The Comfort Zone

As she is fondly known in our house, being blown away in a great wind of balloons…..this made me laugh last night. It made me laugh more even than the idea that Gramps, a guy who can’t even manage to operate his email, will be the one to lead us into the future and help us “catch up with history.”

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

Now I loathe her.

Seems Mrs. Palin won’t be talking to reporters until they can find their nice words again.

Davis demurred when asked when Palin will sit for interviews with major news organizations, pointing out that now would not be the right time given the “combative” attitude the media has seemingly adopted toward Palin. Pressed on the issue, Davis insisted that “we allot a lot more access in our campaign than any campaign in modern political history….we’ll get around to it.”

I also love the part about how the speech that was being written was “masculine” and now she has to “adapt” the speech to her own “needs and personality” which I suppose means putting in places to throw pink sparkles and fairy dust, or maybe make the speech more appropriate to being given while wearing a bikini.

How fucking pathetic. How pathetic of McCain to pick her as his VP and then proceed to patronize her so completely, keeping her away from the press because they’re too mean and making her look like some kind of barbie doll who has to have a more girlie speech written and can’t take too much aggression from the press. What a crock of shit. If she can’t handle Campbell or Katie, I shudder to think how she’ll handle any actual world leaders.

He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later.

Is she a Republican or an Alaskan Independent? I think she needs to answer the question - does she believe that Alaska should secede from the United States of America? Will that be her platform as VP? What exactly is the “good work” she wants the Alaskan Independent Party to “keep up”?

that John McCain and the entire republican party might just be a wee bit disappointed that Gustav didn’t turn out to be as big of a political opportunity natural disaster as they were anticipating?

Here’s the thing…..it doesn’t actually matter that Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Even the absurd rumors that were supposed to be dispelled by releasing this information don’t matter (even though the story gets weirder and weirder).

What matters is that apparently, the McCain campaign is only JUST NOW beginning the vetting process for this person. How disorganized must this campaign be? And how completely unbelievable that this, the first major decision McCain had to make, a decision that he had SIX MONTHS to mull over, and he manages to screw it up so spectacularly. It simply does not inspire confidence in the man, his decisions or the prospect of his presidency. That is what matters.

In light of today’s nauseating commentary by the Sunday morning talking heads, where they repeatedly pushed this narrative of McCain reverting to his “maverick” form and nodded their heads in approval of his tendency to “gamble”, I can only second Josh Marshall and encourage everyone (again) to keep TPM on your radar.

Just after McCain announced his pick, a number of commentators — some independent analysts and others Republican partisans — said that this was McCain reverting to form. He’s a gambler, he likes rolling the dice, playing craps — to use the most chosen metaphor. (Little discussed is that McCain is, in the literal sense, a big time gambler, though he appears to keep the amount of money he loses under control.) But is that the temperament one wants in a president and commander-in-chief? Someone whose inclination, at critical moments of decision, is toward risky, high-stakes gambles? That kind of erratic behavior is pardonable, even an asset in a senator (who has little direct power beyond 1 of 100 votes and the ability to persuade people). But it’s a dangerous trait for a leader of a country of 300 million.

When this speech was going on, I said to Chris “he is looking at her ass!” I kept waiting for someone to mention it, one of the talking heads, but nobody did, so I figured maybe I was just imagining things, even though I saw it more than once. Well, let’s go to the tape, shall we?

No, really. That’s what one of the top advisers in the campaign said.

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.

It’s nice he can joke about it….. but really, 72 is fucking OLD. When people talk about the VP being “one hearbeat away”….with John McCain it is a 72 year old heartbeat. His VP matters and this is who he came up with, someone who doesn’t even know what it is that the VP “does every day” and who believes that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in classrooms across America.

Outstanding, gramps. Just outstanding.

John McCain - “Wait, you mean this isn’t a text message?”