Vodka Wars

One of my favorite vodkas, American-made Skyy, is showing its patriotism, an no doubt taking advantage of a great business opportunity, in response to this Absolut nonsense.

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican-America War (1846-1848). With the signing of this treaty, the United States gained control of what was to become the Golden West, including California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Today, SKYY® Vodka, the number-one vodka produced in the United States, spoke out against suggestions by Absolut® Vodka to disregard that treaty, as well as the joining of Texas to the Union in 1845, as depicted in Absolut’s recent advertising.

“Like SKYY Vodka, the residents of states like California, Texas and Arizona are exceptionally proud of the fact that they are from the United States of America,” said Dave Karraker, SKYY Vodka. “To imply that they might be interested in changing their mailing addresses, as our competitor seems to be suggesting in their advertising, is a bit presumptuous.”

Good for them. I think I’ll pick-up a couple of bottles this weekend.

The Arrogance Of Obama

Tell me again how Barack Hussein Obama is the stronger candidate in the general election.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Those are the words reportedly spoken by Obama “while speaking to a group of wealthy California donors in San Francisco over the weekend.” The kind of sentiment that plays soooo very well with leftist California elites, but really pisses-off blue-collar Democrats and Independents.

So much for Obama being a man of the people.

Of course, like the article says, Hillary is hardly one of the regular people either - what with her and Bill’s 109 million dollar income. But still, the arrogance, elitism, and, quite frankly, stupidity of Obama’s statement is simply astounding.

One can only hope there is a video or audio of it, because it would be a wonderful campaign ad for McCain.

UPDATE:

There’s audio. The quality sucks - or maybe it’s my head phones - but with a little work it will make a great campaign ad. (Scroll down at the site to hear the audio.)

There’s also a transcript. Everything he said wasn’t bad, but guys like him just can’t keep from pushing the envelope. He has lived for so long without anyone calling him on things like this that he thinks he can get away with them even now as a national candidate. Considering the Reverend Wright episode and his wife’s dumb-ass statements, you would think he had learned by now. But he hasn’t.

UPDATE:

Obama sends someone to mend fences with small-town folks.

See, this is what I am talking about. It’s like he wants to lose the election.

UPDATE:

Another great example of the people Obama was talking about from Ace.

The Cult Of Obama

Instapundit calls it striking. I call it downright scary. Seriously, something about this guy makes me uneasy in a way other liberal candidates never have. Or maybe its not him. Maybe it’s his followers. They seem hypnotized. Unable and unwilling to look at his many faults and weaknesses. Angry and dismissive when they are pointed out to them.

It worries me.

Michael Yon Reporting

From Iraq. Well, it’s an Op-Ed piece, but based on his fantastic reporting.

It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators – on both sides of the aisle – who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today.

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous. . . .

This leads us to the most out-of-date aspect of the Senate debate: the argument about the pace of troop withdrawals. Precisely because we have made so much political progress in the past year, rather than talking about force reduction, Congress should be figuring ways and means to increase troop levels. For all our successes, we still do not have enough troops. This makes the fight longer and more lethal for the troops who are fighting. To give one example, I just returned this week from Nineveh province, where I have spent probably eight months between 2005 to 2008, and it is clear that we remain stretched very thin from the Syrian border and through Mosul. Vast swaths of Nineveh are patrolled mostly by occasional overflights.

We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can’t do it from inside a jet or a tank.

Read the rest here. He has a new book, too.

Via Instapundit.

The Language of Love

Well, if not the language of “love,” certainly the language of “I’d hit that.”

Via Frogsmoke.

Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet

I heard this song for the first time in a long time last night. I forgot how good it is.

Is John McCain A Cylon?

If so, then I, for one, would welcome our new robot overlord. I really don’t need a new savior and I already have a woman telling me how to spend my money so what use is Hillary?

Photo courtesy of Metamerist.

In related news - if related means I didn’t want to waste a whole post on this - McCain has erased Obama’s lead in a new poll.