Some Nice Words To Wake Up To In January

"Joan Walsh of Salon and Joe Klein of Time debate the Democrats' troubles."

You, too, can start your day out right by listening to these much-admired crackpots here (I just heard Joan actually ask Joe, above, how liberals can be "feared" - suggestion: lay off the granola and soymilk,...and, oh yea, "no bed-wetting".)

One Reason Why I Will Never Be A Democrat

"I’ve spent a lifetime watching Democrats eat their own. In the past, I’ve sometimes been one of the cannibals."

-- Joe Klein, saying - openly - what most Democrats, Leftists, and NewAgers would rather chew their own arms off than admit, because it would make the saps who "believe" their universalist One World nonsense think - whoa! - Just One Minute.

Kaus Keeps His Head

Slate's quadrennial exercise proving that just because you're open about it doesn't mean it's not embarrassing is up. Slate is voting 55-1 for Obama over McCain, with one additional vote for Bob Barr. With those numbers, it's getting hard to agree with founder Michael Kinsley:

No doubt it is true that most journalists vote Democratic, just as most business executives (including most media owners) vote Republican, though neither tendency is as pronounced as their respective critics believe.

Not "as pronounced" as our "critics believe"? You mean Sarah Palin thought it would be 56-1? How much more pronounced could it get? ...

Memo to Don Graham: As long as we're going with the O by a 55-1 margin, why not drop the now-ludicrous MSM-style pretense of non-partisanship and reap the financial rewards of partisanship that available on the Web-- like, say, the Huffington Post? ...

Shocked, Shocked for Barack! The cheapest out if your'e a previously McCain-friendly pundit who wants to endorse Obama is to say you like McCain but can't vote for him because you're revolted by his campaign. It's an out elaborately developed by Joe Klein at Time, and it's an out Anne Applebaum takes in Tuesday's WaPo. Applebaum claims she's not reacting against McCain's "campaign" but rather to "institutional" deterioration in his "increasingly anti-intellectual, no longer even recognizably conservative" party. But all the examples she cites come from his campaign (Palin) or campaigning that's not even his (Sean Hannity's anti-Obama telecasts).. ...

The problem with the "I'm repulsed" argument is that while it's eminently respectable it's unserious. The campaign will be over soon. There is no reason to think McCain has actually changed what he wants to do on, say, immigration. Applebaum doesn't offer even a speculative argument as to why, with the election safely behind him, President McCain would have to truckle to his party's anti-amnesty contingent. That's because he wouldn't. He'd be much more likely to make immigration the basis for his first and perhaps only foray into bipartisanship--in effect, truckling to the pro-legalization forces. Nor has McCain "spent the past four months running away" from his longstanding immigration position. He's spent the past two months reasserting it.

I think Applebaum knows this. She's not a fool. If she really thinks that McCain's pre-campaign immigration policies--or his budget policies, or his torture policies--are right for the country, then she should be for McCain. Even if he's trying to win by running anti-Ayers ads. Even if his supporters "repulse" her. It's hard to believe that this repulsion isn't a convenient cover for some unstated, perhaps unconscious, pro-Obama imperative (or maybe simply for the imperative to come to a decision). ...

If you're looking for evidence of a "Bradley"-like effect--in which preelection polls can be wildly off--one place to look is the polling on Ward Connerly's Civil Rights Initiative in Michigan. According to Connerly (in answer to an email query)

Some polls had us losing by 10 points the weekend before the election. We won by 16.

Results here. ... It seems clear, in that case at least, voters told pollsters the respectable PC answer they thought pollsters wanted to hear. ... Barack Obama was one of those campaigning (in radio spots) for the respectable PC side that lost. ...

— Mickey Kaus, bringing a bit of reality to the campaign, for Slate Magazine

The Obama Campaign: This Is A Political Cult

"Obama is part politician, part cult. Supporters wearing T-shirts with an Andy Warhol like pop-art image of his face testify to that,...He's marrying inspiration and cult with old-fashioned political grunt.

...the danger remains for Obama in managing the cult-like fervour.

...Well known political journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine, who was travelling on the campaign plane this week with Obama, too, wrote of a nagging concern about this kind of rhetoric of inspiration over substance, noting 'there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messiahnism'.

In his Super Tuesday speech Obama said 'we are the ones we've been waiting for', attempting to make the case the time was now to get some "change" in Washington: a post-partisan world where politicians reach across the aisle for the common good. 'This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different,' he said. 'It's different not because of me. It's different because of you.'

As Klein notes, this is 'not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire.'

'Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause - other than an amorphous desire for change - the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.'

I hear that too in the voices of Obama's staff constantly, themselves referring to this 'cult of Obama'."

— Geoff Elliott, back on February 09, 2008, telling Americans what we're now caught in - using the words of the Obama campaign itself - in The Australian.

But only one blog has been focused on the cultish aspects of this campaign, and that's:

News Flash, Joe: NewAge Ain't "Moderate"

"Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it's that I've seen this act so often before, maybe it's that the people I talk to when I go out on the road really are having a harder time paying for things like health care, gasoline and college tuition, but I'm finding the Republican attempts to derail the conversation from the actual state of the country really depressing and disgraceful this year. They practice Orwellian politics of the crudest sort. They are trying to sell a big lie--that the election is about the social issues of the 1960s, or Barack Obama's patriotism or his eloquence, or the "angry left," when it's really about turning toward a more moderate path after the ideological radicalism and malfeasance of the past eight years."

-- Joe Klein, admitting he doesn't have a clue - as a Baby Boomer - why anyone (including a presidential candidate born before the baby boom and his chosen vice president born after it) would still be fighting the 60's effects on society, in TIME Magazine.

Here's a thought for you to mull around also: the Baby Boom was the largest demographic shift in the history of the world but it only produced two presidents - Clinton and Bush - which, if you ask me, is as big a statement of generational failure as any we've ever known. Not only didn't the Boomers produce many leaders but, of the ones we still know about, we don't want to see any more of them in charge - Hillary fans notwithstanding.

As the Republican ticket makes clear, we on the Right want anything but Boomers. McCain/Palin is screaming we want to get back to basics, with some changes around the edges (McCain) as we chart a new way forward (Palin) and the politics of the 60's (Obama) and it's ambassadors (Biden) aren't even to be taken seriously. We know what that brings - relativism - and we in America who consider ourselves patriots have had more-than-enough of all that.

Like all Americans, we, too, want change.

Then And Now: President Bush's Instincts Beat The Pants Off Of Liberal New Age Intuition

"Bush’s instincts—his supporters would argue these are bedrock values—seem to be paying off… "

-- Joe Klein, hypocritical former Iraq War supporter and liberal columnist for TIME Magazine, in February 2005

"Bush’s instinct was not wrong. In this war, we do need pre-emptive detention of suspected terrorists; we do need a significant increase of surveillance, particularly of electronic communications; we do need, in some circumstances, to use coercive techniques (short of torture) to elicit information from terrorists."

-- Niall Ferguson, in today's New York Times book review of Philip Bobbitt's “Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century"

Do Not Doubt Me: The Cult Of Obama

O.K., I hate to say "I told you so", but,...read this quote, below, that I posted a while back:

"...Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization.

They change so gradually, by the time you realize you're entrapped - and almost everybody does - you can't figure a safe way back out...."

- Deborah Layton, Survivor of Jim Jones' People's Temple

Great. Very clear, right? Easy to understand? That's how it happens. Watch out for it. No problem. O.K.

Now look at what I posted on October 12th, 2007, by clicking here.

Now look at what I wrote on October 16th, 2007, by clicking here.

And now read today's piece, below, by Jake Tapper of ABC News:

"Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.

It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she's "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters. On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. “

The always interesting James Wolcott writes that "(p)erhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can't picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don't look to politics for transcendence and self-certification."

Then there's MSNBC's Chris Matthews who tells Felix Gillette in the New York Observer, “I’ve been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."

And behold, Obama met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.

The Holy Season of Lent is upon us. Can Obama worshippers try to give up their Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities for a few weeks?

At least until Easter, or the Pennsylvania primary, whichever comes first...

- jpt

UPDATE: Let me be clear: I'm not saying there shouldn't be enthusiasm in politics. I'm merely touching on the fact that some Obama supporters' exhuberance seems to be getting a little out of hand. Obama himself joked about this at a Hollywood fundraiser, as noted in Men's Vogue:

“When Morgan Freeman comes over to greet Obama, the senator begins bowing down both hands in worship. ‘This guy was president before I was,’ says Obama, referring to Freeman's turn in Deep Impact and, clearly, getting a little ahead of his own bio. Next, a nod to Bruce Almighty: ‘This guy was God before I was.’”

"Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities"? "Getting a little out of hand"? Sure. TMR features a raving idiot and everybody else knows better than TMR. Right. So this raving idiot has a question for you in light of all this:

What other cultishly vapid talker out there is helping Obama build this cult?

Your guess is as good as mine,...