I really am not sure when this happened to our media, but it is clear that Jeffrey Toobin is the last honest man on television:
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Republicans in disarray!
Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.
It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.
You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.
Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.
Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.
🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.
Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!
This really is a full service blog.
Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
There’s always a light at the end of the frog.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
NR
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a YouTube video with the sound and video that badly out of sync before.
Conservatively Liberal
I bet that made Jimmy Carters day! Shockingly bad? I am glad I missed all but the tail end of it.
Even that was nothing more than I was a POW who wasn’t tortured, just beaten!
Sad sack.
eric_U
So Palin will not give any interviews. Hopefully Obama and crew are thinking about how they will define her. Since her husband didn’t want Alaska to belong to the United States, it seems like that would be a good opening.
DooDooBrown
Someone who was watching please tell me Toobin actually made that comment, because the poor sync and choppy audio made me thing this was a fake, sloppy patched-together edit.
sujal
better video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4cQLR5Eh-Y
aarrgghh
chris bowers quotes an unnamed dc newscaster: the obvious point: mccain is the wrong nominee
“he’s no sarah palin.”
brutal. upstaged by the understudy. then again, we are taking about john-the-former-pow-did-you-know?-my-friends-mclame. is this turning into the wingnut version of “all about eve”?
slag
McCain can’t run a campaign. But Obama’s the presumptuous one. Pass it on.
pillsy
I feel like I just stepped into an alternate reality, because I thought McCain’s speech was pretty good, and mostly overcame its lack of a theme, while Sarah Palin was just aggressively and embarrassingly lousy.
A.Political
Agreed re Toobin, he’s been on point now for quite some time, now we’ll have to see whether he’s permitted to continue his commentary in this manner.
Conservatively Liberal
Well Tom Ridge tried to be honest but then changed his mind.
Mylegacy
One hundred years from now they’ll teach University courses about the 2008 Presidential Election. What we are witnessing is a seed change, nothing short of a Revolution.
Quietly, in basements and dens around America, an army of MILLIONS of Bloggers and fellow travelers is no longer responding to the media – considering what the media puts in front of us – considering the facts they have fed us, the facts on which we have had to base out thoughts. What has happened this year, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WORLD HISTORY, is that the PEOPLE have actually turned the tables and WE THE PEOPLE now CONTROL the agenda and the information which is available to the people. The media have been reduced to following our lead; OUR findings of facts and the Blogsphere’s exposure of Sarah Palin’s appalling scandals and background are a prime example.
The REVOLUTION is HERE, we are not only fighting it we are WINNING it – not with hate, guns, rocks and blood – but with facts, and communication, and an Internet with a billion points of light – each point of which can take facts off and add new ones on.
For the first time in my adult life – America has a REAL chance at change.
God Bless America!
pillsy
Well Tom Ridge tried to be honest but then changed his mind.
Tom Ridge’s neck was obviously too ashamed to be seen in public with him.
Joshua Norton
Yeah, but all the asshole pundits and political “advisers” are saying everyone has to be soooo careful about how they talk to Palin. They don’t want to be to condescending or mean. We’ve all heard this $hit for the past 8 years now. The big bad Dems don’t want to be seen as being mean or condescending to the idiot wingnutz.
Bull$hit. Tiptoeing around her delicate (like a barracuda) sensibilities because she’s a woman is sexism – plain and simple. And since has sexism been such an anathema to the repigs? It’s built into their party platform, right along with keeping uppity Negroes in their place.
Kali's Little Sister
he’s no Sarah Palin…
but he doesn’t care! If he could have gotten there without her he would have clung to his mancrush Joe. Oh well, he found another powerful woman’s…coattails? pigtails? Hermes scarf? mukluk strings?…to grab onto to get what he needs in life.
It’s pretty clear this is not about principles or pride (don’t get us started on honor) anymore since he tossed those overboard long ago on this deathmarch to win.
rawshark
It’s on CNN right?
Dismissed.
Ninerdave
Joshua Norton, I dunno if you are new around here, but you can say Shit without the $. It’s a pretty profane crowd :)
Ninerdave
Where’s your neck? (obligatory Rocky Horror reference)
DooDooBrown
Mylegacy,
I truly hope you are right. I truly do.
But you’ll excuse me please if I doubt your triumphalism.
Most people in this country still can’t operate a computer with an acceptable level of competence. Many still can’t read. Many still rely only on the most shallow, manipulative partisan media without multiple perspectives.
Bush & Co. have succeeded in making America more scared, fat, lazy and attention-span-deprived. 2006 elections put that on notice, but never doubt this country’s ability to reduce itself to pre-cortical brain functioning level.
After 2004, I cannot assume they will “see the light” and try something different. I have some confidence it will happen because of how bad things have gone off track in this land I love, but my arrogant days of assuming everyone just HAS to live in the same reality tunnel as me are long gone.
We are at our final judgment hour–on the brink. This election is about the past (McCain) vs. the future (Obama) like none before. Don’t fall into the abyss of despair without first mentally preparing yourself for the reality that most people are still irrationally scared of the future, scared of the more complex 21st century reality we are now confronted with, and may balk for one more painful time before we truly hit bottom…and hopefully don’t keep plunging after that, if we do.
Joshua Norton
I usually do, but I was looking for a different way of saying it for a while.
cmorenc
NO YOU CAN’T! He’s just fucking with you that you can.
SamFromUtah
he found another powerful woman’s…coattails?
I believe the word you’re searching for is peplum.
Kali's Little Sister
Maybe $hit applies specifically to Republicans?
Brachiator
It’s official. You can now tell which pundits are in the tank for McCain by which of them calls this speech “great.”
I watched the speech on PBS. The pundits were silent at the end during the balloon drop and other stuff. Since there was absolutely nothing significant going on onstage, they could have begun approaching their wrap up.
Ultimately, David Brooks and some other numbskull said that the speech was wonderful. The only dissenter was Mark Shields.
The sad thing is that McCain did try to distance himself from the Bush Administration to some degree, but he ended up confusing the audience since he clearly was trying to pull them in a direction that they did not want to go.
I doubt that senior Republicans were too happy, because even though McCain was oddly rambling, he seemed to be suggesting something like a hefty unemployment compensation supplement to a party which has voted against extensions to unemployment compensation on the theory that if you cut workers off from any benefits, they will take any job that is offered to them no matter how shitty the wages are.
And when McCain kept insisting that he knows how to do stuff without offering a whiff of exactly how he would get things done — well, that was just sad.
The old wild ass theory was that Hillary wanted to see Obama lose so that she could run against McCain in 2012.
Now I wonder if some Republicans might want to see Obama win so that they can run Sarah Palin against him in 2012.
Laertes
Blitzer was appalled. He was literally stunned that Toobin gave a raw opinion. It’s not the done thing.
LiberalTarian
Listen–you cannot be too skeptical of these people. Rove is still working behind the scenes here, and he is pretty sure he is above the law. He’s turned the concept of morality on its head–it isn’t stealing an election if the other side does not stop you.
Be loud, be proud. Obama supporters really need to let the Repugs know they are being watched and have to have a validation for each and every vote.
Democracy needs constant vigilance!!
Ecks
Actually they do have to be careful. Huffington puts it best here:
She may have damaged her own credibility on this story line by being a dick yesterday – maybe… But if not, everyone knows what’s going on in a movie when the big sophisticated senator sneers at plucky Everyman J. Smith. I figure you gotta give her rope… counter punch the crap out of her if she’s nasty, and light her up as dangerously naive if she pretends to be nice.
Conservatively Liberal
Fucking liar. Don’t believe this asshat. You are a stupid shit if you cuss here because the last asshole who fucked up by spewing their epithet filled bullshit rant had their prick cut off and stuffed up their ass.
When you fuckwads cuss you are helping McCain.
Carry on motherfuckers. ;)
SamFromUtah
That of the unknown innocent plucked from obscurity and magnificently rising to the challenge.
…rising to the challenge by hiding from the press. I don’t buy it.
cain
Hey, HEY, HEY! What the *FUCK* dude! You can’t cuss him out like that, motherfucker! I mean, the sumbitch is a fucking friend of mine! Jeezus H. fuckstick! Go fuck yourself, you camel riding, carpet weaving, tone deaf, dead rotting carcass breath, lying, sack of fetid 2 day meat!!
POW baby!
cain
rawshark
Now that Hate Week is over what next?
rawshark
Now that Hate Week is over what’s next?
PC
2 hate months. And if Republicans are unlucky at least 4 hate years after that.
Slothrop
Really? I thought he was critical of *all* unemployment insurance, against the very idea of it.
I guess it was that incoherent…
Conservatively Liberal
Who the fuck do you think you are?! You think your shit don’t stink you goat blowing watermelon eating dick fwopping turban wearing shit sucking pregnant unmarried whore of a goatherder?
Naah, you’re alright. :)
Freedom Baby!
Joshua Norton
Yes, but she’s none of these good people. She’s a lying-for-Jesus whack-job fundie. She thinks we’re on a christian jihad in the middle east and people should gladly die for Jesus. She pays the people of Alaska to like her. If that isn’t “socialism” nothing is. She’s asked for a lot of the pork on the list that McCain sneers at and now claims she’s against it. She is everything that is wrong with this country. Too freaking bad if the repiggies don’t want to hear about it.
Not to mention she couldn’t tell the truth if there was a gun held to her head. (I know that’s covered by “liar”, but you can’t state it enough.)
Johnny Pez
Hey, you sons of bitches watch your goddamn fucking mouths, all right?
Jesus fucking Christ, won’t anyone think of the motherfucking children?
Brachiator
The Huffington Poster gets it a bit wrong. “A Face in the Crowd” is nasty stuff. The small town charmer is revealed to be a hypocrite who despises his audience.
A more modern example of the Palin phenomenon might be the British mini-series, “The Amazing Mrs Pritchard,” recently shown on PBS stations:
But I’m not sure that the strategy should be to “counter punch the crap out of her if she’s nasty, and light her up as dangerously naive if she pretends to be nice.”
McCain seemed tired, his speech half-hearted. His judgment in selecting her should be called into question. And perhaps Palin is not really “mainstream,” but is an exotic (to reverse the nonsense that they try to push onto Obama) whose religious and political views are extreme, and who is not a nice hockey mom, but a vindictive martinet.
What is the deal with “Troopergate?” Did she not believe in due process if she sought to have the trooper fired even after he had already been disciplined? Did she really, as mayor, broach the subject of banning books? Did she try to “Christianize” the ranks of city employees? What’s the deal with this Alaska Independence movement?
She is clearly not naive. There is no use letting anyone get away with that one, or in trying to attack her on this point. The idea is to break down this bland view that she is “experienced” into a serious evaluation of her actions, decisions and beliefs.
CharlesF
What the heck are you darn liberals cussing each other out for? Can’t we all just get along, please?
Blue Raven
You do realize this makes Tom Ridge an expert chicken fucker. This is a refreshing change from the goat fuckers we keep attracting. Finally, the Rethuglican Farm has some species diversity!
Martin
Well, don’t write Palin’s story so soon here. Telling the media to go fuck themselves and that she won’t be available between now and the election will seriously get their backs up. Their bread and butter is being able to report and McCain is taking that away. If they can’t get interviews of her, I’m sure they’ll be happy to interview and broadcast interviews of everyone involved in Troopergate.
Ecks
absolutely true. The question is how this miracle is to be achieved.
Ecks
After all, they really went after Cheney.
OTOH he was an old ugly guy with no charisma who they didn’t really want that much on camera anyway. This one’ll piss them off more. But are their hardballs hairy enough to go there. OTOOH, spine hasn’t been the press’s strong suit in the last, oh… 30 years.
NR
Yeah, but check out this Survey USA poll. Ignore the depressing numbers about the Palin speech for now and just look at this question:
Is the media rooting for Barack Obama? Rooting for John McCain? Or trying its best to be fair to both?
54% Barack Obama
8% John McCain
35% Being Fair To Both
4% Not Sure
Utterly ridiculous, but there you have it. Over at MyDD, Jerome Armstrong points out what these numbers mean:
If the media really tries to go after Sarah Palin, there will be a backlash, despite the fact that she’s lied several times in her speeches already and is enmeshed in legitimate scandals. In all likelihood, it’ll go the other way. The last two months of this campaign could end up looking a lot like the 2000 campaign.
Ash Can
So poor, delicate Sarah is being hidden away from all those big, mean reporters, eh? Mark your calendars, kids. October 2 — the one and only vice presidential debate. Joe Biden ain’t perfect, but, in a matchup with the amazing disappearing Governor Palin, I’d play his odds at the track any day of the week.
KT
I think a more successful line of attack would be to highlight her extreme views. Pound her on creationism, global warming and abortion. If she answers with vague platitudes, keep hammering. If she pretends to support choice, global warming etc, ask her point blank if she will put that in writing.
McCain/Palin have no hope of winning if you get them on the record saying they will support these extreme views. A lot of people believe in “pro-life,” “anti-global-warming,” “pro-creationism” but not enough to win the election. People need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what McCain will do regarding these issues.
If they stick to their guns, they’re toast. If they hem and haw, they’re toast. If they agree to put it in writing that they will support choice, acknowledge global warming, reject creationism, they’re toast.
They have to be relentlessly pounded on these issues.
wasabi gasp
Palin’s grave is gonna dig itself. The focus should be on McCain.
DBrown
McCain was on a Green screen again? That seems odd considering the jokes he received the last time – are they expecting him to pass so Palin can take over and lead the party?
Eye-candy Palin, as a pig with lipstick (all time pork queen, and that needs to be driven home and hammered by everyone) this pig needs to have her ass handed to her – debt, taxes and pork was all she could achieve with her short stay as mayor of under 6000 (cureent pop. is 9000; she had under 6000 when she was a pork manager).
Poor McCain, he is a dead man walking and he doesn’t know it – the christian loonies have him a marked man.
wasabi gasp
Also, taking McCain down to a position where Palin appears to be the only thing keeping him afloat is a great place to have his ego drifting listlessly.
Ecks
I’m with KT here… though I’m sure she will try to find charming ways to finesse this stuff as much as possible (look for “I just want to give schools a choice on creationsim, and other such worming). I think you can make it a 1 2 punch tho. Make her concede the wacky issues, then that opens up a space where she’s not the plucky nice-gal underdog, but the crazy lady… When you’ve got that window open, THEN you can hit her with not knowing anything about the rest of the world. Hit her too hard when she’s still sympathetic, and it can backfire.
BTW, I’m thinking on this whole ‘no interviews’ thing. I think it might work for them. She’ll still be on people’s TV’s in adverts and the news, people who aren’t paying attention won’t feel like she’s disappeared at all. No interviews just lets her image be stage managed much more carefully.
The other thing I’m thinking, though, is that she’s going to be a long term republican threat (hence all this “star, but totally not in a celebrity way” talk)… If she can be rendered as an extreme and unwisely ill-informed figure now, while her image is still not settled, the D’s could be saving themselves some real grief down the road.
Ip, I feel like Rove now. I need a shower.
TenguPhule
McCain was jacking off in the BBQ sauce and nobody noticed a difference.
Conservatively Liberal
If the press don’t get an interview with Palin, I wonder if they will use the one VP debate to ask the questions that McCain won’t let them. If anything, hopefully the press will hound McCain with statements like:
What is McCain hiding?
If McCain believes that Palin is a strong woman, why won’t he let her stand up on her own two feet?
Why did McCain choose a relatively unknown person as his VP and why is he refusing to allow her to answer questions that the American voters have about her?
And on and on and on. I hope. If they go after her half as much as they did Obama on Wright then Palin is dead meat.
How does McCain expect to get away with essentially picking a candidate who he totally controls access to and refusing to allow her to interview anyone. I just don’t see how the press is going to leave that bone alone.
You don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. They have to sell their shit, and they need fresh hot shit to sell their product. Sarah is just overflowing with shit, and if they can’t interview her then they are going to find every single person who knows/knew her and has a poor opinion of her and put that in their papers.
We need dirty laundry…
zuzu's petals
And don’t forget, her “executive ability” was so great she had to hire an administrator to run a town of 6,000.
Ecks
Silly Conservatively Liberal, IOKIYAR!
Cute mock attack ad, if democrats were republicans. Hey, it convinced me.
Conservatively Liberal
On another line of thought, I wonder if they are putting this out there so the press gets (and reports) the opinion that Palin is weak tea (lowering expectations circa 2000) because the McCain camp are hiding her. Once they have their parrot trained, they let her loose saying that they never said that the press could not ask questions. So she parrots her lines and everyone oohs and aahs about what a pretty bright birdie she is and the issue (which is not the real issue with her) is dead.
Then the McCain camp turns again on the press and derides them for questioning the integrity of McCain or his perfectly angelic running mate, scoring big points with the low information voters.
I am getting the feeling that this is the line of attack that they are going to use. This race is far from over and I have a feeling that these assholes just might get lucky and trip across some game plan that works for them in November.
I know Obama and his team are working hard on this, and I hope that they come up with a plan of action that works.
Ecks
Huh, run an Obama (letting the media story burn itself into the ground, then staging a convention that definitively smacks it all down for maximum drama value). Maybe. It depends how well she ends up performing. And given that running as a republican these days isn’t a thinking person’s job (Reagan: “I woulda retired earlier, but they keep writing them yella cards, and I had to read them”)… I suspect her only weakness would be that in the face of aggressive questioning she could get pushed into saying stupid theocratic stuff. But who knows.
zuzu's petals
Is this really the official position of the campaign or was it just Nicole Wallace being particularly evasive and obnoxious ?
Rome Again
I was going to mention this right when I first saw it, but, of course WP wasn’t cooperating and didn’t allow me to make that post, so… I never got to.
:(
OriGuy
Mylegacy, a pedantic nit: the phrase is “sea change”. It’s from The Tempest. It’s not clear what Shakespeare had in mind, but it might refer to the changing of the tides.
Ecks
last thought: The other solution on Palin is to let all this family nonsense wash away (perhaps leaving a patina of tarnish), and the point out the basic truth: that she is really just Bush with lipstick – rewards loyalty over competence, surrounds herself with flunkies, demands that nobody speak to the press without her permission, blah blah blah. Bush is probably kicking himself that he didn’t think to ban books first.
Rome Again
Joshua,
The only standing rule we have right now is that we can’t say “Sarah Palin is a b*tch”
(oh, and the use of the word McCain used to describe his wife – four letter word, starts with c, ends t – is kinda sorta off limits too).
Rome Again
I noticed this too, I was yelling at the television: “Okay, what’s the official consensus asswipes? Where’s the fucking commentary?”
Rome Again
He’s always jacking off, that’s why I have taken to calling him Spooge!
Xenos
In the heartland, they have no sea, only seeds. So they have seed changes.
Full fathom five, the constitution lies,
of freedoms bold mere sentiments made;
those mirrored globes are the King’s eyes,
the text revered, yet again rights fade;
and doth suffer a seed-change…
Rome Again
Ecks, are you tripedal as well? I’m just curious. ;)
zzyzx
For the next month at least it sounds like they’re going to restrict Palin to safe audiences. At the same time Clinton – and this is genius because not only is she the right gender, but she’s not even on the ticket so it doesn’t elevate Palin – is going to give speeches against the governor. If she sticks to “Iraq is a mission from God”/creationist/book banner/a raped 14 year old shouldn’t be able to get an abortion/in favor of bridge to nowhere and earmarks/against sex ed/left her town in debt, well where can McCain go in response to it? Palin will win over the people who like those things but the rest of us will be appalled.
Maybe I’m just whistling in the dark, but I’m not too worried about the polls right now. McCain will receive a bump today in the trackers but I don’t see Thursday building on it. The speech was so scattershot that I don’t see where Obama takes a lasting hit on it.
The DNC gave Obama a boost because it turned Democratic voters support of him from the 70s to the 80s. Clinton speaking out against Palin can get it up to the mid 80s. McCain was already in the 90s for his base. He energized them, but if Palin’s staying out of site and the speech starts to fade, where’s the groundwork for a bounce?
Rome Again
Heh!
McCain’s camp screws up again. Funny as hell!
gizzi
I’d love to get Wolfie into a poker game. Four years ago, some guest mentioned the Bush “Regime”. He started his famous “but, but, but…..”Regime” has a bad connotation to it”……the guest said “Yeah, that’s right”….Now he’s stunned that someone would call a spade a spade ?
What the fuck is wrong with these people ?
Conservatively Liberal
McCain has always depended on women to get through life, to provide him with what he needs be it a wife, sex, money, or whatever pleases him. Now he wants one to help him to achieve the presidency. His first beauty queen wife kept the home fire warm until he was released, with her suffering a debilitating accident in the meantime. After his return he had some affairs since his first wife lost her looks in the accident, then he dumped her for his second beauty queen wife who has greased the skids for him with the truckloads of cash she has.
Now he is going to try and ride the coattails of a former beauty queen contest runner-up right into the White House. He is asking those in his party who do not like him and don’t want to vote for him to further his own goals (and theirs) by not voting for him but rather voting for Palin. She is his insurance policy to the fundies. The fundies know that McCain is old enough that he could pass away at any time. If he does, their girl is in power and they have their dream president, abortion ban and ID all of the way. Even if he survives through one (or two) terms, their girl will be well positioned to step right in and take the job.
These people are not looking at what is best for our country because they don’t give a shit about the country. They only care about themselves and those like them. Everyone else is trash.
Sarah Palin is dangerous for our country, of that I have absolutely no doubt. She knows that she is unprepared to be president yet she could care less because she just might be president if this works out for her. If she loses, she goes back to being Governor of Alaska. No skin off her back, right? And even then she can return and run at the top of the ticket in a future race, so even then her political career is far from over.
With people like Peggy Noonan who are bold-faced lying about Palin to the people who read her and trust her, the Grand Illusion juggernaut just keeps rolling along. They are not real Republicans, they are party hacks who parrot the party line of the day in support of the party, come hell or high water. Real Republicanism is dead and all that is left are a bunch of nasty assholes who are afraid of and hate everyone but themselves.
I hope Obama comes up with a way to not only take her out of contention but will wipe any future chance of her ever running again.
Conservatively Liberal
Good one! Hey, to a rightie who only pays lip service to the service men and women who have sacrificed for our country, one Walter Reed is just as good as another.
Right? ;)
Incompetence in action. That is what John McCain and his people are all about. Total incompetence.
jhh
McCain has built his career by hanging on to the skirts of strong, beautiful or rich women. Two models, one of them an heiress, and a beauty queen turned sportscaster turned pol.
He’s a girly man.
Discuss.
john b
and the funnier thing about that pic is that was what provided the terrible green backdrop for a couple minutes which his campaign should have been avoiding like the plague for the rest of the campaign.
i gotta say whoever decided to have a giant (sorta crappy) screen behind them made a terrible choice. at basically no point did the backdrop do anything but distract. and it only really looked good when they did a wide shot of the whole room.
thereisnorule6
McCain is Rove’s trojan horse candidate. If somehow he gets him elected, McCain resigns within 6 months with a terminal medical problem. Then we get 4 more years of Bush in drag. Mark my words.
gbear
Not to mention that Cheney could make sure they never work again, put them on the no-fly list, audit their taxes, and have them arrested by the feds.
TheFountainHead
Agreed. Somebody said, “Hey, guys, we can spend $—,— on a giant LCD screen and project WHATEVER we want!” Someone else said, “Even a crass 9/11 video that will make all the white people afeared again?” A Third guy said, “Absolutely! Make them think twice about voting for a brown guy!” No one said, “Uhmm, what’s this gonna look like on CNN?”
gbear
So are the debates with Biden all cancelled now? I hope that Biden demands that they go on whether Secretive Sarah shows up or not. I think the point needs to be made that she’s refusing to participate in some of the most basic exercises in democratic elections.
Walker
Personally, I thought the best example was Being There
oh really
Even if the media could interview Palin, virtually all questions would be off-limits as being elitist, sexist, or both.
Q: Could you explain your relationship with the AIP? Does your husband support Alasks’a secession from the United States? If so, would that create a conflict of interest for a sitting Vice President?
ELITIST!!! Only elitists question anyone about political parties that call for secession from the United States.
SEXIST!!! Questions about the politics of one’s spouse (even if they involve breaking up the country or treason) are clearly sexist and demean all women, everywhere, all the time. Back off!
Q: Could you explain what you did with the funds for the Bridge to Nowhere after the bridge was canceled but Alaska still received the money?
SEXIST!!! Nobody would ever ask a male governor a question like this. Shame!
Questions about moose hunting, snowmobiling, and beauty pageantry wouldn’t be very interesting to me, although I imagine Sarah’s core constituency cares about nothing else.
The Straight Talk Express just keeps barreling along.
PeterJ
They got no idea about what Walter Reed looks like and they used fake soldiers.
The Grand Panjandrum
Shorter McCain: I haz The Google, bitches. Now get off my lawn!
NonyNony
So the question of the day (or at least my question of the day) is: “Did they do this on purpose or on accident?”
See, this week seems to be setting up the campaign on the idea that Obama/Biden should be squaring off against Sarah Palin. She’s not running for the President of the US, but you damn sure couldn’t tell THAT from this convention.
So is this their intent – are they really going to be running Palin as their lead for the next two months? Or is this a head-fake to get the Dems to go after Palin harder than they really should be going after a VP candidate in order to take some heat off of McCain (and make the Dems look like chumps and assholes)?
DBrown
Like it or not, eye-candy palin is a factor. That said, everyone who says McSame is the main guy is still right. The repubic base will never waver from the Pork Queen no matter what Obama or anyone else says and it is dangerous to just attack her – her weakness is pork $$$. The key non-commited voters will, no matter Dem’s efforts, ignore her but listen to McPOW bullshit. Obama will always fight two wars – McCains constant lies and the rightwing nutjob/creationist (named pork queen palin) elitism smear; these are the dangers.
The race is still Obama’s to lose so he has to just keep PA, add the nearly already his VA and not lose MI. If he does this, he wins (assuming no one notices his wife’s kids are BLACK … .) Hillary and Bill can help in PA, MI. VA is only his to win or lose.
charlotte
My theory on MSNBC’s fawning over McCain’s dreadful speech is that they already know, as do we all, that Keith O. is going to erupt all over McCain’s ass tonight over the ghoulish 9/11 video and the tacky Rudy/Sarah pitbull show. So Chris Matthews had to go out there last night and gush over what a manly man of patriotic manliness John M. is.was.will ever be. I hope Keith doesn’t go on and on though in shaking indignation mode. He’s much more effective when he dries it up a bit. Go, Keith!
Re: The Grand Old Party, as a proud Socialist, I too hope that it gets its act together in the next decade or so. The USA as a whole tends to be better off when the Republicans aren’t being held hostage by the lunatic fringe. As it now stands, Miss Sarah, cheap, looks like she wants to stuff the old Elephant, exhausted, into the nearest Assemblies of God meeting hall, slut, and keep it there, help me, forever. Or until the Rapture. She’s as common as they come. Go, Alaska!
John McCain is an irresponsible asshole. Cindy’s wardrobe, on the other hand, is just killer.
harlana pepper
I wasn’t going to say anything, but did anyone notice they played Heart’s ‘Barracuda’ during the post-McCain speech rounds with Sarah?
harlana pepper
Oh, and this.
chopper
i dunno. i like the idea of putting the VP with no qualifications at all who’s completely avoiding the press in the spotlight. pushes mccain to the back burner and boy will he blow up over that.
plus, to add to the lines about palin avoiding the press, how would president palin face down putin if she’s afraid of even talking to reporters?
chopper
yeah, and heart is pissed as shit.
magisterludi
Dr. Laura, surprisingly, doesn’t share Palin fever with the usual Dobson-based crowd. She thinks she’s a lousy Mom.
Actually, so do I. That the Palins threw their preggers daughter into the international spotlight was the height of self interest, not national service. Neither she, nor her husband deserve parenting awards.
The hypocrisy of this issue vis a vis Bristol’s “choice” and the reaction of the “religious right” to Jamie Lyn Spear and her parental surprise is nothing short of breathtaking.
.
Brachiator
This is the official position of the McCain campaign. It also feeds into the Republican narrative that the media are inherently unfair, are unimportant elitists, and are un-American if they are not reflexively supporting GOP positions.
Of course, Palin is not staying out of sight. She’s staying away from the evil liberal press, will not be giving interviews and will not be appearing on any of the weekend shows. Friendly press and pundits will be her surrogates. Meanwhile, Palin will be attending a slew of fundraisers, and will be sold to swing state voters as the antidote to Obama. She will also be briefed extensively on various policy positions so that when she is finally unveiled in the public again, she will be a more credible candidate.
Sadly, the Obama team appears to be falling for the okey doke here. According to a recent Andrew Sullivan post:
This is too passive. They will keep Palin’s first impression as a feisty hockey mom in the minds of millions of voters.
Similarly, blandly linking McCain to Bush means that they are not paying attention. McCain’s speech was a bore, but he was clearly staking out a position independent of Bush.
Obama needs to skewer McCain on all fronts, including his judgment in selecting Palin.
And Biden and everyone else should be upfront with the message that Palin is not what she seems, that she is incompetent, rigid, non-mainstream, and anything else that will fly.
They have to force her to make public appearances and interviews sooner than the McCain team wants. They must force her to explain and to defend herself. The best of all possible worlds would be to force her to withdraw from the election.
They need to disrupt her value as a fundraiser and her ability to solidify the religious base of the party.
jake
The REAL WR facility ain’t pretty and the old hospital is clearly too small. I bet some knuckle head thought no one would ever notice. You know. Like people who’ve actually been there.
Ed Drone
Actually, since she is self-described as a “pit bull with lipstick,” I’d say BITCH is HOW SHE DESCRIBES HERSELF.
Not that I’d call a dog that, you know?
Ed
Hob
No, not the tides. That whole passage describes a drowned man at the bottom of the sea, with pieces of his body slowly being replaced by coral and pearls: “Nothing in him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.” It was a pretty specific image, which has been obscured by the modern use of the phrase to mean any kind of major change. Can you tell this is a pet peeve of mine?
Brachiator
Rachel Maddow is having fun with a comparison that might get her in trouble again, but is not inappropriate. I am expanding on it here.
McCain plucked Sarah Palin out of a backwater town, keeps her under his thumb in refusing to let her out in public, and then is going to send her out at night to bring him back money from fund raisers.
Yes, he is pimping her out.
The joke was, “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”
She is saying that she can be more tenacious and ferocious than a pit bull. This is not the same thing at all as saying that she is a “bitch.”
Understanding figurative language shouldn’t be that difficult even in an era of straight talking.
I can pet peeve it with the best of them.
Rome Again
I had a feeling that was coming.
In the interest of Deregulation, no one ever has to ask permission to use any song or product, they just do, with no royalties, no acknowledgment of the work that went into making the thing and certainly no feelings of guilt over stealing intellectual property.
They are thieves.
They were warned to not use certain music, they did anyway, they have no scruples at all.
You’d think that for a candidate who has a song written for him they could stop using the music of others who have asked not to be associated with him.
McCain is just a taker.
Ecks
Tripedal? That means what I think it means?
Anyway, McCain is under a pretty much a no interview standing order too. The straight gag express indeed.
Just keep talking up her extreme opinions, establish them in the media narrative about her, and if she’s not out there to refute them, then they *should* stick. Then she’s screwed. If she renegs on them she’s a flip flopper and a betrayer of the base (they shalt not forgive), and if she acknowledges them she’s marginalized herself. Take advantage of her silence to frame her as the extremist she is!