Grandstanding, Baby-Kissing & Staged Community Service Photos

On Saturday I joined a group of youths in cleaning up the yards and streets near Willesden Green in the Brent Council here in London. It was your typical street/yard cleaning service project. We found all the usual things, though certainly nothing so crazy as the meth lab remnants I found while doing a similar project in Mead Valley, CA.

While I was glad to not involve the UK version of Hazmat in our service project, I was disappointed we didn't find anything stranger than a half-filled bottle of transmission fluid. That's a boring service project.

The one thing that did make it interesting was the appearance of the Brent East MP (Member of Parliament), Sarah Teather. Hers was like the visit of politicians to service projects everywhere--all about staged photos. I know I shouldn't have given it another thought--it goes on all the time--but I was, admittedly, a little disgusted.

To my mind, if you want to take pictures of yourself picking up trash with all the rest of us morons, you ought to at least, you know, pick up a little trash.

I don't know anything about her politics--other than the fact that she's a Liberal Democrat. But her "appearance" at the service project Saturday made her just another politician.

She's just like the hacks in Congress who write ex-post facto bills of attainder meant to "punish" people who earned bonuses at a company that took TARP money. Never mind that Congress--Chris Dodd, at the urging of the Obama administration--wrote the rule in the first place. Now that there's a backlash, Congress will do what it does best--grandstand.

Consider the WSJ's quote of James Madison in Federalist 44:

such punitive laws were expressly deplored by America's Founders. In Federalist 44, James Madison warned that "Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation."

I get the populist pulls on these people. I understand that they need to get elected (or re-elected for the 17th time). But why can't a Senator or President Obama show a little bit of leadership on this issue--why can't anyone in Congress behave like an adult?

Instead of making a superficial production of everything--the Guitar Hero* phenomenon I wrote about all last year--how about a little substantive leadership?


*Over-the-top performance, no real skill or experience.


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Obama & The Press

Hunting around the interweb, we found this graph which well describes the mutual adoration relationship between the Junior Senator from Illinois (Mr. Guitar Hero* himself) and the MSM.

Courtesy of Ms. Noemie Emery:

when Obama appeared — cool, suave, urbane, and much hipper than they were — they had found their revenge and their voice. They were thrilled when he said that wearing a flag pin was a meaningless gesture and proposed a new kind of patriotism that did not include cheering. They nodded in approval when, listing laudable ways of serving one’s country, he included the Peace Corps, teaching, and community service, but left out the armed forces. When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for 20 years, was criticized for delivering tirades against whites and American culture, they defended Obama, not least because many of them agreed with the preacher; some blamed the critics of Wright’s racism for being racists themselves. And when Obama told a well-heeled crowd at a billionaire’s home in San Francisco that small-town Pennsylvanians “cling” to religion and guns from misplaced desperation, they were not at all bothered, as that was what they had believed all the time.

*Over-the-top performance, no real skill.


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McCain's New York Times Op-Ed

We woke up this morning intending to write a kind of an update about Iraq and how much things had improved over the last 18 months, 12 months, and 6 months. We were going to talk about how courageous Senator McCain had been to defend The Surge just over a year ago when it was so unpopular and looked like it would probably cost him the Republican nomination.

All of those things remain true--and Senator McCain should be rewarded for taking an unpopular stance that has proved right and good.
(something like this: Victory in Iraq)

But it's all been kind of preempted by the New York Times' refusal to print Senator McCain's op-ed just a week after printing Senator Obama's. This doesn't surprise us. It fits right into the ongoing narrative of Obama's fawning press coverage. At this point, can anyone deny it?

Obama commits gaffes every day ('I'll be President for 8-10 years') but it is not reported the way it would be if Senator McCain made the same remark. And if the shoe were on the other foot about Iraq--if Senator McCain were the one who wanted to abandon Iraqis to civil war and sure genocide, you better believe every liberal talking head would write numerous 'I told you so' op-ed pieces about how The Surge proved him wrong.

And the New York Times won't even print an op-ed piece in which Senator McCain challenges Senator Obama on Iraq. He challenged Obama the way the MSM should have been doing all along--by pointing out that Obama has been and remains wrong about Iraq. That his policy does not match reality. That he said ridiculous, unsupportable things in the primary ('I will withdraw within 16 months regardless of what's happening on the ground or what my commanders tell me') to get elected by the Leftists in his party.

Is it too much to ask that his press entourage actually ask Senator Obama a tough question? Is that allowed?

Oh well, the least the rest of us can do is link to the text of Senator McCain's op-ed piece at Drudge. Check it out here.

This is just another example of Barack Obama, Guitar Hero candidate:

He's plays well to a crowd, but give him a real guitar and he's a disaster.


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Barack Obama: Guitar Hero Candidate

And finally, a little unintentional honesty from Obama Senior Advisor, Jenny Backus re: Senator Obama's Guitar Hero performance at the 2004 Democrat convention:

No one more than Barack Obama understands how important it is to deliver a convention speech well. He [Sen. Obama] wouldn't be where he is if he didn't know how to deliver convention speeches.

If you're nodding your head while reading this thinking, "yeah, isn't he (Obama) awesome?(!)" then you won't get our point.

But flip this around for a moment and imagine if these words dropped from the mouth of a Senior McCain Advisor. The Obamaniacs over at Daily Kos would be up in arms and blogging about how he's more than just his smash hit speech of 2004--that he's about HOPE and CHANGE and JFK-reincarnate and whatever other buzzword Team Obama has been field testing in Berkeley and Eugene.

And the more we think about it, Guitar Hero is a pretty good metaphor (analogy?) for what Senator Obama brings to the table: over-the-top performance & zero actual skill.

We just have to hope Americans don't hand him the real goblet of rock this November. They may find, like Guitar Hero enthusiasts everywhere, his "skill set" doesn't translate to the real thing.

*UPDATE 9:39pm PST: This probably deserves it's own post. Oh well, here it is, Barack Obama playing Guitar Hero. There's no denying, he's really good.


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