Sarah Palin has been quoted today as saying, “it would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration.”
While I appreciate the extra mile thing she’s doing, I think she did her level best to ensure an Obama victory.
I just hung our flag out in a fit of patriotism after we got back from voting. We had about a fifteen minute wait — certainly manageable. Of course, our precinct is kind of soccer-mom-heavy and we timed it out so it would be right between the early work rush and the mid-day housewife rush. I expect it’ll be pretty dicey after work tonight.
I was going to go downtown to the Obama rally tonight, but my ticket never came. Lizzie’s did, but she doesn’t want to go. And I’m just as happy to stay home with her and Nora and watch history happen together.
While I’m slightly concerned that our flag will make us look like a polling place, I’m perfectly happy to accept any votes for McCain here. 
The guy who claims to have started the rumor years ago that Barack Obama is Muslim has reversed course, now claiming that he’s not Muslim but is instead the illegitimate son of a civil rights leader (that’s a CNN video). If this would make the Muslim thing go away, I’d almost welcome it. But it won’t — we’ll just have another bucket of made-up nonsense to listen to from all the knuckleheads who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and that strange guy at work with all the pamphlets.
The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits. They’re using the dollar sign spot for the moment, and will soon add more digits to the sign so it can track up to a quadrillion dollars. Lordy.
My friend Doug (say hi, Doug) posted a link to this article a few weeks ago. I didn’t really read it carefully until tonight (I know, bad friend), but when I did I realized that it’s fascinating. Much time has passed (not to mention one vice-presidential and two presidential debates), but it’s a very interesting take on Obama vs. McCain.
Last night Lizzie and I blew off the debate and went to see Burn After Reading. Very funny movie, and we ate at Chipotle beforehand. We came home rage-free and went to bed.
Tonight, we watched the debate online. I won’t go into too much detail (because I always do and it makes people bored and glassy), but one point that struck me was that McCain seems ready to send 4000 more American soldiers to their deaths to defend and justify the deaths of the first 4000.
I’m not blindingly impressed by Obama, and really, it was a very good debate for both. But all the specific things I have problems with about McCain (and there are many — email me if you want to get barked at about them), I’m hard pressed to come up with a more visceral reason to vote for him than that the Republican Party doesn’t get to have my White House for a while. In hockey terms (which apparently go over well with the Republican hockey mom contigent), four years in the box for roughing. That being the case, Obama has my enthusiastic vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txfqWzGMgmY
I’m not sure what she said, but I’m pretty sure it was a frantic attempt to bring a good-if-simple question (from Katie Couric, oddly enough) back to the three talking points about which she has scripted responses. THIS is the most popular person in the race? Good God, I have never had less faith in the American public (at least the chowderheads who answer the polling calls).
P.S. Hey, Doug, how do you embed YouTube video in your blog entries? If I pick up their code, it borks the CSS for the whole page.
Ooh, wait wait wait, I posted too soon. This one’s good, too:
The McCain/Palin campaign has again revised its description of Sarah Palin’s only trip outside of North America. This time, more importantly than the last clarification, it turns out that she HASN’T been to Iraq after all.
Look, I don’t care about the first one — whether she spent an hour or a week in Ireland makes no difference to me as it pertains to her foreign policy experience. And honestly, whether she spent time on this side of the Iraq border or that side doesn’t particularly bother me either, given the breadth and depth of how deeply unqualified to take over the presidency she seems to be. We’re talking about very small distinctions. What bothers me is the lying and its underlying message that they need to fabricate a global view for this woman out of one-hour layovers in Ireland. Not simply because the lying is bad, though it is. What irks me is that by doing all this lying and retracting (notice how they retract this on a Saturday during Hurricane Ike coverage), they are indicating that they think it’s bad news that Sarah Palin, for all intents and purposes, hasn’t been anywhere. If they think it’s important, why is she the VP candidate? And if they don’t, why aren’t they saying so?
I just wonder who turned them down. Given the layers and layers of nonsense that keeps coming out about Sarah Palin, she was either a) vetted by a team of nearsighted, crack-smoking lemurs (a great, heartwarming advancement in the uphill battle for the rights of chemically-dependent tail-swinging primates), or b) a late-in-the-count audible after a couple of other options dried up. Seriously, no one thing about Palin has been a slam dunk as far as I’m concerned. But friend, she’s a flippin’ ocean of highly questionable raindrops.
This was funny for a while, but it’s getting hard to watch. More to the point, it’s harder still to understand why ANYONE is on the fence about this race. This election is a choice between an ice cream cone and a sock in the nose. And I don’t mean to cast one candidate as ice cream, either (though I think we all know how I feel about it). All character assignments aside, these guys really are simply that different. How anyone, right or left, black or white, tall or short, or whatever else can look at the Obama/McCain choice and go, “jeez, I JUST don’t know … it’s SO hard to decide …” is baffling to me.
All I can figure is that people shut down in the face of details. Two guys, both senators, both wear suits, both have divisive running mates, both are visibly humanoid with two arms and two legs apiece … they clearly must be exactly the same. And now that we have the choice of making history with either a woman or a black man elected to high office, even the people who just like to make waves are stumped.
Sometimes I think there should be a simple test — maybe five basic civics questions — before you’re allowed to vote. I’ll even give you a 60% pass — get three out of five and you get to vote. Get fewer than three, you’re not informed enough to weigh in on MY life, rights, children, and so on. But man, if you want to see the disinterested come out in droves and vote like never before, all you have to do is try to take away their right to vote with a dart. You’ll see record turnout then. God Bless America.
CNN/Money is reporting that the budget deficit is forecast to hit $407 billion, up $246 billion in just one year. I was about to post something about the deficit approaching a half a trillion dollars, but then I realized an alarming fact. $407 billion is still NINETY THREE BILLION DOLLARS away from a half a trillion dollars. The scale of this is amazing.
Stimulus checks, an underfunded just war, an overfunded unjust war, education and corporate initiatives that aren’t cutting it … at least we’re getting what we pay for.
Where’s the f—— Tylenol?
In at least three speeches since she was announced as the VP running mate of John McCain, Sarah Palin was recorded referring to “nucular” weapons. But ho! Someone in her camp apparently has a Speak & Spell, because in her acceptance speech at the convention, she pronounced it “nuclear.” Whoopee!
Sadly, according to reports this morning, they had to spell it phonetically for her to get her to do it.
Criminy.
