Beer in the Headlights

Flip-floppy, hypocritical and contradictory

In other words, Barack Hussein Obama is your run of the mill far-left Democrat. But at least he's clean and articulate.

The real rubes in this election won’t be the rural Midwesterners Obama slandered, the ones who cling to their guns and religon. It will be the gray-haired profs with ponytails, clinging to their cannabis and liturgy of defeat.

Austin Bay, the author of the above quote (of pure genius) could very well have included wide-eyed, young idealists in Che shirts, pretty much all of the dysfunctional rubes in Hollywood, and anyone else suffering from varying degrees of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

After twenty years as a member of Jeremiah Wright's cesspool of Marxist bigotry disguised as a church, associations with domestic terrorists and other assorted riff-raff, Barack Hussein Obama is now trying to portray himself as an average Kansan who loves Mom, apple pie, V8 engines and Old Glory.

Senator Obama's first television ad of the general election campaign is an attempt to quell the fears of some voters that Mr. Obama is unpatriotic. "America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life's been blessed by both," Mr. Obama says in the ad as faded snapshots from his youth flash on the screen. "I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn't have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country ... . I'll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love."

It is to laugh. Obama's bolted for the center in record time. His campaign isn't even being subtle about it.

This advertisement isn't going to air in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago or any other hotbed of Obama supporters. He's running these ads where he'll appeal to swing voters who cling to their guns, religion and antipathy toward others not like them.

How much do you want to bet we'll see him at a NASCAR event later this year? He'll do so after he gets the proper immunizations so he doesn't catch Red State cooties. Twenty bucks says he'll utter, "Gentlemen, start your engines!"

Then again, maybe not. Can Obama risk the spectacle of being booed by 150,000 people whom he's already described as bitter? It may work to solidify his base of blacks and leftist academics, but it won't look good to those he'll need to sway in order to win.

Obama's trying to fool all of the people all of the time. It ain't gonna work. The shine's come off him.

As we move closer to the general election in November, keep an eye on the national polls. In a prediction I guarantee to be more accurate than anything ever uttered by Dick Morris, I guarantee you'll see a slow but steady shift toward John McCain. Most centrist blue collar Democrats, the real base of the party, will come to realize the unmitigated tragedy that four to eight years of an Obama administration will be for our country.

In the end, after anyone and everyone has been lied to, insulted and cast aside by Obama, he'll remain what he is now - the junior senator from Illinois. Maybe he should start working on a Powerpoint presentation he can parley into a movie, an Academy Award and even a Nobel Prize.

Chock full of interweb meme greatness

And the song is pretty good, too.

We have the "Best of the Johnny Cash Show" on DVD. Like the video above, the performances are eclectic, entertaining and surprising. Some odd stuff and some amazing stuff.

The Rolling Stones are an enigma to me. I love their tunes despite the band's long history of bad behavior and their less than positive contributions to popular culture. But damn, they are rock and roll.

John Lennon, Mitch Mitchell, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards masterfully wailing out "Yer Blues" from the Beatles White Album. Killer. Watch Clapton play, he's so effortless and smooth. This is from the Rolling Stones' "Rock and Roll Circus" from late 1968. Get it on DVD. (You can skip the Marianne Faithfull and Yoko Ono tracks.)

My favorite song by The Who. They just plain kicked butt. Townshend is an underrated guitarist and they had the best darn rhythm section of any band evar. (Yeah, I used evar.)

The subject of great rhythm sections got me thinking about another favorite band of mine - Fleetwood Mac. Grew up on their tunes. I remember hearing their songs pour out of a Delco 8-track from my parents' old dark green Pontiac station wagon with faux wood grain panels. Damn, if that ain't the seventies then I don't know what is.