Sunday, August 31, 2008

The Religious Right Gets On Board the McCain Train

It took me 24 hours to figure this out, but now I get it. The point of Sarah Palin is to get the religious right to support the doddering old fool that they haven't really liked. I do wonder if the Republicans are pretty sure they're going to lose, but didn't want to get killed which they would've without the evangelicals. So they put Palin on the ticket to get the evangelicals off their butts and out to vote. Maybe they think that will help them actually win. (I doubt it.) But they can't seriously think that Hillary voters will vote for the Neanderthal Palin (with apologies to Neanderthals everywhere).

Friday, August 29, 2008

A Helluva Speech

If you did not watch Barack last night, I urge you to do so. It was a fabulous speech. He laid out specific plans and opened the door to many viewpoints on hot issues. He also did not soar, as I'm sure he could have -- he was passionate but he kept it professional and presidential. A great speech that I think even overwhelmed the commentators.

Idiotic comment of the night (and I don't watch Fox, so there may have been much worse) was that old racist, anti-Semite Pat Buchanan saying the speech was not a liberal speech. What?!! Obama laid out everything liberals stand for and it was not a liberal speech! Moron.

Laughable

Grampy McInsane's VP choice is purely laughable. And Joe Biden must be having the biggest laugh of all. He will destroy her in a debate.

This is worse than Dan Quayle, which was about as pandering as you can get. Sarah Palin has six years experience as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,715) and 19 months as governor of Alaska, the fourth smallest state in the union. One heartbeat away from the presidency (of a 72 year old man)? You have got to be kidding.

I'm sure they did this in some distorted thinking that Hillary voters will vote for any woman. Ridiculous!

And they just threw the experience argument right out the door, when they pick a VP with far, far less experience than Obama.

An amazingly cynical and terrible, terrible choice.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Media Madness

I never watch the conventions. Its a media circus and a waste of time. But it is the most obvious example of the media madness that we endure in this country. The media concocts a narrative and then reports to that narrative. So the narrative last night was that Clinton supporters would not support Obama and that Hillary had to save the day. Completely ridiculous but the media faithfully reported to that narrative that they had created. My local paper this morning had an interview with one, count 'em, one delegate who said she was having a hard time switching her support. What did the other 152 delegates think? We have no idea, because it didn't fit the media's narrative. Ridiculous!!!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Biden it is

I can live with Joe Biden. Always liked him. Not a millionaire, unlike most others in the Senate. Raised kids as a single dad when wife and infant daughter died in a car crash (remarried 5 years later). Oldest son is a JAG set to be deployed to Iraq in October. Smart and feisty. And got off the best line of the primaries in reference to Guiliani: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11."

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Doddering Old Fool

Some local hack of a columnist called McCain a "man of the people." Here's my response:

Who are you calling a man of the people? Surely not McCain! That doddering old fool has 8 houses and wears $500 shoes. He cheated on his first wife (who was disfigured and disabled in a horrible car accident while he was in 'Nam) with the rodeo queen and beer heiress who has made his political career possible.

McCain has never held a non-government job. He's never filled out a job application or tried to figure out whether to buy groceries or gas.

He's voted with W more than 95% of the time. His much-vaunted foreign policy experience seems to be based a world from 30 years ago. His current ideas are even more radical than W's. He's out of touch, borderline senile and would be a complete disaster as a president.

And his ads are juvenile and offensive. Eff McCain.

VP Prediction

As I posted on my Facebook yesterday, I predict Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will be Obama's VP pick.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Unfit for Publication

You should watch this -- Media Matters' Paul Waldman takes down that moron Jerome Corsi.

Corsi is a former Swift Boater (he co-wrote the book i 2004). He claims in this piece of trash that Obama is a drug-using Muslim. That any media outlet gives him one second of airtime is unbelievable.

Corsi is a fabulist. He's nothing but a liar. He's also a white supremacist, anti-Semitic and a complete right-wing radical. Here's more. Corsi has said he supports the Constitution Party's candidate for president. The Constitution Party are nothing but anti-tax, white supremacist nuts.

Just as the Republicans called on Obama to repudiate and reject Farrakhan (with whom Obama had absolutely no relationship), I call on McCain to repudiate and reject Corsi and his book. Oh, but when the media asked McCain about the book, his response was "gotta keep your sense of humor."

Grampy McInsane.

Shadow President

I really can't believe what McCain is getting away with. Why the media isn't all over him for acting like the presumptive president is beyond me. He "sends" Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham to Georgia?! Outrageous.

Its also clear that the candidate is losing it. I heard a radio news report yesterday (probably NPR) that McCain has said so many crazy things to the media that his campaign is now limiting the media's access to him and limiting his town hall meetings. Of course, a few weeks ago, the McCain campaign spokesman said that the candidate doesn't speak for the campaign.

Grampy McInsane.

Olympics

We've been watching a lot of the Olympics. Loved the opening ceremony --quite memorable. I especially enjoyed that idiot Matt Lauer telling us that it was intimidating that the Chinese have so many people.

NBC's coverage is frustrating because they don't show much of the sports that aren't well known in America. I miss living in cities that border Canada at Olympics time because the CBC presented a different perspective than American television.

Another weird thing about NBC -- the play-by-play coverage that is being done from New York. Baseball and soccer seem to be covered this way. And I never want to see beach volleyball again.

I've been thinking that in many ways, my world view was formed in part by the Olympics of the 1960s which I watched faithfully on ABC. I think that's when I became attracted to what has always seemed to me the more logical approach of the Europeans.

And hey I'm watching now and Canada has just won its first medal of these games -- a gold in women's wrestling!

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Unhinged

McCain's response to the conflict between Russia and Georgia has been downright scary. Also full of complete hot air but still scary.

Josh Marshall writes on TPM:

The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians -- and ironically and a bit improbably with the Chinese too...The key is that McCain, both in terms of policy and temperament, wants to court that result. It's sort of funny when he's just an unhinged senator. But think for a moment where we'd be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they've now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him...This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he's giving us of a McCain presidency.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Just Askin'

If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama
instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?

-- Marc Ambinder