Vox Popoli

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.

Spacebunny emailed me this news today:

MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes. This could potentially mean an end to attractive women advertising perfume, housewives in the kitchen or men doing DIY. Such classic adverts as the Diet Coke commercial featuring the bare-chested builder, or Wonderbra’s “Hello Boys” featuring model Eva Herzigova would have been banned.

The new rules come in a report by the EU’s women’s rights committee. Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising. She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a “zero-tolerance” policy against “sexist insults or degrading images”.

Isn’t it interesting how the secularists always seem to do whatever they claim to be afraid of conservatives and Christians doing? It looks as if secular Europeans are far more puritanical than the American religious right would ever dream of being. Some time ago I wrote that women’s rights were a disease… it’s clear that cancer would have been the most apt comparison. Perhaps by the time men are banned from smoking, drinking, having sex, playing video games, watching football, or leaving the house without express written consent from a woman, people will begin to realize that my warning was dead-on.

No wonder the media is freaking out. It appears that Palin just single-handedly destroyed the post-convention bounce, and she did it before her superlative speech:

The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn’t vote. This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent.

Note that the “gender gap” is a bigger problem for Obama than it is for McCain – he loses more men than McCain loses women. By the way, isn’t it fascinating to see how conservatives react when a genuine conservative enters play in the place of the Rudy-Fred McRombee sort that requires all of the right-wing bloggers to try to convince themselves that if they just squint at him the right way in just the right light, he might kind of look a little bit like Reagan.

Can you even imagine how utterly crazy this race and its media coverage would become if McCain began his speech tonight with the words:

“My fellow Americans. It has been my honor to serve my country as a United States naval aviator, to serve the good people of Arizona as their Senator, and to serve the Republican Party as its candidate for President.

To me, public service, not personal ambition, has always been the highest calling. So now, in order to better serve the people of this great country, I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the nomination. And I am deeply, profoundly, honored, and absolutely delighted to nominate the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as the Republican Party’s candidate for President of the United States….”

Now, THAT would inspire a media conniption worth watching! McCain may or may not become the next president, but he’d make himself an immortal by becoming the president-maker. Obama had a similar opportunity with Hillary a few months ago, but he was too short-sighted and egotistical to seize it.

Hillary would be the very last one to want to see that; as it is, she’s almost going to have to sign up for the old maverick:

Possibly the most depressed liberal in the country today (other than Obama) is Hillary Clinton. She has been dogged, patient. She has spent years preparing to win the presidency. She’s weathered public humiliation. She was planning to be the frontrunner for 2012. But last night she saw the future and she’s not in it.

I would have assumed that Hillary could beat Palin following four more years of Bush-McCainery, but that’s a questionable assumption at best after last night’s steller performance. Having forgone the chance at an insurrection, Hillary’s best chance now is if McCain to wins this fall and then runs again for re-election in 2012. The interesting question to consider is if Palin would run in 2012 against an incumbent President Obama in the event of a McCain loss. My first inclination is to think she wouldn’t, but then, if Obama screws up the way I’d expect him to, I think Republicans would not only draft Palin for president, but lynch any Republican who thought to oppose her.

By the way, the MSM’s ability to analyze events is best shown by the recent suggestions that Republicans might demand Palin’s withdrawal from the ticket. Of course, there hasn’t been even a whisper of that, instead, they’re loudly wishing that the ticket was upended. Clueless, simply clueless.

This is a typical example of their cluelessness:

Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing–few if any would ever vote for McCain–but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked. I completely misjudged how negative she would be. Her lines about Obama were brutally cutting and possibly over the top in places.

First, they were all taken completely by surprise when McCain made the most obvious and effective choice for vice-president. Second, they actually thought conservatives and the religious right would somehow be turned off by a pregnant girl marrying the father of her child and having the baby! Here’s a little secret for the irreligious Left: religious people not only believe that sin exists, they believe that everyone engages in it. True, it’s best to avoid sin, but the far more important thing is how you attempt to amend for your errant actions when you, like everyone else, fall short of perfection.

Now they’re all surprised that a woman whose nickname is “Barracuda”, who compares her kind of woman to a pitbull, who took on and beat the corrupt old boys of Republican politics in Alaska, should turn out to be an effective attack dog. Whoever could have imagined it?

This is why I don’t read much political commentary except as a guide to what the clueless parrots will be repeating. With a few exceptions, it’s almost completely useless.

This was a particularly good line of attack: ““Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

One shot, two hits. The rabid Democrats in the media, lacking in both intelligence and perspective, have failed to account for the obvious. Wasilla may have only 9,780 residents, but there are more voting Americans living in similarly small towns than are living in the big cities that journalists apparently believe are the only places that matter. I won’t vote for McCain-Palin, but I suspect that a lot of people who would never have voted for McCain alone will.

Forgot to mention, doing a bit of radio now. You can listen here.