The Sailor and the Sarahcuda, and Some Homework

More on McCain/Palin later(work calls) but I'm pumped, and actually think there's a chance now. I'm not the only one, Obama's position on Intrade is going down, down, down.

Plenty of good stuff out there in the meantime. Go to National Review Online and have a good laugh checking out "David Kahane's" explanation of the "Chicago Way." Kahane's a Hollywood writer, who pokes fun at what's really on the minds of Hollywood lefties:

We’re not afraid of you, John McCain.

Sure, you’re an old, old — did I mention old? — fighter jock who’ll get 99.9 percent of the military’s votes as well as those of every other “patriotic,” “God”-fearing “American.” But so what? Against you we can field an army of community organizers, lawyers, activists, advocates, Code Pink ladies, hippie draft-dodgers, metrosexuals, MoveOn.org’ers, communists, Hollywood stars, NARAL, NAMBLA, the entire population of Seattle, and a platoon of New York Times oped columnists leading most of the rest of the media, all commanded by Der Olbermann. Hail, victory!

Listen, pal o’ mine, I’ve got news for you: This jazz about “fighting” belongs to us. We bought it, we paid for it, and we’ve been fighting for it for 40 years. Not that we mean “fighting” in any sense other than metaphorical, of course. We liberals would never stoop to actual fisticuffs or, the Deity of Your Belief System Here forbid, firearms. Real men really do eat quiche.

Read the whole thing. Kahane uses a pen name for reasons which should be obvious.

Additionally, Richard Fernandez (a/k/a Wretchard) at Belmont Club has a most interesting Word Cloud analysis of Senator McCain's speech last night, and Governor Palin's on Wednesday. I would love to see a similar analysis of St. Barack's speech at the Temple of Invesco last week. I suspect such an analysis would show a radically different emphasis. No doubt someone has performed one, and I will go looking when I have some time.

Okay, What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?

One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy. The other kills her own food.

That's not my joke, it's from Gerald Baker's very interesting Times (of London) op-ed piece on why Governor Palin has a chance to connect with Americans in a way denizens of the chattering classes are possibly too educated to comprehend. Also in the British press, and well worth a look, is Janet Daley's column in yesterday's Telegraph (online) on why the prestige media sneers at Sarah Palin. They do so at their peril, but stay dumb, comrades, please.

Speaking of comrades, Con Coughlin, also writing in the Telegraph tells us that Vladimir Putin wants a new Russian Empire. This is interesting, and Mr. Coughlin's piece is well written, but it is certainly not news, nor should it be. Why on Earth would the Russians not want a new empire; why would they not want to recover their geopolitical standing and their lost territories? Russia is still a great power (the chance to foreclose Russia's regaining that status died on 9/11) -- and Russia's behavior in Georgia is the sort of thing that great powers do to their neighbors when it is in their interest. Ask the Haitians, Panamanians or Nicaraguans about that.

In any case, I find it incomprehensible that anyone would think otherwise, and I wish that the US government would stop rendering itself ridiculous by insisting so loudly that the Russians behave differently in their own back yard when we have neither the means nor the intention to make them do so.