Explorations

… because I feel rather much the same.

I don’t know why I’m e-mailing you, except that I just need to vent to someone on The Corner. Pass this around to the others if you like — I bet I’m not the only one.

I really don’t like McCain. I’ll probably vote for him just as a vote for divided government. I’m far too libertarian in my leanings to be comfortable with McCain (or Obama, for that matter).

That said, the way the pro-Obama media and bloggers, and Obama himself, have responded to Joe has got me nearly shaking with rage. They are attempting to destroy a man — a private citizen — who had the audacity to ask The One a question. Mind you, Joe was on his front lawn playing football with his son when Obama strolled up to give him his hopenchange spiel. Obama approached Joe, not the other way around. And Joe asked Obama an honest question. And Obama gave him an honest — and very, very revealing — answer. Again, mind you, the embarassment was on Obama’s end, not Joe’s. It wasn’t a gotcha question.

And yet, for that Joe is being pilloried, every aspect of his private and professional life being sorted through and exposed. To prove … what? What does that have to do with Obama’s answer? What does Joe’s situation have to do with Obama’s philosophical answer — that he wants to “spread the wealth”? Obama’s answer goes down the memory hole while the nation concentrates its fire on obliterating Joe the Plumber.

It’s sickening, it’s maddening and it’s downright chilling.

Sorry for the length. But I am just SEETHING.

From the Corner, for some reason with no author’s name. [1]

I’m enough of a cynic that I’ve really been more likely to vote against rather than for; even if there’s no one I was, there’s usually someone I really don’t want. To a great extent, McCain was my nose-holding solution; I knew I didn’t like Obama, so the answer was obvious, by elimination.

Over time, I really got so I didn’t like Obama; the more I heard about him, the more I saw of him in photographs with halos around him, the more people I saw with “Obama Salutes” and “Obama Corps” doing drill routines in fatigues, the more I got to feel that Obama wasn’t running for President as much as for Caudillo.

Maybe I’m too suspicious. Certainly I’m way tired of the campaign. But even if that’s not what Obama has in mind, I begin to think he’s got a tiger by the ears; he may be riding, I’m not sure he’s in control.

When it’s gotten to the point that someone who happens to ask him an uncomfortable question is pursued to this extent, his personal life exposed, his address published on the Internet, his job and livelihood at risk, it’s gone too far. These people are legitimately to be feared.

1. Update: It was Mark Hemingway; the Corner was put together with stone knives and bearskins some years ago and it’s apparently possible for it to forget to add the author’s name to a post. [↩]