Mostly, But Not Completely, Obama...

Ya know what scares the livin’ sheiss out of me? As of this morning… This:

Yes We Can Obama Song by Will.I.Am

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This video has been Number One on the ViralVideos list for over a week now and the number of views is simply incredible, to say the very least. Just for contrast, the video with the second highest number of views on the list (“Frozen Grand Central) has 5,228,274 views.

O! My Country!

As if I needed yet another reason to be depressed. Is it too late to raise the voting age to 35? Please?

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Speaking of The Phenomenon from Illinois… he had yet another big night last night, and he’s up to ten straight victories in the Democrat primaries. Victory, of course, is relative when it comes to Democrat primaries and their arcane delegate allocation process. The delegate count remains somewhat close, but Obama is opening up what may be an insurmountable lead. At least the pundits think so…

Some folks are saying it’s all over but the shouting. Or the crying, as the case may be. Yet still, not everyone’s impressed. Particularly Robert Samuelson who, writing in today’s WaPo (“The Obama Delusion”), sez:

It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

{…}

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Specific examples abound in the entire op-ed. As it’s said: RTWT. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more articles in the mainstream press now that Obama is definitely the front-runner. Too late? I think so, but your mileage most certainly may vary.

But Hey! Speaking of Obama supporters being “dazzled…” there’s this...

These women were so dazzled they completely forgot how to spell. (yes, I AM being charitable. Very.) (h/t for the image: V the K)

And then there’s this… I missed it, but Ed Morrissey did NOT. From The Good Captain’s post:

Matthews asked (ed: Texas state senator Kirk) Watson to name any significant legislative accomplishment by Obama, and the campaign surrogate got stumped:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "You are a big Barack supporter, right, Senator?"

State Sen. Watson: "I am. Yes, I am."

Matthews: "Well, name some of his legislative accomplishments. No, Senator, I want you to name some of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments tonight if you can."

State Sen. Watson: "Well, you know, what I will talk about is more about what he is offering the American people right now."

Matthews: "No. No. What has he accomplished, sir? You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You've supported him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, Barack Obama, sir."

State Sen. Watson: "Well, I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments."

Matthews: "Can you name any? Can you name anything he's accomplished as a Congressman?"

State Sen. Watson: "No, I'm not going to be able to do that tonight."

Matthews: "Well, that is a problem isn't it?"

It will be in November. Hope and change sound great ... for a while. At some point, the spell breaks, and people wonder how all this hope and change will morph into actual policy, and whether the candidate can actually deliver it. That usually means looking at the record to see how the candidate did so in the past, when they had the opportunity to do so.

That excerpt is from MS-NBC’s coverage of the primaries last evening. I don’t watch MS-NBC at all, ever. But (a) I’ll not digress here and (b) I’m damned sorry I missed that particular exchange. Good on Matthews for pointing out the would-be Emperor is most definitely naked. You can bet anything and everything that’s important to you that Senator McCain will be relentless on this particular point, as he should be. (The Huffington Post has video of the Matthews – Watson exchange here. Watson looks like a blithering idiot. Emphasis on “blithering.”)

Speaking of Senator McCain… I’m not intentionally slighting the Republicans by focusing on the Democrats, but the Republican race is over. Everyone knows that except for Mike Huckabee and a handful of disgruntled conservatives ideologues. All the action is on the Left side of the house now, innit?

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Teflon Don completed his journey back to Iraq and is now in the field and posting…with lots of photos. Great good stuff here, as most of y’all already know. The man can write, Gentle Reader, and has a good eye for pictures, as well.

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Can we please dust off the sedition and treason laws now? From World Net Daily:

JAFFA, Israel – Mideast terrorist leaders today thanked actress Sharon Stone for claiming to Arab media the U.S. used the Sept. 11 attacks as "pretext" for launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The terrorists stated Stone's remarks, published this week in Arabic, reinforce their views that current U.S. foreign policy is leading America toward destruction.

"What Stone said strengthens what we have been saying all along – that the Bush administration and the American evangelical Christians who control U.S. policy are leading America to defeat," said Muhammad Abel-Al, spokesman and senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization.

Aside from her remarks about 9-11, Stone, in her interview with the pan-Arabic Al Hayat newspaper, also bemoaned what she called Americas' decision to ignore the deaths of "600,000 Iraqis."

She stated she was against war with Iran and criticized the international community's failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Senior terrorists here urged Americans to take heed of the "Basic Instinct" star's comments.

It’s past…waaay past… time we charge and bring some folks to trial for their remarks in direct support of the enemy. I’m all about free speech, but this? Stone is over the frickin’ TOP.

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Today’s Pics: Another woman from my past. Pictured is the lovely Elaine, a woman I met while stationed in Beautiful Sinop-by-the-Sea. The first pic is a close-up, taken at one of the drunken brawls parties that were the primary source of entertainment and amusement for the crowd I ran with during my sojourn in Sinop. The second pic was taken looking down from the railing of The White Boat on the day I left Sinop. That’s my Buddy Dan In Florida giving me the “thumbs-up.” Dan left Sinop about a week or so after I did.

But back to Elaine. I met her while working at KBOK (the closed-circuit radio station I deejay'ed at) and we became very good friends...but only friends... during our stay in Sinop. We got romantically involved a couple of years later following her divorce. She and I were in the process of making plans for her to accompany me to Japan in 1975, but I had second thoughts about the relationship and ended it in a rather abrupt and uncaring sort of way. Which, in retrospect, may or may not have been “a good thing.” I would have never met The Second Mrs. Pennington had Elaine and I gone to Japan together. There are all sorts of different possibilities associated with that particular line of thought... but ya can’t second-guess your past, eh?

Finally… Elaine is the reason I can never go back to Tucson. I still fear for my life, with just cause. “I did her wrong,” as the song goes, and we both knew it… she much more than I, perhaps. I base that thought on her oh-so-explicit (not to mention graphic) promises of violence to my person should we ever meet again. Ergo: I can never go back to Tucson. For any length of time, anyway.

Update 2/20/2008, mid-day: I've mentioned The White Boat more than a few times of late and it dawned on me that all y'all have not the slighest idea of which I speak. So...for your illumination, here's the SS (or MV, or whatever prefix the Turks use on their ships) Izmir as she was pulling up to the pier on the blessed day I departed Beautiful-Sinop-By-The-Sea. One doesn't have days like this very often, Gentle Reader. Or trips on The White Boat, for that matter.