WARRIORS!!!!

(Click here).

OK. Back to your regularly scheduled intertubes. More later.

This is gonna leave a mark...

I would like to note something in this video.

There has been a recent increased use of body language experts in stories in the public domain. O'Reilly uses a body language expert (Click "Body Language" in the menu in the center left part of his page). CBS just ran a story on the body language of Hillary's speech in Denver.

So, rewatch the video above and pay attention at 1:45. Watch Obama's rate of blinking his eyes.

I'm no expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if a body language expert says that this indicates discomfort, if not disingenuity.

h/t Allahpundit over at Hot Air.

Two plus Two equals....

...Eight.

Two. Obama on Russia's involvement in Georgia:

“...We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point....” [my emphasis]

Two. Michael J. Totten on Russia's involvement in Georgia:

“...We've been trying to tell the world about this for months. If you go back and look at the archives you'll see plenty of calls from the Georgian government saying they're really worried. Even some Russian commentators agree that this is exactly what happened. Don't forget, they sent in a lot of irregulars, Chechens, Cossacks, Ossetians, Ingush – basically thugs. Not normal Chechens or Ingush – thugs. Thugs out for a holiday. Many Western camera crews were robbed at gunpoint ten meters from Russian tanks while Russian commanders just stood there smoking their cigarettes while the irregulars...that happened to a Turkish TV crew. They're lucky to still be alive. Some of the Georgians were picked up by the irregulars. If they happened to be female, they got raped. If they happened to be male, they got shot immediately, sometimes tortured. Injured people we have in hospitals who managed to get out have had arms chopped off, eyes gouged out, and their tongues ripped out.”

....

Plus it's the oldest law of warfare: have your guns in populated areas, and when the enemy responds, show the world your dead women and children....”

The math adds up to this: Obama is blazingly ignorant in the field of foreign affairs. The story Totten tells is probably too complicated to explain to Joe Sixpack, but the truth shines through: Russia's Putin is a brute.

h/t to Vodkapundit for the Totten article.

Not Ready For Prime Time...

Pre-election Post-Mortem...

So I haven’t been here all that much recently. So, sue me. Cancel your subscriptions, and I’ll gladly refund whatever you’re due.

Seriously, I have recently been alternately busy and lazy. We’ve got a wedding coming up. I don't have much directly to do with that, but it is another thing going on in the house that keeps others busy. I’m spending a bunch of my online time learning to invest and on That-Forum-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, frequently discussing the same sorts of things I’d be putting up here.

However, on my re-entry here, and I may live to regret these words, I thought I’d put up my Pre-Election Post-Mortem.

This morning Obama announced his Vice Presidential pick as Joe Biden.

Yes, that’s right. Joe. Biden.

And, in my mind, this pick pretty much nails down my view that Obama is going down in flames. Here’s why…

Obama’s Process

• Obama has always tried to appeal to the younger voter, and I think that’s smart for him. In his Veep pick, he said that he’d make the announcement via text-mail, and again, I think that’s smart. The text vehicle is perfect for the younger voter he’s appealing to, and he’s gathering tons of cellphone numbers which he can certainly use for future messages/fundraising.
• However……Obama delayed his announcement until the Friday before his convention was to start. If he were really smart, he would have announced his pick on Wednesday at about 3pm eastern. That way he’d be certain to gather a “Breaking News” flash from all the networks for that night’s news and talkshows, plus he’d dominate the news cycle for the following Thursday and probably Friday (not to mention the Sunday morning political talk shows).
• Late Friday evening, after everyone had spent the day looking at their cell phones waiting with bated breath for some word from Obama, the word came down that the announcement would be made 10am Saturday morning. Fine. Everybody went to bed expecting to have their texts in the morning.
• ….Only to wake up and find that the announcement had been sent out at about 3am Saturday morning. The Hopium Smokers™ cannot be happy about missing the text that they had signed up to read first.

Obama has had to deal with the distractions of the Edwards scandal and the Olympics. That said, he flubbed his announcement by delaying until Saturday and by not testing his text-messaging before his announcement. He needs every little bit of bounce he can get, and at nearly every opportunity, he's whiffing at the ball.

Obama’s Pick
There is plenty to wonder about Obama’s pick of Biden. I’m sure the McCain camp has been working through all the possibilities for months now. But off the top of my head, here are the questions I have…

• Joe “I think that I stand by the statement [that Obama is not ready]” Biden.
• Joe “Plagiarism” Biden
• Joe “ [A]rticulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” Biden
• Joe “Been in the Senate since 1973” Biden
  Bonus Snark: Q. Where was Obama in 1973? A. In seventh grade.
• Joe “Delaware’s 3 Electoral Votes” Biden
• Joe “Never more than 3% of the vote” Biden
• Joe “Yea on the Iraq War Authorization” Biden
• Joe “Negative Net Worth” Biden
• Joe “The Senator from MBNA” Biden

OK. That’s enough…I think you get the idea. While Obama may view that Biden offers his ticket everything that he does not—foreign policy experience being primary—he also comes with a fair amount of baggage. Obama’s Biden pick allows McCain to bring along someone like Pawlenty or Palin as the younger, less loose-cannon-ish, and baggage-free alternative (although Palin does have her problems too).

Obama’s Future
Obama still has a P.U.M.A. problem that he will have to work through next week. I don’t think that Hillary herself is stupid or arrogant enough (but who knows) to seriously mount a Convention challenge to Obama, but this lack of unity, at this point especially, is a problem for Obama. That said, the very idea that Hillary has had to form her own “whip teams” speaks to Obama’s weakness at his own convention (not to mention bringing up some disturbing images).

The Democrat Party Future
This is an I-told-you-so moment for the Republicans and conservatives in general.

The D’s should have got on board with removing Bill Clinton from office. They’d have lost the election by a larger margin in 2000 than they did, but by not doing so, they immediately allowed Hillary to be elected to the Senate as nothing more than America’s Most Scorned Woman. Then, as a Senator, she became the party’s “inevitable” primary candidate in 2008. Her “inevitability” was, of course, not a foregone conclusion, but this allowed Obama to sneak under the radar with little examination of just how unqualified a candidate he is. The D’s are about to pay for this.

Had the D's gone along with removing Clinton, I believed they'd be healed as a party by now and have grown a good crop of candidates. As it is, the D's have been beholden to the Clinton machine, and now the party is floundering because of it.

Mark my words: The D’s are going down hard this year. Both as a party and with regard to McCain, the R’s are still far, far from perfect, and they may not recapture either House, but I won’t be surprised if they do increase their seats. The Kos Kidz, the DUers, and the other libtards will take this hard, and frankly this concerns me a bit.

Thoughts on John Edwards...

You know, at one point, I enjoyed making fun of John Edwards. That Feeling Pretty video is still hilarious and it showed the world that he practically lived for that Silky Pony label. He wore out that Son-of-a-Millworker meme and still, to this day, is claiming we live in one of two Americas while living in a 28,000 square foot house.

He ran an intellectually empty campaign...running away from positions he had sincerely taken in the past, and adopting a populist message that he had no history with.

However, I began to have some sympathy for John and Elizabeth Edwards when her cancer recurred.

No more. Sympathy for her--Yes.

He is a snake.

I don't have any idea how many married American men and women are unfaithful in their marriages. I do know that infidelity is wrong. It is wrong when you're trapped in a nightmare marriage. It is wrong when you're drunk. It is wrong when you're both drunk and in a nighmare marriage and happen to stumble on Ms. Right.

A marriage means committment...to one person. If the marriage has failed and you're done with that commitment--fine. Get out of the marriage. Then move on to another relationship.

But infidelity is wrong. There are no circumstances when it is right. And I know that you know that infidelity is wrong. How so, you ask? It's really very simple...

Because the unfaithful keep their infidelity a secret.

And, in the case of John Edwards, it is wrong when you're running for your party's nomination for President. And it is especially wrong when your wife has a terminal illness.

The guy is a snake.

Ace has gone a bit overboard on every little detail of this (as well as subsequent posts), but he does make a number of good points.

• That Hunter is in love with Edwards and thinks that post-Elizabeth that they'll get married tells me that she's a snake too.
• That Edwards-aide, Andrew Young, is fessing up to paternity tells me that either Hunter can or was passed around the campaign. Not very flattering to any of the parties.
• That Edwards has fat-cats who may be paying off Hunter tells me that this is not just about infidelity and love-out-of-marriage, but also of money. Snakes. (Did I mention that yet?)

But Paul at Powerline makes a good point too...this is none of our business, and especially so considering Elizabeth's illness.

But the larger story here is one of the media. The MSM are so deeply in the tank for whichever candidate the Democrats will nominate that they could not explore Edwards' infidelity when handed the information. It was the National Enquirer which broke this story. It is clear to me that the N.E. is riding this story for all it's worth...they're a for-profit company, after all. They probably paid Hunter for her story and/or the blurred photo of Edwards and the child. Who cares? (I don't.)

But the MSM completely failed the public. Had this been a Republican former Senator and VP candidate, they would have been all over this story months ago. They (deservedly) dug into Larry Craig's restroom misbehavior. They used the Foley scandal over inappropriate emails (but no physical actions), among other Republican failings, into a change of leadership in 2006.

The MSM was maintaining their silence here to keep a scandal centered on a Democrat formerly running for the nomination from hurting all Democrats.

Leave Barack Alone...

h/t Ace.

Now this is a surprise...

New York Sun: Iran May End Cooperation With Nuclear Investigation.

"...President Ahmadinejad yesterday again vowed that his country would
not "retreat one iota" from pursuing uranium enrichment...."

The tense of his verbs...

Captain Ed notes a David Gergen observation here, that Barack Obama is being somewhat presumptious, if not out-of-place, with his acting as though he has a present-day role in our foreign policy.

My academic and professional backgrounds are in technical areas (physics and aviation). I rarely write anything more than a brief report while at work. My command of the English language is not the best. I am not a wordsmith. That said, I found interesting this video found via John at Powerline, where we see Obama using verbs in the first person. Beginning at 0:54, he says:

"My job is to think as the national security interest as a whole, and to have to weigh and balance risks in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their job is to just get the job done here." [My emphases]

Obama is full of expectations about this race, and his verbs tell me he has already measured for the new drapery.

Don't like the sound of this at all...

Not one little bit.

The Fleet Positions Itself For War Part II

Hacking the clock.

h/t Ace.

Obama the Elitist (Part 2)...

Evidence continues to mount (which I began to document here) that Obama is an elitist.

Most recently, he essentially tells us that "You and your kids are stupid and your mom dresses you funny." (Ok. I made that last part up.)



The French have noted Obama's lack of foreign language skills. [Tangentially, many of the Democrats who have called Bush "stupid", fail to note that he has a basic ability in Spanish.]

Related, (and I saw this point yesterday, but can't find find the link now--sorry), Obama is the product of a prep school. He did his graduate and post-graduate work at Ivy League schools. His daughters attend a private school. The elitism obscuring Obama's eyes may prevent him from knowing that it is quite common for public schools to begin foreign language exposure in the early elementary school grades.

[BTW, whatever you do, don't embarrass Barry.]

Spoiler Alert for...

...the Green Mile. See the comments if you really want to know.

McCain and Obama...

I'm actually quite surprised at the reticence that McCain is showing on calling Obama on his changes of position. He has certainly made his comments (here, as well as elsewhere), but he isn't aggressively casting Obama as less-than-firm in his positions.

I am struck, however, by this memory....McCain's Feb. 2006 letter to Obama on Obama's changing position on campaign finance reform.

The politically expedient change of positions is nothing new for Barry.

Heller and the Media...

So, anyhoo, the other day I made a point of leaving my hotel early enough to be online at the airport for the first words of a decision on Heller.

The decision came and I quickly put up something on The-Forum-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named and headed off to my departure gate. I sat there under a monitor which was set to CNN Headline News.

On the CNN reporting regarding Heller, they immediately had the thoughts of someone from the Brady Center. Did they include anyone from the NRA as balance? Nope.

And after the Brady Center opinion on the decision, the newsreader made the comment that BATFE is charged with ensuring that gun shops conform to local ordinances and that nothing in this decision would prevent the District from not allowing gun shops inside their borders--the implication being that if the Court says it's OK for an individual to have--to "keep"--a firearm in their home--then he could be prevented from having one in the first place by preventing it's sale.

Two points to all this...

• The Mainstream Media is all about the narrative. Whatever you do, make sure what is said fits with what ought to be said. Offering opinions from both sides of an issue would allow thoughtful people to decide for themselves, and that would be horrible.
• And when a decision goes against you, immediately start muddying the waters. The issue of gun shop locations had nothing at all to do with Heller. Yet the CNN reporting suggests that it does. Again, this goes to the support-the-narrative point, but it also shows that the shallowness that the Media (and unfortunately, much of the American public) has towards important issues allows them (us?) to conflate irrelevant points into an argument. Far too many of us get our only news from 30 minutes in front of a Big Three anchor or USA Today. Is it any wonder that we don't understand the issues?

Thoughts on Seat 44D...

I just got back from my annual trip to the simulator, and the flight was totally packed (of course). Lots of employees complain about full flights--they often miss flights, and when they do get on, they don't get to sit in First Class. Me, I've never done that. While a full flight means a travel benefit is more difficult to achieve, it also means the company is making money and my job is that much more secure.

However, there are some bad points to sitting in the back. I was glad to have an aisle seat, even if it was very much in the back. The really bad point came with the guy next to me.

Although he did announce that we were the lucky two who got to sit next to the guy with a 48 inch chest, he wasn't a totally unpleasant guy. He did ask about the Heller decision and otherwise had some small talk--mostly with the guy in the window seat.

He also had some obnoxious qualities. He got up four times--once during taxi out. What was really, really obnoxious, however, was his habit of raising his arms over his head. He didn't smell or anything, and he was wearing a shirt, but exposing your armpits for extended periods just isn't appealing.

Reflections on a Recent Past...

OK, so I haven't really been burning this place up lately...like in the last 5 months or so. Indoor and outdoor remodelling projects, 3 kids graduating from college (including one out-of-state), and recurrent have shoved my attention to this down the priority list.

That's all done now. I do have some things I need to get to...learning about investments, further work on my garage, light trimming and painting of the trees, but a great weight has been lifted and I foresee more time for this until the wedding begins to consume us.

Whew (#2)....

Court Rules Second Amendment Is Individual Right To Bear Arms

Jeremy Clarkson on...

Car recycling.



h/t Theo.

Wall Street Journal

Why Iraqi's Back McCain

From the op-ed...

"...That only makes America's ambivalence toward its democratic creation that much stranger to the Iraqis. Will the next administration abandon both its principles and its friends in the region? For what?..."

Yes, Barack. For what, exactly?

Finally!

A reason to watch soccer.