We’ve all got family members that are not doing so well. Democrats would help them out, but Republicans would help us out.
[...]
I used to be a Republican. I wanted Bush in there. The previous years I’ve been Republican because of what we make, but this year’s a little bit different. I think this year more guys are not even thinking about the income part of it. They’re just really thinking about the economy and the country. A lot of people want change.”
We’re going to hear a lot of that over the next few weeks. Followed up by complaints that Democrats rigged the election. Is it too early to start coming up with nasty taunts along the lines of “Sore Loserman?”
Rep. Virgil Goode has refused to debate challenger Tom Perriello on TV. Fifth District Republican Chair and Goode’s long-time right-hand man Tucker Watkins had committed Goode to a televised debate, but then Goode claimed that NBC-29 should have known better than to accept a commitment from him. Man, has that got to be humiliating for Tucker.
You might remember Tucker for his creation and distribution of “purple heart band-aids” during the 2004 Republican presidential convention.
I have found that I know significantly more than your average joe about the cause of the nation’s financial meltdown. That is wholly attributable to spending one hour listening to “The Giant Pool of Money,” This American Life’s May episode entirely about the topic. I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you listen to this. On the drive back home from Avon, NC today I listened to “Another Frightening Show About the Economy,” TAL’s followup show that addresses the events as they unfolded between May and last Friday. And now, at last, I believe I understand how things took a turn for the worse and why the bailout was necessary. Again, I recommend strongly listening to this episode. There’s simply no other media outlet that is going to dedicate this much time (or ink) explaining what’s happened.
Ado Annie and Lady Bird played frisbee this evening. Lady Bird’s not too bright, and doesn’t really know what to do with it. Annie, on the other hand, is a dog possessed.
After three days in Reno followed by four days in Avon, NC, I need a vacation vacation. Seven days off, four of those spent on airplanes or in cars. My 2008 carbon footprint is shot to hell.
President Bush has hit a 70% disapproval rating, making him the most unpopular president in the history of polling. 53% of those polled believe that Sen. John McCain would move the nation in the same direction that Bush has. The folks who I know who still support Bush seem to do so impishly, figuring that if the whole world dislikes him so much, he must be doing something right.
Halsey Minor says that he’s not, in fact, running for governor. He’d be as terrible a candidate for Virginia governor as I’d be for the fifth congressional district. (I adore the sporadic rumors that I’m going to run against Virgil. Have these people never read a word I’ve written about the race?) And, as Halsey requested, I must acknowledge that he’s building a hotel on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, which I’ve written about regularly on cvillenews.com, though never mentioned here.
Just a quick thought: Nobody “won” the presidential debate tonight. It wasn’t the kind of a debate that anybody could win, in that it wasn’t game-like. Both were strong speakers. Personally I think that Barack Obama did a better job in a few regards, but I think it’s disingenuous for anybody to claim that there was a “winner.”
Speaking of disingenuous, Rudy Guliani just claimed that McCain “clearly won.” Of course, the McCain campaign started claiming that this morning, before McCain even agreed to participate in the debate. I suppose the standards of such things demand that both sides insist that they won. But it’s just not true.
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.
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Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.
Do it for your country.
My favorite line? “If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”
Kathleen Parker isn’t some random, fence-sitting, little-read columnist. You can see her on Chris Matthews, O’Reilly, her column is syndicated by the Washington Post, and she’s far enough to the right to be on the batshitinsane-certified Townhall.com.
I don’t mean to make this an all-video night here at Ye Olde Blog, but Katie Couric’s latest interview with Sarah Palin is just so stunning that I think everybody ought to see it.
I’m pathologically incapable of witnessing uncomfortable moments. You know how sometimes the local news anchor starts talking into the wrong camera, or reads from the wrong script? I just have to turn off the TV. Woody Allen movies are totally out of the question. Such things make my stomach turn, I avert my eyes, I want to flee. My empathy meter is dialed way up, and I cannot turn it off. Consequently, these Sarah Palin interviews are incredibly painful for me to watch.
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world’s only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:
“Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child’s brain?”
“Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I’m an avid hunter.”
“But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.”
“That’s just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink.”
This bullshit* from the McCain campaign about John McCain riding into the Senate and saving the day is kind of stunning. It’s somewhere between hilarious and frightening—frightening insofar as anybody actually believes that McCain is some kind of a superhero who will swoope to the rescue of the helpless Congress, saving the planet from the menace of investment bankers. Congress reached a deal just a few minutes ago, so apparently they were doing just fine without him. Which makes sense, since McCain hasn’t actually read Paulson’s three-page bailout plan.
I just got a fundraising mass e-mail on behalf of Mark Warner from Jason Alexander, complete with “serenity now” and “summer of George” jokes. Really? George Costanza? With Warner up by by 40%, or wherever he’s at these days, this sort of thing seems unnecessary.
This bailout bill debate could be really bad for Joe Biden and, by extension, Obama. If talk turns to helping out struggling homeowners, and not just CEOs, it’s only a matter of time until somebody points out that Biden is responsible for their inability to declare bankruptcy.
I maintain that Sarah Palin was a terrible, terrible pick for VP. The three interviews that she’s dared participate in since her nomination have shown her as a naif, looking every bit the deer in the headlights, utterly unqualified to run a company, to say nothing of the country. Her scandals keep getting deeper and more numerous (the bridge to nowhere, pork, troopergate, library censorship, ), and now half of the country says she’s not qualified to be president. (Only 75% of Republicans think she is.) Palin was never vetted by the McCain campaign, despite their protestations, and now she’s being vetted by the media in a two-month-long train wreck.
Small wonder that McCain has taken the stunning step of suspending his campaign…although it remains to be seen what “suspending” actually means. (Ending all spending? Suspending staff without pay? Halting advertising? Or is it just a political ploy?) Obama is pummeling McCain in the polls—he’s up 9% today—which surely has something to do with the McCain’s decision to take this make-it-or-break-it leap of faith. If somehow Republicans can get their own bailout plan passed, with McCain’s name on it, I think this will pay off. Short of that, I find it tough to see how this will help to dig the campaign out of the hole that it finds itself in.
For the record, I was wrong in my speculation that McCain was more likely to drop immediately after the convention, which I chalk up to the McCain campaign managing to spin clear negatives into positives, which voters were willing to buy for a period of a couple of weeks. Clearly the shine is off that apple now.
Palin was a bad choice, pure and simple. The base loves her, but the base was going to vote for McCain anyway. If McCain loses this election, I’m looking forward to some candid remarks from him in a year or two. I suspect he’ll agree by then—if he doesn’t already—that he could have done a lot better in the VP department.
