Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
About the Author
Coming Soon: 100 Facts About Gerard Van der Leun. A breathless world awaits. March, 2006
SIDELINES
MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat
"I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven't been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife - I didn't put up for that stuff just to come in second," Obama said.This as Obama "stood beneath a tent on the expansive Bon Jovi compound, which resembled an Italian villa."
"Democrat White House nominee Barack Obama on Sunday offered to go one-on-one with Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin -- but only on the basketball court. Obama, 47, who blows off steam on the campaign trail with games of pickup hoops, however joked that he wouldn't take on the Alaska governor -- and experienced hunter -- with a gun." - Obama offers Palin a game of hoops
"High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.- Algae-dyed polar bears puzzle Japan zoo visitorsYet another instance of warming threatening cute carnivores.
"This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed." -- via Mark Steyn @ The Corner on National Review Online
Small-town residents boo media with McCain On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling. "Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack.I love the smell of tar being heated in the morning.
"There's a photo of Sarah Palin in a stars and stripes bikini, toting an automatic weapon. It says more than any Op-Ed or blog. Hot broad with cool weapon. Every school shooter's dream of womanhood. Alas, the photo is photoshopped, but true in spirit." - Erica Jong: The Mary Poppins SyndromeLest we forget, Jong's one immortal literary achievement was in coining the term "zipless f**k." If only she'd learned enough to zip it.
"Media Bubble, Sept. 2 -- Embattled former beauty queen Sarah Palin* continued to wilt yesterday under the pressure of numerous fair, evenhanded media questions regarding the alleged state of "Alaska." Palin has claimed to be "governor" of the legendary northern land mass, which, while heretofore undiscovered by explorers, was once rumored to contain vast expanses rich with oil, gold, and "eski-mos." -- Treacher
Bonto (Barak Obama – Not The One)You could also middle name it into BHONTO, which could then be seen as a direct descendent of BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again)
NOAA says that shorter-term pollutants from Asia may raise U.S. heartland temperatures by three degrees in about 50 years." -NOAA: China to Warm U.S. Heartland Watts Up With That?
"In a system where everyone else must submit to checks and balances, who provides the check over your power to ruin lives and reputations, if the media are above the law? You'd better come up with a good answer. And fast." - Villainous Company: Palin vs. The Gatekeepers
"If she shoots a lawyer, he's stayin' down." - Assistant Village Idiot: Hive, Not Tribe
How. Great. Is. This. This is what makes those long boring weeks of bad news or lame news worth it. There's always a comedy bonanza coming at some point. And the gloating. Oh Dear Lord, the sweet sweet gloating. I'm not in this for analysis. I'm in for gloating. And I need to be winning to be gloating. You ever try gloating when you're getting your ass kicked? It doesn't play.
It's been a while since I could really, genuinely, deeply gloat. Thank you, John McCain and Sarah Palin, for once again letting me laugh again. And thank you, too, liberals. DKM (Daily Kos Media). Barack "Community Organizer" Obama. Power Glutes Andi. Keef Olbermann. You have played no small role in elevating my spirits and bringing joy into my life again.
I'll say it: it's over. The way Palin grabbed Urkel by the scruff of the neck and shook the fairy dust off his bony ass.... marvelous. All he had going for him was star power, and now it's been eclipsed by her greater Light. Next to her, he looks like any other third rate political hack. Palin's the star. Obama's now just in a supporting role in her cosmic drama. She is the Candidate of Destiny. He is now the second youngest candidate with the oldest ideas. Truly a relic of the past.
Sense of Events: TEOLAWKI still imminent
A beautiful, confident, articulate, independent, accomplished -- and conservative - woman apparently has enraged Team Obama, the mainstream media, and the entire American intelligentsia, as if they got collectively hit by a cruise missile aimed from Middle America.... The danger is not just that Sarah Palin could win McCain the election, but she could expose the entire flimsy structure of doctrinaire liberalism as the hypocrisy—and chauvinism—it has become." -Victor Davis Hanson: Target Palin
The world moves forward in fits and starts, pausing here and there to be overrun by Panzers and commissars, but human beings are clever and keep pushing. The only incurious people in the world work for the newspaper and the TV and the government. Everybody else is always looking around for ways to improve their lot.
Much of this tinkering with the quotidian details of daily life goes unremarked. The average person adopts it, the ivory tower crowd ignores it or execrates it. But whatever it is, it's a fact. It's real. Academics, entertainers, politicians and writers do not live in the world of reality, and show a studied disdain for the trappings of the average person's life.- Sippican Cottage: Something Something Else Happens
"From BDS to PDS, no, Sarah is a girl. She can’t give them PDS. She gives them PMS: Palin Madness Syndrome. In fact, that is what I think we should start calling the press: The PMS Media!" - Palin a news Powerhouse @ The Anchoress
"What then explains the professoriate's desire to teach against their own heritage? Too many things to enumerate here. Ingratitude, envy, vanity, and sloth come to mind. But there are immediate and practical political benefits. One benefit of teaching non-western material that you don't really know -- because you can't read the original language, and the work has had no influence upon your art or culture -- is that you can impress its writers and thinkers into service as political coolies. After all, a lot of track needs to be laid between here and Utopia." - (Originals)
"I hereby propose that future female candidates for high office on the Right must be pre-selected early in life and required to take a vow of celibacy, forsaking family and other obligations and entering into a special society somewhat akin to that of the Vestal Virgins of Rome." -neo-neocon Rules for the female campaign road: let's hear it for the Vestal Virgin
Palin's friends should be less immediately worried about what the Obama campaign will do to her than what the McCain campaign will do. This is a woman who's tough enough to work her way up and through, and to say yes to a historic opportunity, but she will know little of, or rather have little experience in, the mischief inherent in national Republican politics. She will be mobbed up in the McCain campaign by people who care first about McCain and second about themselves. (Or, let's be honest, often themselves first and then McCain.) Palin will never be higher than number three in their daily considerations. They won't have enough interest in protecting her, advancing her, helping her play to her strengths, helping her kick away from danger. And – there is no nice way to say this, even though at this point I shouldn't worry about nice – some of them are that worst sort of aide, dim and insensitive past or present lobbyists with high self-confidence. She'll be a thing to them; they'll see the smile and the chignon and the glasses and think she's Truvi from Steel Magnolias. They'll run right over her, not because they're strong but because they're stupid.
What do the SAT, the Kellogg Company, Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler all have in common? They are all connected by the practice of eugenics in the first half of the 20th century.
Oil prices have slid so far and so fast that the retreat has led analysts to predict further puncturing of what they call a speculative bubble. Many analysts don't see a floor at $100, but rather at levels as low as $70 or $80. "This is start of a fall to $80 crude by the end of the year, maybe as early as September," says Joel Fingerman, principal of FundamentalAnalytics.com, a Chicago-based energy consulting firm.
"If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!" -Fatimah Ali: Philadelphia Daily NewsWe've seen this pathetic threat before but seldom so baldly. Ah, the extortion begins in ernest.
"Combine a child's response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system. No country's politics depends more openly on friendships than America's, yet Obama has not a single real friend, for he rose so fast that all his acquaintances become rungs on the ladder of his ascent. One human relationship crowds the others out of his life, his marriage to Michelle, a strong, assertive and very angry woman." -Spengler - How Obama lost the election.
Chicken-fried bacon is favorite fried fare at Texas state fair contest "Everything in Texas is chicken-fried, and bacon makes everything better so we thought we'd put the two together."
"There are a number of industries that survive solely upon white guilt: Penguin Classics, the SPCA, free range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market. Yet all of these pale in comparison to classical music, which has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance."
"My understanding is that Gov. Palin's town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We've got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year -- we have a budget of about three times that just for the month." -CNN Political TickerMcCain Campaign responds:
“For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and it’s laughable. It is a testament to Barack Obama’s inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin’s executive experience managing a budget of over 10 billion dollar dollars, and more than 24,000 employees.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008
"Still, the weekend offered Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden one of their first opportunities to spend an extended period of time settling into their new marriage. At every stop, the two men greeted their audiences together. As Mr. Biden offered the opening remarks, Mr. Obama stood at his side and looked out into the audience, applauding and smiling. - JEFF ZELENY Reporter’s Notebook - On the Trail, Adjusting to Life as a Couple - NYTimes.comNot that there's anything wrong with that, but please no pictures of the wedding night!
"Keith Olbermann was pulled from St. Paul to anchor MSNBC's storm coverage from New York, with his seat beside Chris Matthews filled by David Gregory. Capus said political considerations had nothing to do with that move." - The Associated Press:
"People in Wasilla are Alaskan tough, so not only does a thing like teen pregnancy not seem like anyone's damn business, but it's also not seen as the calamity so many people in the lower 48 might think it is. This is dangerous country — it's not just the roughneck jobs on cable reality shows. It's real life here." - In Wasilla, Pregnancy Was No Secret - TIME
At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: "Back off these kinds of stories." "I have said before, and I will repeat again: People's families are off-limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."
On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs: "I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired." -- Obama says no place for Palin daughter story - Politico.com
"For the next 15 or 20 minutes, he talked with us about our son, Iraq , his family, faith, convictions, and shared his feelings about nearing the end of his presidency. He asked each of our teenaged sons what they wanted to do in life and counseled them to set goals, stick to their convictions, and not worry about being the "cool" guy. He said that he'd taken a lot of heat during his tenure and was under a lot of pressure to do what's politically expedient, but was proud to say that he never sold his soul. Sometimes he laughed, and at others he teared up. He said that what he'll miss most after leaving office will be his role as Commander in Chief." -BLACKFIVE: The Reason To Delay Air Force One...
"Get in your news anchor chair or at the wheels of your bootlicker leftie blogs or fire up the presses for your dead-tree dying newspapers and tell us all about it. Todd's not a real Eskimo. Sarah's not a real woman. Trig isn't really her son and all her kids have stupid names anyway. Alaska isn't a real state and being mayor and governor there isn't real executive experience, like milking grant programs with Bill Ayers is. Taxes and the Jihad and good schools aren't "women's issues", lesbian rights and taking away people's guns are what women really want. Women care more about the North Slope staying undeveloped than they do about the price of gas for the mini-van." - That Precious Minority Status
Instant Agitprop -- New Campaign garb now on sale: JesusFish Eats the "Mark of the Obamessiah" @ CafePress
HT: Tim Blair"Rolling onto final, the co-pilot calls for "flaps three". I can see the runway; it is raining ahead, but looks OK. "Flaps full, landing checklist" I call out the items on the landing checklist like a good little non-flying pilot. There is a heavy shaft of rain east of the control tower, but our runway still looks good. Lightning bolts flash east of the airport boundary." -- Flight Level 390: TABIR intersection (N28 25.2 W083 00.2)
Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, I’m looking for the liberal who wants to engage in an honest, free-form, even-playing-field discourse examining, with intellectual sincerity, the achievements of the Governor of Alaska who’s been in office nineteen months, versus the achievements of the House Speaker who’s been in office nineteen months. Leave the bumper sticker slogans and sound bites from Howard YEEEEEAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!! Dean at home, and just compare those two stewardships. Problems fixed…people unified…approval ratings sustained. Then get back to me on which female-selection was cynical, desperate, bald-faced, sneaky, pandering, deceptive, superficial, cheap, calculated and condescending. -House of Eratosthenes
Best Palin Reaction Line of the Day: "The smart liberals are worried. The dumb ones think they've won." - AMERICAN DIGEST
If you think someone is watching you, you're probably right. But this doesn't mean you're not also crazy, according to psychiatrists who say that our surveillance and reality TV society is spawning a new kind of psychosis. They're calling it the Truman Show delusion. - Surveillance Society Sparks Psychosis | Threat Level from Wired.com
"If you can just get your mind together
Uh-then come on across to me
We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea...
But first, are you experienced?"
"On August 31st, at 23:59 UTC, just a little over 24 hours from now, we are very likely to make a bit of history. It looks like we will have gone an entire calendar month without a sunspot. According to data from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center, the last time that happened was in June of 1913. May of 1913 was also spotless." - Sun poised to make history with first spotless month since 1913
The Left "would respect her and think she was just great if she'd never married, her 5 kids were by different fathers, none of which were still around, and she was living on public assistance in low income housing. Then she'd be the bees knees." - Sister Toldjah - PLUS: Other vicious far left attacks on Palin
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