Vote for Palin and let God sort it out
Shorter Glenn Beck:
Dear Baby Jesus:Please let John McCain win, then die. Or something.
love,
Glenn
Author Page for davenoon
Stevens Convicted
The more immediately pressing question, of course, is whether the conviction will matter in Stevens’ bid for re-election. Ordinarily, I’d be inclined to repeat my usual pessimistic assertions to the effect that Stevens could be videotaped at a bull moose bukakke party and still be re-elected in November. But these days, I’m feeling unusually hopeful.
So today, I raise a glass of Pruno in Ted’s honor.
Prognostication Hall of Fame
Steven Warshawsky — proprietor of a “boutique law firm” that defends employers in discrimination suits — has written an epically funny brief on behalf of teh power of teh PUMA. Apparently, he’s met some! And they have websites. There was an old lady at a McCain event, for example, who used to work as a phone volunteer for Hillary Clinton. And some other dude. But that’s nothing, he explains, compared with the dearth of Obama buttons in his neighborhood:
Some more anecdotal evidence of a lack of support for Obama among Democrats: I live in the Upper West Side neighborhood of New York City. You cannot find too many places in the country that are more liberal than that. Walking around my neighborhood during the 2004 presidential campaign, I felt “assaulted” on all sides by Kerry-Edwards buttons, bumper stickers, and posters. This year, there clearly is not the same level of outward support for Obama. It is remarkable (and welcome). Will most of the people in my neighborhood vote for Obama on election day? Of course. Will Obama win New York? Almost certainly. But the lack of enthusiasm for Obama among these Democrats, who I’m sure would be going gaga for Hillary, speaks volumes about Obama’s true prospects for victory this year.
And given the total lack of McCain-Palin signs in my neighborhood, I’d warn Oklahoma Republicans against being too confident about the eventual disposition of their seven electoral votes. After all, Warshawsky was on the money about Giuliani and Mark McGuire, so who knows?
Spin Prediction
The McCain campaign’s response to this bit of news will consist of some variation on the following:
Americans should be comforted to know that al-Qaeda’s assessment of John McCain’s temperament as president roughly parallels everything that Sen. Obama has been saying on the campaign trail.
If the McCain campaign won’t run with it, the wingnuts are by all means welcome to have it. In which case, my official response will be some variation on the following:
Wingnuts should be comforted to know that their analysis of al-Qaeda’s analysis of the American presidential election was anticipated by the half-serious analysis of a freedom-hating, nihilistic, left-wing professor who may or may not have been half-drunk when he first thought of it.
This, via Ackerman, will also do nicely:
Sarah Palin in Your Kitchen
Sarah Palin is dissatisfied with the prevailing model of mass politics:
On the tarmac, Palin also referred to robocalls as “inside baseball,” suggesting it was not her call for the campaign to randomly call voters with negative attacks on Obama. “If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand, I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans … and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls and includes spending so much money on the television ads that I think is kinda draining out there in terms of Americans’ attention span,” she said.
That is to say, if Sarah Palin were calling the shots and bearing a magic wand, the United States would be as populous as a small town — say, for instance, a small town in Alaska — and she’d be calling Barack Obama a terrorist consort at your kitchen table.
Speaking merely for myself, I’ve never heard a stronger rationale for eliminating the very idea of a kitchen.
… Jesus, what a maroon. I suppose, though, there’s something to be said for creating the opportunity for millions of Americans to hang up on Sarah Palin. I’m tempted to add the “Send Sarah Home” plea here, but isn’t there somewhere else we might send her instead? Does Oklahoma need a governor? Utah? Is there a town somewhere without a mayor?
Adelman? What about Ledeen?
The prospect of a McCain presidency is too awful even for Ken “Cakewalk in Iraq” Adelman to contemplate:
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
It bears mentioning that no one should draw much joy from the endorsement of someone who was pissing his shorts to invade Iraq; in the event of an Obama victory, Adelman would quickly return his face to the glue-lined paper bag, from which he’s drawn sufficient breath to argue that a less “incompetent” administration would have run a better war. The correct point, of course, is that a more competent administration wouldn’t have invaded Iraq in the first place. Still, as a measure of how objectively awful the Sarah Palin pick has been for McCain, this is one of the more useful, albeit obscure, bits of data.
Speaking of Hoaxes…
Besides not actually calling and denouncing non-existent African press organizations, Michelle Obama was also rumored the other day to have gorged herself on $450 worth of Iranian (ZOMG!) caviar, lobster and champagne at the NY Waldorf-Astoria. The pearl-clutching news, circulated on Limbaugh’s show and elsewhere, apparently derived from a New York Post gossip item that’s been deleted because — imagine this — Michelle Obama was nowhere near NYC on Wednesday.
Readers will be stunned, of course, to learn that self-proclaimed PUMA sites are promoting the story, complete with transparently awful photoshopped images of Michelle Obama’s “receipt.”
Even the renowned Citizen Journamalist TIDOS Yankee has scrubbed his post about the non-existent lobster feast. Probably because the Obama campaign threatened to add him to the Obama Death List.
…Whoopsie! I hadn’t actually seen this at TIDOS Yankee — it was at Americandonkeypunch. Even better!
One-Handed Blogging
Shorter Americaneoclown:
If California voters reject Prop 8, my youngest son might never find lesbians as hot as I do.
Crazy Person of the Day
With her boundless enthusiasm for demonizing those she views as godless, Bachmann cheerfully broke new ground in the Ayers/Jeremiah Wright culture wars by forging a series of associations between “leftists” and “liberals” and “anti-Americans,” inside and outside Congress, who in Bachmann’s view ought to be investigated.And all this as her campaign for re-election in the Sixth District was already facing a nascent pardon request scandal and tightening polls. No wonder Bachmann seems so tetchy and fearful these days. Someone — specifically, that woman in the mirror – is out to get her.
The Dude Abides
I can’t take credit for writing the headline to this piece, but if you haven’t learned quite enough about the Palin Family Circus, I have an article on Todd Palin up at MnIndy.
My expose on the Palins’ pets will appear sometime next week.
Propper Speling is for Loozers
I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice the hilarious error in McCain’s “Joe the Plumber” ad. And I realize that spelling “everybody” is a little more difficult than spelling “POW.” But still. What a clown show.
Byron York is Concerned
I don’t know anything about Joe Wurzelbacher, but I just have one bit of advice. If you have anything in your past that you’re not proud of — a messy divorce, a DUI, an unpaid bill, an indiscreet comment, whatever — be prepared for it to become public knowledge. The lefty blogosphere, along with allies in the press, will see to that.
Right. Of course, if he were a 12-year-old boy, everyone would just leave him alone.
