Here. Throw this guy eight bucks.
Murder By Faint Praise
This NY Daily News piece by Larry Hunter is hardly a ringing endorsement of Obama (in fact, it turns the back-handed compliment into high art), but it does go to show how damaged the Republican brand is:
I’m a lifelong Republican – a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp’s Empower America.
This November, I’m voting for Barack Obama.
When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that’s antithetical to almost everything I believe in?
The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies – this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.
***Or maybe not. But here’s the thing: Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed-in-the-wool, big-government liberal, I’m still voting for him.
These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil – and lost countless lives – and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.
If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It’s not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.
Well played with that permanent Republican majority thing, Mr. Rove.
Number of the Day: 52
Good showing for Obama in June:
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign raised $52 million in June, his campaign manager said this morning – not quite a record for the high-flying campaign, but close to it. The campaign had raised $55 million in February, during the Democratic primaries.
But it’s still more than twice what Republican rival Sen. John McCain raised during June — $22 million.
Yet the Republican National Committee, which is backing the party’s presidential candidate with its own resources, also had nearly $68 million in the bank – a combined treasury which the Obama campaign was mindful about today in reporting its own June haul.
You know the drill:
Comcast Ate My Channels
Apparently Comcast has changed all my channels around, and I can not get MSNBC in my home office anymore (I don’t have a HD box on that tv). Weird, although maybe a blessing in disguise.
On the upside, I do appear to have a bunch of new HD channels on the living room set. Sadly, one of them has Pat Robinson on it, but I think I remember how to block channels.
Good For McCain
I think McCain legitimately deserves some credit for going into the NAACP, not the most friendly of venues ever for the GOP, particularly not a hotbed of support this year given the circumstances, and giving a pretty gracious and magnanimous speech:
I appreciate your kind invitation and this warm welcome to the NAACP. And by the way, this is your second invitation to me during my presidential campaign, and I hope you’ll excuse me for passing on the opportunity at your convention last year and not being here.
As you might recall, I was a bit distracted at the time dealing with what reporters uncharitably described as an implosion in my campaign. But I’m very glad that you invited me again.
Let me begin, if I may, with a few words about my opponent. Don’t tell him I said this, but he’s an impressive fellow in many ways.
He’s inspired a great many Americans, some of whom have wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. This success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not to continue quite as long as he hopes, but it does make you and me proud to know the country I’ve loved and served all my life, still a work in progress and always improving.
It was actually a pretty decent speech.
*** Update ***
Rhetoric v. reality.
This All Feels Vaguely Familiar
From the comments yesterday, the following:
I find it depressing that people keep believing Iran is developing nuclear weapons in the face of no evidence to that effect. The only people saying otherwise are the same exact people who fed the public the WMD bullshit of Iraq.
So here is the challenge to all of you- what actual evidence is there that Iran is developing nuclear weapons? Not trying to prove they are not, as I just sort of assume all nations (particularly after watching the difference between what happened to Iraq and North Korea) covet them. Reliable sources only, so that excludes the Pipes dreams and various drive-by assertions at the Weekly Standard and NRO.
Actual facts. What is there out there? What do we actually know?
The Obamas As Elitists
You have to give the Malkin folks credit- they are consistent:
Actually, Michelle Obama has a point here: the $600 stimulus package tax rebate is kind of a gimmick. But she chose a typically Obamesque way of expressing the thought, complete with an implication that taxpayers are wastrels who will just blow their money on luxuries:
“You’re getting $600. What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month.
“Barack’s approach is that the short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good. And it may even feel good that first month when you get that check. And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”
Have you seen the price of
arugula at Whole Foodsearrings at Tiffany’s?
They remind me of my family’s Jack Russell terrier when he was younger- he would see a ball, and that was it. It was all he could think about. He had to have the ball. You could see the thoughts running through his head as he pestered you to play with him or if you had put his ball away in the house:
“Won’t you throw the ball? Please? Just a little more ball. No. I will not sit down. I need more ball. Good owners throw the ball. Beautiful, lovely, wonderful ball. MUST. HAVE. THE. BALL. Why do you hate me? Ball. Please throw the ball. Ball. Ball. Ball. Wonderful happy fun ball. Ball is the source of all good. Ball. Ball. Ball. I need the ball. Throw the ball. Please. Ball.”
Now just replace the word “ball” in the previous paragraph with “Obama is elitist,” or, depending on the day, “Marxist” or “Muslim,” and you don’t need to read Malkin or her lackeys until after November.
*** Update ***
By the way, this will come as devastating news to the folks pushing the book Grand New Party, as it appears that even Wal-Mart is elitist, what with their wide selection of earrings from the $250- $3,000.00 range. So much for the Sam’s Club Republicans, as Sam’s Club is apparently elitist, too. Once you have lost Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, what do you have left, non-elitists? Dollar General?
On a serious note, it never ceases to amaze mt that the more these guys try to show they are in touch with “middle America” (I just broke my own ban), the more they reveal how out of touch they are with the common experiences of most people in this country.