Here’s everything you need to know about why it was vital to cast that strategic vote for Hillary in the Texas primary this week—all bundled up in an appalling, terrifying, three minute-five second bundle.

Update: I have some additional thoughts on this video over at my “Stop Worshiping Celebrities” blog.

 

Moses was just tripping.

That’s the theory of an Israeli professor of cognitive psychology at Hebrew University who seems to see in Moses’ epiphanies some similarities to experiences he had hopped up on hallucinogens in the Amazon jungle.

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Alrighty. As the cognitive psychologists say, “Let’s explore this.”

First, let’s examine the achievement we’re trying to attribute to smoking tree bark. Moses came down from an extended mountain retreat carrying a moral code that was unlike anything previously known on earth. It was concise, revolutionary, and established an ethical foundation upon which all of Western Civilization would eventually stand.

Now, I don’t have any personal experience with psychotropic foods and snacks, but from what I’ve read, most people who attempt better living through bio-pharmacology don’t come up with “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” They come up with, “Let’s attack the neighbor’s wife because she is a bat-demon whose face is melting.”

Take, for example, author William Burroughs account of trying peyote in his book, Queer:

Horrible stuff. Made me sick like I wanted to die. I got to puke and I can’t. Just excruciating spasms of the asparagras, or whatever you call that gadget. Finally the peyote comes up solid like a ball of hair, solid all the way up, clogging my throat. As nasty a sensation as I ever stood still for. The high is interesting, but hardly worth the sick stage. Your face swells around the eyes, and the lips swell, and you feel like an Indian, or what you figure an Indian feels like. Primitive, you understand. Colors are more intense, but somehow flat and two-dimensional. Everything looks like a peyote plant. There is a nightmare undercurrent. I had nightmares after taking it, one after the other, every time I went back to sleep. In one dream I had rabies and looked in the mirror and my face changed and I began howling. Another dream I had a chlorophyll habit. Me and five other chlorophyll addicts are waiting to score. We turn green and we can’t kick the chlorophyll habit. One shot and you are hung for life. We are turning into plants.

Not exactly conducive to inventing monotheism, wouldn’t you say? But the Ten Commandments weren’t the only revelation Moses delivered out there on the plains of Moab. Moses filled the entire book of Leviticus with sanitary, dietary, health and civil laws he said he got directly from the mouth of God.

The civilizational guidelines were millennia ahead of their time and reflect scientific knowledge that wouldn’t be obtained, in some cases, until the 20th Century.That’s some mighty potent tree bark. I’ll have what he was having.

Or perhaps one athiest professor of cognitive psychology was still feeling the after-effects of some bad jungle mushrooms when he came up with that theory.

Just got an email from John McCain expressing hopes I’ll help replenish the campaign coffers.

However, my wallet will remainly cozily ensconced in my hip pocket until I see who he picks as a running mate. If it is a robust, full-spectrum conservative. . .well, then I may just open up the floodgates to my vast personal fortune. (At least to the tune of a hundred bucks or so.)

If, on the other hand, we get McCain, Part Deux; McCain Lite; Son of McCain; McCain-Robin to McCain-Batman. . . then I’ll find a good 527 organization to help or some close House races. 

CNN is calling it the Limbaugh Effect.  Apparently more than 10% of voters in the Texas and Ohio primaries identified themselves to exit polls as Republicans. You can be sure that there were many others who just didn’t fess up.

Of course, I didn’t act because of Rush. But great minds do think alike and all. . .

 

Way back in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s second term, about the time I started working for a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political organization, a movie came out that made me want to go into campaign media consulting in the worst way.

It was a direct to video flop directed by Sidney Lumet (Network) and starring Richard Gere titled, Power.

In the film, Gere plays a high-powered campaign media guru whose specialty was coming up with devastating television spots and quickly responding to the opponents devastating spots.

For most television-era election cycles, that has indeed been a crucial skill. The right negative ad could be devastating. But the right ad in response, especially if quickly deployed, could neutralize one. This back and forth between the creative staffs and agencies of national campaigns has been the order of the day.

And then came YouTube and a hundred thousand partisans with the basic tools to do video production at their fingertips. Clearly, nothing will ever be the same.

The reality of that hit me last night as I headed over to YouTube in search of a link to Hillary’s “3 A.M. Phone Call” spot so I could imbed it in the “Texas Primary” post below.

The thing was, instead of finding Hillary’s spot, I found 40 or 50 spoofs, parodies and mash-ups of it. Yes, the Obama campaign did quickly produce a response to the Clinton ad (a not very effective one in my opinion—here.) But the real response came immediately from scores of web-savvy, media-savvy Obama fans.  Here’s one example.

The beauty of it is that the Obama campaign didn’t have to spend a dime to create these responses and they can take no flak for them if they are unfair, over the top, or generally vicious. They had nothing to do with them.

The “Power” referenced in that 80s movie title has shifted. The Internet has democritized content creation. I don’t think politics will ever be the same.

Mrs. Blather and I just voted for Hillary in the Texas primary. Yes, for the very first time in my life I cast a vote for a Democrat. Mercifully, there was a sign indicating the line for Dem ballots so I did not have to ask for a one by name.

I’m not sure my mouth would have produced the word. I would have had to grunt, gesticulate and sign my desire for a “D-word’ ballot. But then they’re probably used to that.

My reasons? Three basically.

First, if one of the two leading Dems has to be the next president, I’d rather it be the battle-scarred realist than the love child of Che Guevara and Mr. Rogers. Better someone with her limited charm and powers of persuasion than America’s newest cult leader.

Second, I’m still convinced Hillary is more beatable in the general election, in the highly unlikely event that she should get the nomination. Especially given the levels of bitterness, wailing and teeth gnashing among the Obama faithful that would ensue.

Third, Obama is raising insane amounts of money. By some estimates, more than $70 million in the last few weeks alone. If Obami Wan Kenobi knocks Hillary out of the race today, then he can deploy all that money against McCain in the general election. But if Ms. 3A.M. hangs on to the convention, he’ll have to keep spending tons of that money against her.

Finally, there were no Republican races in my district that really mattered—no good guys in danger

So it was a slam dunk to mark my ballot for HRC. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t feel weird.

Jim Geraghty wonders if Hillary will thank Republicans if she wins.

Michelle Malkin is following the excitement.

Ed Morrisey is backing off his Texas prediction for Obama.

. . .we’re pretty much being bombarded by robo-calls here at Chez Blather.

In the last 24 hours I’ve heard from robo-John McCain, robo-Cindy McCain, robo-Governor Rick Perry (for McCain), robo-Barack Obama, robo-Hillary Clinton, and a variety of lower level candidates.

I’ve also gotten one automated “push-poll” type call from the Huckabee campaign or a surrogate.  

Meanwhile, our television and radio spots are pretty much all Obama and Hillary all the time. I’ve seen Hillary’s widely-discussed “3 a.m.” spot many times. But I have not yet seen the this Obama response aired.

There are a couple of MesmerO spots (like this one) which make a big deal about his refusal to accept contributions from PACs and “Washington lobbyists.” What’s amusing is that the spots are frequently followed immediately by another pro-Obama ad created and placed by the powerful Service Employees International Union.

It does tend to undermine one’s I’m-Holier-and-Cleaner-Than-Everyone message just a tad when it’s consistently followed by good old fashioned Union boss muscle-flexing on your behalf. 

Seriously. Is there anything less fresh, less new, or less change-y than union bosses trying to swing elections with mandatorily-collected dues money?

Here’s the blooming idiot I have in mind:

I mean the one with the statue. Via The Daily Mail:

Actress Marion Cotillard sparked a political row yesterday after accusing America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks.

The 32-year-old French actress, who received an Oscar last month for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, openly questioned the truth behind the terrorist atrocity in an interview broadcast on a French website.

Actually, Mlle. Cotillard, an environmental activist and former Greenpeace spokesperson, has unwittingly done us all a great service with her remarks—at least those of us who value sanity, reason and logic in public discourse.

With her remarks she has put 9/11 conspiracy theorizing right where it belongs, i.e., joined at the hip with other crackpot beliefs like asserting the U.S. moon landings were faked. Enjoy:

But after her outburst, in which she also queried the 1969 Moon landings. . .She said: “Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”

There you have the disease of the postmodern age in a tidy little bon bon: Skepticism about established historical facts and unquestioning acceptance of nonsense.

The deep-thinking French actress did manage to come up with a new motivational angle on the events of 9/11. Apparently the attacks were faked, not to justify a military grab of Middle Eastern oil fields, as most “Truthers” are wont to assert but as a money-saving shortcut on a real estate development project!

She added that the towers, planned in the early Sixties, were an outdated “money-sucker” that would have cost more to modernise than to rebuild altogether, which is why they were destroyed.

She said: “It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them.”

So there you have it. There’s a giant hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan and thousands of secretaries and are dead because it was going to be too expensive to run fiberoptic wires through the building.

And the two other aircraft hijacked that same morning? The one that flew into the Pentagon and the other that crashed into a Pennsylvania field?

Well I hear the offices in outer ring of the Pentagon badly needed new photocopiers. And the Pennsylvania farmer’s plow was broken.

Update: Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey weighs in.