We all know it's a cult, but they're actually now openly pirating Christian terms to advance their candidate. I gotta find a transcript.

Here's what I heard: Commence the deliberate mixing of religious and civic language...

For Barack Obama, for Joe Biden, for me, for all of us, the principles of faith call us to service.

With faith in the American dream, we strive for better schools, economic justice, and smarter foreign policies because we believe in the God-given principles of equality, freedom, and opportunity. With faith in each other, we work for a common-sense approach to politics that focuses on results, not partisan division, because we recognize that we're all in this together.

Aren't we all tired of a Washington that doesn't have any faith in us? Fellow delegates, fellow Democrats, and fellow Americans, now is the time to let our faith guide us to action once again.

It would seem to me that a Washington that had faith in us as citizens would be willing to allow us to live our lives as unencumbered by the government as possible, as truly free individuals with rights and responsibilities to care for ourselves. More expansive government is referred to as a "nanny state," Tim. That's what you're arguing for, right? A nanny isn't there to trust her wards; she's there to watch over them, to limit them, to make sure that they don't do anything that might harm themselves. That's not what our founders intended.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will put middle-class Americans first again and reward companies who create jobs in America instead of shipping them overseas.

Hmm. What about foreign companies that build factories here? Do we shut them down because they're not American owned? Or does this policy only work in one direction?

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and invest in green-collar, clean- energy jobs right here at home.

Obama will be a president who can - by the sheer force of his will, it seems - call into existence the technology that will allow us to end our dependence on oil and switch over entirely to an economy powered by... good feelings? What exactly? BTW, one fine way to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil would be to drill domestically. Just a tip.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will invest in our students, teachers and schools, and make college affordable once again for every American family.

Oh good lord. As if education budgets won't grow every year by remarkable amounts under either McCain or Obama. FAIL.

We need to put our faith into action -- to elect a president who will responsibly end the war in Iraq, give our veterans and their families the support they need, and reinvigorate our military to face the challenges ahead.

John McCain is the only person running that I know of who has always advocated responsibly ending the war in Iraq. He's always wanted to win it. The jack-ass you're talking about was forced to acknowledge the success of the surge that he opposed and then stated that even if he knew then what he knows now, he'd still have voted against it.

Now, let's really just lay into the religious language, shall we?

If we put our faith into action, we can move mountains.
We can move the mountains of negativity and division and gridlock.
We can move the mountains of special interests and business as usual.
We can move the mountains of hopelessness that surround too many of our people and communities.
Does anybody here have a little faith tonight? Is anybody here ready to move those mountains?
Starting right here in the Mile High City, we will put our faith into action; we will reject the failed policies of George Bush and John McCain; we will elect Barack Obama our next president.
In the words of the gospel hymn -- "move mountain."
Say it with me -- "move mountain."
Say it with me again -- "move mountain."
Mountain, get out of our way!

Wow. Just... Wow. Witness the founding of Obamianity, the newest political religion. Jonah Goldberg was right.

A quite long and very intellectual examination on the Obama phenomenon over at City Journal:

Yet if Obama has made redemptive communitarianism attractive in an age of sagging sperm counts, he has done nothing to correct the underlying flaw of the collectivist ideal: its incompatibility with the older morality of limits. The politics of consensus that Obama favors is incompatible with the Founders’ adversarial system, which permits those whom he disparages as “ideological minorities” to take stands on principle that, at times, frustrate the national consensus. Obama makes it clear that there is no place, in the politics he advocates, for those “absolutists” who would defy the community. The “ideological core of today’s GOP,” he writes, is “absolutism, not conservatism,” an absolutism driven by those who prize “absolute truth” over “communal values.” This commitment to absolute truth, he argues, stands in the way of a politics that can solve our problems and change our lives.

Obama goes so far as to argue that the Constitution itself is “a rejection of absolute truth.” His moral relativism is intimately bound up with his conviction that we can transcend those limitations in human nature that the Founders acknowledged when they drafted the Constitution. This rejection of older moral standards, Machiavelli observed, is a tactical necessity for the charismatic redeemer. It is not simply that adherence to the West’s traditional morality would prevent such a leader from being properly ruthless in the pursuit of his ideal; it is that the old morality, with its emphasis on the limits of man’s fallen condition, makes his communitarian paradise seem quixotic—an instance of utopian overreaching.

Machiavelli was ready with a solution. He helped prepare the way for the politics of redemptive healing by working to overturn the older morality. In particular, he undermined the West’s most potent myth of diabolic amorality and delusory hubris. Two years after he completed The Prince, Machiavelli composed a fable, Belfagor, or the Devil Who Took a Wife, in which he ridiculed the idea that the devil can take possession of a man’s mind and corrupt those around him. In assuming (correctly) that the diabolic qualities of his redemptive prince would be easier to swallow once the devil himself became a joke, Machiavelli blazed a path that Voltaire, Diderot, Goethe, and Shaw afterward trod. No one fears the devil that Voltaire refused to renounce on his deathbed. (“This is no time to be making enemies,” he jested.) Goethe’s Mephistopheles is charming, as is Shaw’s (in Man and Superman). Even those characters whom modern European artists have intended to be diabolic (such as Balzac’s Collin) arouse sympathy in a way that older devil-characters (Shakespeare’s Iago, for example) do not.

Dostoyevsky was among the few who grasped the momentousness of the change that Machiavelli initiated in the West’s conception of diablerie. Near the end of The Brothers Karamazov, he describes an encounter between the devil and Ivan Karamazov. The devil appears, not with claws and horns, but in the guise of an elegant man of the world: he phrases his mordant taunts in French and laughs at modern intellectuals who believe that he doesn’t exist or who worry that to admit his existence would harm their “progressive image.” Dostoyevsky implied that it was precisely when the devil became a wit that the intellectual classes of the West succumbed to the most familiar form of diabolic temptation: the belief that men can transcend the limits of their condition and “be as gods”—demiurges with the power to heal the world’s pain and reshape it in accordance with a beautiful idea.

Via Milt Rosenberg at WGN Radio, who tasted the wrath of the Obama Cult for daring to examine the Leader's past.

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said.

Socialism, abortion on demand without question or twinge of conscience, dismantling the traditional family and social structure - yup, all of the best traditions of America!

This about sums it up: Slublog, over at Ace's place

Yea, we have long waited for an inexperienced legislator with no significant accomplishments and former community organizer to lead us out of the wilderness.
VERO POSSUMUS!

Good questions from Peter Kirsanow at The Corner:

Simple assignment for the press corps: ask the senator to name three specific traditions to which America will return upon his election and why his election will prompt their return. No teleprompters allowed.

More gospel of Obama:

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

This whole Obama cult just keeps getting more and more... unsettling.

The following image ran with Willamette Week's endorsement of Barack Obama for President:



There. Are. No. Words.

More creepy obama at NRO.

Ace claims that this news clip is yet more confirmation that Obama's supporters are "cultish maniacs." I find it hard to disagree. If you "remember it for a fact" that two weeks after Bill Clinton was elected, Hillary stopped talking about health care, well... something's wrong with you.

Via the Corner:

Obama was born with his sun in Leo, and his story exemplifies the quest of the Solar Hero. His father, who joins with his mother on an island, conceives a child, and soon thereafter leaves the child and mother to continue his own journeying. Obama, a 'special 'child, left to create his own internal image of 'father', and related meanings of strength, protection, leadership, etc.

The Holmes comet appears just as the presidential race is kicking into high gear, illuminating the concept of the hero vanquishing the monster, a monster that turns people into stone if they gaze upon her. Does it not seem as if our country today is all locked up, constricted, restricted, with ever shrinking mobility and freedom of movement?

Perseus had help from the gods. Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?

The instructions to not directly look at her, but to look at her reflection in his shield. What is Obama's shield, in essence? I propose it is his belief in hope, redemption, and his ability to channel the essential goodness of the American people. The Perseus myth clearly indicates he should not confront his opponent by face-to-face, tit-for-tat combat.

Of especial significance for me is the star Mirfak, the elbow of Perseus's sword arm. At some point, he does need to utilize his elbows, and when the moment comes, cut strongly and swiftly.

And lastly, let us not forget that the comet is BLUE.

So let us have hope, the gods are on our side, and the Hero will prevail.

Great. Now they're actually wrapping the guy in pagan mythology. Honestly, I'm not sure if that's better or worse than pretending Obama is Jesus.

Even though the entire media has been falling over themselves to tell us how inspiring and eloquent and downright wonderful Obama is, it's possible that some of us may not have gotten that message. So now Barack is talking about it too:

"And let me make one last point about the comparison to McGovern and Dukakis, both excellent men, but I'm a pretty darn good politician," he said. "I can give a pretty good speech, and I can connect and inspire the American people in ways that have become apparent. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't pretty good at mixing it up, and so much of the attack machine that's been built up is part of the old politics."

Goodness. Get over yourself, man. It's just unseemly for any politician to give themselves complements like that.

Get informed. See your doctor.

Is anyone else a bit creeped out by Barack Obama's embrace of pseudo-fascist propaganda style art to promote his campaign? Is hope and change only possible through worshipful adoration of our great leader?

On the other hand, it did also provide the opening for LOLbama:

He'll make the trains run on time!

Now he's Luke Skywalker too!

In a move that is about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning, Rolling Stone magazine has joined the media choir to sing the glorious praises of the holy one, Obama! And as a delightful bonus, they've created this creepy, semi-fascist looking image of the Chosen One emitting what appears to be force-lightning from between his shoulder blades.

Basking in the warm afterglow of what must have been an especially satisfying session of endorsement writing, the genius copywriters at our premier journal of crap had this to say about our new political messiah:

Illinois senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama graces the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone, which hits newsstands today. Having galvanized an exciting new movement and shattered the conventions of typical beltway politics, Obama has sparked a social revolution the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1960s.

Really? You mean that chanting "hope" and "change" while channeling Walter Mondale's politics is all it takes to start a revolution? Damn. Too bad Walter Mondale didn't catch on to that.

To the staff of Rolling Stone, each and every one of you record and movie industry pimps and pushers, I say: Welcome to the cult of the Obamentarians.

I think that's Jann Wenner on the podium.

Who does Rolling Stone think Obama is? Via Ace, a commentary from The Onion:

Based on their latest cover, here's a short list of who Rolling Stone thinks Barack Obama is:

• Jesus
• Superman
• The totally awesome, glowing, superhero/savior spawn of Jesus and Superman
• The radioactive president of America's dreams
• A dewy Venus, majestically stepping forth from a serene ocean mist, but, like also a guy who's running for president.
• The late-90s sitcom character, Teen Angel.
• Not just the president of the ShinySuit 3000 Club For Men, but also a client.
• Zeus for a new age.
• Some kind of space hero, or whatever
• Mr. Cloudo, President of Heaven

I'd say either #3 or #4...

Yuval Levin argues that Obama! can't float along on piety and messianic rhetoric for too long:

America’s cultural elites are easily swept up in fashionable new idealisms, especially those that confirm their existing predilections and demand no serious personal sacrifice. But the culture of cool is also powerfully allergic to forthright displays of devotion and fervor. Its most powerful weapon is sarcasm, and the kind of piety on display in the Obama movement seems to beg for sarcastic deflation. Can we doubt that a South Park episode concluding in the handing out of Kool-Aid at an Obama rally is forthcoming?

Can Jon Stewart’s Daily Show put up with statements like Halle Barry’s above for long before letting loose a massive assault on the whole endeavor? How long can a politician go around saying “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” before a sharp and memorable punch line leaves him with a nasty lasting bruise? And how will Obama’s young followers respond when forced to choose between the movement to change the world and the snide knowing chuckle?

The frantic pace of our cultural trends means Obama is running a very serious risk of making his most ardent supporters tired of him very quickly. A nasty turn in his press coverage in just the past week offers Obama an ominous preview of how that could feel. This may not be his fault, but it is certainly his problem.

The point about Jon Stewart is pretty salient, IMO. Full disclosure: I find the Daily Show to be pretty unfunny, and as such I don't ever watch it. I presume that if Stewart and his merry band had gone after Obama! with any fervor, it would have made news. But seriously, they must realize that the Obama! crusade is the lowest-hanging comedy fruit out there in the political world today, right?

Let me just highlight the stuff that makes me cringe:

Phil Sowell, a retired government official, scarcely pauses for breath when asked what Barack Obama would do as President: "He will bring peace to the Middle East and anywhere in the world where there is tragedy."

But Larry Milton, 56, thinks that "he will be more worried about what happens here and less worried about other countries". Carrie Thompson hopes that he will "address global poverty and other issues which Republicans keep overlooking", while Ron Gaynor, 52, a lifelong Republican, says: "He will bring the power of veto and say `no' to a lot of this government spending - we seem to give money to people all around the globe."

Ron Gaynor is not a lifelong Republican. I'd put money on it. And the idea that Obama would reduce government spending, well, let's just call that idea "audacious."

They are all waiting to hear the man himself speak. It is a familiar scene, repeated across America dozens of times in recent weeks. Long queues snake around a sports hall - comprising people of all ages, races and social class - to gather under the Democrat presidential contender's slogan of "change we can believe in". But what, exactly, is this change in which they all believe? The Times conducted more than 50 interviews at a rally in Westerville, Ohio, where many supporters made plain they have contradictory - and burgeoning - expectations of what "President Obama" would do.

Sarah Jaffy, 41, says: "I really like his healthcare plan. And there's another policy - it's my favourite - ooh, I can't remember right now." Erin Henderson, 18, has gone with a gaggle of friends to see Mr Obama and she declares: "We're all really excited about him and we heard he might make it easier to get into college."

Seriously, is it really all that difficult to get into college these days? Perhaps things are different now, but I don't remember it being that difficult to get in. Perhaps she's referring to some Obama plan to help pay for college, but really, what politician doesn't want to help people pay for college?

Sitting in the audience, Alex Dukeman, 17, says that she expects Mr Obama to introduce universal healthcare. But isn't his plan voluntary while Mrs Clinton promises a compulsory mandate? "I just think he is a likable guy and he inspires people," she replies. Zach Adriaenssens, 20, says that Mr Obama is a "unifier" who can negotiate with Republicans "and will sort healthcare".

So Obama is so likeable and such a unifier that he can introduce a health care plan that previously (and frankly still) faces vehement opposition and just magically make it happen on the force of his personality?

Donny Murray, 21, says that Mr Obama "has definitely got a better plan" for tackling global warming. How so? "I'm not sure about the specifics, I just think he'll get more people involved," he says. Freda Graan, 27, a Spanish teacher at Ohio State university, explains: "If you listen to Hillary, she says, `I will do this'. Obama says, `We will do this'. I'm not scared to be idealistic, it's my responsibility as a voter not to be cynical."

Yusuf Abdi, 55, says: "He will change everything - healthcare, no war, education. He can do anything." Karen Clark, a teacher, 58, says that she has switched her support from Clinton because "I want to be on the winning side".

Yusuf Abdi is probably the creepiest of all - Obama will end war! Obama will give everyone healthcare and a good education! HE CAN DO ANYTHING!! Get a grip, man! He's a politician, just like George W. Bush. He wasn't immaculately conceived.