What are they thinking?

I’ve been trying to make sense of the VP pick and a couple of things are obvious. Obama had finally put the Hillary issue back in the box and now it’s out again. They also keep talking up how she’s pro-life and how she has a baby born with down syndrome. Which she knew about before giving birth. Which she didn’t abort like so many other people probably do. This smells like a Rovian ploy to get the single-issue religious voters all excited about the election, by having someone so passionately “Christian” close to the presidency again. They can then just pray for nature to take its inevitable course on McCain and leave her in charge.

If she can overcome the experience issue with the Republican base – and, again, these people care first about you being their kind of Christian, and she certainly seems to be – and she can energize the base and get out the religious vote, it will definitely change things a little bit. If “the base” still exists, anyway.

McCain’s VP

So the McCain campaign has chosen someone younger than Obama, with even less political experience than Obama, not to mention she has zero foreign policy experience… actually, not even any opinions in the public record, as his vice presidential candidate. Way to undercut the one argument the McCain campaign really had going for itself. It’s just astonishing the logic of the Republican party, where two and two never have to necessarily add up to four. These people think in straight lines and end up surrounding themselves in contradictions, and this campaign is not disciplined or smart enough to avoid tripping over them. I understand that after last night it’s time to do a 180, but damn, way to shoot yourself in the foot so quickly.

Are there no other Republican women? Let’s hope so.

McCain going after Osama

All these dumbass TV talking heads going on and on wondering why Obama said that John McCain , a former POW, won’t follow Osama “to his cave”. Besides the obvious fact that the Iraq war took our attention away from Afghanistan, where Osama used to be way back then, and that John McCain was a strong proponent of that war, you would think the talking heads would remember covering a news story early on the election season about how Obama “wanted to invade Pakistan” and how John McCain disagreed strongly with that. They then corrected the story to Obama “wanting to go after Osama in Pakistan” and McCain STILL said it was a foolish thing to say.

That’s what Obama was referring to. McCain constantly insists that he would follow Osama “to the gates of Hell”, but he very publicly disagreed and mocked Obama when he mentioned he would target Bin Laden in Pakistan if there was intelligence indicating his location and the disfunctional Pakistani government refused to do it themselves. McCain ridiculed Obama as naive and inexperience for “threatening” a sovereign nation. This is the same man who disagrees with the sovereign Iraqi government about whether or not American troops should remain in Iraq forever and who has been threatening fucking RUSSIA with military action for the past three weeks. Yet targeting Osama in Pakistan is a bad idea. It’s that classic mind boggling Republican logic.

And let me just say, CNN should be ashamed of themselves for existing. I cannot believe I’ve put up with their coverage. It seriously should be illegal, it’s a disservice to anybody watching it. Watching this shit leaves you dumber and more misinformed than simply not paying any attention whatsoever would. Between the so-called “analysis”, the talking over every speaker and complaining about how “boring” the whole thing is, it’s seriously hard to stomach and i feel for anybody that uses TV news as their only source of information.

McCain campaign looking for a way out

Republicans are using soon-to-be Hurricane Gustav as a way out of having to respond to everything the Democrats and Obama said at their convention. They might be thinking they need to retool their “everything is great” campaign theme with something less embarrassing. They’re thinking of going as far as (1) delaying the start of the convention, (2) cancelling mccain’s speech on thursday if there’s something bad going on, (3) and bush is thinking of staying at the White House and skipping the convention if it makes landfall on a major city. Oh how thoughtful of him! Staying away from McCain in order to “protect us”. Don’t worry people, Katrina is old news. Republicans really are finally ready to protect us. There will be no birthday cake this time.

Too bright to lead

Barack Obama is too intelligent to be president. How many times does the media have to say this: you cannot win the presidency if you try to sound intelligent. Only irrational hotheads can win elections. It’s the media’s job to make sure that never changes, because educating people on how to be a good citizen is just too much work i don’t know you have to like use words and stuff and think, its just too hard.

Obama’s VP

It’s probably going to be Biden, which is great news if he never gets to be president or have a say on domestic issues. He’s all about the foreign policy, and even though he voted for the war he’s shown some remorse and he can’t be bullied and he curses all the time, so he’s ok in my book. At this point, the chances of Obama picking a “change” running mate are nill because of political reasons. We’re stuck with a bunch of these dumbass Democrats for now and we have to suck it up. The goal right now is to win in November, comfortably, have a couple good years and then we can start throwing people out in 2010.

I’m actually kinda hoping he picks Hillary. Yes, the same Hillary who tormented me day after day for the first 6 months of the year. First, the ticket would be unbeatable, no doubt about it. Second, when she wants to she can be a pretty cool person, and having the vice presidency might make her more comfortable being honest since she’ll already be at the (near) top. You can see already, now that the chances of her being president are zero, that she is taking a different political route. Her vote against FISA, for example, really makes no sense if you follow her Senate record because she’s been one of these useless dumbass Democrats up until her loss, but I guess now that she has nothing to gain she can finally vote the right way on issues.

As long as her political people are out of the picture and Bill is kept under control, I see nothing but positives to having her as the VP. Besides, Obama should be reversing all of Cheney’s extended VP powers, so she will not easily be able to achieve Clinton monster status. A weakened, humble, honest Hillary plus extra Secret Service protection for Obama for whenever Hillary gets those urges sounds like an excellent idea, and honestly the rest of the field isn’t any better so why the hell not?

Woulda former POW…

Tucked in some meaningless article about a meaningless issue is this gem from the McCain campaign:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

This probably won’t be the last time we hear it.

McCain is scary

This is a pretty damning article. I didn’t notice at the time but John McCain has always been sort of insane. He was talking about invading Iraq, Iran, and Syria just days after 9/11.  Today he’ s talking about striking Russia. Seriously? The real scary thing with McCain is that since he’s the “original maverick”, which means something like he doesn’t care what anyone thinks because he knows what’s right for everybody, as President he won’t be too concerned about first manipulating public opinion to get people’s support like Bush did. He’ll just do it.

Olympics update

Swimming and gymnastics are just too much fun for me to do an individual private boycott of the Olympics, so I’ve totally flipped flopped on my position that China is evil and therefore we must wish bad upon them. So what if China is a blatant human rights violator, so what that they censor their publications, hide chubby Chinese kids from world tv, engage in environmental propaganda, provides safe-haven for African war criminals, and is just downright not that cool about certain things? I don’t live there!

Besides, if China likes the good publicity and adoration that they’re getting because of the Olympics, then at some point they’re going have to stop embarrassing themselves in the eyes of the world, because it is not going to last long past this. Engagement is the right policy, not just in China but in the rest of the world as well – it should be our policy in Cuba, Iran, and anywhere else we don’t like. As long as they aren’t taking any steps back, I don’t see any reason to punish them even through symbolic acts like an Olympic boycott. The Chinese government and its citizens can decide the pace of reform, but all we should be doing is simply encourage them to do so quicker.

News Update

The biggest news of the past few days is of course Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Actually, the real news is that Georgia baited Russia, who had been waiting for the bait, and got its ass thoroughly kicked. Fighting is on the wane, but who knows. Russia is scary again. This has given McCain an opportunity to engage in a favorite hobby of his, talking smack and being confrontational towards Russia (McCain knows how to fight wars against Russia!), while Obama’s taking the route everyone else is and probably crapping his pants waiting to see what the Russians are up to before starting a new Cold War.

In happier political news, it looks like the McCain campaign has invited Dick Cheney to speak at the GOP convention. Cheney will be speaking the first night of the convention, same as Bush W. Since they felt obligated to invite them, I guess it’s smart to put em up together on the first night and then get on with it. But it still means that for the first couple of nights, the GOP convention will be all about Bush and Cheney. Not good news if you’re John McCain and you want people to forget that Bush and Cheney are Republicans.

Meanwhile, John Edwards finally admitted to having an affair. It happened while his wife was recovering from cancer…. from cancer. AND THEN he thought it’d be an excellent idea to keep it quiet and run for president. Lucky for everybody, he’s always appeared to be an dishonest jackass (who really loves himself!) and so not many people voted for him.

John Edwards is so thoughtful… and so dreamy!

Today’s pollster.com average for the presidential race continues to show McCain with a steady lead over Obama (if you read the poll upside down).