Vox Popoli

Michelle Obama apparently decides to shoot off her mouth again at the expense of Mr. Snorey Stinker:

Accusing API of colluding with American internet bloggers in an effort to bring down her husband, Mrs Obama said she decided to call API because of what she termed, API’s help to spread rumours created by American bloggers and other racist media outlets in their efforts to damage a black man’s name, saying she hopes African Media was mature enough to be in the front to give unwavering support to her husband, a man Africans should identify themselves with.

When API told her that our online news media was only relaying what the American Bloggers and other media outlets had discovered through their investigations, Mrs Obama was angered and she came out loud with the following: “African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. The important thing here is where my husband’s heart is at the moment. I can tell the American people that My husband loves this country and his adoption never changed his love for this country. He was born in Hawaii, yes, and that gives him all the right to be an American citizen even though he was adopted by a foreigner; says Michelle Obama on telefon to API.”

The hysterically fearful reaction of the Obamanists tells you all you really need to know about the likelihood that the API report is accurate. No doubt that if the recording is made public – as API indicates it will do – the truth squad will shift their argument to insist that the tape is faked.

This isn’t just the most importantest, it’s the bestest presidential campaign ever!

Rachel Lucas fails to empathize with the Democratic president-in-waiting’s complaints about how the entire media isn’t sufficiently supportive of his magical negritude:

If there were no CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CSPAN, PBS, NPR, the LA Times, the New York Times, and every other major paper in the country, a radical socialist with insufficient experience like Obama would be down in the polls about 30 points.

You want to talk about an entire industry – an entire apparatus – designed to perpetuate a cultural schism, to give one guy an edge over another guy based on soundbites and bias? You want to talk about that? And you think it’s WORKING AGAINST YOU, SENATOR BARACK OBAMA???

Sorry for all the yelling. I just simply cannot believe my own eyes on this one. I truly cannot FATHOM that this man, who is supposedly intelligent and “aware”, would actually say with a straight face that there’s an entire industry – in the form of the media – that is anything other than his own personal cheerleading corps.

Of course, Fox News is about 10 percent to the right of the rest of the mainstream media, so it’s not as if it makes any difference anyhow. But I’m enjoying the pre-Obama administration period already; that pragmatic Karl Rove Republicanism really worked out well, didn’t it?

It’s such a good thing Republicans didn’t stick to republican principles, because otherwise they wouldn’t be so popular with the electorate and might well be looking at a Democratic White House, House, and Senate.

The weird thing about the left is that they incessantly worry about creeping fascism even as they embrace it:

The Racine school district’s use of an eighth grade textbook that includes a chapter on Democrat Barack Obama but nothing on his opponent John McCain is unfair and troubling, the Wisconsin Republican Party argued Thursday.

I couldn’t care less about the “unfair” aspect as this relates to the election, but there is something unusually creepy about these Obamanation phenomena. As enthusiastic as people could be about Reagan, Clinton, and Bush the Younger – no one particularly liked Poppy – they’ve never been the beneficiary of this ludicrous Soviet-style beatification.

Mickey Kaus catches out both McCain and Obama:

Most telling passage:. Two times, if I remember right, McCain rattled off long lists of occasions when he had gone against his party, and each time he left off “immigration,” his most salient anti-GOP heresy. Once Obama had an opening to back up his charge that McCain was an unreliable champion of “comprehensive immigration reform.” He didn’t take it. This suggests that both candidates recognize that pushing “comprehensive immigration reform”–i.e. legalization–is a loser with the general electorate. Or it’s at least very risky.

A salient observation. Isn’t it also telling how in supposedly democratic America, there’s never any substantive national debate over the important issues that have long-term impact on the direction of the country?

Katharine Lopez unsurprisingly declared the debate to be a McCain victory in her eyes, and then goes on to demonstrate up why the landmark magazine has become irrelevant.:

Most of my e-mails tonight look like this: “Your title and post “I Just Don’t Get” present a crystallization of Cornerite obtuseness and delusion that is almost haiku-like in its succinct perfection.

Look, here’s the thing. That, my friends, is the very model of how a contemptuous email is to be written. America. Children. Do it for them. Hope! Change!

If you care to share your impressions of the oratical pyrotechnics, go for it.

Christopher Buckley leaves National Review and what he describes as the modern conservative movement. It’s a bit drama-queenish and quite possibly disingenuous, but he still makes some effective points about the problems of the increasingly narrow “conservative” commentariat:

I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I don’t disagree with his decision to leave the Republican Party. However, considering the things he’s complaining about, why on Earth is he supporting Obama? Sometimes watching the conservative commentariat thrash illogically about is like being a three-dimensional being standing over a community of Flatlanders.

“Republicans bad… therefore Democrats good!”

“No, Democrats badder, ergo Republicans good!”

There are still some Republican commentators with more than half a brain at National Review, such as Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg, John Derbyshire – his highly amusing atheist antics notwithstanding – and Yuval Levin, but they’re getting increasingly drowned out by the lesser breed and the neocons.

Eaglewood rather likes the book, but notes what is quickly becoming a recurrent theme:

I downloaded his free e-book version when it came out, and I got quickly engrossed in the vibrant world of men, dwarves, and elves he was creating. Others have compared it to the Hobbit or to The Lord of the Rings, but I am not sure I am willing to go that far yet, but I can see the promise in his writing. Unlike other novels of this sort, I liked that he engaged the mind as the story line was more of a thinking man’s story than the typical slash and burn kill fests that so many fantasy novels turn out to be…. This is part of the brilliance of the authors writing. He is able to take you into the world of his characters and have you see through their eyes and truly be there with them in their adventures and follies. You get the feeling you are right there with them as part of the group and actively involved as a fellow adventurer in what appears to be a well thought out complex world.

It seems I may have to give more consideration to a sequel of some sort than I had originally envisioned. The thing is, I had something completely different in mind, albeit set in the same world. However, it occurs to me that there is a very logical link between that which is written and that which I have been contemplating writing in the near future. (That cynical sound you hear is Spacebunny laughing at me.)

Anyhow, if you liked Summa Elvetica and would like more of that sort of thing, then let me know. I have to admit, I quite enjoyed the intellectual challenge of what I consider to be the most interesting aspect, which naturally has been of little interest to anyone else. It’s a good thing I write primarily for my own amusement, is it not? Of course, if you want more of it in physical form, it would be helpful to order the book from Marcher Lord.

As for the length, I’ll merely mention that it was intended to be a short novel from the very start; you’ll note that the Aquinan structure dictates that it either be around its current length or something nearly twice as long. Also, I attempted to roughly follow Umberto Eco’s concept of describing events according to their duration; for example, I’d originally conceived three “traveller’s tales” but the editor wisely declared that two was sufficient.

So, I’ll probably publish Faelan’s tale as a stand-alone short story at some point in the future.

I seldom agree with Frum when it comes to policy prescriptions. But he’s rather better on diagnosing problems, and it seems remarkable for Republicans to get angry with him for pointing out the obvious:

Do my correspondents (and now my Corner colleagues) truly believe that – but for my pitiful media and social ambitions – nobody in America would have noticed that Sarah Palin cannot speak three coherent consecutive words about finance or economics?

Of course, he left out the fact that McCain, Obama, and Biden can’t either. It’s not as if Palin is alone in her economic incompetence. Speaking of which, don’t be fooled by the Dow’s upward explosion. This is nothing more than the inevitable reaction of which I warned Mr. Lowry last week, it’s not the end of the bear or evidence that the bailout is working.

Bull markets grind slowly upward. Contrary to how it might appear, massive up days, even two or three consecutive up days, are quite common in bear markets.

Conservatives may wish to keep this statistic in mind before attempting to defend the police from libertarian vituperation:

More than one-third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime, according to a review of their job applications. The arrests ranged from minor offenses such as shoplifting to violent charges including assault. More than one-third of the officers had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies, and more than half of the recruits admitted using marijuana.

Ah, just give them a badge, a gun, and immunity to prosecution. What could go wrong?