Debate Reactions

It’s long been my opinion that presidential debates are not any kind of helpful tool in determining the candidates’ relative fit for the presidency in comparison with each other. Like most of the campaign season, it’s carefully rehearsed theater that rarely offers (for anyone who has paid cursory attention to the campaigns up to [...]

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I Know, I’ve Been Slacking

I think I’ve been experiencing campaign burnout in the past week or so. Next week my job is sending me into the field. I’ll have a computer with me so maybe I’ll post a little after I get back to my room at night but I can’t say with any certainty how active [...]

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McCain’s Foreign Policy Follies

The latest developed last night when TPM and other web source reported on an excerpt from McCain’s interview with Radio Caracol Miami in which McCain clearly did not know who the interviewer was talking about when she asked him a question about Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain. The audio clip that surfaced yesterday was [...]

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Bipartisan Panel of 5 former Secretaries of State Push for Dialogue with Iran

From AFP:
Former US secretaries of state on Monday urged the next US president to work closely with key allies, engage with Iran, and avoid ruptures with awkward partners Russia and China.
Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, James Baker and Henry Kissinger gave advice at a panel here that often appeared closer to the views of [...]

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“Sadly, No!” Slaps “Captain Special Ed Morrissey” on his Defense of Palin’s Earmarks

Money quote:
Special Ed has decided to go for the gusto with this argument: “Palin didn’t request any earmarks.”
Now you probably imagine that Ed is going to prove this vastly amusing premise by examining the fonts and kerning in appropriations legislation and claiming that they reveal that the Alaska earmarks actually came from the Governor [...]

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From the Department of Intentional Language Dilution

Now the Tina Fay as Governor Palin opening skit on last week’s Saturday Night Live is “sexist” according to the McCain campaign:
“[T]he portrait [on "SNL"] was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so, in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,” Fiorina argued. [...]

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Here’s a Pledge I Didn’t Expect From The GOP Ticket

From Sarah Palin’s speech in Colorado today
“This crisis is an issue of real concern, not only for those in our financial markets but everyone across this country.”
“I’m glad to see that in this case the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have said no to using taxpayer money for a bailout.”
“Our regulatory system is outdated and [...]

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Biden Attacks

I don’t know why all of Biden’s speeches since joining the McCain ticket haven’t been like the one from Michigan this morning. Here’s how it started:
Eight years ago, a man ran for President who claimed he was different, not a typical Republican. He called himself a reformer. He admitted that his Party, the Republican [...]

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Iraq: “A Task that is From God”?

I’m not a fan of Governor Palin, at least not as a vice presidential candidate, anyway. I’ll establish here in case I haven’t done so already that I believe Senator McCain broke his promise and betrayed his campaign slogan of “Country First” when he made an obvious and undeniable PR choice for his running [...]

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Governor Palin and the Bush Doctrine

She doesn’t know what it is:
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view.
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
PALIN: I believe that what [...]

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Internal Investigation Finds Gross Corruption in Dept. of Interior’s Minerals Management Service

NY Daily News
Government officials who failed to collect millions of dollars in fees from oil companies for drilling on America’s public lands were having sex with energy executives, a bombshell report revealed Wednesday.
A two-year internal Interior Department probe concluded that officials in the Denver-based Minerals Management Service had improperly cozied up to oil companies: rigging [...]

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The Straight Talk Express

The Annenberg Political Fact Check (factcheck.org) takes exception to the latest McCain ad, which disingenuously cites them:
Analysis
We don’t object to people reprinting our articles. In fact, our copyright policy encourages it. But we’ve also asked that “the editorial integrity of the article be preserved” and told those who use our items that “you should not [...]

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Neither Cast Ye Your Sapient Economics Before Swine

John Cole puts the debate back where it belongs
In other words, when McCain talks about earmarks, he is talking about 3% of our annual budget deficit, .6% of our annual budget, and a number too small to even report when discussing our national debt. Or, put another way, he is talking about two months in [...]

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Disingenuous Lipstick Politics Continue

Can this ad possibly be effective if McCain’s use of the same language in reference to Hillary Clinton is already common knowledge?

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On Pit Bulls, Pigs, Cosmetics and Code

It’s clearly Obama’s most coordinated attack since the campaign began. The news of his ‘lipstick on a pig’ comment broke just a couple of hours after the news of NY Governor Paterson’s reaction to Governor Palin’s comments about community organizers at the RNC, a comment the left has taken considerable exception to. Even [...]

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New York Governor Paterson on GOP Tactics and Community Organizers

Check NY1.com to watch the video:
“I think that there are overtones of potential racial coding in the campaign. I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama ‘black’ in a sense that it would be a negative, but you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at [...]

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The Country’s Most Prominant Black Rabbi is Michelle Obama’s Cousin?

Why is this not common knowledge? From The Jewish Daily Foward last week:
While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi — a fact that has gone largely unnoticed.
Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and [...]

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On the Right-Wing-Blogosphere’s Coverage of Governor Palin

The Village Voice’s Roy Edroso on rightbloggers’ newfound integrity-challenged enthusiasm and embrace of the “cult of victimology” (to steal a phrase from a old conservative sparring partner of mine). Key excerpt comes at the end of the piece:
So they continue to portray their pitbull-with-lipstick as a victim of the media — someone who is [...]

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Comparing the Nomination Acceptance Speeches

A family member who is committed to the McCain ticket commented to me last week that she was unimpressed with Obama’s acceptance speech, complaining mostly about a lack of policies laid out. “He didn’t say anything about what he is going to do”, is the way she put it, I believe. This is [...]

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When McCain and Palin Haven’t Seen Eye to Eye

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times with a piece pointing out numerous times when McCain’s anti-pork-barrel crusades have led him directly to excessive funds to earmarked for Wasilla, Alaska, while Sarah Palin was Mayor, and in the last two years, to the Alaska State House, also occupied by his running mate.
In 2001, McCain’s list of spending that [...]

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“She should have Henry Kissinger babysitting her”

H/T: Sullivan

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Peggy Noonan on Governor Palin

“The most qualified [woman]? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives and the [inaudible] picture. Every time Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”

Noonan prefaced her weekly column today with [...]

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On the Sanctity of Gender Respect

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On the Notion that Palin is Ready to Lead

Much ado has been made in questioning the wisdom of a 72-year-old presidential candidate selecting a running mate with as short a resume as Governor Palin’s. The argument from those already committed to the McCain-Palin ticket goes that if Barack Obama is sufficiently prepared and experienced to assume the Presidency, then Governor Palin is as [...]

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Palin Rumors Put to Rest

The news of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy should effectively squash the rumor that Governor Palin’s youngest son, Trig, was actually born to Bristol. If it’s true that Bristol’s baby is due in December, Trig, born in April, cannot be hers.
I’m left wondering, assuming that Palin was sufficiently vetted by the McCain campaign, if they didn’t [...]

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