TOBY PETZOLD

Dan Collins said I had to read this, so I did. Of Barack Hussein Obama, Michael Knox Beran writes:

His charisma is grounded in empathy rather than authority, confessional candor rather than muscular strength, metrosexual mildness rather than masculine testosterone. His power of sympathetic insight is said to be uncanny: “Everybody who’s dealt with him,” columnist David Brooks says, “has a story about a time when they felt Obama profoundly listened to them and understood them.” His two books are written in the empathetic-confessional mode that his most prominent benefactress, Oprah, favors; he is her political healer in roughly the same way that Dr. Phil was once her pop-psychology one. The collectivist dream, Obama instinctively understands, is less scary, more sympathetic, when served up by mama (or by mama in drag).

My greatest concern now is that the deconstructions of this unqualified liar will become so numerous and varied that they will merely add kindling to the fire of his fascination —and make Obama the indispensable man of the age. Are we Americans far enough removed from the sinister influences of Big Media? Can someone such as The One —as McCain is now said to be calling him— really wield that much power over the minds of enough people to seize the most powerful office in the world? The contempt of the Democratic Party for this country deeply alienates me when I can bear to think of it. Their choice strikes me as nothing short of anti-American.

When Al Gore accepted the Nobel Prize, he said that we human beings are the problem.

If that sort of self-loathing Leftist pessimism isn’t the direct descendant of the concepts of original sin and the unredeemed sinner, then it is their retarded nephew. Therefore, what Gore and the Gaiists are practicing is religion. Moreover, it is utterly derivative of Judeo-Christian morality, which must be just awful for these tweed jacketed and besandaled morans to finally recognize: “Wha-? We’re just as trapped by the oppressive orthodoxy of sin and redemption as mere Christianists and Neocons?!”

Just quit tripping and settle down, hippies. Come up with something slightly less insane than to promise a completely carbon-neutral America within ten years. Jesus, Gore! Put down that bong and be serious. 

I regard Hillary Rodham Clinton as a hero to her party and to our Republic. She is doing all she can to stop the madness of this choice her party has made tonight. I am proud of my vote for her a few months ago and I hope she becomes the next Majority Leader of the United States Senate —where she will very probably shine. And where I can abuse her from time to time for being a yankee liberal.

I just watched Ray Suarez totally show up Jared Diamond. And that wasn’t even his intention, I don’t suppose, considering that it was a simple interview about Diamond’s latest book. But who knows? Ray’s edgy that way, man! Almost ethnic in his difference —and edginess.

Diamond’s a hack and Suarez busted him. How so? Because Suarez knows History as I do: the two most important things to remember in historical analyses are that scale matters and that one must always be cognizant of unprecedence. 

We’re not fighting over spices, jackass!

Hillary thinks she’s above showing a little leg, but she’s wrong. Get feminized, woman, or forget about the Oval Office.

It’ll be funny if the Democrats actually make an essentially unknown black man their nominee just because he’s opposed to a war that he and they don’t have sense enough to recognize as historically positive for Arab/Muslim democracy and for American business. Wouldn’t that be something like conceding the bankruptcy of their position on this war and going ahead with a choice that says, “Look at us! We stood by our convictions and made a minority our nominee just so we could look ourselves in the eye again.”?

The System won’t let Hillary lose this nomination. Bill won’t allow it.

Turns out, they don’t exist so much as eye candy as they do object lessons. Once there was cheesecake and beefcake, but now there’s people like Jamie Lynn Spears —a very tasty young woman, I might add— whose pregnancy is kindling for a moral debate throughout the country. Or so we are told. But I don’t know what’s so bad about her situation. She’s employed, right? The guy whose child she is carrying loves her and she loves him, so let the crazy kids get married or not. If they’re committed, great. If not, yawn.

The local Big Media newspaper has working for them a religion writer named Eileen Flynn. I really enjoy her stuff, when I happen to come across it, including her very interesting and ecumenical advocacy of celebrating the Advent at their site today:

Advent derives from the Latin word for “coming” and marks the beginning of the liturgical year. Some have said the four weeks represent the 4,000 years of darkness that preceded the birth of Jesus. Some say the Advent wreath is based on a pre-Christian fire wheel. The point is that Advent provides Christians the chance to start anew, to adjust their lives for the coming of the Christ child. Liturgically, the Christmas season begins Dec. 25.

I’m finding more and more Christians embracing Advent traditions. Converts to Catholicism, mainline Protestants, even nondenominational folks who long for rituals to deepen their spiritual lives are making a point to slow down and savor these weeks.

Sounds good to me, even if I don’t need to participate in those particular observances. I’m just happy that others still feel that they have some claim on those ancient rites. It strengthens the backbone against degeneracy and Islamofascism.

Check out her post. It’s got lots of interesting ideas.

Do it for Baby Jesus.

I am surprised at the big number of big names I know from George Mitchell’s report. Quite a few of the detestable Yankees, I’m pleased to note, including Roger Clemens, our local hero.

I think Mitchell’s right, though: call the culprits out on it and then move on. Because this isn’t like kicking Shoeless Joe Jackson out of the majors. Jackson was one of the men who did commit the ultimate crime in baseball: throwing the World Series. But what Clemens and the others did was long-term and systemic. Everybody’s known about steroid abuse in the MLB since McGwire and Sosa’s first passionate, get-a-room quality embrace during their record-breaking season of 1998.

As regards substance abuse in professional athletics, I remarked to a female relative earlier today that the only revelation more damaging than what these have been today would have been to learn that Lance Armstrong was, as the French have long insisted, doping during his magnificent run of championships. Such news would, quite frankly, devastate this town. That’s no joke, either. It would break a lot of hearts and I hope it is never found to be true.

In a remarkable hat-tip (you know, for a propaganda organ of Der Chimperor), enjoy Feministing’s post on Wal-Mart’s disgusting sexualization of America’s young daughters:

Suggestive pink Santa panties targeting young girls are being removed from Wal-Mart stores after parents objected to the offensive undergarments.

The panties, which were sold in the juniors department, seemed to suggest that girls don’t need money, they just need a sugar daddy — in this case Santa Claus.

The hipster briefs — carrying the slogan “Who needs credit cards …” on the front and “When you have Santa” on the derriere — caused an uproar among parents, who called for the $2.96 drawers to be pulled off the racks.

These panties were intended for a domestic, English-speaking market, right? Or is the whoredom of this culture more “advanced” than I had feared —and such messages are now just part of the noise that deafens the soul?

Wal-Mart doesn’t understand this, but their choice in marketing and profiting from this sort of degeneracy is as morally repugnant to me as though these were burkas. And that’s what they are: grade school snatch hijabs.

Our culture is positively schizoid about the wimmins, though. That’s for damned sure. We’re a lot of John Mark Karrs and Patsy Ramseys chasing after JonBenet. A lot of lip service is paid to the safety of children, but the parents are either clueless or complicit about their girls’ habits: the drinking, the oral sex, the internet thing, the general vulgarity of their language, dress, and character, etc. It’s heartbreaking.

I do hope for the day that I will be a father, but things like this worry me.

UPDATE: Oops! Switched my hyperlinks above, but you can figure it out.

UPDATE 2: Corrected dyslexic spelling of hijab above.

Jim Hoft mines from the Gorebot’s speech today before the Nobel Committee the motto that should follow him to the compost heap where his grave shall be: “We Are What Is Wrong.”

How succinctly put is the self-loathing essence of the Left. What a window on their soul!