The Obama campaign wasted no time in responding to McCain’s choice of Dan Quayle in a skirt:
Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.
We’d like to be among the first to wish Sen. John McCain a happy 72nd birthday. And also to note that just because McCain is now the oldest potential president in the history of the country, and just because he has to be checked every few months for a recurrence of his skin cancer and needs Ambien to sleep, and he has kidney stones, enlarged prostate, high cholesterol, and degenerative arthritis, that doesn’t mean he isn’t fit for the 60-plus hour work weeks that presidents must maintain.
We are not at all concerned that a former beauty queen whose only experience holding elective office is 19 months as governor of Alaska would have to step into the office of president in the event that McCain didn’t finish out his term. And with his health about what you’d expect for a 72-year-old with melanoma, what are the odds of that?
So happy birthday, Sen. McCain, and our congratulations on your outstanding and reassuring choice for a running mate!
Roger Simon of Politico has a fine analysis of the Obama speech as he accepted the nomination at the Democratic National convention, saying the candidate highlighted his opponent’s biggest weaknesses: he’s old and wrong.
Obama’s speech soared many times, but it always came back to earth. And it usually came back to earth on John McCain’s head.
Obama mentioned McCain by name no fewer than 21 times, praising his service and patriotism, but attacking him not just on specifics, but on one, general point.
“McCain doesn’t get it,†Obama said. McCain is “grasping at the ideas of the past.â€
Need a translation? Here’s one: McCain, who turns 72 on Friday, is old and out of it. His ideas are tired and he is tired, and this is no time in the history of America or the world for a tired president.
You can accuse Barack Obama of a lot of things — and no doubt McCain will do so next week at the Republican National Convention — but you can’t accuse Obama of being a cream puff. He is ready to get it on, high road, low road, or middle road, against the Republicans.
That was certainly how it struck me. Even more, Obama’s speech left me feeling the urgency that we just have to defeat the Republicans this time.
“John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war,†Obama said. “That’s not the judgment we need. That won’t keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.â€
The past, the past, the past. Old, old, old. Tired, tired, tired. That was Obama’s continuing line of attack as he stood on a vast stage in a vast football stadium looking young, vigorous and enthusiastic.
After seeing and hearing him last night, I can’t wait for the debates. On the one hand, you’ll have the six foot and change young black guy whose energy you can feel through the TV screen. On the other, you’ll have the 5’7″ old white corn dodger with the bizarro smile who has to be photographed from the right in order to keep from scaring young children. Beyond looks, it’s a contest of someone who can articulate his beliefs with alacrity and sincerity versus a guy who, when he isn’t sniping sarcastically, has to check with his staff before stating a position (or how many houses his wife owns).
Bring it on.
In the above clip, you’ll see Alaska governor Sarah Palin interviewed by the nauseatingly unctuous Glenn Beck, which makes the clip NSE (not safe for eating while watching). The interview actually starts at 4:20.
She is on the program to discuss her lawsuit against the Bush administration to stop them from including polar bears on the endangered species list, and reveals herself to be a rabid anti-environmentalist and a strong proponent of global warming, who favors drilling in her state’s pristine wildernesses.
Here are some highlights from her biography:
Update: And now we know this darling of the so-called “values voters” has also smoked pot and is a practiced, serial liar, which appears to be why Karl Rove chose her for the ticket.
Update 7:39 PDT: NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell has confirmed that McCain has picked Palin.
No less a source than Fox News says this morning that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is en route to Ohio this morning, and is likely to be John McCain choice to be his running mate.
Fox also reports that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is out of the running. Meanwhile, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty told a local radio station this morning that he will not be in Ohio later today when John McCain names his vice presidential running mate.
About Palin, Fox reports that “a charter aircraft from Anchorage had arrived in Dayton, Ohio, where McCain has scheduled a noon ET rally to announce his choice.”
Of course, because the source is Fox News, the story about Palin could be disinformation sent out by the McCain campaign in order to create confusion and embarrass the “liberal media.”
Justin Peters of the Columbia Journalism Review provides a rare insight into what exactly the 15,000 journalists covering the Democratic National Convention are actually doing:
14,000 are wearing terrible suits.
7,500 aren’t doing much at all.
4,021 are smugly bad-mouthing the convention and its participants in their story ledes (“There is no reason for so many journalists to be hereâ€).
2,294 are bitching about only having perimeter press passes.
1,026 are drunk.
500 don’t have credentials, but are trying desperately to get them.
340 are confused about how to find the proper press office inside the Pepsi Center.
150 are in the CNN Grill.
62 are enjoying massages.
Seven of them are having their photographs taken with Captain Morgan, the rum-loving pirate who, for some reason, was credentialed into the convention.
One of them is frantically trying to engineer a meeting between Captain Morgan and Ted Sorenson, the painfully dignified Democratic legend who is finishing an interview with Tavis Smiley just as Captain Morgan bursts into the tent, T-shirts and Morganettes in tow.
Apparently, Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is determined to further the state’s reputation as a hostile environment in which to vote in presidential elections. That, or he believes that most felons are Democrats. Either way, his belated executive order restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time just five weeks before the deadline to register to vote in the November election smacks of vote-rigging.
He was asked to issue the order last December by the American Civil Liberties Union, but waited until this week to actually do something about it. According to the Orlando Sentinel, only 9,000 of the 112,000 felons who would be eligible to vote actually have registered. There’s a whole process of reinstating one’s civil rights that has to be completed before a convicted felon can even register to vote in Florida, and that takes time.
Seems Charlie Crist figures that by kissing a girl and rigging the system so that nearly 100,000 Floridians will be denied the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election he will earn the chance to be John McCain’s running mate. Fat chance, Charlie.
Crist had better hope he never gets nailed for a felony, or he’ll be the Sweetheart of Cellblock C in a Tallahassee minute.
Bob Novak, the rightwing columnist who treasonously revealed the clandestine identity of CIA WMD investigator Valerie Plame, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, but recently returned to producing short squibs for his syndicate, including the latest on Joe Lieberman’s chances of being named as John McCain’s VP on Friday:
Reports of strong support within John McCain’s presidential campaign for Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Republican candidate for vice president are not a fairy tale. Influential McCain backers, plus McCain himself, would pick the pro-choice liberal from Connecticut if they thought they could get away with it.
But they can’t get away with it — and this has been made clear to McCain by none other than Joe Lieberman himself.
Lieberman surely doesn’t know that much about Republican politics, but he has close Republican friends. One of them prevailed on Lieberman to tell McCain that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would be a disaster for all concerned, and especially for the GOP.
Oh please, let it be Joe. Please!
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
