Before you jump to conclusions. . .

. . .I just want to point out that I haven’t been completely inactive since the last time I posted to this blog. I’ve actually been quite busy working on another project on Google Sites. It’s my brand-spanking new Kentucky Supports John McCain! web page, and it’s coming along pretty nicely.

Do check it out.

So, I’m in the process. . .

. . .of creating a page at Google Sites.  I’ve got the name picked out, the layout, and the settings.  So, I hit the “Create Site” button, and the little spinning wheel graphic shows up right beside the “Cancel” button, indicating that something is being done.  There’s even the yellow bar at the top of the page that says, “Creating your site. . .”

I’m about ten minutes into looking at this stupid little spinning wheel and scrolling up to make sure that my site is, indeed, being created.  This is what I hate about computers.  They condition you to take their word for it that progress is being made by putting up some kind of graphic that symbolizes movement.  You sit there and say to yourself, “Well, it’s moving.  That means it’s working.  If I cancel it, it will stop working.  So, I will sit here until it stops moving, no matter how long that takes.  It is my duty as an obedient servant of technology.  I must not question the computer.  The computer is right.  And, that thing is moving.  My interference at this point would show a lack of faith in the computer.  And, it could very well cause the entire sytem to crash.  And the computer wouldn’t like that.  Not at all.”

Yep.  Still spinning.  Dammit.

UPDATE: Yeah. . .so, I sat there and watched the thing spin for a little while longer and finally decided to just type the URL into the address bar and see if it had been created yet.  Lo and behold!  There it was.

If anyone is interested, here’s a link to Walt’s Other Wall.  Like this one, it’s still in its infancy.  But, I do see some potential for it.  It could prove to be a useful tool.

The slander of McCain. . .

. . .continues with a helpful assist from Michael Tackett from the Chicago Tribune’s blog, The Swamp.  Where Andrew Sullivan might think it “cunning”, most people would consider Tackett’s characterization of the conduct of the McCain and Obama campaigns, well, dishonest.  Here’s how he does it:

So it is not surprising that there are those who think a race to the bottom–focusing on all these non-issues–is the path to victory.

This is true enough.  There are some folks who fall within either camp who believe that the path to victory amounts to a race to the bottom, as Tackett puts it.  The problem with his analysis is that only Obama has people who could actually be considered “surrogates” with ties to his actual campaign racing to the bottom.  By way of demonstration, let’s take a look at the examples offered by Mr. Tackett:

Patriotism is fairly easy to demagogue. Just recall the photos in which Obama was shown not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem.

Yes, those were some memorable photos.  I can remember when they first surfaced.  It seems they came out, if I’m not mistaken, during the Democratic primary fight.  And, again, if I recall correctly, John McCain was locked in his own primary fight at the time.  So, why Mr. Tackett would attempt to hang this particular bit of skullduggery on McCain is a mystery to me.

Furthermore, there is this:

Or the scurrilous allegations that he didn’t wear a flag pin because of some anti-American animus. Then there is the stubborn fact that his father was Muslim and gave him the middle name that in the Muslim world is as common as, well, John.

Once again, this is not something that can be pinned on Sen. McCain.  In fact, the one instance in which anyone even tangentially related to his campaign effort (and it was indeed a tangential relationship) brought up Sen. Obama’s middle name, it elicited an immediate, unequivocal rebuke from Sen. McCain.  And, the fact is that, at the time Sen. McCain delivered his rebuke, he had virtually nothing to gain politically from doing so.  In fact, he likely further antagonized the portion of the GOP base which he has struggled to unite behind his candidacy.  A fair reading events shows that the first time the idiom “thrown under the bus” was uttered during the course of this campaign was when Bill Cunningham, the conservative talk radio host who repeatedly referred to Obama by his middle name while warming up a crowd from McCain, railed against the GOP candidate for pubilcly disavowing him.

Tackett compounds the dishonesty by comparing the actions of a marginal figure like Bill Cunningham, and those of operatives from the camps of Obama’s primary opponents who pushed the image of the senator failing to salute during the national anthem, to the insulting attacks on McCain’s military record by a man who was, until recently, considered a potential vice presidential pick.

Obama, clearly mindful of [the potential for attacks on his patriotism], started a patriot game of his own with a speech in Independence, Mo., where he tried to be the arbiter of what is and is not out of bounds on the patriotism debate. . .And he wasn’t helped when his own surrogates, such as former Gen. Wesley Clark–who may have talked himself out of consideration for vice president or any other prominent post–started to make some sleights about McCain’s experience in Vietnam.

There simply is no comparison to be made between Gen. Clark and Bill Cunningham.  And, there is no connection to be drawn between the McCain campaign and the images that landed in everyone’s inbox showing Obama’s inattention to patriotic protocol.  Yet, Mr. Tackett is not one to allow those simple facts to stand between him and an exercise in false moral equivalence:

The distressing part of this is that Obama and McCain claim to be where they are in part because they were willing to take the high road and not engage in overtly personal attacks. So far, that is not what is happening.

It would be nice if Mr. Tackett would do the public the simple favor of respecting the truth, rather than serving as an ass-covering sycophant for the Obama campaign.  He’s obviously in no position to lecture the McCain campaign, or anyone else for that matter, on how to go about taking the political high road.  He, in fact, lowers the discourse by placing the two campaigns on the same moral plane.

I suppose it’s somewhat silly for a grown man in this day and age to expect a fair reading of the facts from those who cover the news.  But, I can’t seem to get over the quaint notion that somebody, somewhere, should feel some obligation to get at the core truths when they cover campaigns for the position as leader of the free world.

I guess it’s up to me to illuminate the facts.  And, the fact is, there simply is no equivalence here.  The Obama camp is seeking to benefit from the utter credulity of a fawning press in his half-assed efforts to shield himself from the scurrilous actions of his surrogates against his opponents.  McCain, on the other hand, is seeking to avoid any association with the kind of politics that Obama has professed to abhor from the outset of his campaign, only to be willfully tarred with the actions of people who have absolutely no connection with his campaign, and people who McCain forcefully and immediately “threw under the bus” with no prompting from the press.

Facts are a stubborn thing.  If only they were as stubborn as political reporters with messianic visions dancing in their heads.

The Inaugural Wall

Hello, friends!  Welcome to my new home in the blogosphere.  I was formerly located at The Pajama Pack, but decided to move on over to WordPress for a change of scenery.  I don’t have anything in particular against my old neighborhood.  I enjoyed my time there, and the work I put into it.  But, as tends to happen with blogs, if you neglect them, they generally fall into disrepair and you eventually lose touch with your audience.  Once that happens, it’s extremely difficult to ever win them back.

So, rather than spend untold months fruitlessly pleading for readers to return, it seems to me that I’m better off setting up shop in a new part of town and working to establish a whole new readership.  There will  be few stylistic changes — I only know how to write the way I know how to write, after all.  But, I may at times wander from the well-worn path I established at my old stomping ground.

This blog is, of course, in its infancy.  So, I’ll be adding all the bells and whistles as I meander my way into this new groove.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to provide some reason for you to return in the days ahead.

Walt