Iowahawk reports new Obama surge aimed at vital Reagan democrats.

With new polls showing Barack Obama’s once-commanding lead over John McCain all but evaporated, the Obama campaign announced today it has begun deploying its vast volunteer army of downtown hipster douchebags to help reconnect the presumptive Democratic candidate with middle-American voters.

“Unlike Iraq, this is one surge that is actually going to work,” said Obama campaign manager David Axlerod.

Sources within the campaign say the new strategy was prompted by recent national poll trends indicating McCain pulling even with, and in some instances even overtaking, Obama. More troubling for the campaign were internal tracking polls that show the candidate losing significant ground in key Midwestern, Southern and Western battleground states. As the numbers dropped, some within the campaign were left in stunned disbelief.

“It really didn’t make sense,” said Carly Voorhees, an East Village experimental performance poet, Cooper Union graduate student and member of Obama’s 600-expert foreign policy team. “We knew in theory there were a handful of stump-toothed biblebillies and neocon dead-enders out there, but by all rights we should have had at least a 60%-75% lead. Even after Barack threw that awesome victory rave in Germany, the numbers kept deteriorating.”

“At first we were stumped,” she added. “Then it dawned on us—McSame’s subliminal attack ads were stoking the deep-rooted, latent racism of white middle America. We needed to warn these uneducated simpletons that McSame was exploiting their superstitions and genetic bigotry. The big question was—how?”

At first, the Obama team looked into major media buys in key battleground states. But with a campaign budget already strained by price increases in arugula and Hawaiian airfare, the impact was deemed to be minimal. Instead, they turned to a key campaign asset—a dedicated cadre of young urban hipster douchebags willing to take Obama’s message of change to America’s small town streets and rural blacktops. An intensive eVite recruitment campaign on websites like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post yielded over 1,500 volunteers for the potentially dangerous mission.

“I couldn’t be prouder of all of you wonderful young indy rock assholes,” said Axlerod at a swearing-in ceremony at the campaign’s official training center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “You represent our party’s finest, the best of best—you are our Douchebag Delta Force.”

Highly motivated, and with skills ranging from post-modern gender theory to espresso cafe blackboard chalk art, the volunteers were eager to get to work on the campaign trail. But before deployment Obama officials insisted that all recruits undergo an intensive training regimen to prepare them for the rigors of life in Red Country.

“A lot of the plebe douchebags come in here full of swagger, thinking all it takes is a few hours of FM country music endurance training, and I have to tell them they have no idea what they’re up against,” says Ethan Dodge, a Seattle conceptual theater set designer and veteran douchebag of Obama’s Iowa caucus campaign. “Believe me, I’ve been to Dubuque. I know.”

To toughen up the recruits for the task ahead, Dodge and other drill instructors take a direct approach.

“We tell them straight up: we aren’t your mommy or daddy or your au pair. There aren’t any independent lesbian film festivals in Youngstown, and just because Iowa has a lot of farmers it doesn’t mean they are going to see a lot of Sunday chill-out farmers’ markets,” says Voorhees. “After that shock wears off, we tell them about how the natives drink Pabst unironically.”

“Sure, it scares some recruits off,” admits Dodge. “But the ones who stay are much less likely to crack under the pressure of a two week isolation from American Apparel or Urban Outfitters.”...

Whether Obama’s douchebag heartland surge will ultimately succeed remains to be determined, but longtime political analyst and What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank thinks the basic strategy is sound.

“Unfortunately this election comes down to winning the hearts and minds of whitebread, middlebrow, middle-class, middle-Americans,” says Frank.”This effort shows that Obama troops are willing to reach out and condescend to them, one-on-one, no matter how pathetic and stupid they are.”

Read the whole thing.

Michael Silence:

The kid and the grandpa:
Obama was 11 when Biden entered Congress. I guess they’re going fishin’ together.

Joe Biden does bring one big constituency with him – the Hair Club for Men.

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Glenn Reynolds:

He’s at least as fresh a face as Madeleine Albright.

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J.D., a Little Green Footballs Commenter (no. 67) observes:

Joe Biden? I feel the same way I did at the end of the last episode of “The Sopranos.” Sure, some people considered the go-to-black ending nuanced, but as far as I was concerned, the producers punted. They chose a non-ending because they couldn’t decide on a strong ending. ...

This has the potential to become very very ugly.

During the 1988 democrat nomination campaign, Joe Biden tells a reporter exactly who has the bigger IQ, and goes on to outline his own distinguished academic career.

2:38 video

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Chris Reed corrects most of Biden’s mistatements.

The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ‘’Frank.’’ Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ‘’I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.’’

He then went on to say that he ‘’went to law school on a full academic scholarship – the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,’’ Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ‘’ended up in the top half’’ of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ‘’the outstanding student in the political science department’’ and ‘’graduated with three degrees from college.’’

In his statement today, Mr. Biden, who attended the Syracuse College of Law and graduated 76th in a class of 85, acknowledged: ‘’I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection of this was inaccurate.’’

As for receiving three degrees, Mr. Biden said: ‘’I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science. My reference to degrees at the Claremont event was intended to refer to these majors – I said ‘three’ and should have said ‘two.’ ‘’ Mr. Biden received a single B.A. in history and political science.

‘’With regard to my being the outstanding student in the political science department,’’ the statement went on. ‘’My name was put up for that award by David Ingersoll, who is still at the University of Delaware.’’

In the Sunday interview, Mr. Biden said of his claim that he went to school on full academic scholarship: ‘’My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.’’ Newsweek said Mr. Biden had gone to Syracuse ‘’on half scholarship based on financial need.’’ Says He Also Received Grant

In his statement today, Mr. Biden did not directly dispute this, but said he received a scholarship from the Syracuse University College of Law ‘’based in part on academics’’ as well as a grant from the Higher Education Scholarship Fund of the state of Delaware. He said the law school ‘’arranged for my first year’s room and board by placing me as an assitant resident adviser in the undergraduate school.’’

As for the moot court competition, Mr. Biden said he had won such a competition, with a partner, in Kingston, Ontario, on Dec. 12, 1967.

Mr. Biden acknowledged that in the testy exchange in New Hampshire, he had lost his temper. ‘’I exaggerate when I’m angry,’’ Mr. Biden said, ‘’but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.’’ Mr. Biden’s questioner had made the query in a mild tone, but provoked an explosive response from Mr. Biden.

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Biden failed to mention in his impromptu vitae that he was nearly thrown out of law school for plagiarism.
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Back in 2001, in Newsweek, Michael Crowley provided a less-than-flattering profile, beginning with the following anecdote:

It’s a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot’s cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. “I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you,” he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) “If not, I will screw you badly.”

A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. “You’ve not been good to me. You’re also damn selfish. You better listen to me…” It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning—even fraternally slapping the stunned man’s shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden’s communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. “What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden.”

Meet the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Biden’s mouth does him as much harm as good. ” He gives Castro-length speeches,” says one exasperated Senate staffer. In Democratic caucus meetings, he is famous for declaring, “I’ll be brief,” and then talking the room into a stupor. (Biden’s colleagues have been known to burst into laughter when he makes that promise.) People who know Biden also warn that his loose talk often reflects muddled thinking. In his classic study of the 1988 presidential candidates, What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer wrote, “Joe often didn’t know what he thought until he had to say it.” In one recent committee debate, recalls an observer, Biden delivered a rambling explanation of his opposition to a foreign aid amendment, by the end of which he had seemed to talk himself out of his original position.

What does this choice tell us?

Biden is the safe choice. Though always far too much of a lightweight to make an effective presidential candidate, it’s kind of like standing the average fellow next to the class wimp in the gym. When you contemplate Biden versus you-know-who, Biden suddenly seems like an impressive political figure with a long record of accomplishment and a statesman capable of bringing a major load of experience and depth to the ticket.

By current democrat party standards, Biden is a moderate, and he is on record criticizing the nutroots base’s extremism and urging democrats to run closer to the center.

Obama’s only real political record consists of a plethora of radical associations, so the choice of Biden has to be seen as a defensive move, representing a timid quiver of fright by an increasingly nervous deer (Obambi) trembling as the first rumbles of the avalanche which is going to bury him can be heard far off in the distance.

Personally, I don’t like Biden in the least.

He has always struck me as precisely what you’d get, if there was some magical process that could subtract the beer belly and florid nose from the old-time Irish saloon-keeper-cum-precinct-boss that would at the same time polish him up into a fashionable modern yuppie.

Biden is notorious for his hair implants. A typical photogenic democrat, he’s glib, shallow, and self-important, and he can be a vicious bully to representatives of the other party or judicial nominees.

Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?-1806), Mono omou koi (Reflective Love),
from the series of five prints entitled Kasen koi no bu (Anthology of Poems: The Love Section), c. 1793-94

Estimated to sell for $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 at the Christie’s auction sale of Japanese & Korean art scheduled for September 18, 2008 at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Jeffrey Olson’s excellent description reads (in part):

Her underrobe lies loose about her neck, as in a casual moment at the end of a day, and her eyes are unusually compressed to give the sense of the heavy-lidded stare of the daydreamer. Features or dress that might define personality or status or period are absent. Utamaro is using “delicious approximations” to decant the sensation from the scene.2
The visual glory of Reflective Love begins with the contrasts between the planes of color. The violet inner robe and matching silk hair tie are breathtaking. Purple, one of the most fugitive hues, tends to fade to grayish brown. The muted colors of the Reflective Love in the Musée Guimet prompted Richard Lane to remark on Utamaro’s subdued palette.3 Its cool tone conveys a somber mood, a brooding over something lost or never to be. The impression here—-the vermilion lips and cuff lining, the velvet swirl of hair—-is stirring (fig. 1). The underrobe is in a traditional tie-dyed dappled pattern (kanoko shibori moyo) that appears often in Japanese prints, usually on undergarments. Utamaro uses it to stage intimate settings, as here. The middle robe has the trellis design of plain-weave robes from crossing warp and weft threads. The fabric of the outerrobe represents crepe treated with wax resist so that the clusters of plovers and dots, symbolizing clouds or waves, appear white against the dyed grey.
The pink mica ground is exceedingly rare. ...

kino kyo Yesterday, today—kumo no hatate nino matter how I gaze in vacant reverie
nagamu tote toward the cloud tips
mi mo senu hito no tinted in the evening, how can I know
omoi ya wa shiru the feelings of one I cannot see?
(Fuga waka shu X: 954)

2:19 recording.

Obama’s has his own seal and his own salute. Obviously he needed his own handbag. And it willl go beautifully, too, with his Donatella Versace signature collection.

CBS3.com reports that a woman dumped by a lion in Second Life tried to kidnap the real life individual behind the offending game avatar armed with a taser, a BB gun, and duct tape.

A woman wanted in the bizarrely complicated attempted kidnapping of her former virtual boyfriend has been apprehended after a multi-state search.

New Castle County Police said 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan of North Carolina was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Delaware came to an end.

The pair apparently met online in “Second Life.” A virtual relationship began between the victim, whose character was a Lion, and Jerrigan, whose online persona was said to be a virtual woman.

When the two met in reality several months ago, police said the victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

In the beginning of August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. While she was unsuccessful, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware address.

Police said Jernigan posed as a postal worker in order to locate the victim’s new address, as he had recently moved. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

With her dog Gogi in tow, investigators said Jernigan cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.

When the victim arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he told police he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted police.

Officers arriving at the scene discovered a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun as well as the suspect’s dog.

Police said Jernigan had bound her dog Gogi with duct tape and put him in the bathroom as he was making too much noise. The dog was said to be uninjured, but the SPCA is looking into possible charges of animal cruelty.

Mac may be humiliating poor old PC in those amusing television commercials, but both of them have been caught napping by the penguin in the high tech world of special effects, Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols reports at ComputerWorld.

While top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it’s on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, “In the film industry, Linux has won. It’s running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects.”

Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

The really short version for why this is so comes down to Linux clustering enables you to put massive computational firepower into rendering 2D and 3D images. It’s ironic. While getting the most out of NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards on a Linux desktop is still a pain and there’s always some trouble dealing with proprietary video formats on Linux, the top animated and FX-heavy videos usually have their start on Linux systems.

Specifically, most photo-realistic special effects are created with programs using Pixar’s RISpec (RenderMan Interface Specification) compliant programs. RISpec is an extremely detailed open-standard set of APIs (application program interfaces) for 3D graphics rendering programs. To be more precise, RISpec isn’t quite an open standard. While Pixar, the animation giant owned by Disney, has published the specifications for all to use, and no longer even requires a no-charge license to create a RISpec-compliant rendering program, Pixar doesn’t go out of its way to specify exactly how developers can, or can’t use RISpec.

That said, there are open-source RISpec-compliant programs like Pixie and other rendering programs such as Blender, which can be used as a source for RISpec software. Pixar’s RenderMan software suite itself, while it relies on Linux in most animation and FX shops, is unlikely ever to be open-sourced.

So, while you can’t point to animation and special effects software as a major win for open-source software, there is absolutely no doubt that every time you gasp at a breath-taking escape by Indy or grin at a particularly clever visual bit of fun in Ratatouille, you’re appreciating the power of Linux.

Effective anti-Obama ad highlighting his Bill Ayers connection. Now running in Virginia.

1:01 video

Jeff Schreiber reports:

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. According to Berg, he filed the suit—just days before the DNC is to hold its nominating convention in Denver—for the health of the Democratic Party.

“I filed this action at this time,” Berg stated, “to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.”.

Berg cited a number of unanswered questions regarding the Illinois senator’s background, and in today’s lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls “dual loyalties” due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

Even if Sen. Obama can prove his U.S. citizenship, Berg stated, citing the senator’s use of a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts, the issue of “multi-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegiance to other countries” remains on the table.

In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, “apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight.” As Sen. Obama’s own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham—Obama’s mother—gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth. ...

Should Sen. Obama truly have been born in Kenya, Berg writes, the laws on the books at the time of his birth hold that U.S. citizenship may only pass to a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent and non-citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age. Sen. Obama’s mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a “natural born” citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Moreover, even if Sen. Obama could have somehow been deemed “natural born,” that citizenship was lost in or around 1967 when he and his mother took up residency in Indonesia, where Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen. Berg also states that he possesses copies of Sen. Obama’s registration to Fransiskus Assisi School In Jakarta, Indonesia which clearly show that he was registered under the name “Barry Soetoro” and his citizenship listed as Indonesian.

The Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg says, is a forgery. In the suit, the attorney states that the birth certificate on record is a forgery, has been identified as such by three independent document forensic experts, and actually belonged to Maya Kasandra Soetoro, Sen. Obama’s half-sister.

Read the whole thing.

I doubt that this lawsuit will succeed, or that Barack Hussein Obama will be proven to have been born in Kenya or to have lost his citizenship via adoption by Mr. Soetero, but I would not be prepared to dismiss completely the possibility of there being substance in any of these contentions. Barack Obama is a peculiar candidate of very unusual background, and is remarkably little known. We have no Office of Eligibility for Public Office in the United States which routinely investigates the qualification of candidates with respect to citizenship. Frankly, with respect to many offices, I doubt that anyone would care very much. In the case of the Presidency, though, questions about major candidates with a serious possibility of being elected really should be investigated and resolved by impartial and responsible authorities.

Barack Obama is almost certainly going to be found to be, yes, Virginia, really a US citizen, but I tend to think American voters would prefer to know for sure.

Maybe he’ll defend you against Islamic terrorists

The Telegraph reports that the British Legion was obliged to cancel plans for an annual Veterans Day Parade when the Doncaster Town Council claimed it lacked “the amenities.” Imagine their surprise when Doncaster hosted its first Gay Pride Parade last Sunday.

Obama says McCain forgot how many houses he owns, and he owns seven houses.

0:30 video

McCain replies mentioning Antoin Rezko assisting Obama buy his house:

0:30 video

Actually, it’s John McCain’s wife and her family trusts which own 8, not 7, residences, of which some are only condos used by her children and by an elderly relative.

John McCain spent five years in a Vietnamese prison cell undergoing torture. When he got out, he came home and married the proverbial passionate rich blonde whose father owned a beer distributorship. The universe has a way of seeing to it that things even out.

If I were Barack Obama, and I’d acquired a $1.65 million mansion with the aid of a sinister figure recently convicted for political corruption, I’d stay away from discussing houses.

Paul Collins at Stale tries some recipes from Vincent Price (Y 1933)’s 1956 cookbook.

My wife and I—she being the Mary to my Vincent—began our day of all-Price cooking with one of his great culinary loves: pancakes. They’d already come a long way from the days of a 1935 cookbook like Someone to Dinner, where the recipe for crêpes Savannah reads, in full, “Pancakes, the ordinary size, served with hot maple syrup.” No such fainthearted stuff for Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it all in banana liqueur. It’s a dish that rewards sleepy incompetence: If you don’t flambé it properly, the pancakes immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for lunch.

Amusingly enough, we’ve got a sinister bottle of banana cordial (inherited from Karen’s mother) right here in the house. It is certainly an appropriate elixir for Price-ian crêpe preparation. I often hear it whispering, whispering very softly, to me as I pass the liquor cabinet.

What’s that? What is it saying?

It wants me to show Karen’s new basset hound the special amontillado in the basement?

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers (Y 1975).

Barack Obama is campaigning on the slogan: Yes, We Can. But, as Thomas Lifson points out, in his role as head of the Annenberg educational foundation in Chicago, Obama had a chance to prove that he could effectuate change in a failing public school system by enfusing money into the system intelligently. He failed.

Barack Obama’s most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project’s own final report. ...

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

Meanwhile, so unsavory were Obama’s associations with extreme radicals (and former revolutionaries) Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky that a cover-up, denying media access to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records has been making headlines.

Earlier “Ayers Connection” posting here.

The Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, The Swamp, and even the news-agency-not-to-be-named are all commenting sardonically on the over-up.

The wraps are going to come off. The beans are going to be spilled. What Thomas Lifson calls “the cloak of media invisibility” is beginning to lift.

Rush Limbaugh explains exactly how the democrat party may very possibly have snatched for itself another opportunity for landslide defeat by nominating a leftwing radical with little more than an undistinguished record as a State Senator from a safe-seat minority district for the Presidency on the basis of a single speech.

It is striking how unqualified [Sen. Barack] Obama is and, and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh went on to say: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them.

It is almost that simple. Obama’s candidacy, of course, also benefited from his personal ability to operate as a pop culture celebrity and his consequent utility as a fashion statement. Alas! he is rapidly becoming so last week. But, there is the consolation, that while while the Obama craze lasted, so many people could be proud of America for the first time.