Good session this evening, gentlemen.

Conspiracies

People across the Middle East continue to believe that America attacked itself. By propping up dictators that are pathological liars, what else should Americans expect Arabs to think?

Just sent this rant in an e-mail...

...and I thought it deserved to be torn apart by TSFR (the smoke filled room). Here goes:

Don't buy into these delusions that the world will like us if Obama gets elected. They'll like us for a month, then Obama will make some decision that implies America is better than the rest of the world (for example, we'll refuse, as usual, to sign up for the International Criminal Court) and everyone will go back to bashing us. Muslim middle name or not, America will continue to exploit the Middle East for its oil (we'll prop up corrupt and tyrannical regimes to maintain stability) and the "McDonaldification" of the world will continue apace. Couple this with Islam's inferiority complex – Allah told them that they are superior to the other "peoples of the book" and yet they've lagged behind Christian and East Asian civilizations ever since the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1918 – and you get a Muslim sense of shame and vulnerability. (Side note: Christians have an inferiority complex too, but we're doing well at the moment.) These are the primary reasons, along with our support for Israel, for why many Muslims don't like us. Electing Barack Obama changes nothing!

The moral of the story: vote for Obama if you want to pay lower taxes and you want the rich to pay higher ones; if you believe that it is up to the government to eliminate the appalling inequality in our country; if you don't like the idea of a 70-something and a "hockey mom" running our country; if you think that no matter the consequences, our troops must withdraw from Iraq. Don't vote Obama merely because you think the world will like or respect us.

With all that said, as of now I am voting McCain. Barack Obama is an exceptionally bright and articulate junior senator from Illinois. He is not ready to run our country. The man truly believes that everyone in the world can be made to get along. That is a mistaken and dangerous assumption. Without getting into cultural differences and how they influence world events, let me just say that people around the world don't necessarily think like we think. To Americans, it is perfectly ok that we dominate the world; we're nice and reasonable people. We'll bring you Coca Cola and Big Macs! The world is not so sure that American dominance is a good thing. Barack Obama says he can change that, but he can't! We will still be stealing Middle Eastern oil, we'll still prop up corrupt dictators, and we'll still pollute and insult non-Western cultures. For as long as the current power structure persists and American foreign policy stays the same, we will be resented and hated around the world.

Read the Damn Thing

This is what democrats have to fear... and it's not fear itself.
Obama is "elusive" to middle America (Ohio, Michigan, etc). McCain is the uncomplicated patriot. That's a no-brainer for many Americans, my friends.

What the hell is the fanciful doing up at 7:08 AM?! Sarah Palin would never be so daft.

sarah palin has the same amount of executive experience my dog.

Read This Sensibly

Good, balanced story about the secrecy that surrounds Obama's campaign. I admit, Bush-Cheney were unprecedented in this respect, at least once they got to the White House, but we wouldn't want to repeat the mistake by electing another intriguer.

Money excerpt:

Walking the rows of media outlets at the Denver convention, I had no trouble finding reporters who complained the campaign was secretive and evasive. Ben Smith of Politico.com has written about Team Obama's "pattern of rarely volunteering information or documents, even when relatively innocuous." Politico asked months ago if Mr. Obama had ever written anything for the Harvard Law Review as a student. The Obama campaign responded narrowly, with a Clintonesque statement that "as the president of the Law Review, Obama didn't write articles, he edited and reviewed them." This month it turned out Mr. Obama had written an article -- but it was published a month before he became president.

Chasing the rest of Mr. Obama's paper trail is often an exercise in frustration. Mr. Obama says his state senate records "could have been thrown out" and he didn't keep a schedule in office. No one appears to have kept a copy of his application for the Illinois Bar. He has released only a single page of medical records, versus 1,000 pages for John McCain.

My God, Rhick, You're Right

Haven't read the Dowd piece yet - she's generally a bit heavy on the sarcasm for me. As for that sophomore (he's actually a senior) in college thing, I tracked down the story. He is known to his blog readers as Elephantman and his hobbies include Zionism and fighting socialism. My God. Read the story, it's hilarious. Also, Rhick, thank you for using the term preggers - you made my day.