Posted by
Chad MacINNES on Saturday, August 23, 2008 9:33:45 PM
"Surprise, Surprise,Surprise!" Gomer Pyle said it best. The last 24 hours of agonizing anticipation in trying to build up just the right amount of hype wherewith to launch the official Democrat Party Convention has made me nearly nauseas. All this hype, all this mystery, all this drama surrounding the choice of the Anointed One’s pick for the VP slot on the ticket has finally culminated in the choice of… the only reasonable person on the list that Obama could have picked… Joe Biden. Not to mention the super-lame, tongue-in-cheek- 3:00 AM phone call parody employed by the campaign for this announcement. Personally, if my phone went off at 3:00 in the morning and it was Barak Obama on the other end? Suffice it to say I'd need to get a new phone.
Joe Biden! Wow! Are you as surprised as me? And all the MSM talking heads just drinking it up! Wow! How utterly and totally embarassing for our country. This was almost as surprising to anyone with a lick of common sense as when John Kerry picked John Edwards in 2004. The most poignant difference between the two running mates being the fact that Biden is not a complete scumbag as was his predecessor Edwards.
Really. Think about it: Kerry has represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 1985. Who were all the other real-potential running mates? Kerry HAD to pick the southerner because two wacky “progressives” on the Democrat ticket just won’t win the White House. Fast-forward four years. Obama HAD to pick Biden to balance his inexperience. After all, Joe Biden has been in the Senate since 1972 – “Change” indeed! Great! So now we might get an inexperienced President with a Vice-President and chief advisor who has been in Washington since the stoned age. Sounds a bit like… nevermind.
Seriously, though: Joe Biden was the only logical pick. You know it, I know it, any anyone who has been paying attention lately knows it; so, my question is, “Why all the hype for something that really wasn’t a mystery to begin with?” The answer: LACK OF SUBSTANCE!
Change! Change! Change! Change! Change! Yes We Can! Hail the Messiah! Now that we have the running mate, on with the MSM love-fest! Hooray! Hooray for CHANGE!
You know, there was a time when a political party’s convention actually meant something, and that time was not really so long ago. But alas, now our bubblegum pop-culture has usurped out political process along with everything else. The result? What used to be a noble and excited event – the choosing of a candidate to represent a party and a people to run for President of the United States – has been reduced to a rock concert where there are days and days of hype and drama building up to the main event – the Keynote Speech. At least that’s what it will be for McCain. Obama’s is more likely to be his coronation.
You will remember his speech in Boston in 2004. That is, you remember he spoke, but what the hell did he say? Exactly my point. We all knew in 2004 that this guy, this Obama, would be a rising star, but who expected the Clintons to allow him to beat Hillary? My point here is this – there is no substance to either of these men – not that I am thrilled to death and jumping for joy over McCain. Like I said before, if he gets my vote it will be because he is clearly the lesser of two evils. So, in the interest of fairness, I feel it my obligation to examine what Joe Biden will bring to the Democrat ticket.
Senator Biden’s positions are really not that far off from Senator McCain’s on many issues – which scares the living hell out of me. The biggest different between the two is on the issues of abortion and the Second Amendment.
Biden is, naturally, a pro-abortion Democrat. Of course. He is also a “practicing” Catholic who claims to accept the teachings of he Church on faith. All the teachings, that is, except the one on abortion and the sanctity of life. As a Catholic myself, I take great offense to these charlatans who want to wear their Catholicism on one sleeve to court votes and their overt willingness to kill babies on the other sleeve in order to advance their career. I find this to be a substantial character issue, but I will take that one on at another time. Suffice it to say for now that proclaiming one’s love for Christ on the one hand and enabling the holocaust of abortion on demand on the other is inconsistent at the very least. In my view, which is the view of the Catholic Church, the two are irreconcilable, diametrically opposed.
Before moving on, I just have to give two brief examples of why I believe this abortion issue to be one of character:
Accepts Catholic Church view that life begins at conception
Source: Meet the Press: 2007 "Meet the Candidates" series Apr 29, 2007
Q: You have changed your position on abortion. When you came to the Senate, you believed that Roe v. Wade was not correctly decided and that you also believed the right of abortion was not secured by the Constitution. Why did you change your mind?
A: Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the US Senate, and I have learned a lot. Look, I'm a practicing Catholic, and it is the biggest dilemma for me in terms of comporting my religious and cultural views with my political responsibility.
Q: Do you believe that life begins at conception?
A: I am prepared to accept my church's view. I think it's a tough one. I have to accept that on faith. That's why the late-term abortion ban, where there's clearly viability.
Nominees should agree on Constitutional right to privacy
Source: 2007 South Carolina Democratic primary debate, on MSNBC Apr 26, 2007
Q: As president would you have a specific litmus test question on Roe v. Wade that you would ask of your nominees for the high court?
A: I strongly support Roe v. Wade. I wouldn't have a specific question but I would make sure that the people I sent to be nominated for the Supreme Court shared my values; and understood that there is a right to privacy in the United States Constitution. That's why I led the fight to defeat Bork, Roberts Alito, and Thomas. [Emphasis all mine]
WHAT??!! Once again, we must endure sophistry from the mouth of a politician. Only that didn’t make any sense to me. Hey, at least he didn’t outright lie like Obama no his vote to kill the “infants born alive” bill. But, I digress.
On gun control issues well, he’s a Democrat. This guy can find a right to murder babies within the privacy clause in the Constitution, but “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” means we shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. Someone else is going to have to explain that stuff to me, because I’m at a loss. These guys make my brain hurt.
It is very sad what has happened to politics in this country. It is sad that everything has become a mode of entertainment and a vehicle for ratings and advertising. I thought a lot and talked a lot about this while I was at the Florida Gun Show today. What is happening to America? We’ve been overhyped and over-indulged, and now come November – no matter who wins – we, the people, lose. We are set up for a very sore disappointment.
There are a great many issues that need to be addressed, but can we get through all the hype and rock-star stuff? Instead of McCain’s houses can we talk about SPP, or Georgia and Putin, or Iraq and the –Stans, or what the impact of socialized medicine will have on an already taxed economy? Can we talk about what Obama and Biden’s definition of change will really mean for this republic? Of course not, because there is no substance to most of their ideas, and where there is substance it is of the stuff that could potentially ruin this nation. Perhaps the Obama-Biden Administration can be summed up in these two statements:
From 27 April 2007
“We also have to look east, because increasingly the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years, but obviously China is rising, and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.”
From 21 August 2008:
OBAMA: “Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now and the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly superior to us now, which means if you're a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”
Hey, the trains ran on time in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union too. Hooray for CHANGE! Change indeed.
However, even though things could presumably go very badly for us conservatives this November, all is not yet lost. We can still take control of the future. After all, we out number them. And who knows, in the short term, maybe it will be to our advantage to have an unmitigated disaster in the White House and on Capitol Hill with Comrades Obama and Pelosi running things. How do you say, “Conservative sweep in 2010,” in Chinese?