MoveOn Chuck
Dear Mr. Wolf, take off your sheep costume and produce your ACLU membership card. We know who you are.
It’s time for the (ahem) Republican Senator from Nebraska to cross the aisle and make it official.
On Fire
Peggy Noonan.
This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he’s a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat–in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles.”
Oh. So that’s what Lincoln’s for. Actually Lincoln’s life is a lot like Mr. Obama’s. Lincoln came from a lean-to in the backwoods. His mother died when he was 9. The Lincolns had no money, no standing. Lincoln educated himself, reading law on his own, working as a field hand, a store clerk and a raft hand on the Mississippi. He also split some rails. He entered politics, knew more defeat than victory, and went on to lead the nation through its greatest trauma, the Civil War, and past its greatest sin, slavery.
Barack Obama, the son of two University of Hawaii students, went to Columbia and Harvard Law after attending a private academy that taught the children of the Hawaiian royal family. He made his name in politics as an aggressive Chicago vote hustler in Bill Clinton’s first campaign for the presidency.
You see the similarities.
Go read the rest of it.
Bloggers Post, MSM Listens
Kevin @ Blogs for Bush notes an article written by Tom Shales of the WaPo claiming that conservative bloggers may well have been the reason Bush’s speech to the nation was aired live on the major networks, and not pushed off to the ‘B’ team cable networks.
Live 8 Prophecy from the Walrus
A timely excerpt from David Sheff’s September 1980 Playboy interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Sheff Just to finish your favorite subject [the Beatles], what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?
Lennon I don’t want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death.Sheff Why?
Lennon Because they’re always rip-offs. I haven’t performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock-‘n’-roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You’ve heard of tithing?
Sheff That’s when you give away a fixed percentage of your income.
Lennon Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly.
Sheff What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?
Lennon Bangladesh was caca.
Sheff You mean because of all the questions that were raised about where the money went?
Lennon Yeah, right. I can’t even talk about it, because it’s still a problem. You’ll have to check with Mother [Yoko], because she knows the ins and outs of it, I don’t. But it’s all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don’t bother sending me all that garbage about, “Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans,” Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn.
Sheff But that doesn’t compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert – playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day.
Lennon That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson. OK. So I don’t buy that. OK.
Sheff But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America…
Lennon Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
(h/t colby cosh)
The Slope is No Longer Slippery
Canada will become the third country in the world to officially sanction same-sex marriage. Let the exodus begin.
Cutting the Tall Grass
That’s the title of the post put together by Dave @ Garfield Ridge. I know I said earlier that I would comment on Bush’s speech, but after reading Dave, I don’t have to. He’s got it right, so why repeat it. Head on over…
Bush Speech Reax
I’m listening to the speech now. I plan to take the transcript and comment later this evening.
Senator ‘Cut-and-Run’
John Kerry uses the New York Times to give advice to the president.
Heh.
“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” – Abraham Lincoln
It Takes a Village (Idiot)
Richard Cohen of the WaPo writes that the increasing sales of Ed Klein’s book about Hillary Clinton exposes the anti-Clinton people as village idiots of our time. He notes that “it takes one to buy this book”.
As much of a liberal as I know Cohen is, this article is surprising–notwithstanding the title, his hate of and disdain for “conservatives” and anyone who challenges Hillary really comes through here. I guess the bright side is that people who are this filled with hate and contempt usually don’t make effective advocates or usually aren’t too good at persuading people.
Actually this book is a cunning Democratic plot to expose all of Hillary’s pecadillos well in advance of her 2008 run so that they will all have run out of steam by then. Hillary’s record must be used against her if we have any hope of derailing her power grab. As we’ve seen too many times before, controversy lifts the Clinton’s, it doesn’t bring them down.
It’s Always Helped Me
Vitamin C gets a bad rap.
Another truism of personal health care — that vitamin C effectively prevents and treats the common cold — bites the dust.
New research, which reviews 65 years of data, concludes that there is no evidence that high doses of vitamin C ward off colds or lessen the symptoms — except in cases of extreme physical exertion such as running a marathon in the winter.
The study, published in the medical journal Public Library of Science Medicine, questions the wisdom of the popular practice of popping vitamin C supplements.
“New Research Says…” Code words written by the big pharmaceutical companies who make billions of dollars pushing their over-the-counter meds for the common cold.
Vitamin C has been a life saver for me. I take handfuls of the stuff when I feel a cold coming on, and it stops it dead. The key for me is to start immediately because if I wait too long it won’t work.
Oh, and it helps ‘keep things movin’ too, if you know what I mean.
’nuff said.