A Nail In His Place

From Scott at Power Line:

Watching the Democratic debate last night, I thought to myself: I would buy a used car from Barack Obama. He is smart, disarming, adroit, and likable. In a debate format with Hillary Clinton, the competition has been reduced to seeking Democratic votes on claims to the greatest ideological purity. For Obama, the claim rests on his opposition to the Iraq war. For her, the claim rests on her health care program. Both Obama and Clinton are peddling tales of gloom and doom, and both recognize no greater threat to the United States than the Bush administratoin. In substance, they both portend a grim Eurosocialist future for the United States. With his personal attributes, however, Obama has it all over her.

For John McCain to prevail against Obama, McCain will have to deploy an intellectual rigor in exposing Obama that he has yet to display on the campaign trail. Tony Blankley draws the lessons of the Clinton campaign against Obama and calls for “a surgeon’s scalpel.” Does McCain have it in him?

Link

Steyn on Canada and the Commonwealth
Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Since Maclean’s got into a spot of bother with Canada’s “human rights” pseudo-courts, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of our media confreres who don’t think it should be a “crime” for magazines to publish excerpts from books by yours truly. Nevertheless, in defending free speech in general, they usually feel obliged to deplore my exercise of it in particular:

“Maclean’s published an alarmist screed by Mr. Steyn . . .” (The Economist)

“While the book may be alarmist . . .” (CFRB)

“Steyn’s argument is indeed alarmist . . .” (The Guardian)

And, oh dear, even:

“The fear of ‘a Muslim tide’ was alarmist . . .” (Tarek Fatah and Farzana Hassan in Maclean’s)

Okay, enough already. I get the picture: alarmist, alarmist, alarmist. My book’s thesis — that most of the Western world is on course to become at least semi-Islamic in its political and cultural disposition within a very short time — is “alarmist.”

The question then arises: fair enough, guys, what would it take to alarm you?

The rest of the story…

Some friends with a son in the Navy sent me some great photos of his ship leaving port. I thought I would post one here. God Bless our Sailors and Soldiers!

Ryan and I watched the eclipse last night.  Lots of clouds, but we could see it often enough.  It was quite beautiful.  I took some photos, but lenses is not long enough nor aperture big enough to get any really good shots.

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: February 19, 2008

At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.

The rest of the story…