Jim Treacher: It's not over.

Don't give up.

You can talk back to the people who are lying to you, lying about you. You are not helpless. We are not helpless. Their constant drumbeat -- "Obama is inevitable, Obama is inevitable, Obama is inevitable" -- is a sign of weakness, not strength. If they really thought he could win on his own merits, they wouldn't be trying so hard to brainwash you.

Most of all, you can vote. You might try to outwit yourself: "Well, I live in a blue state, so my vote doesn't matter anyway. Besides, they've already pretty much bragged about how they're going to steal the election, and they're getting away with it." All the more reason to take a little time out of your day on Nov. 4 and spite them. They think we're stupid. They think we're cowards. They think we'll believe whatever they say just because they're the ones saying it. Personally, I have no interest in proving them right.

"He didn't ask Obama to come to his house."

McCain giving a little speech. It's good. I haven't seen a crowd this enthusiastic about McCain. It looks like certian things about Obama's nature are starting to break though.

Some quotes:

"He just asked a question, and Americans should be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared or attacked."

"We didn't become the greatest nation on earth by redistributing wealth; we became the greatest nation on earth by creating new wealth."

Keep it up McCain, Please.

McCain starts hitting on Ayers too.

And reminding us that Hillary thought Ayers was revelant, too.

And now he goes after ACORN.

Rachel Lucas has a background on just what ACORN the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now does and how heavilly they are involved in corruption and the Obama camp.

If we had a press that was acutally inquisitive and not mindlessly corrupt this would be news.

McCain has to make his case. The media won't do it for him. The American voter needs to be informed just what kind of a man Obama really is.

Finally

McCain hits back.




Via Rachel Lucas

It may be too late, but the style is good. The theme "What has Obama done?" is a powerful one. As it has people look at Obama's past and record, and compare it to his speeches and current reactions.

The interesting part is how Obama responds to this. These are heavy charges being leveled against him. However, McCain has outlined Obama's traditional response IE distractions, race card, and generally not answering the questions.

If Obama responds in that way, then it underscores McCain's point.

The Media: McCain's always wrong.

In the eyes of the Media McCain just can't win

"Instead of firing Cox, McCain should explain how his policies differ from President Bush on this issue," added Sen. Chuck Schumer.

How does McCain differ from Bush on this issue? Well, for starters, McCain... wants to fire Chris Cox.

And more on the "Just can't win" idea.

In summary the Washington Post thinks McCain shouldn't made an attack ad based on "flimsy" evidence; that evidence being reporting from the Washington Post.
Glen Reynolds: Really, if you were trying< to discredit the traditional media it would be hard to do better than they've been doing themselves.

Meanwhile the meida is playing the race card. For just about any critism against Obama.

Glen Reynolds asks: "Meanwhile, if Obama is President, will Time regard every criticism of his administration as racist?"

New York in Play?

Ed Morrissey looks at some polls.

Obama went down from a 18 point lead to leading by only five.

New York is a must win for Obama, and I doubt he won't win it, but as Morrissey notes, if he can't just count on NY and has to fight for it "he has to sink a large amount of money in New York, he’ll have to take it from his efforts in battleground states, and he’ll have to cut his face time in places like Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, and Minnesota. That’s a recipe for defeat, both financially and electorally."


Meanwhile there's rumors of McCain doing his own stupid move. Supporting a Drilling Bill that is light on any Drilling but heavy on Pork. That's... a bad move for many reasons.

Sunday Stuff.

Once again let's see what Victor Davis Hanson has to say.

No Foreign Policy Experience?

That, of course, is the charge against Palin, and it is a legitimate consideration. But as an executive of a key state, I trust her administrative skills and experience will ensure she is surrounded with policy wonks, in the way that other Governor-VP picks were in the past.

Other thoughts: I am far more worried about the top, not the bottom, of a presidential ticket. Barack Obama has no foreign policy experience whatsoever, as we have seen in his historically inaccurate and silly speech at Berlin, his flips on Jerusalem, Iran, and the surge, as well as his confusion over Georgia (go to the UN, both sides are to blame, Iraq was the Russian model, etc.) and NAFTA.

Read it all, he touches on the "issues", the "Old Fish Factor" and the media.

Michael Barone adds to the McCain and the Boyd loop theme.

Then team Obama and its many backers in the media failed to Decide correctly, so when they Acted they got it wrong. Their attacks on Palin tended to ricochet and hit Obama. Is she inexperienced? Well, what has Obama ever run (besides his now floundering campaign)? Being a small-town mayor, as Palin said, is like being a community organizer, “without the actual responsibilities.”

Is she neglecting her family? Well, how often has Obama tucked his daughters in lately? For more than a week we’ve seen the No. 1 person on the Democratic ticket argue that he’s better prepared than the No. 2 person on the Republican ticket. That’s not a winning argument even if you win it. As veteran California Democrat Willie Brown says, “The Republicans are now on offense, and Democrats are on defense.”

And TigerHawk cautions to the McCain camp: Good job. Don't get cocky.

Much of why Obama is having is trouble is becuase he got cocky and thought he would skate to the finish. It would be very poor judgement for McCain to fall into that trap.

Palin Reactions

Ed Morrissey rounds up some of the charges against her coming from the left.
They're not the most... wisely thought out talking points.
Some of them are downright insulting, and many open up unflattering comparisons to Obama himself.

RedState goes through and compares Obama and Palin on "experience".

Of course the short answer to "Does Palin have foreign-policy experience for the VP slot?" is given by Rober (the other) McCain. "John Edwards 2004"

It's nice to see the Dems hold their opponents to a much higher standard than they're willing to be.

Also, if Palin has made you want to donate to the McCain/Palin cause then you won't be alone. So far they've raised $7 million. In one day. But you better hurry as you have until Tuesday to make a donation.

Ed Morrissey responds to a Time piece by Michael Grunwald and Jay Newton-Small.
Time: Why is everyone surprised by Palin pick?

Ed agrees.

McCain had several options open to him in this choice, but none of them would have addressed all of the points that Palin does. Tim Pawlenty is a Washington outsider and an Everyman too, but fortunately Minnesota has not been plagued with official corruption, and Pawlenty has not had to crusade for massive reform. He has governed as an effective and strong center-right leader, but doesn’t have the dynamism of Palin. Mitt Romney, who would have been my first choice, has a proven track record in both private and public sectors of strong leadership, but his compromises as governor of Massachusetts already had people calling him a flip-flopper on key points like abortion. Also, Romney isn’t exactly an Everyman; although he is a Washington outsider, his wealth hardly gives the impression of one.

Palin is, in a way, Pawlenty with a ferocious record of reform. She went after her own party’s state chair and exposed his corruption at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission. Palin defied Ted Stevens and Don Young in refusing to accept the Bridge to Nowhere and told them that Alaska can build its own bridges. Otherwise, like Pawlenty, she enjoys and excels in sports, has a young family, and prior to entering the governor’s mansion lived in a solidly middle-class home. Palin is, as Pawlenty often points out, more Sam’s Club than country club.

As stated before, Palin has a big risk. If she can't handle the pressure or gives a big gaff, she can easily sink the McCain campaign. On the other hand, she's already had a great effect given the donations, enthusiasm from the base, the obvious and more than partially cynical female angle and her social and libertarian cred.

The timing also cut Obama's convention off at the knees. In one move, his speech and the whole convention are old news.

In that case, it may have been better if his speech reached out to more than just his base. Obama speech bounce: nil

Meanwhile Ed Morrissey (who I've gone back to three times today) has some comments on "The Man Trap"

This trap has two doors, as Powers notes, and the Obama campaign and its supporters fell through both of them. First, it didn’t take long to speak dismissively of Palin as a “beauty queen” and a “small-town” hick, even though she governs the state of Alaska and has a favorability rating in the 80s. No one actually came out and called her “Sweetie”, but to women who resented the Obama campaign’s real and imagined sexist slights against Hillary Clinton, it was deja vu all over again.

The bigger trap, though, was the knee-jerk attack on Palin’s experience. Calling her a “small-town mayor” only underscored Obama’s own woeful lack of experience. Two years as Governor trumps a year as Senator before running for the presidency, and having been an executive in Wasila trumps having been a “community organizer” in Chicago’s South Side. Further, Palin has a record of attacking her own party’s machine to effect real reform in Alaska, where Obama never lifted a finger to support reform of the Chicago political machine while in Illinois, and had one of its fixers, Tony Rezko, raising money for him most of his career.

The most you can say is that "McCain was wrong to highlight experience given his own pick for VP." But most of the Obamabots are saying "Palin doesn't have enough experience."

Knee-jerk is right. The Obama camp's initial response to Palin was not thought through. In their quest to not be "Swiftboated" they lash out quickly and without thinking. This makes them predictable, and as we saw, one can use that to set traps.

Ed asks:

Did McCain set Obama up to fall into this trap? If so, then perhaps that more than anything demonstrates how poor a candidate Obama is and how much more masterful McCain can be. Would you rather have the man who set the trap dealing with our enemies abroad, or the man who fell into it?

It's Sarah Palin

Here's a good point.

We're two hours away from McCain's ceremony with his running mate, and nobody has any idea. We've got conflicting reports on who's in Ohio, and whether a woman who looked like Palin was on a flight from Alaska.
Maybe a guy that can keep his running mate choice this secret would, as president, keep national security secrets off the NYTimes' front page.

Also Mcain manages to have the announcement go off only a couple hours before his Friday speech.
Obama's pick leaked in the dead of the night, for a Saturday speech.

So it's Palin? Not bad at all.

More on her experience

Her executive experience, meanwhile, while brief is really pretty impressive—she seems to be a tough and serious manager. With her in the second spot, McCain can still push the "is he ready" question, though perhaps a little less effectively, and it would be hard for Obama's folks to argue in response that, well, McCain's vice presidential pick is not any more experienced than Obama is.

And unlike for the dems the more inexperienced one is at the bottom of the ticket. Though one has to note that she has more executive experience than the other three candidates combined.
This is also a good move by McCain's camp to knock much of the wind out of Obama's post-speech sails.

And how does Obama's camp respond?

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies — that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same.

Mocking her for being a former mayor when she's currently a governor does not seem to be a wise move.
I mean it'd be like calling Obama a former Ill. Legislator.
It's like they're trying to make Obama look sexist and stupid. Are they trying to piss off everyone that lives in a small town?

They used judgment which was good, but they shouldn't have touched her experience that just makes one question how Obama can say that.

Instead they should have done something like this "We are pleased that Sen. McCain realizes that judgment is more important than experience, and thus picked a VP who's judgment he valued over any experience. Regrettably, his choice shows a lack of judgment on his part and her part."

There. Was that so hard?
If you do that then McCain looks bad and the campaign can go back to judgment.

This also makes Obama's camp look unsportsmanlike. Last night McCain gave a personal message to congratulate Obama on formally getting the nomination.

Ace of Spades has some thoughts too.


Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on the choice. Read them all. He's got some good thoughts on it.
This one struck me.

4. In a Zen way it raises the inexperience issue, inviting Obama to critique a fresh VP as "inexperienced" and thereby automatically turn the same scrutiny to his as-thin-or-even-thinner resume for the more important job."

This is exactly what is happening. Obama and his supporters are being very critical saying that you can't have an inexperienced, token, pick that's got a thin resume in... the Naval Observatory.
But why then, is it okay to have someone with at the very most only slightly more governmental (and infinitely less executive experience) experience in the White House?

The smart thing would be to way to undercut McCain's statement of experience, is to act as if McCain has conceded to their point. Digging in and fighting like this is just a poor move.

It raises questions of why Obama went with Biden? If not for his long time experience in Washington.

That being said. Palin has to keep from making any gaffes and perform well.

In his own words....

Here's the latest McCain ad.
Rather interseting blend of footage and quotes from those in the Democratic primary

Glen Reynolds notes "Weirdly, McCain seems to have taken a lead in the rapid-delivery YouTube department. I wouldn't have predicted that."

It's not that weird if you remember McCain was a Navy pilot. For a combat pilot response time is everything. It looks like the McCain camp has realized that if they react to situational changes faster than the opponent they get more control and options.

This forces Obama's side to be reactive and play catch-up.

I've linked to Richard Fernandez's post "Boyd versus Alinsky" before.

And how McCain is trying ot get into Obama's OODA Loop

Don't play as well as you thought you would? Cry Foul.

It looks like the Obama camp is saying that McCain's preformance in a recent debate was good... too good. That he seemed more prepared than Obama was for the questions.

The simple explination is that McCain... was more prepared and had his staff think about what questions would be asked at an event hosted by evangelicals. Hint: abortion and moment of conception and other evangelical issues would likely come up.

The Obama camp has a... different explination.
Ace takes it to task.

It's 3AM and Russia is Invading...

Remember that silly 3AM ad that Hillary used?
The thrust was bad stuff can come up suddenly and the president has to deal with it?

Well, we've got a real crisis on our hands.
Let's see how the candidates respond to it.

McCain obviously took time to determine first that Russia had indeed attacked Georgia before demanding restraint from the victim. It’s apparent that McCain has a better grasp of the situation and understood its ramifications as events unfolded. Obama issued a boilerplate statement that generically demanded that everyone start getting along, and had to modify his stance as his 300 foreign-policy advisers had a chance to tutor him on the conflict.

I’d rather vote for the man who gets it right and has spent years studying foreign affairs, warfare, and American strategic needs than the man who makes it up as he goes along. McCain is right; this was a 3 AM moment, and Obama proved himself unprepared and unsuited to answer the call.

The irony of the "War on Terror" (man what a silly name) is that it made people forget that wars can be fast and involve "big countries" and that it doesn't have to be the US at fault.

We are not post history. Other nations are still jerks and bastards and nasty shit happens. It's not always our fault and sometimes we have to deal with it.

Chilling Effect

So a group are sending threatening letters to people that donate to political causes they disagree with.

As the group says "The warning letter is intended as a first step," and they list other threats.

Their intent is clearly a chilling effect to cutoff funding to political rivals.

What would you make of the group trying to do this?

I purposefully left off the political affiliations here, because... does it matter?

Are you the kind of person that thinks that certain tactics are okay for your side to do but beyond the pale for the other guys?

The fine folks at Ace have a few thoughts on this.

Far from scaring conservatives, this one is likely to energize them. If you have enough money to be one of the largest donors to the GOP or conservative causes, you've probably had to deal with a lot tougher people than these wannabe Brown Shirts over the course of your life. I'm sure this 'warning letter' will be showing up in the solicitation letter of every conservative group by the end of next month. It might even get some lukewarm conservatives on the McCain bandwagon. Thanks guys!

It's like these guys are trying to rally the Right around McCain.

Is it even Fighter Pilot versus Community Organizer?

Here's commentary on the idea of the Community Organizer versus the Fighter Pilot.
Not only does Richard Fernandez touch on the comparison between Alinsky's principals of organization and Boyd's OODA loop, but he also shows that Obama does not even do the Community Organizer idea.

Barack Obama's first and most grievous mistake was to make the campaign about himself. The "people" became the mere backdrop for his mass rallies. No real organizer mints a Presidential seal, describes himself as the symbol of a generation, believes he is the One and makes himself the object of ridicule.

...

A real organizer works in small settings, amplifying, exhorting, putting others on the stage. He doesn't work in front of large crowds and from the front pages of newspapers. And if it is objected that nobody can become President of the United States that way, the answer is that community organizers don't want to become Presidents. They want to be organizers.

A comment by Fernandez in the... comments with some delicious metaphors.

Obama by making himself the center of the campaign has effectively decided to lock himself in. This election was supposed to be about Bush. Obama made it about Obama. He can't change his campaign without altering the image of himself, around which his political message is largely built. That's why in a clash between policy and person, Obama will change the policy. He will flip-flop. This is the only degree of freedom he has.

McCain for deliberate or accidental reasons, waited until Obama was locked into a course. He let Obama build the edifice of himself, brick by brick, until it was as immovable as the statue of Ozymandias. BHO set the capstone in Germany. He was the One. Then McCain really pounced. He had to get inside Obama's OODA loop once, strategically. And he did this by cannilly waiting until BHO was in a powerdive, his controls frozen by compressibility. Obama can maneuver tactically and talk about Republicans being "proud of their ignorance" which is another tin-eared example, if any were needed, of how unlike an organizer BHO is. He doesn't seem to get tired of insulting the great unwashed. But that's it. He is the One that he has made himself.
And McCain, despite the deficiencies of his own vehicle, might actually be able to shoot BHO down.

This also fits given the performance deficiencies American pilots often had to deal with when compared to enemy aircraft.

Mockery.

You've seen the sarcastic ad. and there was the Celeb ad.

They are jokey and silly but they have a relevant point.

But the McCain ad had a serious point, one the Obama campaign obviously felt it couldn't ignore. Obama can be as arrogant, gassy and remote as other members of the country's aristocracy of fame. If this celebrity framework is successfully imposed on Obama, the entire repertoire of Obamania — the mass rallies, the soaring eloquence, the picturesque cool of the candidate himself — risks becoming a liability.

In a statement Obama repeated three times, he said what George Bush and John McCain are "going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

The latter part of that statemetn was taken apart yesterday.
But there's another problem, the ad was making Obama look like, what he actually is, a global celebrity.

That's not painting him as someone to be feared, that's painting him as someone to be seen as vapid, mockable, and not serious. People are not afraid of Spears of Hilton, though I will admit they are afraid of the idea of giving them massive responsibility over their lives.

This is they point of the ad.

That is why Obama reacted so much to that ad. Not because it made him an object to be feared, but because it threatens to make him a joke.

Meanwhile some people are really reaching for some subtext in these ads.

Here's a tip for liberals: If your candidate is going to stage enormous rallies in front of tens of thousands of chanting Germans (with monuments to Prussian military might in the background) in the middle of his Presidential campaign, it isn't the GOP's fault if the footage comes out looking a little like Hitler at Nuremberg.

Speaking of jokes.
Pelosi tried to end the debate but the Republicans thumbed their noses at her. In one move they made her and the Dems look uncaring about the economic needs of the public, unwilling to engage in a debate, willing to stifle dissident, and open to mockery. Not a good move for a group that is more unpopular than Bush that's trying to fight a very popular energy idea.

Sarcastastic

Nothing like using Obama's words against him.
I've been following these statements, but it is nice to seem them all together like this.

Personally, I think the ending is a bit weak. Instead of the ham-handed questions it should have capped it off using Obama himself.

Ah well.

Hat Tip LGF

VDH on McCain and Obama

Here's a bunch of thoughts today Victor Davis Hanson.

Victor Davis Hanson on what McCain should do

But that said, McCain should not get trapped into surge dialectics, but stay on 5-6 domestic themes: he wants to transition us to green energy through drilling, nuclear, clean coal and all our resources; Obama has bought into Gorism and thinks we can hope and change our way magically to "wind, solar, and millions of new jobs in green energies"; McCain will close the border first and discuss the thorny issues later; Obama won't. McCain will cut federal spending and pay off debt, Obama wants a trillion dollars in new entitlements; McCain won't raise taxes; Obama's could make the top brackets pay, European-style, 65% percent in state and federal taxes, and stifle economic growth with new levies on capital gains, inheritances, payroll, and income; McCain will appoint judges who follow and interpret, not create, laws; Obama will do the opposite; McCain knows the military and what it can do to protect American interests; Obama wants to create a shadow civilian force "that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the $500 billion a year Pentagon.


That should be his message, and he should not get involved with pro-Obama pundits refining and upgrading Obama's latest incarnations on Iraq. Even biased reporters are chaffing at the new gospels of Obamism, and the carefully scripted appearances designed to limit exposure to the sort of circus we see at the White House Press room, and eventually will want more impromptu Obama.

Ideas on Energy and the like.

The more we size up the current energy crisis, the more it seems like we are waking up from a long coma. Yet it turns out that even in our decline we still pump 8 or so million of our 20 million plus imported barrel daily appetite. We have some of the world's largest deposits of coal, tar sands, and shale. We could get another 5 million barrels per-day off our coasts, off the continental shelf, and in ANWR. And we still are the world's largest nuclear producer, and could produce 50% of our energy with such clean power plants. Wind and solar will help, especially as in the Pickens' plan to divert natural gas and/or propane to transportation. Our engineers are the best in crafting enhanced conservation in our homes and cars, and the country is mobilizing to stop the annual trillion dollar wound.

The point? That for all Al Gore's notion that we will soon be plugging our battery-powered caterpillars and semis into wind-generated electrical sockets at night, the future is still not, well, that bleak. I think if we use ALL our resources, and don't fall into Gorish fundamentalism, we could cut 14 million barrels of daily imported oil within 15 years through conservation, flex-fuels, natural-gas and electric cars, oil, coal, tar sands, shale, nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal. Like Obama, though, with Gore it's a certain pie-in-the-sky liberal fundamentalism from the 1960s: you are either for the apocalyptic vision of current greed and the need for massive government planning, or you are a hopeless naïf.

Ironic that the people that are taken in by plans that seem logistically and mathmatically... "hopeful" accuse people that don't take their schemes at face value "naïf" but so it goes


The media's fanboyism.

The distinction again is that Obama appeals to the gullible and puerile as a sort of James Dean candidate. And thus he is not to be cross-examined, but instead free to shun interviews and clarifications, and prone to avoid reporters who might be less than adulatory — the normal stuff that so irritates the supposedly sensitive press that has now gone brain-dead.

What is fascinating about the tingly-leg press is that they are exhibiting the very symptoms of arrested development and star-struck immaturity that they always accuse America in toto of suffering. The usual critique of the elite media is that we are a nation of mindless followers, who go from one fad to another, and value looks, youth, and pizzazz over substance.

But the current spectacle suggests something worse — that the press who claims they know better and are more sophisticated are, in fact, far more infantile than most Americans, and essentially Access Hollywood, People Magazine, and the National Enquirer dressed up with network logos and NY-DC bylines

...

If one were to take Obama's recent deer-in-the-headlights comments, stutters, pauses, contortions, and false starts when asked about the surge, and put them into the mouth of Dan Quayle, well, case rested...

An interesting mix of projection, and favoritism.
Just remember, whenever someone excuses one of Obama's "oppsies".

Would they extend the same for Bush or McCain?