Tuck's repairing the rotting timbers and plywood of the northwest corner of the garage roof (above left), affording us the latest photo op of beauty in unexpected places. Let the sun shine in. Uriah Heep, Tuck's venerable Mercedes 280 SL is the icon behind the veil. Let us pray.
"I suspect everyone has the convention speeches wrong. Everyone expects Mr. Obama to rouse, but the speech I'd watch is Mr. McCain's," writes Peggy Noonan in today's WSJ:
But Mr. McCain provided, in 2004, one of the most exciting and certainly the most charged moment of the Republican Convention, when he looked up at Michael Moore in the press stands and said, "Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war, it was between war and a greater threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. . . . And certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace." It blew the roof off. And the smile he gave Mr. Moore was one of pure, delighted malice. When Mr. McCain comes to play, he comes to play.
We're with Ms. Noonan on this one, big time, and have been since Senator Obama first crossed our radar screen back in December of 2006, as we wrote last spring:
We tried to listen to the Big O when he came on LIVE cable TV, but, like American Princess, "at some point, we got tired of listening." Soaring rhetoric was never our thing. Since December of 2006 we've had Obama's number -- check out our prescient blogpost "Did Obama just call me a racist?" re Obama's snowing of the "feel good about themselves" Democrats of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Like ourselves, Baby Cakes has never been into soaring rhetoric. Is it time for dinner or not? That is the question.
Enter stage right David Zucker, "the director who brought us 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun,' [who] turns his sights on anti-Americanism," as Stephen F. Hayes wrote last week:
Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol [Coming to a theater near you October 3], is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo … Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. "Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "The response to 9/11 — the right was saying this is pure evil we're facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I'd just had enough. And I said 'I quit.'"
Where did you get that dress, it's awful, and those shoes and that coat, jeeeeez!
Update: The News Junkie at Maggie's Farm tosses us a link and informs his adoring readership that he's leaving the farm and heading to the Big Apple to seek his fortune:
I think I can take it, and too much comfort is not good for a young fellow.
We were reminded of Sir Francis Drake's Prayer, blogged here a coupla months back:
Disturb us Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore…Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
Well, it would certainly be a novelty to have a Republican administration in place that will articulate its position instead of leaving it to bloggers as the current administration has seen fit to do. Of course that assumes he will continue speaking if he is elected... not a true "given" as the election process requires speaking, but once elected this requirement vanishes.
In any case, we must await events.
I hope Tuck gets enough dry weather to get his garage project finished. We love the car... beauty in unexpected places indeed. *grin*
Posted by: Teresa | August 23, 2008 at 11:21 AM
Humankind is a pack animal. Pack animals need a leader. In the case of humans the wisdom of the ages has found a divine leader more satisfactory than a fellow human. Based on results in the 19th and early twentieth centuries the Judeo-Christian religious philosophy havs produced the best results for the pack. Recent developments have found many adrift as they doubt the existence of this god and wish to replace its teachings with what they think are new and better philosophies depending on the innate goodness of humans. Unfortunately, humans have both innate goodness and innate evil in their nature. Those who wish to see the goodness triumph must be prepared to physically suppress the evil.
Posted by: goomp | August 23, 2008 at 12:17 PM
For the past 8 years, W's silence in the face of the foulest of rhetoric being directed against him and his administration has baffled me! On some levels, I think it teeters on the verge of saintliness. And on other levels, I think he has been a damned fool.
Allowing bullies to rant unimpeded by a little sane commentary is foolish - or at least that's how its look to me.
Posted by: Gayle Miller | August 26, 2008 at 04:55 PM