The Objective Eye

"Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen."
- Ayn Rand, "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" (1961)

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Friday, August 29, 2008

Palin Veep Choice is a Brilliant Strategic Coup

Now Playing: Rick Wakeman's jam ("Gone But Not Forgotten," "Catherine Parr" and "Merlin the Magician,") from An Evening of Yes Music Plus by ABWHL

WOW! A mere matter of hours after Obama's attempted "big splash," nobody anywhere in media is talking about anything except McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Veep candidate. Announcing it on the eve of the Labor Day holiday means the American population will be talking to each other about it all weekend, rather than being soaked with the customary Leftwing propaganda about it from the monolithic Leftwing "mainstream" media. The MSM as a single unit will certainly launch into full-blown attack mode against the McCain-Palin ticket for the duration of the election season, right after next week's saturation coverage of...Hurricane Gustav.

Love McCain or hate him (I pretty much despise him, for the record,) you have to admire the sheer brilliance of political strategy in this pick. If you're a Republican you've got to be completely jazzed at the fact that McCain has brought back a sense of razor-sharp political strategy to the GOP, something that's been gone for far too long. In one single stroke, McCain has absolutely buried the Democrat-Socialist Convention and news about it.

To say there is a lot to admire about Palin is a vast understatement - she's someone who's elevated "unconventional" and "overachiever" to near-freakish levels, and I'm not talking about her gender vis-à-vis the VP candidacy:

- Governor of Alaska, the only American state that borders on two foreign countries, maintaining approval ratings ranging from the upper 80s to mid-90s;

- a competent mother of five;

- an aggressive opponent of taxation, wasteful spending and corruption, with a rep as a whistleblower;

- an avid firearms proponent, NRA member and shooter;

- operator of a snowmobile/watercraft/ATV business, an adept snowmobiler and outdoorswoman;

- a hockey player, eh?, a champion basketballer and former beauty queen


From the standpoint of cross-partisan election season appeal:

- she's been a union member and has strong blue-collar roots;

- she will instantly appeal to the woman's vote and Clinton supporters angered at being snubbed by the DNC;

- she's spent more time with American troops in the Middle East than the Democrats' candidate for President would spend with American troops at a hospital in Germany - which means instant appeal in particular to "military moms," a powerful voting block.

- as a woman, her ascendance to the historic position of "first female Vice President in American history," though philosophically trivial, will steal a huge political prize from the Democrat-Socialist Party. If she goes on to the Presidency and wins that too...

- a woman as Vice President of the most powerful and benevolent nation on Earth will send a long-overdue message to foreign nations and, er, religions, that are steeped in often monstrous misogyny.

On the downside, Palin has raised taxes against the oil industry as Alaska Governor; she, like McCain, has drunk the Kool-Aid on "climate change," a.k.a. "weather"; she shows every sign of being firmly entrenched within the religious right, reportedly even to the point of advocating "creationism"; and though an indirect negative, McCain praises her commitment to "the common good" - an inherently circular concept - and that she's "fought oil companies."

[Earth to McCain: The very reason we're shoveling $4 a gallon into the bank accounts of OPEC and al Qaida, is that government has been "fighting oil companies" - instead of getting the hell out of the way and allowing them to produce.]

All in all the positives vastly outweigh the negatives, and the pick is indeed strategically brilliant.

Expect the "mainstream media" to focus almost exclusively on Hurricane Gustav in their every single broadcast, above-the-fold headline and article, for the duration of the coming week. For obvious reasons. So those of us who are interested in the Presidential campaign will have to stick with the 'Net.

Not a problem.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Some Brief Notes on the Democrat-Socialist Party's Pep Rally

Now Playing: "Payin' the Cost to Be the Boss by B.B. King - a lyrical aptness to this week's events that's none too subtle...

'Been a long time gone - so sorry, but summer beckoned and I responded. Anyhoo, the Democrat-Socialist Party is having its pep rally in Colorado this week, and frankly I can't stand to sit through more than five consecutive minutes of it. It's not really what's being said so much as the mind-numbing boredom. Didn't I see and hear all of this same drivel exactly 32 years ago? Déjà Carter...more on that in a sec.

To be perfectly even-handed here, I'm not planning on doing much different with the GOP convention, though there may be a speaker or two I'm interested in hearing, should they turn out to have been invited - Shadegg, Pence, Coburn. You know, the people McCain wouldn't touch with a forty-foot Constitution-tested flamethrower as VP options. We'll see - in every sense.

Obama's choice of Biden was very, very strange - as was his decision to make The Earth-Shattering Announcement at 3am on a Saturday, almost as if he were embarrassed at his own pick and were trying to conceal it.

As if to confirm the sentiment, today's Gallup Daily tracking poll shows zero bounce for the Obama camp after the Biden pick. I could have told BO that - Biden and his appalling, often comically misguided worldview flatly bores me. Sorry folks, but aside from the occasional spectacular verbal gaffe, the man is a walking yawn factory, a Leftwing cipher. As a lifelong Republican I can't say I'm unhappy with his choice, but it's yet more evidence of Obama's lifetime of poor judgment.

On a lighter note, America's worst of the worst, Jimmy Carter, was essentially Miltonized by the Obama camp yesterday. The ex-President and proud midwife to modern Islamic terrorism was relegated to a four-and-a-half-minute prerecorded video clip, shown when the crowd had thinned for dinner, and a 60-second stroll across the stage with Rosalynn. That's it. No speech, just a walk & wave.

I wouldn't want to make a hasty assumption, but I think the Obama-Carter comparisons have gotten a little too close to the truth and a little too hot to handle. Or maybe the Democrats-in-charge have decided it's more prudent to keep the frothing anti-Semitism a little more discreet.

At any rate, it's looking more and more like a McGovern-type landslide defeat for the Democrats this November - even the expected rosy picture for Congressional Democrats has evaporated. Polls are showing overwhelming public support for new oil drilling that Pelosi & Co. have militantly stonewalled. That ought to be a no-brainer, and if the GOP "leadership" have enough remaining sense to focus on that issue - not just in the Presidential contest but Congressional ones too - they ought to be able to neutralize any Democrat-Socialist Congressional advantage.

And that's about all the silver lining I can pull out of this muck. Regardless of how badly Obama loses, we're still...stuck with McCain, and unless he has some kind of Matrix-Neo-type headshed that rearranges roughly 75% of his synaptic roadmap, we don't have much advantage over Obama except on national defense and energy.

More later.