Posted on 09/27/2008 12:04:59 AM PDT by RatherBiased.com
In recent memory, every presidential debate eventually distills down into a few catchphrases. Al Gore became known for his sighs and love of lockboxes. John Kerry actually served in Vietnam. Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy.
Barack Obama has a bracelet, too.
That inartful comeback will likely filter out through the political ether in the days ahead. What might not filter through our partisan press is that shortly after pointing out that, like John McCain, Obama sports a bracelet given to him by a military family, the Democratic candidate had to stop and look at it to find out the name of the soldier he's honoring.
That soldier is Ryan David Jopek. Barack Obama doesn't appear to have known that fact.
Here's his complete line:
"Jim, let me just make a point. I've got a bracelet too. From, Sergeant, uh, uh, from the mother of, uh, Sergeant, Ryan David Jopek."
Had a Republican, say Sarah Palin, made this gaffe, who wants to bet that we wouldn't hear this clip repeated endlessly during the post-debate spin shows and in the days ahead? How much would the sincerity of our hypothetical Republican politician be called into question.
I didn't hear it discussed once in the post-debate coverage. Did you?
Sidenote: Michelle Malkin reminds us that this incident is remarkably reminiscent of the now-famous incident of George H. W. Bush looking at his watch during the 1992 presidential debates.
That should be devastating. Of course, the mainstream media will bury it. The blogosphere and talk radio should take off with it. You will know that the word has gotten out if the media start to run stories explaining away this gaffe. They will ignore it in hopes no one noticed, but if too many people notice, the media will make a lame attempt to help Obama in damage control. It will be sort of like what happened during the Clinton scandals - the media eventually came out with stories about how adultery is really a healthy thing and that great leaders always have affairs, and how wonderful it is for a 50 year old man to be in such good physical shape to be so attractive, ad nauseum.
Obama could have said, "Yes, bracelets are excellent ways to honor those who've sacrificed for us. I have one myself and I share John's deep feelings about it, but I want to prevent us getting to the point of bracelets being worn." That would have been a good comeback and may have put to rest the bracelet issue. Instead, Obama couldn't help himself and turned it into a "I have one, too. Wanna see it?" contest because he isn't sincere in wearing the bracelet as Senator McCain is. It's merely a prop for Obama so when he spoke from his heart about why he wears it in the same way that McCain spoke from his heart about why he wears his bracelet, we all got the truth: McCain wears a bracelet to honor a fallen hero; Obama wears a bracelet because McCain wears a bracelet.
Good job, Milhouse. You just handed the McCain campaign two campaign commercials and a lot of material for stump speeches.
Historian Tony Judt, reviewing the book for The New York Times:[3]
An 800-page compendium of the crimes of Communist regimes worldwide, recorded and analyzed in ghastly detail by a team of scholars. The facts and figures, some of them well known, others newly confirmed in hitherto inaccessible archives, are irrefutable. The myth of the well-intentioned founders--the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs--has been laid to rest for good. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism, and those who had begun to forget will be forced to remember anew.
Anne Applebaum, journalist and author of Gulag: A History:[3]
A serious, scholarly history of Communist crimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Africa, and Latin America...The Black Book does indeed surpass many of its predecessors in conveying the grand scale of the Communist tragedy, thanks to its authors' extensive use of the newly opened archives of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Martin Malia, Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, writing for the Times Literary Supplement:[3]
The publishing sensation in France this winter (1999) has been an austere academic tome, Le Livre Noir du Communisme, detailing Communism's crimes from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989...[The Black Book of Communism] gives a balance sheet of our present knowledge of Communism's human costs, archivally based where possible, and otherwise drawing on the best secondary works, and with due allowance for the difficulties of quantification. Yet austere though this inventory is, its cumulative impact is overwhelming. At the same time, the book advances a number of important analytical points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/COUBLA.html
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087
It's in the big bookcase just inside the entrance to my apartment--my goal is to someday knock out an unapologetic hippie by whacking him on the head with it. :D
Watching the Friends, the talking points are that it was a draw...Barry did great on the economy and Mac on foreign policy. Puleeze. They are finally showing the bracelet story—cringe worthy—says Steve. Dr. Lamont Hill said that Mac won. Mike Allen says Barry but that viewers will say it’s a draw.
So let’s keep an eye on him and see if he wears the bracelet all the time, now. Or only when he’s debating.
This “bracelet” clip and the Kissinger gaffe may be the “gotcha” moments that people will remember of the debate.
At first, the audience starts to think that Obama is joking, and there is a smattering of cynical laughter. Obama recovers badly and goes ahead finishing his anti-war point.
I got several bracelets... Let me look at my handy dandy list here and I’ll tell you about all of them... uh, uh, where’s my list?
I wonder how long before that appears on a T-shirt?
I’m with you. I take no prisoners!
The incident proved Obama is an antiwar pacifist who lacks any ability to be Commander in Chief of a war machine.
The mother of Ryan David Jopek is a Cindy Sheehan clone and should have no place or standing in a Presidential campaign.
FNC has their marching orders. Fair and balanced when it comes to dems, critical when it comes to repubs.
bttt
I think some people see utopian dictators and their henchmen as romantic figures while we see them as repulsive. I remember growing up, a lot of kids older than me were all excited about Mao and Castro. They were caught up in the idea that if only the "right" person is given absolute power, he can create a perfect society of perfect people. To me that seemed like really an old, reactionary idea, going all the way back to the Pharoahs in ancient Egypt and hardly a way to run a modern society. On the other hand, I was fascinated with the American idea of limited government with separated powers, so no one gets complete control and things balance out. To me that was more revolutionary than all the commies and fascists combined.
I read the Communist Manifesto and didn't find it captivating. I thought Nietzsche could turn a clever phrase but he was really second-rate. I found Mein Kampf to be torture (know your enemy, even if he is long dead). But I read John Locke and Madison and Jefferson, and they seemed like true revolutionaries who understood how a complex society runs (No "give me absolute power and I will make you perfect" nonsense. No ranting about getting a priesthood or a vanguard or a superman to whip people into line).
I noticed that people who beleive in free societies have a healthy skepticism about institutions even as they support institutions and try to make them better. Utopians, on the other hand, want to tear down everything but then they have a religious fervor about what they would build - no sense of skeptism or even humanity with them. Maybe when you grow up in difficult circumstances you see people as they are and you are repulsed by fanaticism and utopianism? While those who are given everything see utopia as possible and desirable? Even when I was young I had an unromantic (in the wider sense of the word) frame of mind and I did not understand why some people believe in the things they believe in.
There's no such thing as a "Christian Liberal". She's either a Christian or she's a liberal. The two terms are incompatible.
I'm not able to have liberal friends. I truly do look at their ideology as a horrible mental disorder. I can't stand to be around them.
Good point. Just like his lapel flag pin a few months ago. Another thing that stood out, was BO always looking away from McCain as if he were looking into the audience for answers. He didn't listen to the entire point McCain made, and then started his blah - blah - blah.
...our greatest POTUS was, says Jimmy Carter without hesitation....
1)Malaise - That overall sick feeling that started the day he took office.
2)Gas lines and Americas begging Opec.
3)Hostages 400 plus days and the advent of jihadism.
4)Sky high interest rates 16%
5)The give away of the Panama canal.
6)The attack of the killer rabbitt
7)AND LEST WE FORGET THE CREATION OF THE CRA DISASTER THAT HAS GIVEN US TODAY’S FINANCIAL CRISIS....
I dunno. I would ask her just how, exactly, she thinks it honors her son to give a bracelet to an anti-American, anti-military puke like Obama.
And Iran glares at Obama, sets the timer on its watch, and Obama says: Gotta go! Got a plane to catch! Let's do lunch!
Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
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