McCain Picks Palin

Any woman who grew up hunting moose has a leg up on getting my vote.

Seriously, I think this is a fantastic pick, which probably means it's a disaster. I can see only three downsides: (1) This hurts the inexperience theme against Obama; (2) She's described by CNN as a younger, female version of John McCain (please, stop); and (3) they might choose Starship's gawdawful song "Sara" as a theme song (note to McCain campaign: don't tempt me to vote against you by doing that -- I'm serious).

This is the first time I've been genuinely excited during this election season (sort of like Michelle Obama being proud of her country for the first time, but different). McCain's campaign has done a very good job for the past month or so knocking Obama off-course, and their management of this VP selection process has been fantastic. Palin hits a number of good notes -- she's a darling of conservatives but has maverick tendencies, is a governor who's actually running a state and is a mother of five who is tough enough to stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden.

With that being said, the guys at Powerline seem lukewarm to say the least on this pick. I do see the downside of inexperience being an issue, but it will be a difficult one for the Dems to exploit, since they've nominated someone with arguably the same level of experience as their standard-bearer (and with even less experience in an executive capacity).

At the end of the day, though, this is just a VP selection. In other words, it's good for the story and for next week's convention; after that, it's probably not relevant. Unless they use that Starship song, in which case I'll be pissed.

Random Movie Quote of the Day

Like all American males, I love being able to quote ad nauseum from popular movies. I figured I should share whenever a random quote pops into my head.

Is there anyone out there who has worked in an office job that doesn't identify with the movie Office Space? Here's one of my favorite discussions ever...

Bob Slydell: Milton Waddams.
Dom Portwood: Who's he?
Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guy, mumbles a lot.
Dom Portwood: Oh, yeah.
Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of him being a current employee here.
Bob Porter: I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck.
Bob Slydell: So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh: Great.
Dom Portwood: So, uh, Milton has been let go?
Bob Slydell: Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.

This has been your random Movie Quote of the Day.

Barack and Britney, Together Again

I think Obama might be embracing that celebrity thing...

John McCain's campaign mocked the massive neoclassical set created for Obama's speech at 75,000-seat Invesco Field. Some Republicans have dubbed it the "Barackopolis," while others suggested the delegates should wear togas to fit in among the same Doric columns the ancient Greeks believed would stroke the egos of Zeus and Athena.

"It's only appropriate that Barack Obama would descend down from the heavens and spend a little time with us mere mortals when accepting the Democratic nomination," said Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz.

The McCain campaign quickly dispatched a memo calling the stage the "Temple of Obama."

"We would have expected to read something like this in The Onion. Fortunately for us, it's true. Unfortunately for Obama, it's true," a McCain adviser told The Post.

But the set is designed to evoke the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, not the Acropolis, said staging supervisor Bobby Allen, a Spears set vet.

"We've done Britney's sets and a whole bunch of rock shows, but this was far more elaborate and complicated and we had to do it in far less time," said Allen, of RDA Entertainment.

"The biggest challenge has been making sure we don't damage the playing field underneath."

Asked who is harder to satisfy - the Democrats or Britney - Allen replied: "I better not answer that."

The curved, columned backdrop does resemble the portico of the White House, and blue carpeting and podium surrounded by white stars is suggestive of the Oval Office, other crew members said.

Democrats quickly pointed out that George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination before a similar, though less elaborate, stage in 2004.

Except Bush wasn't mocked for being a celebrity at the time.

My view is that Obama's got the political skills to pull off reversing the momentum of the celebrity attack, but he needs to be aware of the effectiveness of it. Right now, he just seems to be adding more fuel to the fire.

Meanwhile, the question of whether Britney or the Democrats is harder to please is one of those juicy ones where I have too many good responses to post.

Ouch

Like, wow.


(hat tip: Ann Althouse) It's always effective for an opponent when the people praising you are the ones burying you, and even more effective when your own quotes can be turned against you.

The Difference?

The Lord of Truth sends me Peggy Noonan's column every week. I think Peggy's ruminations are sometimes tiresome, even when the language is beautiful. However, this week, she posits a great description of the one key difference between the two parties:

Democrats in the end speak most of, and seem to hold the most sympathy for, the beset-upon single mother without medical coverage for her children, and the soldier back from the war who needs more help with post-traumatic stress disorder. They express the most sympathy for the needy, the yearning, the marginalized and unwell. For those, in short, who need more help from the government, meaning from the government's treasury, meaning the money got from taxpayers.

Who happen, also, to be a generally beset-upon group.

Democrats show little expressed sympathy for those who work to make the money the government taxes to help the beset-upon mother and the soldier and the kids. They express little sympathy for the middle-aged woman who owns a small dry cleaner and employs six people and is, actually, day to day, stressed and depressed from the burden of state, local and federal taxes, and regulations, and lawsuits, and meetings with the accountant, and complaints as to insufficient or incorrect efforts to meet guidelines regarding various employee/employer rules and regulations. At Republican conventions they express sympathy for this woman, as they do for those who are entrepreneurial, who start businesses and create jobs and build things. Republicans have, that is, sympathy for taxpayers. But they don't dwell all that much, or show much expressed sympathy for, the sick mother with the uninsured kids, and the soldier with the shot nerves.

Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one sort and the suffering of another. You might say that in this both parties are equally cold and equally warm, only to two different classes of citizens.

I think the biggest problem that I have with government is not that it tries to provide services that we need and does so inefficiently -- we all gripe about that, but bureacracies are by their nature inefficient. I think what offends me is the fact so much of our government system is set up to transfer wealth from one group to another. There are some who don't take issue with that, and they're more likely to be Democrats than I am. At the end of the day, I think Noonan hits the nail on the head as to the difference between the way the parties are perceived on economic issues, even if this is not true in reality.

Tug McGraw Would Have Enjoyed This Game

The Phillies-Mets game last night was insane. 13 innings. One Phillies reliever, Clay Condrey, jump-started a key rally with a double, his first hit since 2003. Two Phillies starting pitchers served as pinch-hitters. Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz played third base in the ninth inning. Mets reliever Aaron Heiman threw 60 pitches in 3 innings and didn't give up a run. The Mets blew a 7-0 lead with Pedro Martinez on the mound, in part because they used as a closer a guy (Luis Ayala) who couldn't cut it in middle relief for the Washington Nationals. The guy who got the winning hit (Chris Coste) went 4-for-4 after bing inserted into the game in the 8th inning. Add it all up, and the Phillies win moved them into first place, one-half game ahead of the Mets.

Jeff Passan at Yahoo Sports describes why this rivalry is so damn entertaining...

Rationality is in short supply this time of year, so, yes, there is an explanation for those black helicopters Jimmy Rollins sees when he peers into the New York Mets’ dugout.

The perceived slight from the last time Rollins and his Philadelphia Phillies saw the Mets, the one where Jose Reyes hit a home run, wagged an index finger, danced in the dugout and capped it with the kind of handshake kids execute to get into supercool tree houses. Well, Rollins has carried it for more than a month because even if it was innocuous, he always finds something.

Please understand, were Nelson Mandela to wear a Mets uniform, Rollins would bury a spike in his ankle. Orange and blue make him turn red. He embodies this rivalry, and it is the best sort: one perpetuated by feelings of contempt and not bushels of leftover hype from seasons past.

Game 2 of the series is tonight, while my fantasy football draft is taking place. If it's as exciting as last night, I may be excused when I select Michael Vick in the third round.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Brian Micklethwait has some intriguing points regarding the argument about climate change when discussing a blog post by Will Wilkinson...

Wilkinson's point is not just that climate chaos-ism is nonsense, a claim that I increasingly find myself agreeing with completely, not least because the now undependable notion of "global warming" has been replaced by the idiotic phrase "climate chaos", or, even more idiotically, "climate change". When was there ever a time when the climate did not change? What Wilkinson is also noting is that the hysteria whipped up around the changeability of the climate was whipped up because these lunatics came to realise that they had no other arguments against a more-or-less capitalist, more-or-less-free-market world economy. They have now conceded - not in so many words, rather by changing the subject - that capitalism works, and the only nasty thing they have left to say about it is that it works so well that it ruins the planet.

I don't know that I agree with everything here, partly because I think there are plenty of honest arguments being made by people who claim that global warming is occurring and it is a problem. The problem is that there are also a good number of panicky if not dishonest arguments being made as well. I understand that people try to employ slippery slope arguments for a reason, but a number of the arguments strike me far too apocalyptic in tone (not to mention weird and creepy).

Beyond that, there's the issue of the folks who believe climate change is occurring and is a problem expressing a desire to shut down the other side of the debate. Forget free speech for a second -- aren't scientists supposed to test hypotheses and not merely accept something as dogma? Perhaps the folks who believe global warming is a problem would be better served refuting the arguments of those on the other side... assuming they have confidence in their position, of course.

I'd also mention the fact that having hip celebrities and politicians make and endorse calls for work on climate change while flying around on gas-guzzling jets looks a tad bit hypocritical to the average Joe. I don't think hypocrisy should have a negative impact on the merits of the underlying argument, but it does, because public perception is another matter. Ask Al Gore about his house if you don't believe me.

Giving Us the Business

I didn't watch Hillary tonight, since the Phillies and Mets are engaged in a war of attrition (it's 7-7 in the 12th as I write this). But Jonah Goldberg wrote something that struck me...

Hillary tonight:

We need a president who understands that we can't solve the problems of global warming by giving windfall profits to the oil companies while ignoring opportunities to invest in the new technologies that will build a green economy.

Again, whatever you think of so-called "windfall profits" they aren't "given" to corporations.

Couldn't have said it better. A corporation earns profits. Perhaps Hillary is confused because she's been in government too long. After all, people are forced to give the government taxes, instead of having the government earn that money.

I Wonder Who Will Judge

Friend of the blog K-Mac sends me this link to the world's first beauty contest for nuns. Who says the Catholic Church is behind the times?

Biden and Vlad, Together With Al Gore

Loyal reader RB sends me this link. I love the fact that we have a link for famous plagiarists, but I don't think all of these guys qualify as famous. Besides, I wouldn't call Vlad Putin a plagiarist -- he might invade my home or poison my dog.

Meanwhile, Outside the DNC...

Stephen Green, otherwise known as Vodkapundit (a name many are jealous of), reports from the DNC for Pajamas Media, and captures nutty anarchists contemplating killing conservative pundit Michelle Malkin. The idiots are led by freak radio personality Alex Jones, whom I've never heard of. Watch the video, particularly starting at the 3 minute mark or so...


Instapundit is right when he said Jones looks like "the deranged brother of the Skipper from Gilligan's Island."

Dear God, that guy has a radio show? This is a great country indeed, when someone who's that big of a buffoon gets to speak to several hundred (or maybe more) people everyday.

Who's Watching?

Megan McArdle notes no one is watching the conventions based on Neilson numbers. I think they get better ratings than most infomercials, and that's what conventions largely are. People will watch the big speeches (Obama and McCain) and political junkies will watch some of the other stuff.

Truth be told, I watched the Phillies beat the Dodgers last night, as well as an a Tivo'd episode of Burn Notice, with a few glances at Michelle Obama's speech later in the night and today on the Interweb. The Phillies game was more fun (for me) and Burn Notice was more entertaining. I think I have more of an appreciation for the pundits who have to watch this stuff non-stop -- maybe the job's tougher than I thought.

And They Say Dick Cheney is a Threat to Civil Liberties

One of my stumbling blocks for voting for McCain is the fact that he championed McCain-Feingold, which I consider to be an atrocious limitation on free speech. But perhaps McCain and Barack Obama have more in common than I thought, according to the AP...

Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign.

Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It's the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that Republicans exploit.

Obama's target is an ad by the conservative American Issues Project, a nonprofit group that questions Obama's ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The lone financier of the anti-Obama ad, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, was also one of the main funders of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who targeted Kerry. Simmons, a McCain fundraiser, contributed nearly $2.9 million to the American Issues Project, according to documents filed by the group with the Federal Election Commission.

Fox News and CNN have declined to air the anti-Obama ad. But by Monday afternoon, the ad had run about 150 times in local markets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Michigan, according to Evan Tracey, head of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, an ad tracking firm.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama supporters have inundated stations that are airing the ad, many of them owned by Sinclair Communications, with 93,000 e-mails. He called the ad false, despicable and outrageous.

"Other stations that follow Sinclair's lead should expect a similar response from people who don't want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks," Vietor said.

Sinclair offices were closed late Monday and officials there could not be immediately contacted.

"It seems they protest a bit too much," American Issues Project spokesman Christian Pinkston said. "They're going all of these routes — through threats, intimation — to try to thwart the First Amendment here because they don't have an argument on merit."

...In a letter to station managers, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote: "Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity."

Bauer also wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney, noting that the ad is a "knowing and willful attempt to evade the strictures of federal election law."

See, airing an ad to counter the bad one -- that's free speech. Good for Obama, even if I still need to see where he denounced William Ayers (I keep reading he has done so, and just haven't seen it). I still think Obama's ad is pretty silly, but if he can counter with facts that demonstrate that he's not closely associated with an unrepentant (alleged) terrorist thug, more power to him.

Sending in your lawyers to pressure broadcasters not to air the ad -- that's not free speech, and it's bad strategy to boot. Now plenty of people will see the ad in question, and even more will think a logical thought -- why don't they want me to see it? That's particularly true in an environment when the ad can be emailed and seen by millions on the Interweb. For example...


See, now three more people have seen the ad (four if you count my one-year old daughter). I wholeheartedly doubt that everything in this ad is true. But I also doubt that the Obama campaign has hit upon an effective way to counter the ad this way. In fact, it led to USA Today covering the story and talking about Ayers in some detail. That article features this incredible quote from 60's radical-turned-elected official Tom Hayden...

Tom Hayden, an anti-war activist who met Ayers in the 1960s and later was elected to the California Legislature, says Ayers' past should be forgiven.

"I have met and like John McCain, but he bombed, and presumably killed, many people in a war I opposed," Hayden says. "If I can set all that aside, I would hope that Americans will accept" that Ayers has changed, too.

I'm sure members of the American military love the moral equivalence between actions taken by soldiers in a war with domestic terrorism. You know, I'm as sick of Vietnam comparisons as the next guy, but don't tell me that because it was a different time, I can't understand why idiots like Ayers were setting bombs. The 1960's and the Vietnam War did not exist in a time warp where America was under a totalitarian regime or something, and setting bombs is and was WRONG. Period. Plenty of young people did stupid things, but the vast majority didn't try to kill people or destroy property with explosives. Even if they did, one would hope that maturity supplied them with the necessary perspective to know it's wrong.

My suggestion to Obama? Address the issue in a speech, where you condemn Ayers as contemptible scum. No, not his actions -- him. Say they're not only unacceptable, but a failure to apologize shows that he has learned nothing about how wrong he is, and that you regret any association with the man. If you want to go over the top, state that you don't want his vote, or the vote of anyone who thinks his actions were and are justified.

I'm guessing that's actually the truth, if only for political reasons. I hope it's true regardless.

Irrelevant Poll of the Day

Seriously, why does anyone actually do a poll like this? They must have a lot of time on their hands in Germany...

Germans overwhelmingly back Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over Republican contender John McCain, a poll showed, though a majority said the U.S. election outcome won't affect relations with Europe.

Seventy-four percent of Germans say they would prefer Obama as president, with only 11 percent supporting McCain, according to the Forsa survey for N-TV and Die Welt newspaper. Among Germans under 30 years old, 84 percent said they back the Democratic senator from Illinois.

Obama boosted his popularity in Germany last month when he delivered a speech in Berlin's central Tiergarten park that drew some 200,000 people. Germans also favor positions held by Obama such as his opposition to the Iraq war, combating global warming and greater engagement with European allies.

To quote the Simpsons, no one who speaks German could be an evil man.

Irrelevant Unsolved Mystery of the Day

Bringing you the questions that don't matter, except they get stuck in your head and make you wonder...

I watched a good deal of volleyball during the Olympics, because if you're going to be forced to watch Olympic sports, watching women's beach volleyball isn't a bad way to pass the time. But I caught a little of the regular volleyball as well, and I was amazed to see both games now use the system where a point can be scored whether you're serving or not. When did this start, and why? I mean, it's not like volleyball generates ratings -- were they just tired of games going on forever? And how would anyone get tired of women's beach volleyball going on?

Maybe He Should Have Picked Clinton

I just threw up after writing that headline, but it would have been a good strategic move. Picking Biden is the smart consensus choice, if you're a conventional politician. But since Barack Obama isn't supposed to be a conventional politician (he's a Lightworker, remember?), this makes it look like his candidacy is reverting from a higher calling to standard-issue politics. I'm not saying it ever was anything but that, but the perception created by the Obama campaign of a cool, fresh politician has worn thin far faster than I thought it would. And I thought it was BS near the beginning.

Having thought about the Biden pick over the weekend, I come away with a feeling that Democrats are probably saying, "Um, okay" instead of "Yes, we can!" I actually think that would be okay if Obama was still rolling along to a run out the clock victory on McCain, but the momentum in the race shifted to McCain in July and August, and Obama's going to have to do more to take it back than nominate Joe Biden. Yes, Biden will provide a strategic assist in southeastern and northeastern Pennsylvania (and possibly in Florida with northeastern transplants), and he will be an effective attack dog for Obama. But the latter job is not one a "higher-order" campaign needs.

I know the Obama folks are now "fighting back" against what they view as misleading negative ads by McCain, but they're missing the mark with stuff like the ad about the houses. Yes, it was a dumb self-inflicted wound by McCain, but Obama would be better off letting the media play it up than cutting a campaign ad about it, and not just because it means McCain now has carte blanche to make Tony Rezko a household name. If Biden is signed on to be the designated fighter, it (a) implies Obama isn't tough enough to fight on his own, (b) means someone affiliated with the campaign is now taking negative shots at McCain, which will appeal to the nut left but not independants and (c) could leave Obama looking like Biden's #2. In fact, I'd think that might be a stronger ticket in some battleground states.

I still think Obama wins the election because the GOP is about as popular as spam email nowadays. But Obama's efforts to brand McCain with the Bush brand has not yet succeeded, and the longer McCain stays close, the more the problems build.

JammieWearingFool makes a great point...

Just imagine if you had massive amounts of Republicans defecting from the GOP and declaring they'd be voting for Barack Obama. You'd have a nonstop deluge of Obamacan stories flooding the media.

Though now you have news that John McCain is drawing a quarter of Hillary Clinton's supporters and it hardly gets a ripple on the eve of the Democratic Convention. Maybe the leftwing media covers their ears and goes "la la la I can't hear you" and hopes the story will go away.

I'm reminded of this moment from Beverly Hills Cop when Axel tells Jeffrey he's not listening to him by singing "lalalalalalala I am not listening to Jeffrey but he is still talking." It was funny when Murphy did it, but it's stale an unoriginal when the mainstream media does it. For the record, I'd expect most Hillary voters will return to the fold and vote Obama. But it should be disturbing to the Obama camp that they've lost many of those voters over the last two months, instead of making gains. I'm sure they've noticed, even if the media has ignored it. Whether they can do something about is another issue.

MSNBC To Launch Obama Channel

Okay, the headline's a joke, but would it really shock you if it was true? Ed Rendell probably wouldn't be shocked. Now I remember why I respect Rendell, even if he's a Democrat...

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give “closing remarks” during this afternoon’s Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s George Stephanopoulous and CBS’s Bob Schieffer — but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage

"Ladies and gentleman, the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing," said Rendell, in the ballroom at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "It was embarrassing."

Rendell, an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter during the primaries, now backs Obama in the general election. Brokaw and Rendell began debating campaign coverage, including the on-air comments by Lee Cowan, and when MSNBC came up, Rendell went after the cable network. “MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."

Chris Matthews, Rendell said, "loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons.” At that point, PBS's Judy Woodruff, who was moderating the moderators event, said: "Why don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down."

(hat tip: Instapundit). You know, Ed is an Iggles fan, and we're known for being brutally honest.

The fact that MSNBC is now a sad parody of a news network probably doesn't matter, because Olbermann is earning good ratings (by MSNBC standards, they're friggin' unreal) by pandering to the nutjob left. Of course, the lefties would probably say this is a balance to Fox News, except that (a) so are CNN, ABC News, CBS News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the vast majority of the legacy media, and (b) Fox actually has liberal voices on the air regularly. But hey, keep pandering to the idiots and failing to vet Obama -- I'm sure it won't hurt him when uncovered scandals come up, and no one will ever question the substance behind the candidacy before Election Day.

A Break For This Important News

Forget politics. Here's the most important news of the day...

The blonde fur is flying, as Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson are going to battle over Tony Romo.

Here's what's happening in a nut shell: Tony and Carrie were good friends, dated and broke up. Then Tony started dating Jess. Carrie was named "Sexiest Vegetarian" and, soon after, Jess was seen wearing a T-shirt that read, "Real women eat meat." Burn.

Theeeennnn, Carrie told Allure magazine that her ex still calls her sometimes, which Jessica was apparently not too keen on hearing. Jess then shot back, to Nashville's 107.5 FM's Woody and Jim show, that she and Tony had a good laugh over Carrie claiming that the Dallas Cowboy player was still ringing up the American Idol winner.

"If Tony wanted to call her and be with her, he would," Jess sniffed to the radio guys.

That sound you hear is the millions of useless insecure front-runners known as Cowboy fans trying not to rip their hair out, wondering why their pretty-boy QB can score with blonde singers but can't score enough points in playoff games. But hey, look on the bright side -- at least he's involved in a love triangle that would fit in well in any formulaic high school movie. Of course, in the movie, he would have won a playoff game by now.