And another thing

Yep, her "Variety" show bombed on NBC. Best news I have heard all week.

Guns N Roses new album

After what, 17 years in the making and 13 million, can you say "pretentious"?

Rock n Roll is not rocket science nor is it hard to figure out, but this has to rank along with another group that's pretentious, Fleetwood Mac.

You got your money Axl, you got the fame, so just go quietly into the night. This ain't rock n roll, it's just your ego looking for more stroking.

Snoopy

I am not much of an animal person. I mean I like animals, but I am not real crazy about dogs, they tend to get in the way and seem "needy". But I do like cats. I have always heard the theory that people who are dog people like to dominate other people and have bigger egos than most whereas people who like cats, aren't usually concerned with dominating anything. I don't know if that's true, but I just like cats. I prefer not having to every 5 minutes, let the dog out or in, or the constant barking. My favorite cat I have ever had was Buddy, but at only 8 years old, he passed away. I have never had nor seen a cat like him. Even as far as a cat, he was really different.

Anyway, the cat that has my attention now is Shammy. And this is a picture of her on top of my 16 track reel-to-reel in my studio. She has taken to sleeping there when I am in the studio and I have therefore given her the pet name "Snoopy" since she reminds me of Snoopy on top of his dog house, LOL.

And if you want any more evidence of his being a socialist...

Read this. It is no joke. This was released by the Communists of St. Petersburg regarding the election of Comrade Obama. This is scary. They endorse Obama. As I said, this is no joke. They really must feel that with Comrade Obama's election, the resurgence of the socialist ideal is alive and well and in all places, the United States. They also call for John McCain to shoot himself for being defeated! I am also providing the link to their site, though it is Russian (Cyrillic) and unless you have a translator or read Russian, you won't understand it. Below is the actual text that was translated.

Communists of Petersburg on Obama Victory

The Secretary of the Volkhov District Committee of the Communist Party Katerina Petrova has expressed the Party's position in her statement regarding the victory in the presidential election of the candidate of the liberal wing of the Democrat Party Barack Obama:

"The days of the bloodthirsty and thieving Bush administration are ending. The American people have rejected the rabid Russophobia and anti-Sovietism of McCain. We, the Communists, believe that McCain must respond to his own defeat like an honorable officer and shoot himself in the head. Or there will be no respect left for him.

Even though Obama was supported by many left-wing forces in the U.S., including - at our request - The Communist Party of America, Barack is clearly being controlled by the Pentagon and Wall Street. Comrade Zyuganov has correctly observed with dismay that Obama is surrounded by slithering certified Russophobes - Brzezinski and the maniacal Albright. Therefore, Russia cannot lower its guard - we must be prepared for the continuation of the Cold War. But there still is a chance that Barack Obama chooses a realistic policy and brings new people into his team. The Communists and the Socialist Party USA, as well as Negro organizations, must demand that Obama appoint their representatives to key management positions! Let's also hope that Obama is intelligent enough to reach out to Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Korea, Zimbabwe, and Palestine.

We would like to alert the progressive forces of America: if Obama chooses the policies of reason and renounces Bush's policies of aggression and intervention, the CIA will try to assassinate the new president. To this end, the American Left must hide Obama in some sort of Uncle Tom's cabin. But in the event Obama succumbs to the pressure from the bankers and the military reactionaries, all the workers who have contributed money to his campaign must withdraw their dollars back.

We have noticed the hope and enthusiasm with which the people's America is celebrating the Negro boy's victory; how it is being cheered in the streets of American towns and villages by common toilers who are tired of the war in Iraq, of the absolute power of monopolies, of the hawks in the White House; it is impossible not to get excited at the sight of the dark-skinned Americans - so thirsty for change... You better not mislead them, Barack Obama! Do not leave them exposed to the forces of blind fate! Do not betray the legacy of glorious Americans - Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King! Or you won't be worth a red cent!"

If you want evidence that Obama supporters have no clue...

...watch this. Taken from video interviews outside a polling place, when asked questions about the candidates. You can tell by the responses, that most of these people got their information (or lack thereof) from the non-job the MSM did. Funny how they seem to be able to know about Sarah Palin and the myths surrounding her, the clothes issue (she didn't buy them, the RNC did), the whole "I can see Russia from my house" (which isn't what she said, that was a creation of SNL) and other things.

Plainly spoken, these people are idiots. They have no clue who Reid-Pelosi or Barney Frank is, the don't know what Comrade Obama said about the coal industry and they didn't know about about the 57 states gaffe he made as well as they obviously don't understand the theory of free-market economics, instead, saying "redistribute the wealth? sure". This is probably a small sampling of the people who voted for Comrade Obama. If there was any argument to be made that voters prove they are literate, and cognizant of how the government works and who is currently in government, this is it. This is just amazing and sad at the same time that so many people are so stupid.

Fascinating letter from Cory the Driller to Comrade Obama

This has been circulating around the net and yes, it's true. This guy, Cory Miller, is representative of what a real American is like, not some liberal socialist. Below is an interview on FNC with Miller. This is but one of they guys that Comrade Obama wants to raise taxes on. Read this letter and you get a good sense of what a Real American, yes I said a Real American thinks of the pending socialism and the twisted mindset of liberal socialists and expected entitlement. We seem to have morphed into a country dominated by wussy oprahfied, people. No wonder male enhancement pills are being handed out like candy, there are very few real Americans that have any balls to fend for themselves and instead want to rely on government subsistence.

Mr. Obama,

Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me “Cory the well driller”. I am a 54-year-old high school graduate. I didn’t go to college like you, I was too ready to go “conquer the world” when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80’s oil boom. I didn’t get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawnshop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start not a result of privilege. It is the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self-discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn’t afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10-year-old, ½-ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).

A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time… $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.

I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn’t work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night, as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.

2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.
A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.

Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so an employee and I (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers’ pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers’ product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that’s ok, I didn’t expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.

Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn’t it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our country’s’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn’t get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It’s funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.

You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and wouldn’t demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.

What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-determination, self-discipline, personal betterment, and hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach on every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn’t it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever-expanding dependence on government. What’s remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn’t need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.
You see, I know because I’ve had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.

Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I’ve seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”); you averaged of less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden (don’t you just hate goggle?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self-reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us…

Cory Miller
just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.

P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American… Miller Drilling Website

Socialism comes to America

The election of Barack Obama as "President" is significant and historic in 2 ways. First off, being a black man and the first black man elected to the office is historic. I would only hope that those out there, usually black, would finally dispense with "this is a racist country". But I am more than willing to bet, if you disagree with his policies, you're a racist, if you call him a socialist (which he is), you're a racist, if you don't like him, you're a racist. I had some time ago, a co-worker where I work call me a "racist" because I told him I don't like hip-hop and think it doesn't take anything more than a beat and someone screaming some obscene nonsense to make. For that, I am a racist. I don't like country music all that much, so what does that mean? I believe that far from being a "uniter", what will happen is, that anyone who disagrees with him and his policies will fall under the umbrella of being a racist. Too bad, if that makes me a racist, so be it. Because I am not. I grew up with friends of mine while I was a military brat, whose parents were a black man and a white woman, and it never occurred to me to think about what color they were. I never really experienced racism until I started into public school and what a shock that was.

Contrary to what they claim, "we" meaning the US and not me, elected the first black man to president and are the first industrialized western country to do something like this. The second reason why, is for perhaps for the first time in America's history, we have elected a radical socialist to office. I have no problem with electing a black man to the office, certainly I admire quite a few, Michael Steele, JC Watts, Alan Keyes (often called a crazy uncle of the republican party) or even to an extent, Colin Powell. Hell, I would welcome Condi Rice as the first black woman as president, except that her own people displaying their racist tendencies, don't think she is "one of them". It's funny to see how now Colin Powell is "one of them" ever since he endorsed the Dalibam-uh. Before, he was an Uncle Tom.

I have never understood why black people vote democrat or as I now refer to them, the liberal socialists. After all, Martin Luther King was a republican, it was Eisenhower that really instituted segregating the military (even though Truman signed it into law), it was the republicans that fought to push through both de-segregation and the civil rights laws we have today, all the while Kennedy (who opposed the civil rights act while a senator) and the democrats fought tooth and nail to deny blacks equality in this country. Yet to hear someone like Marion Barry once state, "Lincoln was a republican? he couldn't have been a republican, he freed the slaves!" shows you how ignorant of history many, and not just blacks, are about history.

And it was President Lincoln that freed the slaves. The liberal socialist party (democrats) brought you Jim Crow, the KKK and violent opposition to allowing blacks the same rights as whites. And on top of that, the liberal socialists have distorted the history and really to be perfectly blunt, the so-called "black leaders" have done no justice for their people as they see the democratic party as a back channel way to reparations by basically giving their constituents welfare and free handouts in order to keep them placated. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, I would dare say, blacks that keep voting democrat expecting them to help are suffering from some sort of insanity. In essence what the democrats keep doing, is placing the blacks into positions of hand-outs and keeping them "down on the plantation".

I really hate to say it, but I think most blacks that don't know history other than their own lives, feel as if they are "entitled" somehow to free handouts. They have bought into this myth that by voting democrat, somehow their lives are going to be better. And they have swallowed this fallacy that the democrats have done more to improve their lives than republicans. Improved it how? by giving them welfare? by taking away through welfare, the responsibility of their men to be fathers? by promising a mule and 40 acres? Already we have seen an example of this in Florida with someone people are calling "Peggy the Moocher". This is what she had to say at a Dalibam-uh rally in Florida:

Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life." Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help (Obama), he's gonna help me."

Like another famous liberal, Oprah Winfrey, the Lord Messiah, the Dalibam-uh is going to buy her a car, fill up her tank, pay her mortgage and buy her a new HDTV! This is the mindset of these liberals. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme... cos you owe it to me! I am waiting for Oprah Winfrey to invite Peggy on her show and hail her as a national hero!

And yet all the liberal socialists have done is promise handouts to minorities only to disappoint them in the end. And if you want to talk about racism, I heard a co-worker say at work that he was voting for Comrade Obama simply because he was black. If that is not racism, I don't know what is.

But back to as I will call him, Comrade Obama. I can not bring myself to call him "President". Knowing what I know after studying him. For 8 years, I have endured the name calling and downright malicious attacks on President Bush and yet now, I am expected to call Comrade Obama "President"? To me that's a bit like calling Hitler the Prime Minister if I was french during WWII when Hitler had a stranglehold on France. With his election and the troika of Obama-Reid-Pelosi, we are going to have a politburo as opposed to congress, with Comrade Obama as First Secretary. He wants to be my president too? then cut taxes, leave the Bush tax cuts alone, let the troops finish the job they were sent to do and put an end to abortion, partial birth abortion especially. What? he won't do that? then why should I call him President. For 8 years I have heard Bush called names, caricatured as a monkey, a buffon, Alfred E Newman and worst of all, Adolf Hitler, and yet they expect me to swoon over the Dalibam-uh? I don't think so.

So now, nothing can be done, other than to grit your teeth and hope that the republicans finally get off their asses and start acting like the party they should be. There needs to be strong opposition to Comrade Obama's policies. Otherwise, we start down the slippery slope toward a real socialist state. I have heard friends of mine saying that I should not be so critical toward Comrade Obama, as he is the elected president and that by taking the stance I have, I am acting like the kooky leftist that now run the liberal socialists and reducing myself to their level. That may be true, but I voted for a President of a representative republic, not a socialist state, and I am not going to change my principals for anyone. Comrade Obama is a very dangerous man, especially with the Reid-Pelosi partnership that has the potential to wreck this country beyond what it was envisioned to be by the founders. It's going to be a long seige, a very long seige.

Why I'm voting Democrat...

Not me, but this is your typical mindset of liberals.

Ben Affleck as Keith Olbermann

This send up from SNL was also good. Even though I am no Ben Affleck fan, I thought this was pretty good. Courtesy NBC.

McCain on SNL

This is funny. I was surprised how well he did and how well he seemed received. Here is the QVC video spoof. Courtesy NBC.

Another prominent republican endorses the Dalibam-uh

Like many of the other republicans that have been dismayed by the endorsement of the Lord most merciful, the messiah, the Dalibam-uh (peace be upon him) by what we thought were conservatives or "good" republicans, I was a bit taken aback by Colin Powell's endorsement, even though I knew from what Bill Kristol said a few months back was going to happen. Now I am in utter dismay. After reading this endorsement from T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII,
I am just shocked. Yet another republican has fallen under the Dalibam-uhs spell. "T-bag" as he's known to his friends has become yet one more sell-0ut. Say it ain't so T-bag!

As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib

By T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Columnist, The National Topsider
Membership Chairman, The Newport Club

When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative journal National Topsider in 1948, he famously declared that "Now is the time for all good conservative helmsmen to hoist the mizzen, pour the cocktails, and steer this damned schooner hard starboard."

In the 60 years since he first uttered it after one-too-many Cosmopolitans at one of Pamela Harriman's notorious foreign policy black tie balls, father's pithy bon mot has served as a rallying cry for conservatives from Greenwich to Chevy Chase. Today, I say it's time for we conservatives to once again grab the rigging and set sail with the flotilla of the true conservative in this race: Barack Obama.

Trust me, I haven't taken this tack lightly. No Van Voorhees has supported an avowed socialist since great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpapa Cragmont Van Voorhees lent Peter Minuet $24 and a sack of wampum to swing a subprime mortgage on Manhattan Island. Old dad himself often recounted how, as a lad, he would command the family chauffeur Carleton to drive the Duesenberg down to the Times Square Trans-Lux so he could hiss Roosevelt.

But I've taken a good measure of this Obama fellow, and I must say I like the cut of the man's jib.

How can I say this, you ask? One look at this Obama chap is all the answer you need. Suave, tanned, unflappable, Harvard connections; it's obvious that here is a man to the conservative manor born. One imagines him at the helm of the Ship of State, basked in the sunlight diffusing through the seaspray over the bow, like some beautiful rugged Othello from a rapturous Ralph Lauren catalog, calmly issuing instructions to the deck crew in that magnificent mellifluous baritone of his.

It's that easy-going, almost effortless grace that has all the A-list conservatives like David Frum and Kathleen Parker whispering Reaganesque in hushed tones. Even Peggy Noonan -- the Grand Dame of Gipperism -- has succumbed to Obama's undeniable conservative charms.

Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final. "Why Peggy, you old dowager," I quipped, "I believe you just had an orgasm."

Certainly, my endorsement has raised more than a few eyebrows around the National Topsideris hooey, over-the-top rhetorical flourishes obviously designed by Mr. Obama to win over benighted inner city hoi polloi (a feat, I might add, that even the Great Communicator himself was unable to accomplish).

As for his so-called radical ties, who among us hasn't sent dinner party invitations to Gore Vidal and a leftwing terrorist or two to enliven the postprandial conversation? Leonard Bernstein loved hosting all manner of Weathermen and Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army celebrities at his Park Avenue pied a terre, but it didn't mean the Maestro wasn't in favor of low taxes.

On the contrary; I know for a fact he itemized every cent of the catering bills for his famous terrorist cocktail parties. water cooler, particularly among the alumni of jejune cow colleges like Michigan or Dartmouth. They sometimes point to Mr. Obama's radical Rolodex and his hooey about "wealth redistribution" and "dictatorship of the proletariat." But, as I patiently explain, this is precisely the point - it

Just so, I have every confidence that Obama's true conservative butterfly will emerge once in office, coaxed from its Maoist cocoon by conservatives like myself and Frum and Parker and Noonan -- all of whom I am pleased to report are already under consideration for the Obama Administration State Dinner shortlist. Certainly there may be a tax increase or two, but isn't that what estate attorneys and Cayman Island banks are for? Under a worst case scenario some of us may have to set up a lease-back depreciation arrangement on one or two of our vacation compounds, as Dad was forced to in the dark years of Carter.

But I'm not worried. I've got a pretty good sense for character, and I'd be willing to bet my Weejuns that inside this Obama fellow lives the soul a rock-ribbed old money Brahmin. Ask yourself: could a seriously committed Marxist carry off a Brooks Brothers suit like that? I mean, other than Dad's old commie nemesis and Harvard fencing club foe Alger Hiss.

But there is an even more compelling reason to support Barack Obama: Sarah Palin.

If you are a conservative like me, you guffawed when you heard John McCain announced this declasse rube as a running mate, followed by good-natured applause, thinking it was some sort of whimsical campus prank he was reenacting from his Annapolis years. This was, of course, quickly followed the shock of realizing that he wasn't joking, and all that Hanoi unpleasantness had finally driven him around the bend.

It's an inescapable conclusion that this woman has, in 6 short weeks, single-handedly destroyed the Republican party. Certainly George Bush may share some of the blame; but we conservatives must remember how our hopes were buoyed by his impressive bloodlines and Yale degree before we realized his excursion to Texas had caused him to "go native." But la Palin offers true conservatives no such extenuating graces. I mean, my God, this woman is simply awful; the elided vowels, the beauty pageantry, the guns, the crude non-Episcopal protestantism, the embarrassing porchload of children with horrifying hillbilly names, the white after Labor Day. As fellow conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan quipped to me the other day outside a Martha's Vineyard antique shop, it's gratifying to know the Gipper isn't alive to see what has become of his party.

But it's not just American conservatives who are appalled. Just last week conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and I were enjoying an apres-badminton apertif at the family weekend house in Montauk with my good friend Viscount Klaus-Maria Von Wallensheim, the conservative EU Agricultural Pricing Minister with whom I shared an Alpine chalet and manservant during our years as classmates at a Swiss boarding school. "Kloonkie" (my old school appellation for the Viscount) reported the growing dismay of the Continental Right over Palin's embarrassing enthusiasm for childbirth and Israel.

"Coddsie, old chap," he warned, "You know I've always been America's biggest defender in Monaco. But if you elect this ill-bred charwoman, I will be forced to move anchor to St. Tropez out of pure shame."

David and I were left nodding silently, for how else could we respond? If Palin has lost Kloonkie, she has surely lost the entire conservative movement. The idea of this dreadful woman in Washington is almost too much to contemplate. Not only would it be a fashion disaster, one can scarcely imagine the White House social calendar -- mooseburger fetes to that ghastly Joe the Plumber, perhaps followed by snow machine derbies through the Rose Garden?

For now, we conservatives must do what we can to sabotage the ill-fated McCain-Palin fiasco and hope for the best. Once the election is over we can lick our wounds, read the entrails, and decide where the movement should go from here. In anticipation, the Topsider will be holding a top-level exclusive strategy conference in Nassau next January, featuring tout le monde of conservative intellectuals from the Back Bay Review, The Prospective Standard, National Bowtie, and The Swarthmorean. If you are attending, please be advised that gentlemen's jackets will be mandatory after six PM.

Until then, do not despair; the election of Mr. Obama means that at least some conservatives will still have a place at the table. I do hope I get seated next to this William Ayers fellow -- I've heard he has some amazingly droll anecdotes!