Let Sarah Be...For Your Own Good

I didn't expect that I'd ever be defending Sarah Palin...from (using my John McCain airquotes) "Republicans," no less, but it's the position I find myself in this morning.

Some staffers, who apparently share the integrity gene with the mountain goat, have decided to throw the Governor under the bus, accusing her of a full range of nonsense caused by her being a stupid hillbilly, basically.

I don't dispute the claims they made about her nor would I excuse them for a Vice President were they true, which I suspect most are.

But if this woman was so incompetent to not know that Africa is a continent, not a single country, it was practically criminal of them to not be screaming bloody murder during the campaign to get someone so unfit for office off the ticket.

I understand the motivation to protect the bossman and can even appreciate some degree of deceptiveness in said pursuit, but this scheme is just so ill-thought-out because at the end of the day, if you believe their claims about Palin, the loss was all McCain's fault...just like he said in his speech.

Highlights and Low Lifes From Tuesday's Elections

I guess I paid attention to the same bigger issues/races that most other people were on Tuesday night, but here's my little take from the roller coaster we just got off of...


The Big Enchilada- Like anyone else, whether for or against his candidacy, I extend congratulations and a skeptical eye towards Barack Obama. I could have done without the shots of race-baiting bigot, Jesse Jackson and self-centered attention whore, Oprah Winfrey, weeping for the cameras in Grant Park, but it is what it is and they are who they are. I was talking with a friend out west last night and, while we come from different parts of the spectrum, we both had a similar experience in the voting booth. I stared at my paper ballot before turning it into the machine, not quite believing what I was doing, but on Jerry's good name, it never even crossed my mind that I was voting for a black guy. Obviously, I know Barack is black, but the big "whoh!" moment of it all didn't really occur to me until Tuesday night when a panting Keith Olbermann made the call. This was a big moment for the country, one which I didn't really give a lot of thought to when deciding who to vote for, and that's probably both a good and generational thing.

And I'll side with Joe Scarborough and others who think it's time we taunt the liberal European countries with this one. While they often like to look down their pointy noses at the crass, racist America with our imperfect present and more imperfect past, I have to ask where their President/PM of African descent is if they're so damned enlightened.

But now it's time for the guy to get to work and, as I've said, I'm skeptical of him. While I'll concede the possibility that, in his heart, the guy is every bit the bleeding heart/pinko that some claim, I also think that he's a pragmatist above that. The guy is smart and wants to retain power. He would not have gotten where he is without those qualities. And he must know that he won't be able to get the legacy and time in office he wants if he governs like a left-wing loon, so I think his alleged/reported tapping of Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff is telling. Barry's heading to town to get shit done. His biggest challenge could actually be fighting back the beady-eyed, angry liberals who've been waiting to stick it to the GOP for the last eight years.

California Prop 8- Shame on the voters of California for choosing to put a ban on gay marriage in their Constitution. Before anyone gets smart with me, I realize that they probably have the right to do so (current ACLU challenges notwithstanding), but it's just in such bad taste. I won't waste my free space here recycling the full laundry list of arguments for gay marriage, but for the life of me, I can't see why it's worth their share of $74M to build the case for why two people can't just spend their lives together. For years, the rap against gays was that they're just a bunch of pleasure-seeking hedonists so then when it turns out that they want to settle down just like anyone else, the argument shifts. I'm neither a theologian nor an expert on what God believes, but my guess is that he's got bigger trout to fry.

Connecticut 4th District- As has been well-noted, New England now has no GOP representation in the House of Representatives since Chris Shays lost his seat. While smarty pants guys like Chuck Todd and Michael Barone might be able to correct me on this, this is probably the starkest regional imbalance in federal representation for either of the two major parties. The GOP is becoming the party of stodgy old white men and it's just not good for its future. Anyone who's interested in this might pick up Grand New Party. I guess the first big shin-dig will be today, when a bunch of 'thinkers' get together at the home of rabble rouser Brent Bozell to plot a comeback strategy.

Minnesota Senate- The Senate race in the Land of 10K Lakes is still going on. I've blogged here before of my visceral dislike for Norm Coleman so I'm really rooting for them to make up for the few-hundred votes short Alan Franken is before the recount.

North Carolina Senate- While the race had more history than took place in the last week of the campaign, Liddy Dole's "Godless" ad spoke volumes about the GOP's tactics. The Democrat party is not above deceptive, tasteless ads, but this one just hit a lot of people in the gut and I'm actually happy she lost, if for no other reason than as punishment for pulling such a ridiculous stunt.

Selah.

Barry Better Be Ready

Well, I cast the vote the way I intended. While I know that some friends who used to think I was a bit of a goof probably think I'm more of a goof now. It is what it is.

Be that as it may, I don't think I came into this thinking that the guy will multiply the fishes, turn water to wine, etc. He seemed to be the lesser of two evils.

But now I'm starting to think about all these 'fired up and ready to go' people who are going to be gathering in Grant Park tonight and I'm a bit worried. It seems implausible that Barack will be able to deliver anything close to the 'change' some of these newbies are expecting.

Assuming tonight goes the way the talkies are hinting, he's going to be getting quite a few more gray hairs...

Some Election Day Music

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Indiana will be the first good indicator of how it's going tonight and if the Mac has a chance...

If Barry cleans his clock in the Hoosier state, it's hard to envision a scenario where McCain pulls it off.

Here's some wonderful Louis Armstrong, doing Back Home Again in Indiana in 1959.

In Cuyahoga County, Voting's OK, Smoking's Not

Did my civic duty...

It's About 4AM...CNN is Already Running Live Election Coverage

Just doing my voting cheat sheet now...I've not paid much attention to downballot stuff, so sorting thru that now. I think I'll be cool and save it on Google Docs, so I can look at my little spreadsheet in the booth. The Plain Dealer actually had a pretty nice voter guide to use and go through the whole ballot, with links to their endorsements on the various office-seekers and referendums. I didn't go with them all the time, and could have had some usability suggestions, but it was still pretty useful.

My only beef with it was that it wanted you to check who you want so you could email your results back to be printed out. While I get the overt use of it, you start the process with entering your address so they're doing a de facto poll. I just copied the information out and pasted it into my own sheet.

I really hate all these damned referendums they have us voting for.

Isn't that what officeholders are for?

Archie Bunker had an interesting way of figuring out who to vote for.

"Tory, Feldman, O'Reilly, Nelson... That's an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman, and a regular American there... what I call a balanced ticket."

Cold Feet

I'm really stuck now...as decided as I thought I was, now I am starting to get cold feet about voting for Barry.

I know it's just one vote and part of me feels like I'm being too melodramatic about it, but I'm very far from thrilled with casting a vote for Barack. The things that drew me to his candidacy...the perception that he's a thoughtful guy and a smart organizer remain. I don't think he's prone to rash decisions. He seems like a measured guy.

What pulls me back from jumping right in the deep end, though, is the fear that he's some kind of serious-ass bleeding heart that will explode spending and won't be able to offset the costs of any domestic plans by getting out of Iraq a whole hell of a lot sooner than McCain.

McCain's no angel and I really question his judgement...from fearing that he'll jump the gun and go after the next towel head that pisses him off to the knowledge that he picked someone like Palin to join him on the ticket. She's clearly a natural campaigner and the textbook case of an overachiever, but in McCain's own words, the real job of the Veep is to be able to take over and as much of a verbal loose cannon as Biden is, I think that these two individuals are best-suited for very different kinds of activities at 3 in the morning.

I trust Joe more than someone who can't name a newspaper she reads. Sue me.

I'll probably end up going with Barack, but I really need to sleep on this one. Luckily, I can see the polling place from the front door, so can wait till the lines are short.

Funniest Thing I've Read in Personal Correspondence Today

from liberal, friend, co-worker and occasional reader, DB...


What's funny is when I see comments online from people who actually live in socialist countries who think that Americans are morons for calling Barack a socialist. Maybe people just use "socialist" the same way that I use "dumbass" to describe Palin.

I Hate Illinois Nazis

An interesting Obama endorsement.

Nifty Google Earth Election Presentation

Some smarty pants got all US election results, by county, back to 1980, into Google Earth.

This is pretty cool to play with.

To me, Google Earth is like a whole hunka potential. To date, I've just kind of played around with it, and found using it like a Flight Simulator is fun, but have not done much useful with it yet...same for its iPhone app which was released this week. But I think it will only be a short amount of time before my Birks are knocked off by it.

Mark Ambinder's blog at The Atlantic is where I saw this mention first.

It's Bizarro Election Season!

Remember the Seinfeld episode where everything turned backwards, ala Bizarro Superman on them? Elaine got the really responsible friends who read ("Books, Jerry...Books!") and the whole bit?

That's what's happening now.

This year, all of a sudden, Obammies are the ones effectively equating political donations with protected speech and playing fast and loose with scrutinizing their donors while the GOP had a Come to Jesus Moment and all of a sudden find this and voter registration shenanigans to be highly offensible.

Who woulda thought...

Comrade Palin

I continue to be amazed at how otherwise-smart friends of mine will insist that, unlike McCain and Palin, Barry is a "socialist," implying that their ticket is not.

I won't carry on about how they're all for some form of a progre$$ive tax, but why no one pushes back hard on Sarah about her demonstrated record of socialism in Alaska is completely beyond me.

Sure, there's the rap about how the press is very pro-Obama, and I have to admit that the coverage does appear to lean his way, too, but if the press completely had it out for the McCain ticket as is claimed, why aren't they pouncing on how she redistributed the wealth from the oil companies in her state like this?

Why I'm Voting for Barack Hussein Obama

I've never voted Democratic in a real, major election in my life. The first time I was eligible to vote was the 1992 Republican Primary and I cast it for Patrick J. Buchanan. My high school class elected me Most Conservative...whatever the hell that means. I briefly volunteered for the McCain campaign in 2000 in Minnesota...at a time when his campaign was already over after the dirty Bush tricks in South Carolina that year. John Kerry annoys the hell out of me and I voted to re-elect Shrub in 2004. I'm no activist, but my voting has been roughly predictable during my adult life.

Despite some misgivings, which I'll try to put on the tubes below, my plan at the moment is to vote for Barack Obama. Routine events between now and next Tuesday probably won't change this, but I reserve the right to change my mind if some bombshell, literally or figuratively, happens to pop up.

Both sides of this campaign committed sins. McCain's people, both direct and surrogate, have fanned ugly flames. They've come just short of calling Obama a terrorist and implied that he's un-American. These claims are demonstrably false and over the line when it comes to claims I've seen in my lifetime. Obama, suggestions of fringe websites notwithstanding, is not wearing sandals and carrying a glow over his head. He's benefitted from John Lewis' accustions of Wallace-like campaigning and ran Spanish-language ads chocked full of lies.

These are par for the course and pretty predictable given the novel demographics of this election. While I think McCain's sins were worse, I'll call this a draw.

One of the big criticisms I hear from friends and Sean Hannity is that Obama is a Socialist who will have to raise taxes in sphincter-stretching ways to pay for all his ambitious social programs. With the liklihood of November producing a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, I see where they're coming from with the fear of taxes, but the claims of "Socialist" are utterly ridiculous, coming from supporters of a guy who also favors a progressive tax structure.

However, we should have learned by now that the legislative promises of candidates rarely go the way they plan. No one knows what's going to happen in the coming weeks, let alone years, that could change this. Framing Clinton as being far too interventionist, Shrub ran on a "humble foreign policy" plank in 2000, but produced nothing of the sort. Situations on the ground dictated a reassessment of this position. So while Obama is a little bit too meddlesome in his orientation towards domestic social engineering for my ideal tastes, I also don't consider his current plans as a done deal, pal.

So what am I left with to judge these clowns on? It's my impression that Obama is more of a thinker than McCain. Some of the weight I'm putting in this assessment is a natural emotional reaction...when you move on in relationships, jobs or other things, you often want to overcompensate for previous deficiencies. I have no evidence that Bush posesses any more intellectual curiosity than a jellyfish, so Obama's insistence on speaking in full sentences and appreciation for the fact that the world is a complex place is...mighty refreshing to me.

I'm not arguing that McCain is a dolt, but he sometimes has a knee-jerky response to issues that's good for soundbites on the news (kudos to him) but also make me wonder what's going on upstairs and if he really thinks that everyone falls into either the good or evil camps. Surely both have members, but is there a middle ground where others reside? I'm pretty sure Obama thinks so, but I'm not so sure about the other guy. His worldview and approach to understanding that world is what attracts me to his candidacy.

Obama's been criticized as naive when it comes to how he'll deal with foreign and domestic policy. "He's too wet behind the ears," they say. While I'll guarantee mistakes during his first months in office, I don't believe he's anything but a shrewd politician. He somehow managed to bring down the mighty Clinton machine and deftly navigated the last few years without being pinned to many serious policy position flaws. This is a guy willing to make the correct sacrifices to achieve his ends. If our interests are his, which I believe they are, these are good habits for someone in charge. I don't need someone who's always got his heart on his sleeve when he's dealing with some of the bozos in the world.

I'm intentionally not addressing some of the more scurilous charges and implications from his dealing with Ayers and Wright. They merit no more than these two sentences.

It looks as if the Democrats could win the Presidency and enough of the Congress to leave no doubt who's to credit and blame for what goes on in Washington. I'm fed up enough with the Republican party to switch the course I've traveled for my entire voting life and it's not a choice I've made lightly...I'll be watching closely to see how my investment pays off.

Republican Party, you chased me and my reliable vote away. Your insistence on pandering to the lowest common denominator lately just worries and disgusts me. Appeal to my brain, not only the base animal instincts you've been going after lately. I hope that some time in the wilderness helps you learn the error of your ways, reinvent yourself and come back and deserve my vote again.

OK, So Let Me Get This Right

The new chant now is, "Use your brain, vote McCain."

That's catchy.

The thought is that if you were smart, you'd look at the kind of spending McCain advocates and that which Barry is behind.

This seems to make sense.

The real rallying point is how Barry wants to stick it to a few people on the top of the food chain and "redistribute" their wealth.

Ignoring the hard fact that taxes are basically redistribution devices in and of themselves, I can see why you would be against this if you were either very rich, had a heightened sense of economic morality or both.

Barack the sissy was against the Iraq war from the beginning. Now, he was not holding elected office at the time, but there's at least a clear public record of his stance.

Rambo, on the other hand, was all for it.

To date, this war has cost us about $600B and is not exactly slowing down anytime soon.

Please don't tell me about fiscal responsibility unless you were against this war to begin with or can demostrate to me how remaining there is in some way cost-effective.

It's really trashy to pretend that you give a shit about spending, John. You remind me of someone who has an overflowing toilet that's left feet of sewage flooding the house, but instead of taking care of that problem, you insist on dusting the earmarks off the window sills to prove your cleanliness.

The Term We'll All Be Sick of One Week From Today...If Not Already

Closing Argument

The First Sarah Palin Movie

The Daily Beast, quickly becoming a go-to, all around information site for me, has clips up of the new Larry Flynt masterpiece...Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?

I'm Starting to Understand...

Why people of a certain age just start to get turned off to politics.

While I still get a kick out of it, this cycle, more than any other, has just made me so much more cynical than I've ever been before.

El Rushbo chimed in on the Powell endorsement.

Rush, why don't you just stop dancing around your true desires, come on down and call the guy a ni**er? It would be a much more honest way of expressing yourself.

Cool Campaign 2008 Slideshow

This is from GQ...I thought it was pretty neat.

The Likely Voter

Big news was made today over the Gallup poll showing a statistical dead heat.

I started to bicker with friend and co-worker MC about this...and now I'm hearing that I'm not alone. These "likely voter" algorithms are not universally-accepted.

Sorry for the Slow Posting Lately

I've just been busy and preoccupied with other things...but plan on blocking out enough time to watch or listen to the debate tonight on Lawn Guyland before falling asleep.

I will say that I'm pretty close to committing to a candidate. I won't let the deal be sealed tonight, based on debate performance, I think, but...I'm getting there.

A couple of guys named Chris have articulated it better than I can.