I was going to live-blog the debate, but it was so boring that I fell asleep before I could post it on Takimag. In any case, this was supposedly a debate about foreign policy, but more than half of it was taken up with the peculiar obsession of the insufferable Jim Lehr, of PBS, who manages to combine earnestness and pretentiousness … [Read More]

Jim, let me just make a point. I’ve got a bracelet, too… ~Barack Obama This statement, better than anything else said, sums up Barack Obama’s performance at the presidential debate last night. Coming in a close second would be this exchange on the Georgia-Russia situation (or was it the Wall Street bailouts?): LEHRER: You see any—do you have a major difference … [Read More]

My friend Dave Weigel has a revealing post at Reason’s “Hit & Run” blog about Ron Paul’s long-overdue endorsement of Chuck Baldwin. Weigel refers the scornful commentators at “Hit & Run” to some “unfiltered Chuck” detailing his opposition to the North American Union, multiculturalism, and abortion. In a second post, he quotes Chuck as stating, This MTV generation has lost its … [Read More]

Are GOP partisans as dumb as they seem? My answer to this query is “at least as dumb as turkeys, the mouths of which have to be shut when it rains, lest they swallow too much water and drown.” How else does one explain the continued enthusiasm shown by conservative-GOP activists for the “conservative” McCain-Palin ticket? Although for years conservatives of … [Read More]

With the two major presidential candidates being both similar and wrong on virtually every issue, as they seem to be every four years, this election is more like the cola wars of the 1980’s when the major soda brands spent millions trying to sell the public on slightly different versions of same product. Obama wants to buy the world a Coke … [Read More]

Will the neocons who tutored George W. Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for Sarah Palin?         Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party.         In St. Paul, … [Read More]

Not to be insulting, but people who write about politics are all suckers. Suppose for years you’ve been drinking a certain whiskey. Its producers then launch an ad campaign that “brands” the whiskey in a way that you don’t like—that associates it, say, with youth and libido rather than maturity and discernment. Does the ad campaign make you change your view … [Read More]

Near the end of a town hall meeting in Johnstown, Pa., a woman arose to offer a passionate plea to Barack Obama to “stop these abortions.” Obama’s response was cool, direct, unequivocal. “Look, I got two daughters—9 years old and 6 years old. ... I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, … [Read More]

Having been listening to happy talk for more than a week about the “Palin factor,” courtesy of all my local friends and the commentaries of Pat Buchanan, and having felt at least for a few minutes some of the same euphoria about the GOP vice-presidential candidate, it now seems appropriate to look at the gaping hole in the donut. Although Palin … [Read More]

One wonders: What did Sarah Palin ever do to inspire the rage and bile that exploded on her selection by John McCain? What is there either in this woman’s record or resume to elicit such feline ferocity? What did we know of her when she was introduced? That she was a mother of five who had brought into this world a … [Read More]