The Tiger at Home

I don’t think it’ll come to this.

But if it does, here’s the lowdown.  And a list of DNC-nominated members of it.

That’s what Morning Joe is calling Barack Obama’s bowling. He bowled a 37.

Still, he’s doing his best to avoid a John Kerry image:

“You know I got a beer down there. What do they call it.. a Yuengling?” Obama said to a local man.

“Yuengling! Like you didn’t know,” the guy joked back.

“Trying a Pennsylvania beer, that’s what I’m talking about. Is it expensive though?” Obama asked. “Wanna make sure it’s not some designer beer or something.”

He shook a few hands and took a few more sips of beer before he walked out, the headline writing itself: “The Candidate You Can Drink a Beer With…”

That said, he should stick to basketball. He’s good at that — just like President Bush is good at baseball (and can do one heck of a first pitch), Senator Obama will destroy you in a game of one-on-one.

Beer and basketball, that’s the ticket.

Update: More from the Caucus:

ALTOONA, Pa. — Barack Obama spent Saturday evening in a close encounter with the fierce urgency of a gutter ball. …

Mr. Obama, it turns out, was a weak centrist. His balls rolled down the center of the lane, but much too slowly to knock over more than a half dozen or so pins. “You notice I’m getting better?” he asked. …

“Let me tell you something,” Obama said to the crowd. “My economic plan is better than my bowling.” A man standing at the next lane called out, “It has to be.” …

Finally, in the seventh frame, Obama made a spare, cleaning up one pin. “Yes I can!” he started chanting after a couple admirers at a nearby lane started it. “Yes I can!”

As to politics, maybe. As to bowling? No, he really can’t.

Actually, that’s pretty good — “Yes I can!”

… the more we learn about history, the more this seems like the real thing.

I really don’t see my guys doing this… [via Instapundit]

But then, they don’t have to. It’s out there, it’ll get forwarded around, and so on.

I’d say, replace the footage of the twin towers with the stuff in this McCain ad and this ad on FISA. [The NYC footage is in poor taste and would create a backlash.]

Then you’ll have what the Republican-oriented 527s could do in the fall.

Remember the Gore scenario I posted about, earlier? It’s getting some more play. [Via nbt]

Hot Air commenters are gleeful. Instapundit has been having fun. Althouse thinks it’s crazy.

***

I got to thinking… you know, for all the good press Al Gore’s been getting, why didn’t we elect the guy? (Flashback to November 27, 2000, with Chris Matthews on Charlie Rose.)

And then I remembered.

Yeah, that’s why I voted for Nader in 2000, back in my lefty days (and Matthews voted for Bush) — Gore seemed like a jackass.

So it probably isn’t such a good idea.

Sometime in the next Congress, whether it be 2009 or 2010, Joe Lieberman will become a Republican.

Why?  His rhetoric.

As Swampland points out, his interview with Stephanopoulos is nothing less than a “I didn’t leave my party; my party left me” speech.  Calling John McCain closer to the legacy of JFK than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama — even if it’s true — is crossing the Rubicon.  He cannot go back.

When the Democrats pick up more seats in the Senate this fall — as they will — Lieberman will be thrown out of his committee positions.  At that point, the Republicans will offer him positions in line with his seniority and rank.  Whether or not he formally puts the small R after his name, Joe Lieberman will effectively be part of the Republican senatorial caucus.

That’s what Slate is doing.  (Really.)

I’ve always thought of these things as a bad idea.

Hillary isn’t in good shape, but there’s a lot of life in the old gal yet. And she’s a Clinton. Clintons don’t quit.

(People might wish they had — we might be entering the tenth year of an Al Gore presidency, if they did…)

1.  Remember David Kilgour?  He’s re-surfaced, and is calling for a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games.

I say that this is a silly idea.

No, if we’re going to make a statement — and I think we should — I say both Canada and the United States should boycott the whole Beijing Olympic games.

2.   Remember Jessica Cutler?  The Washingtonienne?  She too has re-surfaced.

Politics goes on as usual. (more…)

… said Popular Mechanics, which ripped a strip off of “I Am Legend”.

Viz.:

Though the film’s press release claims “the possibility of a retrovirus spreading out of control is no longer just the fodder for science fiction stories,” Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, one of the world’s top virologists and director of the Laboratory for Immunopathogenesis and Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center, says the scenario presented in the movie doesn’t seem plausible at all. “It sounds pretty far-fetched,” he says. “Viruses don’t mutate and become airborne. They typically fall into a couple of different categories—respiratory, STDs and vector-borne like insects, ticks and mosquitoes. They don’t change from tick-borne to pneumonic. They just don’t do that.”  …

The likelihood of Neville finding a cure from his own blood is slim, too, according to Lipkin. “The notion that by taking a little bit of his blood, he’s going to somehow affect this mutation of the people, doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “There are some antibodies that might be protective, but they’re not going to last forever. And he has to become infected with this in order to develop those antibodies.”

And what about the Infected? “As far as this thing turning people into vampires, and making them look a specific way,” Lipkin says, “that’s quite bizarre. This is Hollywood. That’s all I can say.”

Huh.  So my zombie fears should subside.

Really, though, the history of pandemics should reassure us.  Even the worst ones have a limited lifespan, and a limited kill rate.

Which is still to say, it sucks to be you, if a pandemic is going on when you’re of a certain age, but it isn’t likely to be the end of the world.  The majority will survive.

… I ever would do it, but I’ve found a little programme that lets you watch your favourite American TV shows from the network sites without getting blocked by their American firewalls.

So I’m happy.

For no reason, of course.

… in hatred for the New York Times.

From John McCain to Jeremiah Wright, Americans of all political stripes and all backgrounds can agree — the Grey Lady is not very nice.

Victor Davis Hanson is not right in this analysis — although I agree that Obama is quite similar to McGovern in certain ways, the country has changed since 1972. It is entirely possible that that will win. (And let’s be clear — by 1974, many people were probably wishing they had voted for McGovern.)

Michael Barone, on the other hand, is spot on here. John McCain missed the 1960s. Barack Obama — although he goes on and on about Reagan in The Audacity of Hope — did not really live through the 1980s in the way that most Americans did.

But it’s an interesting juxtaposition.

Update: Funnily enough, the one remaining serious candidate who’s been through it all is… Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Is she right to stay in?)  [via The Stump]

Update again: “I like long movies.”

She’s best when she keeps it short and sweet.

(Slow day at the office.)

So I figured I’d pick up some light reading for the weekend at the local used bookshop over lunch. I was hoping to pick up copies of Dreams from My Father and Faith of My Fathers — as I take Senator Obama’s point that it’s unfortunate for our politics to be distilled down into soundbites only. (Granted, he’s deploying that rhetoric in a rather weaselly way right now, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t true, just the same.)

I’m more interested in the older books because I see them as being better looks into the men themselves — a deeper glimpse at their character. (I am not even going to bother with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History — I have better things to do with my time.)

Sadly, I couldn’t find either book. I did, however, find a stack of copies of The Audacity of Hope for ten bucks a pop at the used bookstore, and copies of McCain’s JFK-imitating book of last summer, Hard Call, on sale for less than twenty bucks at the Indigo across the street. So I’m going to have to dose myself with the campaign books, after all.

Anyway. One should become a well-informed citizen. (more…)

McCain fires the first shot in the general election campaign:

It’s kinda dark.

I like it. On the other hand, does it have a ring of, “In your heart, you know he’s right,” to it?

Update: But then, it’s stressing the same themes as “Momentum“…

It’s going to happen.

McCain-Romney.

Crazy.

Update: I guess it’s time for us all to watch this, isn’t it:

Update again: Interesting call here:

I like Hillary Clinton. Get a load of this quote from her interview with Greta.

Contra Lowry’s interlocutor, I also think that Bloomberg makes sense as his Veep.

The hell with picking someone for foreign policy — tax policy is going to be an area where Obama gets savaged by the GOP.

Having Mike Bloomberg as his economics guy would do an awful lot to solidify the economy as an area of Democratic strength this fall.

Update: Just thinking as I go, right now — could you imagine a vice-presidential debate between Mike Bloomberg and Mitt Romney?

I think I would pay money to watch that one. Big money.

1. This blog is the home of optimism — or at least, not pessimism — for Republican chances this fall. That said, I think this guy is out to lunch.

At this point in the election cycle — before any fear of the unknown has set in — challengers are often running much better against their incumbent-party opponents. In 1988, Michael Dukakis had about a 10-point lead over George Bush (the senior and then-vice-president), only to lose by around eight — an 18-point swing.

Ditto in 2000. George Bush (the younger) had about a similar 10-point lead over Al Gore at this stage, only to see the lead shrink to nothing by Election Day.

In fact, that’s been the usual pattern. … The only modern exceptions to this involved Bill Clinton, in 1992, and Ronald Reagan, in 1980. In both elections, the insurgents came from behind. But both faced notably different circumstances than Obama does.

The whole point of the Obama candidacy is that this is 1980 — there is an unpopular, tired incumbent party in power whose ideology has been dominant for the last three decades, but whose solutions are just not in the same room as the problems the country faces. (And haven’t been for the last decade or so.) So people are ready to take a chance on a challenger whom they might not entirely agree with, but who they think is a good guy and who offers new direction.

[Now, the McCain response to that is, sure, this is 1980, but you have Barack Obama offering Jimmy Carter redux -- high taxes at home & weakness abroad. But that's another fight...]

Anyway.

2. This is actually a pretty darned good idea. It’s right there with Stephen Harper’s GST cut promise in 2005-06 — an idea that speaks to every middle-class taxpayer, whatever the economists might have to say about it.

Is it a good idea, policy-wise? Well, we’ll talk after the election. :p (Well, cutting it would make the tax system more progressive… but by that measure, George Bush’s tax cuts also made the US tax code more progressive, too…)

3. Am at a sports bar next to my office, getting some late breakfast/early lunch. They have an item on the menu that I just had to order, after seeing the description — “The PM burger”. It has a photo of Stephen Harper photoshopped to show him holding a great big burger with a grin on his face, and they tell their customers to send an e-mail to pm@pm.gc.ca if we don’t like it.

Took a photo of the menu with my camera, but my Verizon Canada plan doesn’t let me send pix messages, sadly. So this blog will have to remain unadorned with Stephen Harper hamburger pictures. (Alas!)

They do have free wireless here, though, which is nice.

Update:  The PM’s getting an e-mail about this.

The question is considered here.

I think it’s easy enough to figure out. If you strip away all the rationalizations, you get down to a gut feeling about a candidate’s judgment. Romney appealed very much to a certain type of conservative & McCain put them off; Obama has a strong appeal, too. So you can say that you don’t care for his campaign rhetoric, but you think that Barack Obama has the temperament to be president. (I disagree, but then, I’ve made my views clear for a while.)

Is picking presidents based on a gut instinct wrong? No — in fact, I’d argue that it’s a better tool to use than a spreadsheet of views. I got a bad vibe from Obama when I went to see him speak in February. That’s when my views on the man started to change.

We then dress up our intuitions with a whole lot of words. Sometimes, one can look silly. (Kmiec does right now, I’d say.)

But it’s the gut check that is decisive for the voters who decide our election — it’s probably just as well if we admit it.