Good live coverage here, and the reports make this sound like it is going to be a real bad one, despite being only cat two.
Archives for September 2008
Friday Night Open Thread
And the Doughy Pantload comes through with the most awesomest spin of the campaign so far. I will paraphrase:
“John McCain does not use a computer because he was a POW.”
Right now you probably think I am kidding. Take it away, Jonah:
Does anyone know why McCain doesn’t use a computer or email? As a couple readers suggested to me, it might be because his injuries prevent it. I mean he can’t lift his arms much higher than his chest and it looks like he has all sorts of other mobility problems with them. Maybe he can’t type or use something like a blackberry. I don’t know. But I hope the Obama campaign found out before they played the granpa Simpson card on McCain. I’d hate for Obama to be mocking a veteran’s disability to score cheap points.
Umm, Jonah?
John McCain, using his blackberry.
This is officially the stupidest fucking election ever.
*** Update ***
Jonah is deadly serious in peddling this piffle:
The reason he doesn’t send email is that he can’t use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe (March 4, 2000):
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
Behold the next wingnut fauxtrage. Kinda cool watching these morons work in real time.
Someone tell the morons to read this story:
There’s no telling if he’s going to buy a tape from the Video Professor, or just have his son-in-law sit down with him for a few days, but John McCain has decided to learn how to use the internet.
“I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself,” McCain told the New York Times in an interview that appeared Sunday. “I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”
Even so, McCain bluntly admits, “I don’t e-mail. I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail.”
Or this one:
Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?
Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.
(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)
Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are just part of your blog.
Q: But do you go on line for yourself?
Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.
Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?
Mr. McCain: No
Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.
It should come as no great surprise that these are the same folks who think Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is close to Russia. Clown shoes, I tell you. Clown shoes.
*** Update #2 ***
It then shows a picture of McCain and George Bush and says, “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”
Hitting an opponent on economic issues is standard political strategy. But going after a candidate for his skill with computers and e-mail …
…is a new, 21st century line of attack.
The McCain campaign charged that it’s untrue.
“John McCain travels with a laptop,” said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds. “This is a senseless tactic from Obama’s campaign because they’re struggling with the realization that the American people understand he is not equipped to deliver change because his record has no bipartisanship or significant legislative accomplishment in it.”
That was the McCain campaign, today. Is there anyone dumber than right wing bloggers?
BTW- These loons are desperately hoping they can push this meme into the MSM, but are forgetting one thing. While they are blogging from where ever their fact-free zone is, high on cheeto dust, actual reporters have spent the last 20 years covering McCain, riding on the Straight Talk Express, riding on his campaign plane, watching him, and have seen him repeatedly use a blackberry and a phone and a computer and drive his car and god knows what else (including fly a plane AFTER returning from Viet Nam and throw out the first pitch in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series).
The morons pushing this nonsense really are in a fantasy land of their own creation.
Low Hanging Fruit
Alright, media types. Now he is just insulting your intelligence:
McCain issued this challenge in his defense:
I’ve been through this litany before, where I say, “ok, what specific area have I quote changed?” Nobody can name it. … I am the same person and I have the same principles.
I will start for you all- offshore drilling.
There, that took .8 seconds to come up with one. Here are six dozen more flip-flops.
This is is some low-hanging fruit for the media, easier even than Gary Hart’s challenge.
Open Thread
Looks like we have raised about $7-9k in the past week or so, which is a solid effort. At any rate, toss in 5 bucks and have one less beer tonight at happy hour.
And, for your entertainment value, the RNC in one minute (via Rumproast):
Meanwhile, the ladies at the view just bitch-slapped McCain. Here is a snippet from Ben Smith:
Personally, I am sick and tired of hearing that lying sack of shit claim that the reason he needs to lie in so many ads is because Obama refuses to do town hall meetings with him. It is just such a ridiculous premise- “I had to lie and be nasty because he wouldn’t do what I wanted.”
And another thing- he knows the ads are running- enough with the nonsense about “the John McCain I know would never run those ads.” You apparently didn’t know John McCain very well.
Hurricane Ike
If you are reading this from Galveston, or if you have friends from the Galveston area, it is time for you to get out:
On the hurricane’s present path the surge will certainly top the Galveston sea wall, and he estimates that if the path holds your chances of living through the night if you’re still on Galveston island are probably less than 50%.
Seriously, folks. Grab the kids, the pets, and GTFO.
Brendan Loy has the coverage.
Dan Drezner Cuts To The Chase
Dan Drezner, after watching the Palin interview, asks a question:
Question to other GOP policy wonks: is it possible to support a candidate that campaigns on the notion that expertise is simply irrelevant?
The depressing thing is that this has been the GOP platform for years now. Expertise is overrated. Gut instincts, being “tough,” and being “decisive,” and not “blinking” are all far more important than actually knowing things.
Look at the thorough disdain for science the GOP has displayed for the past few years. Amorphous morals trump reason and science, and then those morals are conveniently discarded or altered when it becomes inconvenient for the GOP (see: family values, David Vitter).
The funny thing about all this is that the new savior of the GOP, Sarah Palin, is the one who is finally waking everyone up to what the Republican party really is all about. They are not serious about foreign policy (Fallows is just brutal). They are not serious (or honest) about scientific policy. They are not serious about economic policy (other than cutting taxes). They are not serious about an energy policy (just drill, baby, drill).
They just are not serious about, well, anything.
And Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.
And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country. This from last night stood out for me:
Charles Gibson, the interviewer, asked her if she didn’t hesitate and question whether she was experienced enough.
“I didn’t hesitate, no,” she said.
He asked if that didn’t that take some hubris.
“I answered him yes,” Ms. Palin said, “because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”
George Bush in a dress. The Palin interview should be a gut-check for Republicans and conservatives who think the last eight years has been a perversion of conservative principles. I am betting most of them will not even put down their pom-poms, though.
OMFG
Sorry for all the threads, but this really deserves a thread of its own:
News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it’s the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes “age-appropriate” programs) or Palin’s repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).
The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to “destroy” the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn’t exactly please reporters, and makes the whole hanging-with-McCain-on-the-Straight-Talk era seem 100 years ago.
As for the sudden insistence that Palin is a delicate flower who must be shielded from harsh rhetoric, take this example. Joe Biden, asked if Palin as VP would be a step forward for women, said: “Look, I think the issue is: What does Sarah Palin think? What does she believe? I assume she thinks and agrees with the same policies that George Bush and John McCain think. And that’s obviously a backward step for women.”
A typical political shot? Not according to the RNC, which said the “arrogant” remarks are “better suited for the backrooms of his old boys’ club,” while Palin is trying to break “the highest glass ceiling.”
Of course, she wasn’t picked because she is a woman, was she? And I’m sure if Hillary was the nominee, the RNC would be extremely respectful of her attempt to shatter an even higher glass ceiling.
That was Howard Kurtz, pretty much shooting straight down the middle. There wasn’t even one attempt at false equivocation.
The McCain campaign has been so scummy, so dishonest, so full of shit, so trivial, so small-minded, and so utterly full of contempt for the voter that they have lost Howard Kurtz, the go-to guy for right wing spin, the man who single-handedly has pumped more bullshit memes from the right wing blogosphere into the mainstream discourse than anyone else.
And they have lost him. If I were the McCain campaign, I would begin to worry. You are no longer fooling the WSJ, Fred Hiatt’s WaPo editorial page, or even Howard Kurtz.
Even George Bush never lost Howard Kurtz.