It is only a matter of time before Barack Obama is seen driving with a baby on his lap, or releases a home-made sex tape. And, just like Britney and Paris, Obama wants to raise your taxes!
He’s John McCain, and he approved that message.
John McCain, who has long sought to portray himself as an independent-thinking maverick, is flip-flopping and hemming and hawing and referring to countries that don’t exist and backtracking and triangulating and…
Well, just read Matthew Yglesias here.
And he links to this and this.
McCain’s campaign is looking more pathetic all the time. And yet, polls suggest he could win.
(Yeah, yeah. Polls at this time of year often mean virtually nothing. But the fact that it is even close is ridiculously depressing, isn’t it?)
We live in an age of information, we are told.
Indeed.
I just looked at CNN.com. As I am writing this post, under “Latest News,” the site lists twenty news stories. Some of them are rather important. However, among the twenty stories that CNN considers important enough to label “Latest News,” one also finds the following eight headlines (my comments in italics):
“Singer Winehouse admitted to hospital” (Wouldn’t it be easier to report when something bad doesn’t happen to Amy?)
“Space-tourism mothership unveiled” (O…K…)
“Man deposits millions, one tattered bill at a time” (WTF?)
“Moustache pulls batter out of slump” (Giambi’s porn ’stache is hideous. Is it news?)
“Huge shark caught with bait, hoisted” (Let me see if I understand this - someone went fishing, used some bait, caught something, and hoisted it up? Holy sh*t!)
“Are you a millionaire in the making?” (Incidentally, no. But can anyone consider this “news?” Is CNN suddenly a sweepstakes? Is Ed McMahon lurking on the website somewhere?)
“Honey, I cheated with your checkbook” (Write your own joke here).
“Beer marathoners run, drink, vomit” (“CNN.com readers read, think, vomit”).
“Cop on desk duty after decking cyclist” (Dear cop: please visit editors of CNN.com and get busy).
There you have it. “Latest News.”
Obama’s European tour and the unrealistic expectations that it’s creating on the continent:
He came, he saw, he sprinked us with stardust
The Guardian
Obama on tour: three special relationships in one day
The Independent
L’appel d’Obama aux Européens: “Aidez-nous”
Le Monde
Adoration All Round as Obama Meets Sarkozy in the City of Love
Deutsche Welle
Obamamania grips Europe
The Economist
Today, we bring you a study in contrasts.
A clip from Obama’s Berlin speech:
And now, a selection of words from our President. (It is worth hanging around through the introduction and watching to the end, as there are some sublime works of performance art contained within):
Feel free to laugh or cry. Maybe a little of both.
Scheisse!
From the McCain website, Tucker Bounds (no, really) on Obama’s speech in Berlin:
“While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a ‘citizen of the world,’ John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving, and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it.”
Sigh.
Is our political culture really this ridiculous? Are there really people who think it makes you a bad American if you consider yourself a citizen of the world? Are we this childish? Can I come up with even more smart-ass rhetorical questions?
It is worth pointing out that one of McCain’s heroes (and, like McCain, a guy who ran for president when he was well over a million years old) used the same phrase in 1982 at the United Nations:
I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.
That was Ronald Reagan. The guy who McCain called “that most eloquent, visionary, and steadfast apostle of freedom.”
John McCain says he knows “how to win wars.” And, heck - I guess that would be a rather handy thing to know if you plan on fighting wars.
From The Trail:
“I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars,” McCain told the audience at a town hall in Albuquerque. “And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that.”
OK. I just want to know how he knows this. How did he learn how to win wars? I think it’s a good question.
Is it from his service in the Vietnam War? Because we didn’t win that one.
Just hours after getting hit-and-run by the McCain campaign, Bob Novak became the author of his own:
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.
A Politico reporter saw Novak in the front of a police car with a citation in his hand; a WJLA-TV crew and reporter saw Novak as well. The pedestrian, a 66-year-old male, was hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital with minor injuries according to DC Fire and EMS. Novak was later released by police and drove away from the scene.
“I didn’t know I hit him. I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.”
But don’t feel too bad for the Novakula, there’s more to the story:
As he traveled east on K. Street, crossing 18th, [a cyclist named David Bono] said a “black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”
Bono said the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and then Novak made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.
He chased Novak half a block down K St., finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block him and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blared, and commuters finally went into reverse to allow Novak to pull over.
Bono said that throughout, Novak “keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.” He said he vaguely recognized the longtime political reporter and columnist as a Washington celebrity but could not precisely place him.
Finally, Novak put his head out the window of his car and motioned him over. Bono said he told him that you can’t hit a pedestrian and just drive away. He said Novak responded: “I didn’t see him there.”
A concierge at 1700 K Street said that she saw a bicyclist yelling and walked outside to see what the commotion was about.
“This guy hit somebody and he won’t stop so I’m going to stay here until the police come,” Aleta Petty quoted Bono as saying, as he stood in K Street, blocking traffic.
Bob, I call “bullshit.”
Feeling the pain of high gas prices? Looking for someone to blame? Feeling screwed by the oil companies?
The McCain campaign shows us who the real villain is here
(The chanting is a nice touch, no?)
I assume we can expect new McCain ads that will expose Obama’s other evil doings:
-Losing buttons off of your shirts at the dry cleaner? Obama did it.
-Obama forces movie theaters to grind their popcorn salt into that bizarre dust-like substance.
-That endless stream of Dane Cook ads during last year’s World Series? Barack directed them.
-Cats and dogs used to get along fine before Obama turned them against each other.
-Those new pants making you look fat? Barack’s fault.
-Obama is the guy who came up with all of those irritating names for everything at Starbucks.
