Someone Stop the Bleeding

Lawd, have mercy. I didn't think anything could be worse than the first interview. It's like Katie's Mike Wallace here. I actually winced through the uncomfortably long Russia-Alaska-Canada connection. It was beyond absurd. Especially considering the part of "Russia" they are near is the most sparsely populated part -- Siberia -- home of the arctic tundra, a few prisons and oil pipelines.

She also made a strange reference to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that didin't make a lick of sense. Then proceed to praise Henry Kissenger then claim Kissenger was not for talking with Iranian officials or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without conditions only for Couric to correct in the bookend to her interview that Palin didn't know what she was talking about. Again.

And now it is officially depressing and part of me feels some pity. Katie? Why did you have to be so cruel? Why did you have to ask questions? Why couldn't you have been more like Sean Hannity and stack your interview with leading, loaded questions about how wrong everyone is and how right she and John McCain are? Why would you just set up the pins so her talking points could come knock them down? No. You had to open your mouth, say things then expect Sarah to say things back. Mean, Katie. Sooo mean.

Katie Couric Beats the Palin Pinata

When CBS News anchor Katie Couric starts getting licks in it's time to be concerned. I'm not saying Couric is a bad journalist or a featherweight. I didn't mind her all when she was on the Today Show. And sure, she's the second-to-weakest link on 60 Minutes. (The weakest would be Anderson Cooper. I still don't know why he's there.) But when Katie starts pulling jack moves at the end of the interview pointing out how you are dodging her question, whipping out the "not to belabor the point" at the end, only to watch you slap yourself silly with the fact that you don't know what you're talking about you're in trouble. No wonder Sarah Palin is being sheilded from the press. Sweet Betsy, someone might ask her a real question and expect her to know things like "facts" and "her running-mate's voting record." The best she can do is be Talking Points Bot 1.0. All she can do is regurgitate what they made her memorize. Shallow is as deep as this kiddie pool goes.

The Sick of Sarah Palin Club: Alaska Chapter

Recently when Gov. Sarah Palin returned to Alaska after being picked as John McCain's running mate she was greeted by 1,400 Alaskans who though McCain picked the wrong woman. While most of America was still falling in love with the self-professed "hockey mom" who is just like us, these individuals, mostly women, felt the need to point out that not everyone was head over heels for the Manchurian vice presidential candidate.

These are from the Alaskan Women Reject Sarah Palin Rally that happened over a week ago.

The woman in the hockey jersey and long, braided ponytails was quite inventive, putting her sign "Hockey Mama For Obama" on a hockey stick. I also enjoyed the new take on the McCain-Palin logo, reckless-inexperienced.

This woman's sign doubles as a weapon. Perhaps she feels the need to be armed with a spiked wooden stake because "Palin is a dangerous northern extremist!" ... and a vampire.

This one reminds me of the flag of the US continental army with the rattlesnake and "Don't tread on me" written on it. Only it's a black crow telling me to "beware of tricksters." Kind of creepy, but I like it.

Palin has a pretty devoted following in Alaska so it's not surprising that a few non-Palin fans feel some folks have spent a little too much time drinking the Palin-aid and trying to convince others it's refreshing and delicious. Carly Fiorina tried the Kool-Aid and wouldn't you know it? It came right back up.

Palin, quite famously, fought the government when they were trying to put the polar bear back on the endangered species list. I don't know if Palin knows this, but we're largely a nation of animal lovers to the point of lunacy, especially if those animals make cute plush toys. I'd love to here her try to explain why she wants to kill Knut's relatives. Seriously. Answer that in a way that doesn't sound heartless to the bear-of-any-kind-lovers in the lower 48. And you don't want to mess with PETA. Those mo-fos are crazy.

They sent Michael Vick to prison over dog fighting. Granted, he was a despised black man, but former Sen. Bill Frist killed some cats and Judith Nathan Giuliani killed some dogs, both in the name of some "questionable" science and serious ass covering. While it didn't "dog" them politically, it would have if either (or their spouse) had ever gotten out of starting gate.

Anyway, Frist's presidential dreams died with Terri Schiavo.

Agreed. Sarah Palin is a lot like Bush in a skirt. Oo! Ooo! What's the difference between Gov. Sarah Palin and President George W. Bush? LIPSTICK!

It's understandable that this kid would point out that Sarah Palin does not speak for him. She doesn't speak for a lot of women and children based on her policies. I don't know where to begin almost. I think the most outrageous was how as mayor of Wasilla the city charged rape victims for their testing kits. As if it weren't hard enough for sexual assault victims to seek help and get justice, now the indignity of being charged for an unspeakable act being perpetrated against them. Palin has backed off from this, even though the state legislature had to create a law to stop the charging. And, shock-shock, Wasilla was the only town doing this.

She should be glad she's on the bottom of the ticket because if she were up top she'd be hanging out with Rudy "One Delegate" Giuliani.

You'd think that "God's will is not a foreign policy," but I'm almost positive "because Jesus told me so" is the Republican Party platform. I still don't know why the Prince of Peace would want to hang out with some contradictory war hawks (I'm almost positive Jesus is a dove), but whatever. Who want's to listen to a Jewish carpenter with a "God Complex?"

The Sick of Sarah Palin Club: Sen. Chuck Hagel Gives The Palin Four Thumbs Down

Is it just me, or did Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel jack John McCain's "maverick," busting heads with your own party angle, years ago? Ever since McCain cuddled up to Georgie Porgie in hopes of tricking the party base into liking him, that whole "maverick/Country First" label reads more like "party capitulator/McCain First."

Hagel didn't mince words. He's a member of the club.

Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska yesterday became the nation’s most prominent Republican officeholder to publicly question whether Sarah Palin has the experience to serve as president.

"She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything."

Then Hagel said something I've been thinking ever since this insane -- the most insane of all the Palin talking points -- was first pushed by Republicans.

Palin has cited the proximity of Alaska to Russia as evidence of her international experience.

Hagel scoffed at that notion.

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

Indeed! I feel her whole selection was insulting to the American people. But some Americans, unlike us and Chuck, don't realize they've just been told they're idiots. You just had an email-hiding, rape-kit-charging, book-banning, dictatorial, your-body-her-choice, "I can see Russia from my house" farce foisted up on you and you shouted, "Awesome! She's hot and makes moose burgers! And she is got a knocked up teenage daughter! She's just like me! She's real!"

Of course Bush was elected twice. Of course!

Welcome to the club, Chuck!

In other news, at a women's forum in North Carolina Thursday morning, Michelle Obama quipped that voters should choose based on the issues, not because they like a candidate or think "she's cute."

La Femme Obama then clarified with a smile and laugh that she was referring to herself.

Now, isn't she a sly one?

The Sick of Sarah Palin Club: Relief on the way?

Not since I sat through three hours of "Titanic" waiting for the boat to sink have I wanted so desperately for something to end.

Thanks, sadly, to an unstable financial sector, veep candidate Sarah Palin has been nudged aside just a bit so some real news could get covered. But there are other indicators that Palin person will finally be reduced to her more human-like stature. A little less Annie Oakley of the Artic mythology and some regular, greenhorn politicking, lawyering up against ethics investigations and avoiding all contact with the press.

Because, dear Lord, we don't want to know what could happen if someone asked her a question in a situation where she couldn't quickly defer to her talking points on a teleprompter.

Along with this I have some portents of what I hope signal the official end of the Moose burger era and a return to rationality to some degree.

Conservatives Turn On McCain-Palin: This Huffington Post story doesn't take any sort of official poll on the matter, but points to some conservative word jockeys who are a little annoyed with John McCain for blowing his "Country First" credentials by picking a candidate based solely on her ability to jazz up the base, but not on her ability to do anything other than that.

It features this clip from Richard Cohen of The Washington Post:

His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

Palin's Favorability Numbers Eroding: FiveThirtyEight.com crunches the numbers and thinks Palin's pluses are going flat. They cite her appearance on ABC in an interview with Charles Gibson and Tina Fey's adept mimicry on Saturday Night Live as possible factors in the dip.

The Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos now has Palin's favorability-unfavorability scores at 45-44 -- just a +1. Six days ago, when the poll, launched, she was at a 52-35, a +17 ...

(T)here is a similar decline in her numbers in the Diageo/Hotline poll. Her favorability numbers in yesterday's Hotline poll -- today's isn't out yet -- were a 48-36, or a +12. But a week ago, on September 8, she had been at a 48-24, a +24.

I just want it to be done. Is it done already??? Or does it end after her interview with Sean Hannity? If Sean gives her some "grrl" power will she finally recede to the background?

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The bar was set so low Gov. Sarah Palin didn't have to do much to pass, but she's going to need a more than cram session with party operatives to ace the final. (Photo: Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin and ABC News' Charlie Rose, Reuters)

Every answer was answered quickly and assertively as if every word was parsed, perfected and practiced over and over and over again.

I could hear Gov. Sarah Palin's Republican coaches echoing in her ear:

"We are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security."

Who cares that in the real world Israel would never do anything that big without letting us know first, without us being complicit in either the knowledge of the act in presage or in helping execute a strike. We interfere directly with Israel's interests all the time, from pushing for elections in the territories leading to the election of Hamas, to arming Hamas' opposition Fatah even though both organizations hate Israel. (One just didn't want to recognize them as a state.)

There wasn't a lot of depth in her answers. The Alaska is close to Russia foreign policy defense, repeated by so many Republican operatives with straight faces, is starting to border on comical. How is that even a serious answer? To quote Barack Obama:

"They must think you're stupid!"

And throughout the interview I wondered if she thought I was stupid. If she thought I couldn't hear the coaching and see the gears turning in her head. That I could tell the places where she fumbled because she couldn't go deeper than paper thin. That she retreated to her garrisons of "energy" and "talking points" whenever things got too complicated. That she was quick to answer but easy to trap and ABC News' Charlie Gibson tried when asking her about the "Bush Doctrine" (a foreign policy view which morphed over time) or having her clarify if she saw the war on terrorism in the Middle East was a "holy" war, a mission from God, as she alluded to in a testimony she gave at her home church.

It will be interesting how she will handle future interviews. Despite what the operatives squawk, Palin was not vetted and because the press and public knew so little about her there was going to be a gauntlet she would have to run. Avoiding gaffes and traps and verbal slip ups and casualties of personal failings. One false move and all her hard work could be derailed.

She can't do worse than her superior, John McCain, who often falters under questioning, even more so than the president. George W. Bush is not exactly known as an adept speaker, but he's usual good at avoiding traps by either being flip or refusing to answer the question.

McCain can only ramble, making mistakes and misspeaking but usually escaping unscathed due to his decades in the public view. Palin doesn't have that to fall on. She can't just blurt "war hero" as a cry of "uncle" causing the other side to relent. The Republican Party has suddenly become righteous about sexism charging headfirst into "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" territory with Palin. They cry sexism over every criticism even though they and Palin once described women who point out prejudice and privilege are "whining."

Maybe the chorus of hockey moms crying "she's just like us" because she the Brett Favre of vice presidential candidates, can protect her. That they can shelter her with the belief she's just a "regular dude (or dudette in this case)." She married young, she's a working mom and her teenage daughter is pregnant.

She's just like us.

I find this mantra both silly and scary because why would you want someone like you to be president? You want your president to be better than you. Your vice president to be better than you. To be "elites." The creme of the brulee. For them both to be smarter and more savvy and more cunning than you because they're going to be leader of the free world.

Not the head of your bowling league team.

Being a regular dudette is not a threshold you have to cross to be a candidate for the number two spot on a presidential ticket. I want to know if you've got game. If you can bring it. If you are rock solid. If you can take it -- the criticism, the heat, the pressure, the pain, the politics, because it never lets up. Because if you win you enter a whole new world of internal and external pressures that never takes a holiday, even when you do.

I know I couldn't take it. Could you? Can Sarah Palin?

She hasn't proved that to me. Not yet. But the test has only begun and next time it won't be open book.

Drama-Rama in the McCain Campaign

The criticism keeps coming about John McCain picking Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president. And no matter how the talking heads spin it, most presidential candidates -- Democrat or Republican -- would not have tapped a woman under investigation for some duplicitous firing situation, who was dealing with the sensitive family drama of teen pregnancy and was so far to the right of Attila the Hun that her views and her novice nature on the national (and international) scene scare the pants of independents and Democrats.

I already thought Palin was a hasty decision, made in the wee hours after the closing of the Democratic National Convention. She was an reactionary pick, a gut check, not thought through. And this looks more and more like the truth with the Republican Party dispatching operatives to Alaska as fast as the press and the tabloids are.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin. (NYT)

People will toss the tundra in search for all the dirt they can find on Mrs. Clean and we're heading into bizarre territory with so many odd skeletons falling out of Palin's political and personal closet.

She has a private lawyer in an ethics investigation trying to determine whether "she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner;" and her husband was convicted 22-years-ago on a DUI charge. (NYT)

The scandal "Troopergate" involves Palin, members of her staff and her husband pressuring the state's public safety commissioner to fire her brother-in-law who was in the middle of a contentious divorce with her sister. (Anchorage Daily News via Jack and Jill Politics)

Palin has her own controversial pastor troubles -- an ongoing them in the 2008 race with Rev. Wright, then Rev. Hagee and now with Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins who has "preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war 'contending for your faith;' and said that Jesus 'operated from that position of war mode.'" (Huffington Post)

She depending on who you ask, she backed controversial candidate Pat Buchanan's presidential run. She said she didn't. Pat Buchanan said she did. (Washington Post)

Palin has a much more complicated relationship with embattled, indicted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and flip-flopped on "The Bridge to Nowhere" deal. (Washington Post)

Palin was fine with earmarks when she was Mayor of Wasilla, securing a lot of government cash for her city. (Washington Post)

She is against abortion, even in the cases of rape or incest. (Jack and Jill Politics)

She was almost recalled as mayor of Wasilla after she tried to have the police chief and library director fired for not supporting her reelection campaign in 1996. (Huffington Post) (Jack and Jill Politics)

Then there's the matter of her pregnant teen daughter, thrust into the spotlight. She and her mother are being lauded by the right while ignoring the hypocrisy of holding two diametrically opposing views at once.

Despite the whole "teen premarital sex" issue that the vast majority of Christian conservatives claim they are against, including pushing abstinence only education, everyone seems "OK," arguing teen pregnancy is "normal." I can't help but think their opinion would be different if it were anyone else (see the Obama daughters if they were older). It was Christian conservatives who worried Jamie Lyn Spears pregnancy glamorized teen pregnancy. And the abstinence only program teaches that all birth control methods are unreliable so you shouldn't have sex at all until you are married. Of course, teens being teens, they have sex anyway. Only now, unsafe, unprotected sex. But for some reason everything is grand with the same crowd who usually bemoans behavior.

Yet another mixed message. Premarital sex is OK, as long as you marry the person you're doing it with ... eventually. Glad to know the goal posts got moved back a bit more.

The more and more that trickles out the more and more I'm positive she was never vetted no matter what the McCain campaign says. She would be leper in the eyes of most president wannabes, the equivalent of Barack Obama selecting Kwame Kilpatrick as his no. 2. No one would want this kind of negative press, not to mention all the gross shock jock talk about Palin's comeliness and McCain's penchant for pretty ladies. If Hillary's sin was being dumpy and always wearing pantsuits, Palin's cross to bare will be her youth and beauty ... further compounded by the investigations and baby dramas.

I don't care how much the base loves her. The based would have loved a lot of pro-lifers who were being vetted. But McCain couldn't have Liebermann or Tom Ridge so he chose the craziest veep pick ever.

What else is going to happen? Is the woman going to appear in a grainy picture of the grassy knoll? Did she really kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman?

If Palin was a roll of the dice, I'm starting to think McCain shot craps.

Palin: Daughter Pregnant! (Again?)

From Politico.com:

Besieged by blog rumors about her 17-year-old daughter, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — named Friday as running mate of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — released a statement Monday saying her daughter is pregnant and plans to marry the father.

The governor and her husband, Todd, said their daughter, Bristol, plans to keep the baby.

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned," the Palins said in the statement. "As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

Liberal bloggers have speculated extensively about the possibility that Palin's fifth child, born this spring, was actually her daughter's.

Hmmmm ... this doesn't sound good and doesn't exactly kill that rumor. At. All. Now people will be even more determined.

This is very much starting to turn into an Tom Eagleton situation, but let's see what happens. There's a hurricane going on in the gulf coast so this isn't going to get the kind of attention it normally would in the 24-hour news cycle.

A politician's kids should not be part of the debate, but with Gov. Sarah Palin using the culture wars and her own family values as her conservative credentials, the private and personal becomes the public and judgmental pretty fast. And left is BRUTAL on family values candidates who have a house out of order, often calling them hypocrites.

I feel sorry for 17-year-old Bristol Palin. Her mom really should have thought about what this campaign, what the press would do to her when there is this juicy of a rumor floating about the internet that her mother's youngest is really her baby. And saying she's pregnant now doesn't really kill the rumor, but make people even more curious. It's just messed up because as much as I don't want McCain/Palin to win, the daughter's exploits should be separate from her mother's campaign ... even if the mother is using her family as evidence of her piousness and judgment.

If anything, this makes John McCain look very reckless in his VP pick. (The New York Post claims McCain knew about the pregnancy before he picked her.) Most politicians wouldn't have risked this due to the unknown fall-out. I still think Palin was not vetted and McCain went with his gut.

His dangerous, Crazy gut. And that's why the prospect of him in the White House frightens me. If he can be this out-of-control when picking a veep I'm scared to see how he's going to deal with Vlad the Putin.

McCain Campaign Looks Into the Eyes of Obama and Blinks, Dipping Into "The Crazy" With Veep Pick

My first reaction was "Who?" Quickly followed by a "what the f...?" To steal the talking heads from gushing about Obama's speech John McCain attempted to throw a curve ball with Gov. Sarah Palin from Alaska.

If his goal was to confuse the shit out of everyone -- mission accomplished!

I get the feeling the McCain campaign made this decision in the wee hours after Obama's speech. After all, the news was supposed to leak at midnight, but it didn't, signaling that the closing of the Democratic National Convention was THAT GOOD. Apparently the spectacle and revelry was not "too much" and "arrogant." Apparently it set just nicely with folks as the awe inspiring rah-rah, "Go, Speed Racer Go!" vibe the Dems wanted.

The Palin pick smells like fear. Fear that the unity of the Clintonistas and the Obama-ites after all that feel good Stevie Wonder backed lovin' could bolster the Obama-Biden ticket to the top. Palin is a Trojan horse meant to sway disgruntled feminist Democrats and lure them to the Republican ticket. And people joked that Biden was an "Affirmative Action" pick -- Palin is like an Evangelical Geraldine Ferraro with an NRA membership, a first time governor who's only in her second year and under investigation according to CNN.

I realize that some Republican players are attempting to spin this WTF into a good thing (She has two whole years of executive experience! She's a social and fiscal conservative! Joe Biden can't slap down a woman in a debate without looking like an asshole!), but she's the governor of Alaska. How many votes in the electoral college does that pull? The Obama campaign is actually "pleased" with the pick as they feel the experience argument is now off the table now that McCain has picked a relatively unknown, not vetted 44-year-old.

On CNN the talking heads are arguing that this pick shows that McCain wants to be seen as the "real" agent of change by this wild card pick. Reporters Suzanne Malveaux and Gloria Borger are reporting that some Republicans are scratching their heads. I think John McCain started dippin' into The Crazy, whippin' out the Maverick card.

Ultimately, people don't pick their president because of their veep selection, but just as it was odd that George "Poppy" Bush picked the dimwitted Dan Quayle to be within a heartbeat of the presidency, McCain, who turned 72 today, has strangely picked an unknown out of fear of the successful public relations coup that was the Democratic National Convention.

Smart move to distract the press and get them to stop cooing about Obama's speech, poor move for the future. If he wanted to pick a woman he should have picked the former head of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Sen. Elizabeth Dole or ANYONE that people have actually heard of. (Fiorina was so effective as a surrogate she was able to tote views I didn't agree with yet I still enjoyed listening to her.)

Is this woman the future of the Republican Party? Is this someone they're going to rally around for president if McCain wins and decides to be a one-termer? Is she prepared to be the leader of the free world if McCain pulls a William Henry Harrison? And is this to generate some excitement? According to CNN, the McCain campaign had to bus people in from out of town because they couldn't wrangle 10,000 in Dayton for this announcement. He had Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney there with him, but obviously flenched when Obama painted him as old, staid and out-of-touch.

But out of all this ridiculousness, I'm mostly disappointed that he did not pick my boy "Perfect Hair" Mitt Romney, aka "Guy Smiley" from The Muppet Show. I'm just distraught. No one worked insincerity like Mitt Romney. Every word he uttered sounded like the crowing of a used car salesman.

What will I do? Who will I make fun of? Damn you, Sarah Palin! Damn you!