As I began to suspect late last week, it appears that the McCain/Palin campaign have gotten their hands on a time-traveling DeLorean. After all, McCain declared himself the winner of Friday night’s debate….on Friday morning. Nevermind that it’s widely agreed that Obama actually won. There’s some kind of special message about fate vs. destiny in all of this, but we don’t have time for existentialism right now. There’s an election going on.
And now, a full four days before the VP debate, the ad below has surfaced, offering a predictable snapshot of the McCain camp’s reaction to her inevitable crushing defeat, despite the fact that she’ll likely have her talking points fed through an earpiece Thursday night (look for the new ear-concealing hairstyle).
This may also be the reason why she’ll most likely go into hiding directly following the debate. You know, to heal her wounds. From the head shot, of course, not the beating Biden will give her. She’ll take that in stride, though, ’cause Sarah Palin’s not exactly the type of person who acknowledges indisputable fact.
Besides, she’s got a wedding to plan. This was seen falling out of the DeLorean as Doc Brown McCain got out:
There’s a hundred other ways to dress it, but Scroobius Pip is the shit. I did an interview with him on Antiquiet a few weeks ago, and I can personally testify to the guy’s high-octane flow and flavor, even off the mic. I stumbled across this video on his MySpace while fishing for a spot on the list for Tuesday’s show at the Echo, and my shit was pleasantly rocked.
His friends list is largely a who’s-who of his peers and influences – it’s how I came to discover Polar Bear, another gifted spoken-word Londoner who’s worth a listen.
Little Britain is one of my all-time favorite shows. The characters created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams are some of the funniest and most original out there, and their weird-ass brand of humor has handily bitch-slapped the competition since 2003.
Propelled by the smash success of the U.S. version of The Office, the inevitable American adaptation of the show, Little Britain USA, premieres tonight on HBO.
For the record, while Ann and Nancy Wilson did send the McCain campaign a cease & desist over their use of the song, but the pic above is actually a piece conceived by The Stranger, a colorful little site with refreshingly candid guest editorials like this one:
And hey, while we’re talking about the Barracuda, here’s a piece on the VP nom that I couldn’t have put better myself. Disregard the disarming mugshot of the author, Aztec Skeletor.
This guy’s such a maverick he can fucking time travel.
A victoriously grinning candidate, flag draped and beaming over an all-caps declaration of victory. For a debate that hasn’t happened yet. A debate that he has so flailingly tried to postpone.
The ad was featured in a Wall Street Journal story posted this morning, but has since been removed from the piece. Another ad quotes McCain’s campaign manager as saying: “McCain won the debate– hands down.”
Stay tuned for McCain’s election landslide victory announcement sometime in the next week or so.
This proposed $700 billion bailout is, understandably, raising a lot of red flags among all circles. People are taking to the streets, the media’s falling over itself trying to focus on real issues again and keep up with the spins, and Congress… well, the pants-shitting and skepticism is a bipartisan affair. The talks have now gone belly-up in a spastic fit of chaos, with both sides pointing fingers at the other and presidential politics weighing down the entire process.
But a question lingers: where does this gargantuan number come from? $700 billion? That’s a lot of government-funded rape kits, bombs and fighter jets. Surely the administration has a structural breakdown of where that money should go. Right? I mean, come on, it’s not like they just made it up. Right?
Forbes asked the U.S. Treasury Department, and got this response:
“It’s not based on any particular data point, ” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com, “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
I love music. I play music. And this little site exists solely for me to air out my inspirations and aggravations. Therefore, from time to time I’ll be posting little how-to videos and other sources of musical improvement. Here’s an instructional video on how to play 3 Weezer songs – Island In The Sun, El Scorcho and Beverly Hills by the guys that wrote them:
A couple years ago I’d have laughed at the idea of saying this, but Weezer kinda kicks ass. I’ve been a love/hate listener for a while, but the Red Album is pretty rockin, and they do a lot of really cool shit for and with their fans.
Here’s a quick how-to clip for their song Troublemaker.
These songs are super easy to play, even for someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing on the guitar.
You know what, I’ve got no snarky remarks on this one. It’s just fucking scary.
Transcript:
COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that? PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land- boundary that we have with- Canada. It- it’s funny that a comment like that was- kind of made to- cari- I don’t know, you know? Reporters- COURIC: Mock? PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah. COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials. PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia- COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians? PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We- we do- it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where- where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to- to our state.
Now that’s pretty horrifying, right? Sure. But there’s more to be considered here than what an Alaskan can see from a hill in her hometown and hypotheticals about where Putin might “rear his head.” You know, things like the big-budget ($700 billion, to be exact) Wall Street remake of that classic 1929 flick the Great Depression . On that note, here’s a little more from the Couric interview, this time focusing on the economy. You may recognize that deer-in-the-headlights look she gets when asked for specifics and steered away from her talking points (think Bush in the presidential debates).
John McCain’s maverick straight-talk image has dissolved in a matter of days, falling flat on its face with such rapid repetition that it seems almost deliberate. McCain’s flipping his position on so many topics with such increasing frequency that he can now only be defined as either an exposed, flat-out liar or very, very confused.
He’s taking more hits than a crackhead with a death wish in the polls, and suddenly he wants to postpone a debate that’s 48 hours away, to put “country first.”
Mind you, McCain has skipped more Congressional votes during this session than any member of the Senate – except for Tim Johnson, that is, who had major brain surgery. But suddenly he’s demanding that the presidential race be shut down so he can return to Washington?
Flag on the fucking play.
Nevermind that the bailout negotiations are already underway, and there’s nothing helpful that McCain can bring to the table with his spotlights, entourage and grandstanding. He wants to step in and, by association, gain an instant upper hand by taking credit for whatever resolution arises.
Look West, it’s on the horizon and headed for the headlines: Obama’s disagreeing with McCain on the need for a delay, forcing his hand by saying it’s more important now than ever, will naturally be portrayed as the anti-patriotic equivalent of burning the flags draped over the coffins of dead soldiers returning home. He’ll be dragged over the coals and painted unpatriotic for not hopping on the “country first” train.
In other words, while the Great Depression Part 2 looms large, McCain is once again doing his damnedest to change the conversation from economics to political tactics, to generalize and demonize instead of tackling the specific issues and discussing in direct conversation, for all of us to see, how he’d handle them as president. He voted for all the deregulation, but is painting himself as the toughest re-regulator. It’s all bullshit, an image play, a grabby stunt to draw the hero spotlight back to the superpatriot, John McCain. You know he was a POW, right? You’ll be reminded of that many, many times if he actually shows up on Friday.
The American people need to see these candidates, all four of them, as much as possible between now and November. But the McCain/Palin campaign has and continues to go to great lengths to keep that from happening. Perhaps that’s because there’s something more to the fact that he seems increasingly confused each week, and the issue of his age is being raised yet again, this time by people much closer to home.
As for Sarah Palin, the campaign still offers nothing but family-first evangelical trophy veep blurbs. They’d been riding the wave of American Idol-style sensationalism since her minutely scripted unveiling, gleefully tossing talking-points nuggets to the millions who want, who deserve to know more about this woman than how many retarded kids she has or what country she can see from her hometown.
The media, already tired of being stonewalled on Palin and used alternately as a launchpad for lies and deceit and a punching bag for not being deferential at every turn, called bullshit on the McCain campaign’s chokehold on coverage of Palin’s world leader speed-dating marathon, limiting exposure to a question about somebody’s kid. And you know things have really gotten bad when cartoonishly right-wing Fox news calls bullshit on McCain’s lies:
Then, what was expected to be a perfectly chatty meat-and-potatoes conversation on The View last week instead became the single most direct interview with McCain yet. It was also, by far, the most telling of the depths he will sink to in order to win the presidency. He defended the ridiculous “Obama wants to teach kindergartners sex ed” ad, calling it completely fair and accurate.
Then there’s the 18 or so times since June that McCain has called the economy fundamentally strong, with more than one instance of which occurring in the past two weeks.
Then there’s the discovery of belly-up mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s direct financial ties to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis until a month ago, contradicting McCain’s very recent response to a question about Mr. Davis’ connections. He said Davis hasn’t been affiliated with them since 2005, and “I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.” Unfortunately for him, they took him up on his offer and discovered, once again, that McCain is full of shit.
So why, now, does John McCain suddenly want to suspend his presidential campaign and postpone Friday’s debate? His campaign surrogates are saying it’s another one of his good ‘ol boy “maverick” moves, that McCain is, once again, simply gettin’ his shitkickers on and “putting country first.” Which is to say, this latest stunt has absolutely nothing to do with his entire campaign hemorrhaging massively on every front.
John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn’t cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. But all of a sudden, he’s demanding that the presidential race shut down so he can return to Washington.
Hmm.
Newsflash: Bush debated John Kerry while he was president, a job where every second of every day is packed with demands, decisions and a need for constant multitasking. For all his sudden urgency, it’s an interesting note that McCain acknowledged just yesterday that he had not even read the administration’s three-page bailout proposal.
Let’s recap that last point. McCain, citing the current economic crisis, wants to postpone Friday’s debate to deal with the pressing economic issues at hand. But he hasn’t even read the bailout plan. And it’s only three pages long.
If you’re President, you need to be able to walk and chew gum. The world isn’t going to hit freeze-frame every time a crisis arises. Can I get a witness?
“Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time,” Obama said today, “it is not necessary for us to think we can do only one thing and suspend everything else.”
See you on Friday.
UPDATE: McCain was supposed to be on David Letterman’s Late Show tonight, but cancelled, natch, since he’s busy putting country first. Who stepped in to replace the empty guest slot? None other than Mr Keith Olbermann. But good old Dave didn’t exactly just grin and bear the cancellation. He brings up a very good point around the 3:25 mark here:
