Pre-Election Hooptedoodle

This is the U.S. of A, edition, of course. The article that I posted on the night of Canada's recent election saw a traffic spike of over ten times this blog's usual daily readership, beating my old one-day traffic record by almost five times. I don't expect a repeat of that performance. There's just a wee bit more competition in the field of snarky political analysis on the American side of the Parallel. In Canada, it's me or the CBC, so I get hits.

Once again, disjointed thoughts ahoy. We'll be listing to starboard 'till morning, following no set course. Where'er the wind and currents lead, there shall we go.

Yarr.


About 24 hours from now it'll all be over and we'll know who the next President will be. I'm interested, but not worried. I have faith that America will survive no matter which candidate wins. Neither one will be a disaster in and of themselves. There are too many checks and balances in place, and the office of the President is not a dictatorship. Just because the President wants something doesn't mean it automagically happens.

Of course, having wacky-at-best Pelosi and friends littering a perfectly nice Congress doesn't help keep things under control. If elected, Obama may be able to get some schemes through that wouldn't have survived a less hysterical House and Senate. For instance, he's admitted that electricity prices are going to skyrocket under his administration, and that he'll tax any attempts to build new coal-based power plants into oblivion. Unlike Bush's inexplicable dreams of handing U.S. port security over to Dubai, Obama may be able to achieve his fantasies.

Sidebar: I've decided that for this entry, I'm going to skip linking to sources for most (but not all) of this stuff. I certainly could, and will look them up if any are requested in comments, but for the sake of expediency I'm going to mostly let the reader do their own Googlin'.

Overall, instead of utter devastation, I picture an Obama administration as more a live-action adaptation of Goofy Minds The House. Yes, a big noisy mess may get made, but eventually the adults will return to put things right.

I just hope that the mess doesn't include nuclear ash because of Iran getting to finish building their "peaceful purposes only, honest, not for bombing infidels at all, and like the Democrats we have no idea what Taqiyya means" reactors.


Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is comprised of far more charisma than substance. I hope Obama doesn't juggle and deflect as well as Clinton did, so he only gets the single term that Clinton should have. Clinton won a second term by managing to distract the masses with bread and circuses. Meanwhile, as people amused themselves to death, the DMCA passed, two of the Supreme Court justices who supported the Kelo decision slithered onto the bench, and the groundwork was laid for September 11 and the current mortgage crisis.

America, if you elect another Democrat, please pay closer attention this time.


One way that Obama could do serious damage is with his Supreme Court nominations. Joe Biden, when asked in the VP debate for an issue where he has changed his position, actually said that he used to think that judges should be picked based on, you know, their abilities, but now he understands that judicial picks are really all about politics and ideology. I was stunned that anyone would admit that, and even more so that no one picked up on it. I expected the moderator to say, "Wait. So you're saying that used to hold a mature position on the matter, but now you look at it like a toddler?"

Anyway, everybody let it pass, although for me it was one of the most telling moments of the entire campaign. Presumably Obama holds similar views, or Joe wouldn't have been allowed to say it.

Everybody with a conscience knows that Roe v. Wade was one of the worst judicial decisions in history. Even liberals who applaud its results will admit, once they've had enough drinks to start being honest, that it was a fraudulent act of sheer arrogance on the part of the Supreme Court.

As an avid pro-lifer, of course I want Roe v. Wade overturned. However, at the same time, I recognize that the real problem behind the abortion tragedy is not legal but spiritual. We need to change hearts, not laws, to protect preborn children. Even if abortion were outlawed tomorrow, some women would still find ways to commit it, and some men would be perfectly happy to take their money to help. Pro-life laws, in and of themselves, are not the answer to the abortion problem.

That said, I wholeheartedly support pro-life laws (or anti-abortion laws; that term doesn't scare me, since it accurately describes my position).

Yes, changing hearts is more important that changing laws, but unless and until we can manage the former I'll take the latter. Think of it this way: in the long term, Germans of the 1940s needed to understand that rounding Jews into ovens was wrong, and morally repent. I'm happy that Auschwitz got shut down anyway, though, even if it happened before all the German people were on board with the change.

If I had more readers, especially of the leftist variety, I'd be expecting some righteous indignation over "comparing abortion to the Holocaust". That objection always cracks me up. Hey, pro-abortionists: if you don't like being compared to Nazis, then stop advocating the murder of people you've decreed to be sub-human despite all scientific evidence and moral arguments to the contrary. The main difference between a Nazi and a pro-abort is that the pro-aborts have been far more successful, probably due to better marketing.

Wow, did that one ever wander off on me.


An insightful friend (who really needs to get his own blog going, so I can quit stealing his stuff) made a really good eschatological point about Obama in an e-mail to me. He said that if you think Obama is charismatic, wait until you see the actual Anti-Christ. (And yes, this does mean that I specifically object to any claim that Obama is the Anti-Christ. This is as close as I can come to giving him an endorsement.)

Note carefully that despite their very similar sounds, the words "eschatological" and "scatological" have nothing to do with each other.


It amazes me that some American voters still haven't made up their minds. Apparently a large number or voters routinely make their decision only when in the actual voting booth. Obama has a definite edge there; he looks more like the movie President. Any movie. Anytime a movie made in the last fifteen years showed a fictional President of the vaguely near future, they were either black or female. I think a bylaw got passed by the Screen Actors Guild or something. Anyway, since Obama fits the casting call better than McCain, he gets an advantage.


You know, if Hillary Clinton's supporters had actually followed through with their threats to support the Republican nominee instead of Obama, it would have been their first smart decision.

You see, if Obama gets elected, there's a good chance he'll hold onto the office until 2016 (bread and circuses, bread and circuses). By then, she'll be pushing seventy. Still younger than McCain is now, yes, but maybe not so interested in running for office. There's also the distinct chance that everyone will have gotten bored and forgotten about her by then.

However, if McCain wins, there's - let's face it - a pretty good shot that he won't go a second term, for various reasons alluded to in the last paragraph. That gives Hillary a fresh shot at it again. Her odds would be much better in 2012 against a Republican incumbent than against a wide-open field in 2016.

Her supporters absolutely should have been out there doing everything they could to get McCain elected. Of course, if they honestly believed their own rhetoric about McCain, it would mean they were willing to inflict horrible damage on their country (according to their peyote-fueled "prophetic visions" of McCain's performance) just to get another shot at getting their own way down the road.

Sounds about right for Democrats.

I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad that Hillary's supporters haven't been smart enough to realize this. I note, however, that on the Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash opening monologue I just watched, Amy Poehler, playing Hillary, made a lot of "subtle" hints toward hoping that Obama would lose, for this exact reason. Rats. I came up with this bit a while ago but didn't write it up until now, and now even I feel like I'm ripping off the SNL writers.


You know what? I'm stopping for now. I've got some more election stuff, but I think it'll keep for a day to keep this one to (maybe) readable lengths. (Let's see, checking my notes... economy, scary Obama supporters caught on tape, exchange rates, why the Electoral College stinks... yeah, this can all wait a day.)


Before I go, though, I need to mention someone. She's terrific for bringing in search engine hits, but her name hadn't come up naturally in the course of writing this entry. So:

Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. Too bad I don't have any pictures of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin pictures are great for generating traffic.

There. That should help.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the ceiling in my computer room. In the lower left, you can see a bit of my Crisis on Infinite Earths poster, painted by Alex Ross over George Perez pencils. If you had already recognized it, chances are you're a huge nerd.