Maybe he had a fight with his wife

Cramps? or maybe Obama's strategy last night at the First Debate in Colorado was to keep his head down to make Romney look like he's picking on the black guy.  By universal acclamation Romney won the debate and even Chris Matthews said he was excellent.  Jeff Greenfield said Obama seemed clueless about the most basic political points and many feel Obama should have went after Romney on his 47% comments and Bain Capital.  Oh I know what it was he was depressed about that Samuel Jackson video.  The economy, taxes, job creation and education and Jim Lehrer as moderator, get the nachos out.  I don't get why Savage keeps calling Lehrer a baggy-eyed Bolshevik and other conservatives like Michelle Malkin hate the guy but at any rate Rom was up-tempo, controlled the direction of the debate and was aggressive this according to the Today Show which I popped on this morning because truth be told I deliberately surfed right past the debate on most channels but even here some new Chinese digital station was covering it from Beijing so I got some snippets in English.  OK so Romney didn't exactly speak as an arch-conservative and won't exactly win the hearts of the Ron Paulians, not even sure who they're voting for.  He denied Obama's $5 trillion in tax cuts assertion and said there's a place for government in health care, that's not exactly hardcore libertarianism.  Axelrod said Romney's was a strong performance but still a performance so that's one of them half-compliments.  Look Obama has very strong base support whereas Rom is going for the 7% swing, he's a swinger and Obama's a baseman.  O's weak performance won't affect his base of course, it was more embarrassment than abandonment.  Clearly though when Chris Matthews no longer gets The Tingle in his left nut something's wrong:)

Samuel Jackson should just STFU!

Rumor has it that if Obama loses he'll become the head of the European Union and when you stop to think about it it makes sense although Bill Clinton at one point was supposed to become the head of the UN.  Slash 'n' burn capitalism, Romneyism vs. Obamanomics.  All things considered I kinda prefer the free markets although not in a total Randian sense.  Hey did you hear about the October Surprise?  According to Alex Jones there's military intel out there that something is gonna happen next month to help Obama win the election.  I was talking to my friend about this yesterday and said I doubt this as things are not going well for him in the Middle East right now and I doubt Jones ever wakes up in the morning and has a normal day of thinking.  Don't believe the media and all the polls out there, alot of folks are saying don't be swayed and just Vote for Romney.  I'm wondering if soapie is a prepper for when the World Economy totally collapses like in the not too distant future.  I don't know if you've ever talked to a prepper or those who at least are considering prepping but they're pretty annoying.  You know folks who stock up on the canned goods and jugs of Poland Spring and go to Eastern Mountain Sports for those wonderful packages of freeze-dried beef stroganoff and lasagna.  Gotta build a cabin in the woods right now and take the family there even if they don't wanna go and think I'm nutz and while we're at it let's get some of those water purification tablets too.  Anyone watch The Hunger Games yet? didn't think so but if I could articulate a principle here it is that the more a government grows the less benevolent it becomes, think about that Mr. Miller, BB.  I think the nub of Liberalism can be defined as you can kill a fetus but can't have a Big Gulp, pro-choice in one narrow sexual zone or band and fascism spraying off in all the other directions.  There are 50 States in the Union so why does every election apparently hinge on what Ohioans want?  Look the rest of us won't vote we'll just let the State of Ohio decide things.  Obama as head of the EU, you heard it here first:) 

The Hunger Games

I bought the DVD at a FYE store yesterday and wasn't sure I'd even like the movie due to its overly dark and disturbing material, kind of reminds me of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and then there was the matter of protagonist Katniss Everdeen, how can you make a heroine out of someone who participates in the madness and kills other people?  Once I started watching The Hunger Games though my views slowly changed.  It became obvious that those teens Katniss killed were at the root evil to begin with and she had to defend herself.  The Hunger Games based on the first book in a trilogy by American YA writer Suzanne Collins is a kind of prophetic hybrid of Lord of the Flies and 1984 with a healthy dose of Serling.  I've often thought of why don't we have literary classics anymore but with the themes here that hearken back to elements in those earlier works I can see the potential for a classic itself here, a future item on a high-schooler's reading list.  So what is the interpretation?  First off I agree with Beth who blogged about this once and I hope she takes time out to join the discussion here and so I do see it as a kind of cautionary tale against Big Government and in the comments section I'll delve more into that.  Yes of course it's a kind of satire of the reality TV craze and all.  When things in the 74th annual Hunger Games get a little boring for the viewers at home the staff at the central control panels first add a blazing forest fire to get Katniss closer to her adversaries and later on noontime eerily turns into nightfall and three large black and frightening attack dogs that look like a cross between a pitbull and a panther are added to the mix, so much for playing fair.  The president of Panem played by Donald Sutherland says to one of the younger bosses, not sure what his role is exactly and they all look weird but he says to him early on to watch this Katniss character as she represents hope and hope is stronger than fear and it may be a spark now but to contain it.  The Hunger Games as well can be Glenn Beck's worst nightmares come to fruition.  There is also the theme of the star-crossed lovers Katniss and Peeta the other teen chosen from her District 12 and the two are willing to die at the end by eating the poisonous nightberries until a Voice comes from the sky telling them to stop the Games are over and they're the victors.  Then there's the central enigma of the movie, WHY do the 24 teens chosen HAVE TO kill each other?  Did the Powers-That-Be mandate this?  I didn't catch that.  Of course they could have all just teemed together to survive so there's some powerful philosophical and theological observations going on here about human nature itself, about the nature of Good and Evil and you could say maybe it was all just one big vast social experiment besides being a form of perverse entertainment.  I have to say this is really a great and thought-provoking movie well-suited for the action/adventure format and there's so many political angles to this thing so let's get started...... 

Will Obama release the Blind Sheik?

This is really a question to all the Daves and BBs out there, the Satys and Shaws, those 47%ers who are never gonna vote for Romney but is there at least a tipping point where you'll no longer be in Obama's corner? where he crossed the Rubicon, went too far, where a defense is no longer tenable or even logical?  Does the President write our material for us and does he even masturbate from time to time the various anti-Obama conspiracy theorists out there ("let's see if I release the Blind Sheik I'll solidify my rep as a closet Muslim who won the Oval Office").  Have to say this though, that guy the other night on Univision the Spanish station saying to Obama "with all due respect you didn't keep your promise" that there Latin guy should be hosting the NBC Nightly News and not Brian Williams:)

The Conservative Establishment & Mr. Romney

By which I mean Peggy Noonan and David Brooks and Bill Kristol and the usual bunch.  What I don't get is this, conservatives critiqueing and in many cases negatively a fellow conservative while his campaign is still in progress, a kind of daily review.  That's just dumb and you don't see liberals doing this and that's why we have this term "conservative elite" (oh and you thought only liberals could be elites).  Yeah after the dust has cleared you can say your piece but with friends like these...I'm talking of course about the Mother Jones video and do I base my vote on off-the-cuff remarks? not really, I mean we're all human and what would be the point without living room chatter but if you feel they're that important then let's have The Collected Off-The-Cuff Remarks of Barack Obama.  Need I reprise the quote about the hardcore 47% who will vote for Obama no matter what? you can google it.  Now while it's an oversimplification and not in keeping with Emily Post I do believe Romney hit on a core of truth here and that's why everyone is so upset.  Sandra Fluke's biggest turn-on is government and I'd say she is emblematic of what Romney was referring to.  I've said myself that with the economy the way it is I'm amazed the race is still this close and how else do you explain it and keep staying politically correct? but again I'm not getting why certain conservatives are so upset with Romney's race, after all he is starting to say some very conservative things, things they've been saying for years now.  Well if they know how to do it why don't Peggy Noonan or David Brooks or Bill Kristol run some day?  but it's like those movie critics, they know all the finer points except to show us how it's really done:)

Liberals and the religion of peace

US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff were killed in an attack on the Benghazi Consulate in Libya by Islamist gunmen and a safe house was also attacked.  There was another attack on our embassy in Cairo and the Muslim mobs were outraged by some amateurish movie they feel insulted the Prophet Mohammed.  They're blaming America for the film which makes Mohammed into a philandering fool and religious phony not apparently understanding or caring to understand that our free speech system comes with the disclaimer these are the views of others but that's over the heads of these Fred Flintstone religionists.  We now have Islamists in power in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia the fruits of the so-called Arab Spring.  So what happened when Christians had their beliefs and Savior insulted when artist Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" came out and when another artiste Chris Ofili disparaged the Blessed Virgin Mary by putting elephant dung on her?  Well...NOTHING but who do liberals see as the bigger threat to freedom though? not the Islamists of course, the Christians.  Romney is blaming Obama's mixed signals in the Middle East for the latest tragic events and that's valid and is this the way they repay Obama's past outreach to the Muslim world?  Seems too Obama's little post-convention bounce is gone, the sugar-high, the little orgasm and now it's back to business.  Our domestic economy to put the most positive spin on it is making a glacial recovery and the world is getting more dangerous by the day, can Obama ride the tide? 

Hope and change has turned into King Lear

He wanted the job.  Well the new numbers are out: 96,000 new jobs for August which is less than expected and a jobless rate at 8.1%.  Some economists think 2% growth is on trend for a very slow recovery but for all their festivities at their abortion and car show the Democrats must have known this was just around the corner.  Folks' income is not going up either and well if I were running the Romney campaign I'd strongly advise against getting personal and attacking the President.  The economic situation is Romney's best hope, going full-bore negative might turn off those crucial independent swing voters who as some pundit on Gwen Ifill's show last night said hate the neverending conflict and incivility in Washington.  Put in the more street vernacular a guy's down you don't kick him in the nuts.  Obama's latest campaign slogan seems to be patience which as George Will noted ain't a strong suit of the American people.  The Messiah has turned into Job with a hairshirt, the Speech was probably the weakest of his career.  The shelf life of It's Bush's Fault, they keep redating that thing.   He needs to get down on his knees and supplicate the Earth Goddess (Oprah) but enough, I've probably overdone it myself.  The #'s speak for themselves.  Going forward:)

When socialists can't find true love they fall for Obama

This is what I find fascinating.  Saty a self-avowed and proud socialist prefers the Dems and Obama over Romney and the Repubs.  That's to each his or her own individual choice of course but you would think a socialist would only prefer other socialists.  Socialist-minded folks in general seem to vastly prefer the Dems and Obama however over Romney and the Republicans.  Now if Obama is not a socialist and for the purposes of this piece let's say that he's not AND if the Democrats are not socialist as a party either then why do they the socialists actually prefer them?  It would seem to me the Dems and Obama are actually closer to socialism even if they're not actual socialists themselves else why would socialists like them so much?  Moving on......

Fire up the abortion machinery

So far for my money David Brooks of PBS' Newshour is giving the best commentary.  Cecile Richards daughter of the late TX Governor Ann Richards is now the president of Planned Parenthood and gave a brief speech and there was alot of talk all night about reproductive rights and gay marriage and Brooks asked San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro whether something weird was going on after all this was supposed to be economy night in an economy election and later said the Dems seem weirdly abstracted from the historical moment which is to say we're still in some kind of economic morass and they were quite deliberately focusing on those reproductive rights and gay marriage all evening.  Sandra Fluke of course spoke after 10 and hers was brief too, I'll at least give them credit for getting to the point and they seem to be more aware than the Republicans that the attention span of the average American is rather short.  Obama seems to have a strong socioeconomic message for the country-at-large and it is this: you may not have a job or a home but at least you can still get an abortion and get hitched to whomever.  Must be some weird vibe in the ether, first Clint Eastwood and now this.  The barn is burning and Farmer Joe is having sex with the cow.

So getting back to my original question if Obama is so not a socialist why would......

All things DNC - a running blog

I have to say I very lightly sampled the first night of the whole affair.  Honestly I hit the hay before Michelle Obama's big speech not because I hate her but I had to be at work by 7 to set up by myself and if they really wanted folks to watch it she would have been on at the top of the hour.  Look things aren't going well for them but the DNC is like a defense attorney, you have to say something.  I get that, it doesn't bother me and you can't expect them to be all walking around dispiritedly with placards saying WE SUCK.  Actually they did seem rather dispirited the whole night.  One guy was particularly pathetic and got into the whole class warfare thing (is that a winning formula?) and strongly implied Romney didn't pay all his taxes.  Nita Lowey is actually one of the richest members of Congress, did you know that?  There was alot of talk about women and heavy on the Goya.  Masturbating the base, dead fetuses and gay marriage but no real talk of the public debt which David Brooks of the Newshour said is what those independent swing voters care so much about that and economic growth.  Caught Harry Reid early on and in his speech I heard the phrase "some Tea Party ideologue" or was that my imagination? ho-hum and changed the station.  Kathleen Sebelius and health care, I think I switched over to Globetrekker.  Actually the whole night seemed rather boring and I was heavy on the channel-surfing.  I could have gotten more out of my evening by meditating on the grease spot on the ceiling, I mean Clint Eastwood may have been weird but he got people talking.  I was wrong though, I thought the Dems would hold more of a moderate convention but it doesn't appear to be so far.

Wage discrimination addressed

A conservative POV to explain the so-called pay gap between men and women:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/don-t-blame-discrimination-for-gender-wage-gap.html

You don't even have to agree, in fact you're not expected to but we've been accused lately of not addressing certain things around here.  So grab a cup of java sit down and let's hash 'er out.

Thoughts on the RNC Convention so far

I'm a heavy channel-surfer not one of those political nerds like Hannity who can name all the various Congresspeople on Jeopardy so what you're gonna get is my take on various snippets more to my liking like KY Senator Rand Paul's speech which was a good one even if he did milk Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks a little too much.  Condi Rice I thought was excellent, superb even especially in her comments on our entitlement and grievance culture and I saw John McCain on the floor telling the PBS interviewer that yeah there needs to be more of a discussion on Obama's foreign policy here.  I'm mainly sampling PBS' Newshour coverage beginning around 7 with Mark Shields and David Brooks and their generic political commentary and various guests like Newt and Rick Santorum and pollster Andy Kohut who said in his research some of the negative words folks used to describe Paul Ryan were "extremist" and "scary."  Funny but I tend to agree with soapster here, Ryan ain't no real constitutionalist radical he merely wants to give the federal budget a haircut, wants to streamline Medicare and Medicaid not get rid of them entirely.  He's not exactly gonna slay Leviathan but I like him more than soapster does what can I say?  Let's see what else?  Santorum talked movingly about his disabled daughter Bella probably offensive only to a pro-choicer and yeah the RNC paid homage to none other than Ron Paul but once they started showing that film about Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. I reflexively changed the remote to Sanford and Son.  I don't know how you can watch this stuff gavel-to-gavel, I guess you have to if you wanna churn out some nerdy blog.  They keep saying Romney has to open up to the country more as a person, discuss his Mormonism a little and Ann has already laid the groundwork with her charm offensive but that's the wisdom anyway.  The upcoming DNC Convention in September? that's gonna take a cast-iron stomach to sit through but if I'm to be taken seriously as a blogger than I have to sample at least.  My guess is that Obama is not gonna be talking alot about Bashar al-Assad even though his militias are killing women and children on an almost daily basis now.  That's not what they mean by a War on Women and it's gonna be kinda weird to see Dolan give the blessing at that thing:)

Speaking of vice presidents

Seems to me Romney is beginning to conduct a serious, professional and highly polished campaign in his choosing Wisconsin Congressman and budget hawk Paul Ryan.  On the other side we have the walking gaffathon Joe Biden and Obama happily defended his latest put y'all back in chains remark what was that last week? not getting the whole Wall Street/Racism angle but I was thinking if I were a high-ranking key advisor to the President first thing I'd do is say you gotta dump the guy.  It's like getting a fresh pair of sneakers or a spanking new car with that new car smell or even when you clean your room and buy new clothes, you just feel different.  Biden is like the friend who's always a snot's throw away from embarrassing you but you hang with him anyway.  Obama is clean and articulate (where did I hear that before?), Biden is like your uncle on Scotch and for the life of me I don't get why Obama sticks with him unless he wants to lose.  Biden is Yogi Berra without the charm and, OMG they have vice-presidential debates don't they!! 

The Closing Ceremonies were a little weird

Maybe it was the influence of the Christian Bros. but the whole thing reminded me of a cross between Madonna's Bedtime Story music video and Shock the Monkey.  Even Duran Duran wore long pointy hats, whirling dervishes to West End Girls and then there were peformers dancing around with garbage pails on their feet and then giant supermodel posters came by paraded by dark figures and then Annie Lennox without Dave Stewart sang out something on a float and there was some kind of tribute to David Bowie thrown in the middle but again I was over the hump at that point.  Ah the Brits, just a sliver of acid, get those dark Gothic creative juices flowing.  I only watched the Games sporadically heavy channel-surfer that I am.  There was the inspirational Oscar Pistorius story of course with its sci-fi edge, Gaby Douglas the first black American gymnast to get the gold and Phelps who's retiring.  Now he can go home and smoke his bong.  There was the high-diver Tom Daley from Great Britain who splashed too much during one critical dive and didn't go in at the right angle only to make beautiful comebacks right after that.  I was always afraid of them hitting their heads on the board.  There was the Mo guy who won the 1000M and 500M races and speaking of which I think I only saw one white runner.  I remember many years ago some really fast black runner I forget the name and one interviewer asked him how come he's so fast and he said when he was growing up he was used to running away from the cops.  Actually I don't think you can say that today, Bob Costas would be fired.  American swimmers Missy Franklin, Ryan Lochte...tried the butterfly as a kid in Tibbetts Pool in the big YO and that there's a stroke that completely goes against the grain and human nature, dunno the purpose.  Not into the beach volleyball at all, that's when I channel-surf.  Likewise women boxing each other's brains out and don't care to watch cycling indoors around some track, more into the diving/swimming and track & field events as I said.  Of course they never had that Munich moment-of-silence marking in 1972 when terrorism and international sports mixed but what did you expect exactly?  It's like the Olympics is being run by the UN.  Kudos to Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman for even bringing up the topic. Next stop in cuatro anos Rio de Janeiro, expect a decadent undervibe.  Mark my words someday chicken-spitting will become an Olympic event.  Why the hell not? everything else is:)

50 Shades of Crap

It's kind of a slow blogging cycle at least for me, nothing I could latch onto of late.  I mean yeah Sandra Fluke introduced Obama at some political function, he still seems to be milking that one and I was reading in my Catholic New York that he and Romney are gonna speak at the annual Al Smith Dinner in NY and...but hey wait a minute didn't his HHS Dept. and Sebelius just cause endless grief for the RC Church and other religious institutions? yeah a few lame jokes will smooth that over.  Maybe he'll even tell a birth-control joke or two, who knows?  Then I see the guy I'm actually gonna vote for, Romney, is actually a murderer according to some Super-PAC and this is just the longest hottest most horrible miserable summer for me in a while.  Getting attacked by mosquitoes practically on a daily basis even in my sleep and then there's the Fishbowl of Work to deal with.  Look folks are bored at work, I get it and maybe you have a temporary health issue or whatever and it makes for fodder and no it's not your paranoid vibe at work again, they really are talking about you and everybody else for that matter.  If I were in charge I'd make sure everybody has enough work to do.  New manager has a habit of sometimes leaving old food in the showcase like pulled pork so I talked about it with a co-worker and his attitude was give the guy a chance (the fruit of liberalism?), didn't seem to get my point like I was being a meanie.  Now I'm all for giving people chances, God knows I wouldn't be perfect in that role either and I'm not a prick but at what point is giving somebody a chance a lowering of standards, defining deviancy down?  I see Costco won't carry Joan Rivers' new book so she chained herself to a shopping cart and bellowed into a bullhorn.  Kristen Stewart/Rob Pattinson...you see the material I got to work with? but I'll be honest I kinda follow this stuff and I'm definitely on his side.  There was a new massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, they're not Muslims but they look like them and their faith system is very googleable.  I checked my e-mail just now and see I got like a hundred fresh comments, dunno what everyone is talkin' about I gotta go see.  Time for a fresh post, carry it on over here if you like.  I'll put the coffee on and get the crullers rockin'.  Had a couple of Jamaican beef patties last night, they're good and all but left a kind of slight aftereffect.  It's definitely time to plan the next vacation:)

Another drummed up controversy - Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A, maybe I need to get out more and stop reading my field guides but I never heard of the place.  Don't recall them around these parts and sorry I spent so long on the gun post 'cause I didn't have anything else but this is kinda right up the alley.  Chick-fil-A, 1,608 chicken restaurants across the country whose president is Dan Cathy some Christian guy opposed to gay marriage.  All told his chain rakes in more than $4 billion a year and they say they run their business on Christian principles and teach their employees to do the same.  Not sure what this means exactly, are their workers forbidden to gossip and use cuss words but to each his own.  So a new report from the LGBT group Equality Matters says Chick-fil-A gave more than $3 million to Christian groups opposing the gay agenda and the timeframe here is from 2003-09.  In 2010 according to the report the company gave about a cool $2 mil to such causes.

SO??????

Did Dan come in with his boyfriend and did they refuse to serve them?  You know the thought occured that indeed Dan can come in with his boyfriend and they could order a nice chicken-lickin' sandwich or two and take it home later and incorporate it into a sex act.  UMMM the boycott thing is cool and if it bothers you that much SO DON'T EAT THERE!  Kraft not that long ago posted a photo of a new Oreo cookie with a nice rainbow filling inside, didn't know that, I looked it up.  JC Penney recently hired Ellen DeGeneris as its spokesperson before dehiring her so it cuts both ways and I'm like I don't care if DeGeneris is JC's spokeswoman and it's fine that the chicken company supports the traditional family but the Oreo thing I don't think is good for your diet.  Look no laws were broken in any of these cases and I'm labeling this under the gay agenda, yes the gay agenda.  As far as I'm concerned everyone can have a POV on the ole Hershey Highway, you can't force me to drive on it just like I can't tell you not to take that route.  Seems the LGBTers want you right there in the room with Ranger Rick getting right on up in there and anything short of clapping and applause will get you in trouble with the Nanny State.  That last point is a metaphorical one of course but look folks are entitled to each their own ickiness.  All I knows is that when you're driving along and you pass a Kennedy Fried Chicken you're in the ghetto:)

The Politics of Tragedy

I hadn't actually planned on blogging about it today.  I had woken up early, got the percolator going, fed the cats and about 10 after 7 turned on the Today Show and Matt Lauer and saw the Breaking News.  We now know about the suspect, 24-year old James Holmes allegedly shot and killed 12 theatergoers and injured more than 50 others at the midnight showing in the town of Aurora, Colorado of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises.  Holmes had no criminal history up to that point.  OK stunning and sad and tragic news to be sure but my blogpost could wait awhile, there'll be the usual suspects calling for more gun control about which more in a minute but that gestational post could give birth tomorrow or the day after at the latest.  So I'm googling this and I'm googling that so I finally say let me go to Drudge to catch the latest and see what we learned, any link to terrorism? and after a few seconds I find this:

ABCNews Already Linking 'Tea Party'? Backtracks...
Breitbart: Shooter May Be Registered Democrat

and I'm thinking what in hell does Politics have to do with any of this???  Now I realize Breitbart (not the ghost of Breitbart but now the generic Breitbart Spirit I guess) was trying to counter the Brian Ross/George Stephanopoulos thesis but C'mon!!!  Interesting though that ABC went with this so early, it's like a kind of Rohrshach or Word Association Test - Charlie Sheen/drugs, Mayor Bloomberg/soda, latest tragic shooting massacre somewhere in the country/Tea Party but it's all very disgusting.

Now gun control:  I'm not against all gun-control measures, pass them if you like but criminals are not apt to obey them in the first place since criminals by nature don't obey the law.  It'd be like saying because money-laundering and extortion are against the law the Mob won't launder money and extort it.  I never got this.  Gun control at most is only moderately positive, a modest step in the right direction but the way the libs get all worked up over it.  Yeah and banning the Big Gulp will makes us a nation of the svelte. 

Turns out this James Holmes character was enrolled in the University of Colorado-Denver and just dropped out of some PhD neuroscience program.  What's with these eggheads gone psycho? think Ted Kaczynski.  These tragedies seem sadly cyclic nowadays, also cyclic is the expected labeling system: Tea Party/gun control/fell through the cracks of the mental health-care system, the usual.  I had to use my own label "journalism" to categorize parts of my post here but I use the term loosely, looser than what my cat did on my cedar chest the other night:)

With Obama's reelection looming is this the best time to have a conservative crackup?

Re conservatives, conservative bloggers who won't vote for Romney, not getting the overall theory here.  Liberals must love our little internal debates it can only help their guy time and again.  I say pragmatism before idealism -- defeat Obama first then talk about purifying the Party.  Now the case is being made that we should reelect a president with unemployment still over 8%, it's a weak case to be sure, it's unusual in terms of how Americans typically vote on the overall economy in presidential elections but it is being made nonetheless by BB, Dave Miller and liberals in general.  The difference between us and them, deep down they must know that Obama leaves much to be desired, his first term has to be disappointing for them but in general you don't hear this being expressed by most liberals (I know you're gonna highlight and link to some of the dissidents, go right on ahead).  What are they gonna say the first African-American president kinda sucks?  In short they're all on the same page and have to make the most of it, the Mission is more important.  I'm sure they think the same way about us, it's far more important to get Obama reelected and work out the kinks later than to let a Republican win.  There's always a conservative crackup perking underneath the surface but never a liberal crackup it seems and I don't really count the liberal idiosyncratics club with members like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.  A wise for his years young manager of mine a few years back once said you have to choose your battles by which he means you can't go with everything that agitates you, there be some things that are more important at least for the time being.  What I see some conservatives doing here is a kind of messy multitasking and they're doing it out loud.  They're all over the map, they want Obama the Marxist defeated of course but they also hate their own party and are complaining about it and that doesn't help the first cause...it's just such a muddled approach.  There are those for example who want Obama defeated and at the same time want to end the Federal Reserve today, one is definitely doable the other is a pipe dream for now.  I think though y'all should be invited to Obama's second Inaugural Ball, Michael Fumento will drive:)  

I kinda admire Romney at the NAACP convention in Houston

I didn't think he had it in him but he took it up the ass, ripped into ObamaCare and said how his policies are especially bad for African-Americans.  Of course everyone hooted and hollered like he just insulted Mother Teresa.  President Obama is so taking the black vote for granted and why shouldn't he that he sent Biden down there instead.  That'd be funny though if he said something stupid.  So when is it acceptable to criticize a black president?  I say when the jobless rate is still over 8% it's fair game and when a president is this weak liberals using the Race Card just looks plain stupid.  I'm not quite sure how Conservatism got linked up with the whole racism charge in the first place, didn't Charlton Heston once march with the Rev. Martin Luther King?  I read somewhere recently that Bill Maher has accused Matt Drudge of racism for constantly going after Obama.  I think with Maher it's not so much humor anymore, he's way past the Mort Sahl stage.  It's not funny or entertaining and now he's just venting a distorted anger, some chronic mental masturbator.  Put another way I'll take a Seinfeld or even a Jon Stewart.  Chris Brown and Drake fighting over a girl, I'm no fan of Chris Brown but it wasn't right what Drake did.  Now it comes out that Rihanna is into S&M and so maybe Chris Brown was confused when he hit her.  Fat uninsured folk, I think liberals are guilty of hate here.  Again kudos to Romney and he kept on rappin' too, I love it.  IF Romney does make Condi Rice the VP that's a heavy 2-fer, she's black and she's a woman.  Look sometimes you gotta counteract these things, it's not like somebody's gonna call her a house nigger -

right?

The real problem with Higher Education

Sometimes conservatives overly misdiagnose the Problem.  For instance you'd think there was a veritable epidemic of bad teachers in the NYC public schools system and for this reason teacher ratings and evaluations need to be made public not tomorrow but NOW.  Conservatives love this particular bandwagon but I say it's the kids, home-training.  With Higher Education, colleges and universities conservatives say the problem is liberal bias.  Well yeah there's some of that, having two years of college under my belt you could sense it from time to time but I really don't care, whatever floats your boat.  You have a political leaning well if the students know where you're coming from I don't see the problem but the real problem in a nutshell is that colleges and universities make you take courses you're never gonna use in Life.  Went to that Catholic institution for two years and they made us take an advanced math class so this older white-haired priest is writing calculus equations on the board, really breezing along with his chalk and I'm like what in hell? I'm never gonna use this in my day-to-day.  Then we had to go to the college bookstore on the corner of course and buy our own textbooks which cost a small fortune and I remember thinking back then in high school the class that just made it to the next grade just passed their books down to the next generation of students gratis.  What a racket!  One of my younger male managers going back a few years said after high school he just wanted to dive right into the workforce, make money and so he went with chefing and avoided the whole higher education experience.  Practical skills you learn by actually doing, how to make money, interacting with people and customers and learning new trades on the spot.  Better for the economy.  I'm glad to see a few conservatives like Maggie Gallagher more or less put down the whole college experience as a serious waste of time, you're gonna spend years paying back that student loan and what exactly are you gonna do with that advanced art or history degree anyway?  Education is one of the most controversial issues in this country, everyone has an opinion.  I say kids don't need to be taught how to masturbate just how to make the dinars:)

I think the election of the first African-American president was a great historical moment

Too bad he sucks.  Is this a racist statement? I don't think so because I honestly think the election of the first black president was a great historical moment but it's like Tiger Woods the first in his game too, he let us down and deep down it always pains us.  IMO liberals' great great unabated love for Obama goes beyond simply that he's a good liberal Democrat in the best progressive mold, they're still nostalgic for the sheer historicity of that moment so I get it, like Tiger they want to see him make that comeback.  The historical importance of that moment, put it this way unemployment could jump to 20 or even 30% and he could pardon Sandusky and you'd still have the same folks defending him (be honest).  Jimmy Carter isn't black so it's easy for everyone across-the-political-board to render the historical verdict that he sucked whereas in Obama's case I sense some reluctance to do so.  Political Psychoanalysis, I think in this case most of it hinges on Race which is why Cindy Sheehan could protest the Obama White House and the msm won't cover it which is why I learned it from BB in a reply to the Dude, it sure as hell wasn't Brian Williams.  Frank Robinson became the first black Major League Baseball manager, not that long after he was fired.  So yes it's important to make History, I'm kind of a progressive conservative in this regard but it's also important just as or more so to make an objecive analysis, an impartial and fair evaluation after a time and in this regard he suffers.  FDR was handicapped although at the time it was kinda downplayed, been there done that so now I say let's elect the first woman president, then the first gay president (they can be one and the same) but here's a minor sticking point for me, can they at least be good?  Don't just make History, give us a good historical product.