voted for him expected a President much like Tiger Woods.

Conversely, Obama-as-realized has demonstrated he is much more like Reverend Al Sharpton who hides a core of thuggish race-hustling extortion behind an expensive suit.

This isn't as much as racial thing as a social thing. Or subcultural thing. Power plays that work for Reverend Jeremiah Wright on his congregation do not generalize to the wider American culture. That there is a black subculture (to which Mr. Woods shows no signs of membership) is a signal failure of integration efforts of the 1960s. Rather than demonstrating the success of civil rights, Mr. Obama demonstrates black power at the expense of civil rights.

Had Mr. Obama truly been the Tiger-Woods-sort-of-man who was sold to the American electorate he could have easily assumed the Clintonian role of triangulator-in-chief. To the contrary, he has become the extremist whose words do not match his actions. So much that an unemployed Alaskan housewife has schooled him with a half-dozen Facebook posts. It should be noted that Ms. Palin began her demolition of Mr. Obama with an exhortation to civil dialog after the Mr. Obama had advised his followers “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Tiger Woods would have brought golf clubs.

Religion For Decorative Purposes

The Ten Commandments include the 3rd commandment that says not to use the name of deity "in vain." Orthodox Jews keep this commandment by writing G-d. And I think anyone who says, "God" or "Jesus Christ" as part of an oath or curse is violating this commandment. But after reflecting on the commandment, another sense of meaning occurred to me. (If you can find anything in the Bible that contradicts this, you should believe that and not what I'm about to say.)

The Bible says not to use the name in vain. I've also heard the commandment translated not to use the name "in a useless fashion" or an "empty way." And I don't think there's any question that this is what the commandment is getting at.

But consider another use of the word "vanity" and that's the furniture or bathroom figure one uses when applying makeup. We use a vanity to maintain our outward appearance. Beauty being only skin deep and all that.

Jesus complained early and often about the Pharisees whom he called play-actors or hypocrites. He condemned the shallowness of their religion. They were all about appearances without much concern about inward attitudes. He spoke of polishing the outside of the cup while leaving the inside dirty. Whited sepulchers and all that.

They used religion as a Decorative item. And that's what I think the 3rd Commandment is strongly condemning. Thou Shalt Not use the Name as Decoration.

This is a trap for anyone who goes to church more than twice a year. For one thing, it's easy to represent oneself as being somewhat pious while inside you're not entirely incorporating the character of Christ into your inner being. (Or if you're Jewish, internalizing the Torah.) Instead, you go to church and you act like you're not as desperately wicked as you know your heart to be.

I noticed when I was in Shipshewana, Indiana a couple weeks ago that there are many businesses run by Christians. They don't hide their Christianity. That's OK. But anyone familiar with families knows that the children can have a different relationship (or no relationship) with God than their parents. What if keeping up appearances is good for business? I worry that if the kids don't share their parents' Christianity, then after they inherit the business they'll feel a need to fake it: Keep up the facade of Christianity and use it as decoration. If that happens, and I hope it doesn't, it will be a violation of the Third Commandment.

Then there is Politics. One candidate for President last year ran in the Republican primaries on the premise, "Vote for me because I'm Baptist." I am Baptist and I like Baptists and I could probably enjoy an evening of non-alcoholic beverages and conversation with this man and have a great time. But I voted against him because I think having the same religion as me is a bad reason for me to vote for anybody. (Besides, he ran Arkansas as much like a socialist as Bill Clinton did before him.)

Politicians always like to be seen in church. Before Billy Graham got too old, every President make a point of getting a photo op with him. I think that any politician's religious display is suspect, and I look to see whether he's using God's name in the vain pursuit of political ends.

After Bill Climpton lost the governor's race he was in the choir every Sunday sitting where the TV cameras would pick him up. I don't think he did that because he wanted to sing more hymns.

Finally, take the recent behavior of the man currently holding the office of the President. Does his use of religion violate the 3rd Commandment? It depends upon how deep his rhetoric goes to his personal character. If he says one thing and does another once or twice, that's one thing. (A sinner should have the space to repent.) If it's a pattern of behavior, that's another thing.

Let's say that I tell you that we are all our brother's keeper. That's true. Though you can say that all men are brothers, I happen to have three siblings, two brothers and a sister. If I had millions and they were living on welfare or in a dirt-floor shack, I'd do something tangible for them. If Barak Obama believes "I am my brother's keeper," then why does his brother live in a shack in Kenya?

This whole moral argument for nationalized health care (yes, he is calling it something else) that the President has launched in the last few days reeks of hypocrisy and desperation. If it were anything more than cynical manipulation, he would have started with moral arguments, not trotted them out after he'd already lost the Blue Dog Democrats. The effort is so transparently hypocritical that only Democrats could possibly fall for it.

If you're running for office, don't use religion for Decorative Purposes. (This goes especially for Sarah Palin who has been endowed by her Creator with enough decoration already.) Internalize your faith and make it integral to your inner character. Then live that out. You might not win, but you'll do better than that, you'll do the right thing.

How To Go John Galt

With the recent political events there has been renewed interest in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged wherein the character John Galt leads a strike of the producers against the takers.

You may be aware that the tax base has narrowed so that 60% of the American populace can vote themselves goodies from the other 40%, particularly the richest 20%. This may motivate some rich guys to "Go John Galt."

This note tells you how!

First, you have to quit engaging in productive activity.

Second, you have to stop paying taxes. If you do it right, you can pretend your tax cheating is "an honest mistake." Or you may live in a high tax state. And the way to address that is by moving from a high tax state to a lower tax state. Suppose you live in Illinois with higher taxes. Just move to Virginia or Maryland.

Third, if you've read Atlas Shrugged you know the book depicts an economic collapse instigated by John Galt and his allies. To really do the John Galt thing, you've got to substantially and materially contribute to an economic collapse.

Conversely, you might not appreciate these "wreckers." You might think think people who do such things are criminals. Perhaps we can identify those who've already gone John Galt.

First, who does less productive activity, or does more anti-productive activity than a government official? Second, when the guy running the IRS is a tax cheat as well as the chairman of the House Ways & Means committee, tax-paying is definitely optional for some people. Third, the unicorn of hope and change has pursued disastrous economic policies that have has chased capital out of the financial markets. Presumably, George Soros is done shorting the markets.

So, who is John Galt?

Can An Anchor Have Coattails?

Only one of two things are true: Either Barak Obama is a crypto-socialist, neo-stalinist goon due to his alliances with people like Mr. William Ayres, Mr. Jeremiah Wright & ACORN or "he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." I do not see how both assertions can be true simultaneously.

In recent days, Mr. McCain has been running ads linking Mr. Obama to America-hating radicals. One is not guilty of anything for associating with such people. But alliances with such people form a reasonable basis for drawing inferences about a candidate's unstated policy aims and fitness for high office. However, these ads mean absolutely nothing if the candidate in question is "a decent person."

Given this contradiction, how do I know Mr. McCain won't similarly nullify any other part of the narrative he has crafted about his opponent's unfitness for office.

This is the central contradiction of the McCain campaign. Andy McCarthy at National Review said it here: "Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office."

Astroturfing The Insubstantial

I just saw this on National Review.

When several liberal bloggers all choose to spotlight one particular news report by an Alaska CBS affiliate, one begins to wonder if we're seeing a coordinated message. Adding to Dean's observation, it sure is strange the way the liberal blogs all spotlight the same obscure story at the same time, huh?

I think it is significant because I've been thinking about the contrasting warfighting strategies of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain. Astroturfing is nothing new and I suppose it is not unique to Mr. Obama's campaign. Francis Schaeffer once said that you shouldn't ascribe to a conspiracy the coordinated actions of a bunch of people who are all in lockstep as far as their worldviews are concerned. Thus, a few people can easily receive and forward the same choice tips that exactly fits their mental picture of the world.

Nevertheless, it appears that there are two or three channels of negative information coming from the Obama campaign about Mrs. Palin. The first is directly from the campaign and it mentions all the things a liberal Democrat would dislike about a conservative Republican. As such it's a fairly straightforward matter of attack and wholly cricket. But then there are the less-than-direct attacks which are troublesome. The rather childish, petulant insults like discussing Hillary with middle finger extended or referring to lipstick-wearing pigs are really beneficial for the window into Mr. Obama's character that they provide. I was upset yesterday, but today I'm grateful for this disclosure.

However, the astroturfing is troublesome. If you've a story you can't shop, or that would generate significant blowback, you can release it to your fellow-travelers and count on them to muddy the waters. Consider former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, who announced his opposition to Mrs. Palin on the basis of a demonstrably false story about book-banning in a public library. I think Mr. Koch should oppose Mrs. Palin according to his beliefs and values, but he ought not support his decision upon a falsehood. I don't think Mr. Koch even knew he was deceived until long after the fact.

We've got to have a grasp on reality if we're to function in this world. When lies are your stock-in-trade, I think it distances you from reality. This may yield some short-team pleasantness, but it can be long-term harmful. And if you overdose on lies, you have blowback that can kill you.

Now, it appears that the Obama campaign believes that one can make a negative impression about Mrs. Palin if a particular CBS affiliate's news story is aired, but they're afraid there's not enough substance to it. Fritz Mondale once said, "where's the beef," and the Obama team must not have sufficient faith in this line of attack to man up and put it out there directly. Mrs. Palin had no problem directly attacking Mr. Obama in her convention speech. Why are her Democrat opponents not similarly direct?

If you punch me in the nose, I'll hate you but I'll respect you. Conversely, if you try to stab me in the back, I'll both hate and disrespect you. Mr. Obama has never faced big-league pitching and it shows.

Steven Quincy Urkel for President?

Mr. Barak Obama said that when you put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig. Now, any one of the 40 million people who saw the Republican Vice Presidential acceptance speech recalls the joke about how a hockey mom differs from a pit bull. (Yes, he also deniably called Mr. McCain an old fish, but I'm not on about that.)

It does not require the intelligence commonly claimed by a Democrat candidate for national office to connect the lipstick allusions. Isn't that clever? Mr. Obama didn't actually call Mrs. Palin a pig. Haw haw haw. When someone complains about the attack tomorrow, he'll deny it and everyone who doesn't accept this will look petty. Mr. Obama flipped the bird at Mrs. Clinton earlier this year in a similarly deniable fashion. It must have taken the brain the size of a planet to come up with that trick.

Or a sixth grader. You know, the guy you eventually got fed up with and gave a wedgie to. There's a word for this: passive-aggression. It's what gelded males do around females who have cowed them. It's the standard operating procedure for men without chests.

When Mrs. Palin went after Mr. Obama in her acceptance speech, she manfully launched a frontal attack. There were no childish petty snipes she might deny the next day. There was an arrogance in her sarcasm, not unlike that of Mr. Mohamed Ali who really was the greatest. (Mr. Obama has the arrogance of the Emperor/Messiah with no clothes. He has everyone in the Washington DC Beltway convinced that his hopey/changey/whatever is just so marvelous that only provincial bumpkins doubt its substance.)

When Mrs. Palin pointed out that someone has to have an awfully thin resume to count such a bogus gig as "community organizer," Mr. Obama whimpered the next day that the mean girl was hitting him: She used... sarcasm. She knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. She was vicious. In this world there are producers and there are consumers. Community organizers are not producers. Look at all the jobs Mr. Obama didn't create in his community. Someone has said that "Jesus was a community organizer." My Bible says he was a carpenter.

Contrast this with snippy, mincing references to pigs and lipstick. Or a thousand astroturfed smears about Mrs. Palin and her family by anonymous bloggers whose IPs track back to Democrat operatives. Yeah, that's the kind of guy we want standing up to America's enemies. That'll scare them.

When I vote for a black guy President he's gonna be John Shaft, not Steve Urkel.




Update: I suppose that passive-aggression is altogether fitting to a disciple of Mr. Saul Alinsky. I happened upon this essay wherein this paragraph appears:

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.

Saul Alinsky vs John Boyd

Here's a lens through which to view the current political conflict. On one side is a fellow whose first job out of college was community organizer. On the other side is a fellow whose first job out of college was fighter pilot. Each appears to have brought this experience to the fight.

It is wrong to accuse Barak Obama of having no experience. He was a community organizer. I served on the board of a neighborhood association in the early 1980s and have met a few. However, my experience was insufficient to become acquainted with their guru, Saul Alinsky and his book Rules For Radicals. However, I now recognize the pattern of conflict followed by his disciples. I am confident that Mr. Obama learned Mr. Alinsky's lessons as well as did Mr. Obama's rival, Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Better, seeing as how both worked from the same playbook and Mr. Obama won.

Before that, Mr. Obama's greatest achievement was winning his Senate seat. He was quite lucky when the judge unsealed Mr. Ryan's divorce papers. Mr. Ryan was ahead in the polls at the time. But you make your luck and we'll never know exactly how this lucky break came about. Perhaps someone more familiar with Mr. Alinsky's book could say.

The other party is headed by a fellow I've written about in the past as mere media hoax. He was so out of touch with my wing of the party, so hostile toward the religious right, so prone to sell out Republican interests, and so quick to kowtow to the media elites that I thought it impossible that he could inspire loyalty in the Republican Party. Obviously, I was wrong.

Before Mr. McCain became a POW he was a fighter pilot. Fighter pilots kill Communists.

They did so over North Korea and over North Vietnam with lopsided kill-ratios thanks to the fighting doctrines taught by USAF Colonel John Boyd. The key notion in Mr. Boyd's way is the OODA loop. In any dogfight, each pilot must do the same four things: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. The participants in a dogfight will loop through these steps, and the winner invariably manages to "get inside the other guy's OODA loop." A fighter ace kills the other guy because when he's inside his OODA loop, the other guy is always responding to a stale situation. During the "Observe and Orient" steps the pilot forms a mental picture of reality. During the "Act" step the pilot changes reality. If I'm inside your OODA loop, I'm changing the situation faster than you can decide what to do that'll save yourself and/or kill me.

It is widely documented that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush were all "misunderestimated" by their political opponents. Though I don't think Mr. Bush was or is a Conservative, each of these politicians were never understood by their political opponents. And each of these politicians managed to run rings around their adversaries. They each had this stealth shield spell of confusion that addled their enemies' wits. It's hard to Observe and Orient when your brain can't grok who your opponent is.

Since the Friday before Labor Day it appears that Mrs. Palin has transformed Barak Obama from Emperor/Messiah into Wyle E. Coyote, Sooooper Genius. Look at all the narrative attacks that have been spun about her and none have come close to touching her. Can this mean that someone is serially faking the drive-by media elites out of their jock-straps? Has Team McCain gotten inside Team Obama's OODA loop?

Maybe, and maybe it doesn't matter. Elections are zero-sum games, just like dogfights: one guy wins and one guy loses. Except in dogfights losing is usually much worse for your health. But elections are a form of politics and I don't know whether Mr. Alinky's tactics (which are native to politics) are more effective than Mr. Boyd's tactics.

Update: for a better analysis of Team McCain's fighting strategy go here. If you happen to agree with Mr. McMain's side, you need to get your head around this:

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

WHY things are this way have to do with the nature of post-modernism and its notion of truth and absolutes.

Another Update: Another OODA loop analysis of the current conflict.