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The Anchoress presents a dialogue about a desperate Democrat:

Don Clinton: Oh, get yourself a hankie, Candace, and stop bleedin’ all over my rug. The more you whine and cry the more that li’l Alaskan hootchi-goo is gonna laugh while she grinds the stiletto heel of those cute little size sevens straight through your pericardium and into your heart before you even know what’s happened!

The One: (falls to the floor in contrite supplication) Help me, Godfather, help me! What do I do? How do I get this mean girl to stop beating me up, and reclaim my glamor, my “it” factor? My minions in the press have been going after her with everything they have, and they’re getting booed! Next “I” might get booed, oh, what do I do –

Don Clinton: (leaps from his chair and smacks The One twice on the face, smack! smack!) You can be a man! Be a man!

The One: (pathetic) I don’t know how. I just… don’t know how.

Obama is melting down quickly, but he didn’t melt down quickly enough for the Clintonistas to attempt the revolution in Denver they were considering. Obama badly needs to shake things up before he tanks completely, but he doesn’t have the courage to face down his wife and do the only thing that might save his candidacy, which is replacing Biden with Hillary. (Seriously, who is he going to upset in the slightest by that move, the influential Delaware wing of the Democratic party? The Neil Kinnock fan club?) Even that probably won’t work now anyway, since what would have looked like an act of strength and magnanimity a few weeks ago would now be correctly seen as an act of supreme weakness and desperation. But if he goes down 20 with likely voters, he may as well give it a whirl.

As I wrote around the time of the final primaries, Obama was very foolish to grab for the brass ring instead of ascending to secular sainthood that was his for the taking by graciously gifting the nomination to Hillary and then condescending to accept the vice-presidency. That’s the sort of Olympian, above-the-fray role he was born to play, not straight-up street-fighting against a devious old aviator and an Alaskan she-barracuda. If he loses as badly in November as is beginning to look possible, he’s probably one-and-done on the national scene.

A reader writes to tell of his personal experience of the VP candidate:

I have been following your writing on and off for the last couple of years. I am a committed and politically well-educated Christian “libertarian.” I am from Wasilla, Alaska. I personally know Sarah Palin. [They are near neighbors.] I worked on her first campaign for Mayor of Wasilla. I also have a good libertarian friend whose wife is [a good friend of] Sarah.

Sarah is a smart and savvy individual. In person, she actually does not come across as a barracuda or a strictly annoyingly aggressive person when you talk to her. She is beyond that. She is more reserved and skilled socially, almost shy-seeming. The reason she is known as a barracuda is because she is surprisingly more of a strategist/winner than people ever give her credit for. She is very skilled politically, but not in the slick willy sort of way. In the 80% approval rating as Alaskan Governor sort of way because she is very real and honest.

She has a pretty good social conservative record. But, she has become a bit of a fiscal socialist once she got to state office. I have had several women bosses and I typically can’t stand women as my leaders. They are way too emotion-based and petty. Palin is a bit different, she seems like a good leader, that said, I don’t think that I can in good conscience vote for McCain.

This corresponds pretty closely to what I’ve gleaned of Gov. Palin in casual observation from afar. I think she’s smarter, more dispassionate, and much more strategic in her thinking than most observers realize. However, I also detect an extreme ambition and an ego that she probably tends to keep somewhat concealed from those around her; I don’t trust anyone, male or female, who pursues a career in television in their youth, as it tends to be indicative of both a severe character flaw and intellectual superficiality.

The fact that Palin was both a beauty queen contestant and sportscaster indicates an unusually high degree of narcissism. Those possessed of such a character are very unlikely to resist the temptations of power, to which I suspect her acquaintance is obliquely referring when he describes her fiscal socialism in office. In general, it’s fairly safe to conclude that the sort of individual who builds expensive sports complexes as a local politician will tend to engage in expensive nation-building and showy domestic spending programs when elected to national office. Unfortunately, conservative instincts and Christian faith seldom trump core character flaws in Washington.

Sarah Palin is still a marvelous choice by John McCain and may well be the factor that allows him to upset Barack Obama and claim the Cherry Blossom Throne. Palin is an admirable woman of political and evolutionary accomplishment, and it is certainly possible that she possesses the internal steel to resist the tests and temptations that will be placed before her. It wouldn’t shock me, however, if many of those who enthusiastically vote for McCain-Palin in 2008 eventually come to regret doing so once the fruits of victory are harvested.

Is apparently a Muslim after all:

“Let’s not play games. What I was suggesting — you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.”
– Barack Obama

I really wish Obama would debate George W. Bush. It would be just like the Lincoln-Douglas debates, only the exact opposite. Nice to see little Georgie Steph leaping in and helping him out, though.

And the man just keeps digging himself in deeper:

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.”
– Barack Obama, 5 Sep 2008

The Bush administration socializes the housing market:

The US Government took control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the stricken companies that underpin America’s mortgage market, yesterday and promised to inject up to £110 billion of taxpayers’ money to keep them afloat….

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary and a key orchestrator of the rescue package, acknowledged that it was highly unusual for a government to intervene where publicly traded companies such as Freddie and Fannie were concerned. But he emphasised that the two struggling groups represented a special case because their survival was crucial to the health of the worst housing market since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

More on this in the next week. But count on one thing. This will make matters much worse in the long run. This is nothing more than the robbing the American taxpayer to protect the investments of the Chinese, the Russians, and the investment banks.

Isn’t it wonderful to have a Republican president! This really shows how 2008 is the mostest importantest election ever….

Pennington started slow but the Dolphins look less incompetent than last year, while Favre once again demonstrates that it’s better to be lucky than good.

Mr. “57 States” is at it again. Nittaly Lions, WTF? You know, Barack Obama is such a regular guy that after going out with the boys and bowling a 37, he likes nothing better than to kick back and drink a nice cold Budweezer while watching the Nittaly Lions play the Michigan Wolf Marines. Just like all you bitter folks clinging to your guns and Bibles in flyover country.

I truly hope he wins. His malaprops will provide more comedic material than Bush the Younger ever did, to say nothing of the good humor inherent in the inevitable invasions of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo or whatever they’re calling it today. I’m starting to enjoy the off-teleprompter Obama so much that I may actually watch the presidential debates for once.

While it’s nice to see the conservatives so enthusiastic and it’s even nicer to see the ObamaNation having heart palpitations and hysterics as they watch what they thought was a sure thing begin to recede from their nasty little claws, I have to confess something that might startle a few of you in light of my recent posts which have been full of approval for John McCain’s strategic selection of his running mate.

To be blunt, I don’t like Sarah Palin. And not for the same reason that part of the moderate Republican commentariat doesn’t like her – the Krauthammers, Nordlingers, and Frums – either. Peggy Noonan, of all people, nails it precisely:

This is the authentic sound of the American mama, of every mother you know at school who joins the board, reads the books, heads the committee, and gets the show on the road. These women make large portions of America work.

These women do get the jobs done. They also tend to make for terrible leaders, being for the most part petty dictators, micromanagers with an absolute focus on the insignificant detail. I don’t know that Palin is like that – and her approval ratings in Alaska tend to suggest that she truly isn’t – but I picked up the same vibe that Noonan describes and I dislike it. Intensely.

Consider the very things for which she’s being rightly celebrated for of late. She’s proven herself to be a tough and bossy mommy with a talent for verbal ridicule. How is this new? Sure, it’s unusual in the world of national politics, but not exactly unknown in the average suburbia. Palin is a regular person, which is admittedly a huge step forward when compared to psychological freak shows like Obama, McCain, and Biden, but that doesn’t make her someone that I happen to find likeable. In fact, most of the people I dislike are more or less normal. I suspect a lot of the avalanche of enthusiasm for her stems from the fact that she’s the first genuine conservative who’s been offered as an option to the Republican party since Ronald Reagan; of course, it took the old liberal maverick Republican to do it. Everyone knows at heart that if the decision had been left up to the conservative commentariat or the party elders, the ticket would be going down to defeat with the usual faux-conservative of the sort that they tried to cram down the base’s throat throughout the primary. So, the outpouring of excitement is perfectly understandable and entirely well-merited.

I also have to say that I don’t find Palin the least bit attractive. She’s not ugly like Michelle Obama, but I’ve been utterly bewildered by the sexual gushing over her by men and women alike. Carla Bruni, yes, absolutely. Sarah Palin, no, not so much. As impressive as I find her moose-slaying and so forth, being one who played hockey as a boy on the outdoor ice rinks of Minnesota, neither “hockey mom” nor “pitbull” nor “barracuda” are concepts I consider to have any association whatsoever with sexual attractiveness.

Needless to say, given the fact that my personal and intellectual inclinations are reliably in the extreme minority, this all bodes very well for a future President Palin.

Panic in the disco! There’s a fire at the Taco Bell and the Alps are melting!

Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today’s, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows. The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

See if you can follow the logic train. It is science:

1. The glacier is melting because it is warmer now than it was in the previous decade or so.
2. This melting has revealed evidence of people inhabiting the land underneath the ice of the glacier.
3. At the time people inhabited the land underneath the ice of the glacier, they were living in a warmer climate.
4. Therefore, a warmer climate brought about by anthropogenic global warming will cause humanity to rapidly die off in a global cataclysm.

Obviously, we must immediately crown ALGORE king of the world and grant him absolute monarchical powers in order to prevent this catastrophe from taking place! There is no other answer! There is no time… I’m… I’m SWEATING! AAAGHH! I’m SWEATING AND BEADS OF MOISTURE ARE BEING SUCKED FROM MY BODY BY THE HEAT! MY MOUTH IS LIKE A FURNACE! IT BURNS! IT BURNS! THERE IS NO ICE IN THE FREEZER, IT’S WARMING, IT’S WARMING, I’M MELTING, I’M MELT –

The OC joins the legion of SFWAns trying to pretend I don’t belong to the organization:

Case in point: can you point me to one professional SF writer who predicted even as recently as two weeks ago that Sarah Palin would be the Republican nominee for Vice-President, or that her nomination would ignite such a firestorm? (Vox Day doesn’t count. He’s a political economist, not an SF writer.)

Et tu, Bruce? First, everyone tells me that I’m completely crazy for saying that Hillary will be president in 2009 back in 2003 when it’s so obvious that she’s finished, then goes on about how I clearly have no idea what I’m talking about when she falls just short of the nomination thanks to an astoundingly incompetent campaign manager who literally doesn’t know the rules of the nomination process. Then, I correctly predict the Palin nomination as the only thing that McCain can do to kickstart his presidency and I’m informed it doesn’t count? Tough, tough crowd.

But the OC has a point. The average SF writer these days is far too economically ignorant, technologically clueless and politically left to have any clue about what’s going to happen in the future anyhow.

Seriously, what sort of idiot still thinks religion is going to disappear because of science anyhow? The irreligious Left has been clinging to one form or another of that idea for more than 200 years now, despite the fact that the only thing science has actually accomplished in that regard is to enable more and more irreligious leftists to reach evolutionary dead ends. A science fiction writer who writes about futures without religion can’t be considered a competent science fiction writer, he’s really nothing more than a poly-sci fantasist.

Discuss if you are so inclined. I’d be more impressed with the Giants defensive line if Washington didn’t appear to be in offensive disarray. Jason Campbell doesn’t appear to be very well suited for Jim Zorn’s scheme; 15/27 for 133 yards and a touchdown isn’t awful, but it’s not going to win many games without 200 yards on the ground either.