Some people say John McCain isn't conservative enough. But there's more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based.
-P.J. O'Rourke

Thank you.

Yep, a storm's a-comin'.

Taking a break from my break to post this hilarious video about the dangerous fission that takes place when fusing politics and music.

Sanity, perhaps?

David Greenberg of the (excellent) New Republic wrote an article defending Hillary Clinton's conduct this election cycle as nothing out of the ordinary. Now I would argue that her unlikability is more a product of her supreme arrogance and less her individual attacks, but that's beside the point.

Anyways, I read through the article, remaining unconvinced that Clinton is anything less than the Wicked Witch of the West, but this line did catch my attention:

Nor should Clinton's tactics be faulted for giving ammunition to the Republicans for the fall campaign. Harping on a rival's weaknesses is part and parcel of any campaign. Al Gore denounced Michael Dukakis's prison furlough program in 1988. Bill Bradley branded Gore a serial exaggerator in 2000.

Just a quick observation: didn't both those guys lose?

"I made a mistake. I have a different memory. That happens. I'm human. For some people that's a revelation." - Hillary Clinton

The death toll reached 4,000 today.

Whether we agree with this war or not, we must never fail to ask the question, "Why?"

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

-John Updike

I was asked in the comment section to explain the reasoning for the last post. I figured I'd just make that a separate post.

I suppose that I have accepted that years and years of petty political division will not be alleviated in the slightest during the next four years or even beyond that. It's likely that they'll only get worse.

I don't have any sense of loyalty to McCain or to the Republican party. There is so much duplicity on both sides, and the more I read, the harder it is to sift through all the BS.

I'm so angry with the Limbaughs and the Hannitys of this party for what has transpired over the last few weeks, I can barely stand it. It's shameful and wrong. It's ugly and callous, and I want no part in that.

That said, they got to me. I realized that there enough people out there who would seek to keep us divided that any hope of success is only a fool's hope. "Yes, we can", Obama's rallying cry, rings true for millions, but there is another cry who rings true for millions more and that is "No, we won't." There is no desire for reconciliation among those who's influence is the greatest, and while there is desire in others, it is overshadowed by deeply ingrained cynicism that came with the last 20 years of scorched earth politics.

It is not an issue of Obama's experience or policy or motives for me, but an issue of what kind of monster he is facing. Too many powerful people with too much clout stand in his way. To compromise is to lack conviction. To be anything less than viciously partisan is weakness.

So in short, I fell under the influence of people I despise.

Yeah, my cynicism got the best of me.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American...

...
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

Barack Obama said that in an incredibly honest and telling speech on the issue of race this morning in response to the recent firestorm surrounding his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I have my own thoughts about the Jeremiah Wright issue that I may or may not post. It isn't anything new. But it is being addressed now, as it should be. And anyone who has watched Obama's campaign with any sort of diligence knows that the worst statements of Jeremiah Wright do not in any way accurately reflect Barack Obama's candidacy. Anyone who has read his words or heard him speak knows that he is not Jeremiah Wright, nor Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. He is not Malcolm X.

But you will either take the man at his word or you won't. Read the full text of the speech here.

Perhaps part of me doesn't always feel like accepting grace because of everything in faith, it is the part that requires the least effort, and the part I have the least control over. I think that a big part of me wants very much to perform some rite of passage in order to attain it. Heck, I want to do something. Anything. And deep down inside, I know that I would fail. That bothers me. It wounds my pride. But if I really believe what I say and more importantly what the Bible says about our depravity, it couldn't be any other way. Trying to attain it on my own does not work. It's like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain only to watch it roll back down again. It never worked. For anyone.

I don't like not being able to do things. I don't like it when I can't accomplish something. I'm deathly afraid of failing. I can do most things. But not this. I can't, I haven't, I won't. Knowing that to gain victory, I must rely completely on someone else because I'm too weak to do it on my own is scary and slightly angering.

But that's the beauty of it. The horrifying beauty of it, I suppose.

All this talk of a joint ticket is really unsettling to me. In one sense it's unsettling because of the obvious duplicity on Clinton's side of things, and in another it's unsettling because, the last thing I want is for Barack Obama to defeat Sen. Clinton and then have to deal with her for the remainder of the election season and then possibly the next 4 or even 8 years.

I will not, under any circumstance support a Clinton-Obama ticket. Clinton is one of the worst partisans in Washington, and I shiver to think what her administration would look like.
I will also not support an Obama-Clinton ticket. For him to choose her as his running mate would be a hypocrisy I could not in good conscience deal with. I still think that there is a certain loathing for her on his part that would make it unthinkable to select her as a running mate. And comments he made earlier today seem to support that assertion, so I'm not freaking out just yet.

About a week ago, I wrote a post called "The Demise of the Clintons". I will write no more such posts until the nomination is officially decided, one way or the other. There were several times when I thought about writing posts about how the Clintons were most dangerous when behind and not to underestimate them, but never got around to it. I would have been a genius had I written that instead of the aformentioned post, but I guess I have to live with my mistakes.

Should Obama win though, everything I said in that post will stand :).

Johnathan Chait channels my own fears:

Clinton's path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama's elected delegates might break off and support her. I don't think she'd be in a position to defeat Hitler's dog in November, let alone a popular war hero.

Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn't necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton's kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost--to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months--uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.

Why won't the Clintons just go away? For the love of God, why won't they just lose?

I voted today (first time!). Whatever the results, I was proud to be a part of it.