Five Before Chaos

…was a snoozefest, so much that I turned it off after 45 minutes. At this point, there’s no surprises, from either side. No mention of “poverty” or “poor people’ in this one, either. Go figure.

Seriously, I haven’t beat a subject to death like this since the whole racist VT secessionist movement story 2 years ago. It’s just the gift that keeps on giving, like looking at a car wreck. But I must move on. Most of the thinking persons in this country have figured out she’s an idiot. In fact, “Sarah Palin + idiot” is giving me tons of Google action lately.

Two more things, and I’ll try to move on (but I make no promises). First, one of the best comments about last night’s debate comes from one of the commenters over at Boiling Mad:

If Obama resorted to leaning on Ebonics the way Palin leaned on the redneck dialect, conservatives would be calling him the n-word.

Indeed, and you betcha! (wink wink)

Second, there’s some seriously must-read Matt Taibbi out there right now, Mad Dog Palin. There’s just too much quote-worthy stuff in it, so go read the whole thing. A sampling:

All of which tells you about what you’d expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the Constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you’d think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out…

Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn’t that she’s totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we’ll not only thank you for your trouble, we’ll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.

If I don’t talk to you before Monday, have a good weekend.

I have to admit, I’m a bit shocked that Palin didn’t come across as the blithering idiot we’ve seen this last week. What’s one notch under blithering? Still completely idiotic, like listening to that date that you can’t wait to end.You know, the “Sweet Jesus, hurry up and finish your fucking milkshake so I can take you home… there’s still time for me to catch up with the guys for a beer!”

I’m suspecting the media will call this one a draw. She did master the non-answer. My problems with Biden were more so policy than anything else, but there’s no denying he’s light years ahead of her in the intelligence game. Unfortunately in these things, it’s not what they said, it’s how they made the viewers “feel”.

Looking around the internets, I think the left-blogosphere is somewhat let down because she just sounded like another dimwitted, ill-informed Republican douche instead of the ditzy pile of wasted oxygen and brain cell one she’s been acting like lately. I think her numbers will go up just a tiny bit after this, but it’s not going to change anything, and I’m sure there’ll be many more moments of interview stupidity. McCain is still toast, he’ll still lose if he doesn’t keel over first.

And if I hear “maverick” one more time, I’m going to fucking puke.

As previously mentioned, many are looking forward to the Veep debates tomorrow night, undoubtedly a high-water mark for surrealistic comedy during this campaign season. It’ll go down like this:

• Palin will give lots of non-answers, and pull here cutsie-poo dizty cheerleader thing to disarm critics.

• Biden will be passed off as mean, condescending, and sexist, purely for being able to use more than monosyllabic words, not use the word “like” in the middle of a sentence with two commas around it, and perhaps knowing where actual countries on the globe are.

There’s a good piece over at Alternet now by a guy who’s debated Palin several times. Apparently, she’s the master of the non-answer, and as a bonus, has that hardcore disdain for facts, that many conservatives find so sexy and appealing:

“Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, ‘Does any of this really matter?’ ” Palin said.

I have to say, for the first time ever since blogging, that I now have my Dan Quayle. You know what I mean, when some public figure is out there that is so mind-numbingly, excruciatingly stupid that s(he) provides a constant stream of snark-worthy material. It’s got to be how late-nite talk show hosts feel about Bush – there will undoubtedly be a comedy vacuum for a while when he’s gone.

So, speaking of comedy, the Veep debate is this Thursday. I can’t help but wonder how many people are going to be tuning in simply for the sheer idiocy of it all. Lefties all over the country, in addition to being enormously entertained, will have chronic bouts of schadenfreude. This will epitomize the pinnacle of the conservative movement in the last 20 years.. the sheer, utter glorification of stupidity and incompetence as a strength and personal virtue. Reagan would be proud. Dan Quayle is probably jealous.

There’s still part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if she “had a family emergency” and ducked out of it at the last minute. There’s even chatter that a good ol’ white trash wedding of her daughter right before the election might somehow lift McCain’s anemic numbers. How, of course, this is never explained. I can see it getting traction with those idiot voters who like Palin because they can relate to her being a ‘mom”, while forgetting that in their dimwitted fucktardery that we’re not electing a “mom”, we’re electing a president here. I don’t care if she can make a mean fluffernutter. And I don’t say that to disparage the vital function moms have in our society.. I have one, you know. It’s just that it’s apples and oranges… voting completely based on emotion with no thought processes involved.

So, anyways, the WSJ today revealed that since the McCain campaign knows they’re really screwed and stuck with her now, they’d better give her some ‘training’. Their solution?

Meanwhile, the more experienced advisers assigned to her by the McCain campaign are accustomed to working with seasoned candidates, not someone “completely green on the national stage,” one strategist said. Several Republican backers have griped that the campaign has put the candidate in difficult situations, from sitting for high-profile television interviews to popping into meetings with foreign leaders, some of whom made sexist remarks, said several officials.

“It’s time to let Palin be Palin — and let it all hang out,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist.

Yessssss (pumps fist wildly in the air)! I love how they’re trying to spin this, as though we’re supposed to believe that her batshit insane explanation of foreign policy experience (“living next to Russia”) weren’t her words.. they were McCain talking points! Uh, okay. Her own words? Expect a lot of “um” and “uh”, interspersed with awkward silences as her one or two synapses misfire. Also, expect how this will play out. The wingers will try to play it up that Biden was mean to her, and sexist, too. You know, for actually speaking in complete sentences and such. Oh, the horror.

Now, I’ve said it a bazillion times… the GOP pretty much uses the nuts on the religious right for votes, nothing else. They could give two shits about ending abortion, stopping the gays from getting married, or making glossolalia the other official language of the United States, but this particular base ain’t exactly the brimming with critical thinking skills, so thay gotta throw ‘em the red meat.

Problem is, they overstepped this one. By pickng a bonafide nutter that is so loved by the Godidiots, they failed to realize that this kind of candidate comes across to even the marginally-thinking Americans as, well, really stupid.

Well, Saturday night, I watched both NH debates. This is the first time I’ve watched any for this season, believe it or not. A few thoughts:

Romney reminds me of a sleazy car salesman, or that prick in college who would screw other guys’ girlfriends, get caught, and then try to weasel out of it by buying the guy a beer. Grampa Fred reminds me of that nasty uncle that some people have. You know the one: when he dies, nobody can really find anything nice to say about him. I’ve never heard someone defend oil companies with so much reckless abandon. I guess those “true conservative principles” were thoroughly ingrained in him when he spent all those years as a K-Street lobbyist. It shows. I now also see why Ron Paul appeals to some people. He may be a nut on certain things, but he is most certainly speaking the ugly truth about how 9-11 was in part a result of American foreign policy, although I don’t see that flying with the many idiots on the right who firmly believe that our country can do no wrong (you know, the ones who never picked up a history book past 5th grade). McCain looked like he needed a nap. And Huckabee didn’t break out his boner for the Jesus, because I suspect he knows that shit won’t fly in NH. And yes, Giuliani does indeed have “9-11 Tourettes”.

Actually, I believe the Dem debate, although a stark contrast from the GOP one, was kinda slow paced and less exciting. I did enjoy Edwards and Obama tag-teaming Hillary, as did most of us, I’m sure. She looked quite unhinged. I have to laugh at her seeming inability to grasp that to many of us, she is the personification of the status quo. As she mentions “experience” ad nauseum, I think that she fails to get that if much of that experience was being a triangulating DLC Democrat, that’s not exactly a winning argument for those speaking for change. And Richardson really needs to get rid of the deer-in-the-headlights look, although at this stage of the game, I don’t think it’s gonna matter much. Either way, whoever gets the Dem nomination is going to mop the floor with the GOP, for better or worse.

The one thing that really put me off about both debates was the loaded question propagandizing from ABC before several questions that would show a mini “news” piece, followed by a question like “Will any of you admit the surge is working?” But the format of the debate, podium-free, that allowed the candidates to have discussions, was most definitely a good one, much better than the ususal 15-second soundbite “debates” we’re usually given.

11 more months of this shit? Sigh….