Volume 9, Number 31
May 4, 2008
May 4, 2008
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SUNDAYS - SINCE
1999
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Monday,
at the National Press Club, in front of an audience of both
practitioners of liberation theology and the black arts of campaign
coverage, Jeremiah Wright divorced himself from any benefits of the
doubt which might have accrued.
It was such a strange confluence of narcissism, racism, conceit and pseudo-science (and nothing like his conversation with Bill Moyers) that, evidently, Obama no longer felt he was stuck with stickin'. Leave it to others to ponder whether the fact that the bus had an automatic transmission made it easier for Barack to back over the pastor several times, but if loyalty is part of your character evaluation, in light of the Philadelphia speech, Obama has earned some respect. It's been beaten to death and, yes, we should be moving on, so I will only add that I fear a forthcoming revelation of the onset of some medical condition and we will all have to bite our collective tongue. We're experiencing something of that sort here in New Mexico as Sen. Pete Domenici (R) revealed a neurological condition, the progression of which will leave him a shell. Now is not the time to haul out the Domenici grievance list. One candidate trying to win in the Republican primary June 3, Stevan Pearce from downstate, is playing the 'only real conservative' card in his current round of saturation advertising. With McCain at the top of the ticket playing the 'reach across the aisle' card, Heather Wilson seems more the heir apparent. Her Air Force credentials, along with victories for New Mexico and a grateful business community in the BRAC base closure process, would seem to cast her as the shoo-in. But Senator Domenici's record is, as you would expect from such a lengthy career, all over the place on energy, the economy, defense and so forth. Will Pearce have the gall to resort to the same shallow degrees of guilt by association, wielded so devilishly by Hillary's Blackberry posse, and pick through all the parts which aren't 'conservative enough.' Just how different from Senator Pete does he dare to be? You've got to admit, though, he's got that values rap down to an artform. He's like Tom DeLay but, so far as we know, without the Jack Abramoff part. He follows the party line that habeas corpus is for suckers and torture is okay because of some moral relativism voodoo usually eschewed by people of his label. He's not a hypocrite; though; he's the only true conservative in the race. I'm guessing he's got "freedom fries" tattooed on his arm and he'll be gunning for people who won't wear that lapel pin. Did you know there's a Kinks song about him? Pearce is the quintessential 'good German' and wants us to go along. If he loses, thank goodness he had to trade in his incumbency in Congress to make his play. If he succeeds, the Democrat will have the added benefit of any tsunami of desire to bid these types good riddance. That is the Democratic work which is not yet underway. That is the audacity of stalling for time to socially engineer a Dukakis in the tank moment which will stick to Obama. Hillary has got some huevas. There's a false impression afoot that this is a three way race, because obviously it's a succession of two-way contests. This tag teaming between Clinton and McCain, slighting Obama's character in the broadest of brush strokes, is dangerously close to McCarthyism and speaks volumes about party loyalty. As Stanley Fish wrote in his Times blog, a man with a firsthand knowledge of what he describes as William Ayers salon type gatherings, "There was and is absolutely no reason for anyone who knows them to plead the fifth or declare, 'I am not now nor have I ever been a friend of Bill’s and Bernardine’s.' Least of all Barack Obama, who by his own account didn’t know them that well and is now being taken to task for having known them at all. Of course it would have required preternatural caution to avoid associating with anyone whose past deeds might prove embarrassing on the chance you decided to run for president someday." One could easily add, a Clintonesque preternatural caution. The first signs of weariness defending from every new tangent in the onslaught which has become juggernaut is pounced upon as fresh opportunity for caricature. Adjectives are so easy to inculcate in this hyper-drive world of media glut. The cycle repeats with ever more dizzying frequency. The world is facing Malthusian meltdown, global climate change, corporations sans frontières (in lieu of world justice), further brinksmanship by war criminals, not to mention a couple of dozen other impending crises, but all you need to know is that Barack Obama has made three gaffes since February, had a former pastor very publicly lose the naked light of Christian teachings, and had tangential involvement with someone with a less than perfect permanent record. That it raises a serious concern about his qualifications to be president, you would think, would be the rhetorical province of 'the true conservative in this race.' I guess that once you're committed to the slime pit, you're stuck with stickin'. |
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Next week: Now We Know http://users.wildblue.net/msyoudin/paxtpund.html
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