. . . here’s something cool.

The “Movie Poster Addict” website has a display of the the promotional posters for each of the last 79 “Best Picture” winners. What a contrast to today’s marketing. I love the slogan for the Frank Capra film above: “You’ll love them all for giving you the swellest time you’ve ever had!”

I was curious as to how many of the previous 79 winners I’ve actually seen. I counted 65. I was much less likely to have seen the very recent ones than the very old ones.

How about you?

Media bias for one thing. Check this out.

1. In the post below I mentioned Michelle Obama’s hyperbolic warning that under an MesmerO administration, we’ll all be required to “shed our cynicism.” (The phrase triggers an image of a bunch of snakes molting their skins.)

Today Mark Steyn mentions that the whole concept of compulsory cynicism shedding reminds him of this old Dilbert cartoon:

 

(click to enlarge)

2. I predicted way back in this post that as soon as it was clear that John McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up, the mainstream media which has been so friendly to him would turn on him with a vengeance. Of course, that happened today. Not that the development was all that hard to predict. 

It was about as risky as prognosticating that Chris Matthews will soon be an obnoxious cheerleader for the Democrats. Which leads me to my third point.

3. Because I don’t have enough to do, I’ve launched yet another blog. At www.chrismatthewsleg.com I will be chronicling the life and times of Chris Matthews’ Leg . . . what thrills it, what repulses it, and what hacks it off. (Not “hacks it off” in the literal machete-weilding sense of the term, of course.)

I don’t know how long-lived it will be but I’m having fun with it for the time being.

As Jim Geraghty reported this morning, Michelle Obama is the gift that keeps on giving. In a recent speech she gave us a glimpse of what you and I will and won’t be allowed to do under President MesmerO:

 Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

I’m sorry but I’ve come by my cynicism honestly and you can have it when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. 

To follow up on my posts below, James Lileks noted this morning that: “There is tremendous faith in his ability to just wave a love-wand and get things done. . . Perhaps they don’t mind a fellow on a white horse if he promises to nationalize the stables.”

Lileks also points out one of the upsides we conservatives can look forward to under the Dali Obama administration:

If he wins, I do look forward to dissenting; since it’s been established as the highest form of patriotism, I expect my arguments will be met with grave respect. Shhhh! He’s dissenting.

Yes, it’s going to be a glorious day.

 

I missed this Charles Krauthammer piece from a few days ago which covers a lot of the same territory as my ObaMessiah post below.

Excerpt:

Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He’s going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can’t possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war — with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.

Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.

Read it all!

Google has gone too far.

Yes, for years the principal partners have donated hundreds of millions to left-wing causes. Yes, they have been complicit partners in the Chinese government’s Big Brother information control regime. Yes, they have facilitated vicious “google-bombing” campaigns by liberal extremists against conservatives and Christians.

But now the guys at Google have taken the extraordinary step of “disappearing” from the Internet a journalist who had been critical of the UN.

. . .beginning Feb. 13, Google News users could no longer find new stories from the Inner City Press.

“I think they said, ‘If we can’t get this guy out of the U.N., let’s disappear him from the Internet,'” Lee said.

It began with an innocuous-sounding yet chilling form letter from Google to Lee, e-mailed on Feb. 8:

“We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users,” it said. “When we reviewed your site we’ve found that we can no longer include it in Google News.”

As soon as he read it, Lee immediately suspected one thing: That someone at the UNDP had pressured Google into “de-listing” him from Google News — essentially preventing Inner City Press from being classified on Google News as a legitimate news source and from having its stories pop up when someone conducts a Google News search.

Here’s the whole story. 

And here are some search engine alternatives:

www.ask.com

www.yahoo.com

www.excite.com

www.dogpile.com(an aggregator of the most popular engines)

If you know of any other good ones, feel free to mention them in a comment.

This Obama thing is officially out of hand. Seriously, people.

 Poster: Ray Noland

 The spirit of adulation presently gripping the multitudes in the thrall of the entrangling power of the hypnotic waves of joy emanating from the Obama persona has rapidly moved from amusing, to startling, to disturbing, and beyond. It’s now pegging the “creepy” meter.

 As Mayor Shinn said of Professor Harold Hill in the Music Man: “The man’s a by-god spellbinder.”

The man has no experience. No substance. No credientials. And no ideas. He’s little more than a pez dispenser of feel-good platitudes and vague left-wing-gift-shop-refigerator-magnet bromides. And yet people who hear the man speak come away looking like this:

Obama speeches increasingly cause sensitive individuals to faint as their neurological systems are overwhelmed by the positive energy and good vibrations harmonically converging in the sound waves. Obama’s voice causes funny feelings to shoot up Chris Matthew’s leg.

I have decided that henceforth in the campaign, I shall refer to Sen. Obama as “Mesmero,” a lesser-known X-man mutant whose superpower was the ability to hypnotically bewilder anyone who made eye contact and make them believe with all their hearts that nonsense was actually true.

This is precisely the effect Obama speeches seem to be having on millions of Americans. 

Mesmer-O tells them that electing him will heal the discordant partisan divide, bring peace to a war-weary world, bring us all free medical care, and remove “roadblocks” hindering the disabled, parents, the poor and immigrants. And they believe him.

Nevermind that following through on even a fraction of the promises imbedded in his “Blueprint for Change“ will require Mesmer-O to repeal most of the established laws of physics, economics and human nature. But then that’s what Messiahs are supposed to be able to do.

And that’s what is truly scary about the emerging cult of Obama. It’s overwhelming cultishness.

So absurd has it become, that even over at the Left-leaning Slate, Tim Noah has established what he calls “The Obama Messiah Watch.” A tongue-in-cheek blog he says is dedicated to “considering evidence that Obama is the son of God.”

I’m still trying to decide whether this blog (“Is Barack Obama the Messiah?,)” is serious or satire. I’m leaning toward the latter but in any case, it’s a rich and disturbing source of examples of the religious ecstasy this guy is inspiring. Nothing too over the top mind you, just stuff like:

Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”

— Eve Konstantine

Well, at least she didn’t get carried away and embarrass herself. This guy either:

“Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.”

— Gerald Campbell

 Then there is this clear-eyed, no-nonsense assessment by that respected public policy wonk, Oprah:

“We’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth.”

— Oprah Winfrey

Senator Mesmer-O may indeed have “an ear for eloquence” but I have a pretty good nose for a steaming pile of idolatry—and this craze is starting to reek.

On the menu above you will find a new tab labled “My Reading List.” It’s my way of preparing an answer in advance in the unlikely event that you should wonder, “Has David read any good books lately?”

There you will find links to three pages:

•  one for a list of books I have recently read (usually accompanied by a short review or comments);
• one for books I’m currently reading (that is usually two to four books at a time);
• and one for books I’ve purchased and am hoping to get to soon. (That stack shrinks and grows throughout the year.)

Competing with the one-piece jumpsuit for future-men was the. . . what would you call it. . . a smock-vest?

Actually I wore something not unlike this in Junior High. I had buried it in my subconscious but James Lileks brought all the polyester horror back to the surface a few days ago when he offered this scan of a page from the 1972 Sears catalog.

I noted Lincoln’s birthday in a post below. Came across a long, wonderful, illuminating essay by my favorite Abe-o-phile, Andrew Ferguson, over at First Things.

He explores the conundrum and mystery of Lincoln’s Christian faith in “Lincoln and the Will of God.”