The Blame Game Begins

As wacko as Sarah Palin is, McCain's defeat does not lay at her feet. His defeat was caused by his dramatic transformation from funny, outspoken, bipartisan hater of corruption, to GOP extrem-o base-panderer. Srsly. Obama was inclusive, and McCain followed that Republican strategy of the last 20 years: divide and conquer. FUCK THAT. Divided we fail. Which thankfully, many, many Americans realized.
So anyway, this shit is not Palin's fault. Sure she is totally backwards. But picking her did not sink that campaign.
Watch the clip to see some post-election McCain camp finger-pointing.

The Tax Foundation finds errors by both candidates during first debate

"Although the first debate was originally supposed to be about foreign policy, due to the current financial situation in the United States, the economy was the issue for the first half hour of the debate. In the economic portion of the debate, both Sens. Obama and McCain made some statements about taxes that played somewhat loose with the facts. Let's take a look at a few of these courtesy of CNN's transcript"...

JUMP

"You're absolutely right, John."

Perhaps the first time a candidate has accused another candidate of being too agreeable.

Obama disagrees with McCain on HUGE, over-arching policy issues, so clipping together sound bytes of Obama being polite during the debate makes what point, exactly?

lolcat duznt undrstan wy looke allmos sayme heiyt duhring debayte

Barack Obama: 6'1"
John McCain: 5'7"

The Biggest Load of Political Bulls**t I've Heard Since Bush said FEMA was doing a good job with Katrina

So I'm actually grateful to McCain for this week. He did something even more transparently politicky than taking an inexperienced nutjob of a backwoods Alaskan woman as his VP pick in order to fire up those bible-thumpin, rifle-totin' GOPers/steal attention and momentum from Obama.

McCain suspended his campaign in order to fly to D.C. where he is "needed" to help solve the financial crisis. Included in this suspension is a possible no-show for the highly anticipated first debate with Obama.

Please keep in mind:

(A) McCain is not even on the committee that is dealing with the issue
(B) McCain's financial background/expertise is pretty much zilch.
(C) McCain is the most absent Senator of the 110th Congress, having missed 64% of the votes since January 2007 (more than Tim Johnson, who um, had a stroke) (Washington Post).
(D) He tanked in the polls this week. concidence?
(E) Congressional lawmakers came to terms on the bailout package today, several hours before McCain finished his speech at teh Clinton Global Initiative and flew to Washington to rescue the American Economy (NY Times).
(F) McCain's "suspension" saved him $1 million dollars in ads, and generated a shitload of earned media. ie., he didn't stop campaigning, he merely stopped paying for tv time (huffington post).
(G) As of Friday morning, 12:17 AM PST, the McCain camp still hasn't announced whether or not he will debate Obama Friday night, having declared that the answer depends on the state of the bailout agreement.

In my opinion, this move makes McCain look like a complete idiot. It looks like, not only is he reluctant to debate Obama, but he went about avoiding that debate in one of the most transparent maneuvers I've seen in a loooong time. If I didn't object to the word "pussy" being used as a derogatory term I would TOTALLY CALL HIM ONE.

But, at least I haven't thought about Sarah Palin for like a good 36 hours.

Here's the latest New York Times article about it all.

Jeremiah Wright is to Obama as Phil Gram is to......

MCCAIN!

This Gawker article makes the point that McCain's relationship with Phil Gram might end up hurting him even more than Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright did. Phil Gram is the former senator who happens to be McCain's main economic guru, and who also happens to be a major proponent of predatory lending (i.e., the main cause of this whole "verge of dramatic economic depression thing" that's going on right now).

So the United States is entering financial turmoil, what with all of our banks collapsing and the world's largest insurance company needing a bailout from the State of New York and the stock market tumbling and thousands of fancy jobs on the line. Honestly, though, let's get to the heart of the matter: will this news secretly (or openly!) thrill political partisans? It seems, on its face, that news of Wall Street turmoil helps Senator Barack Obama. And why not? The initial careful ventures into political exploitation of this maybe-catastrophe are already underway. How will it play out?....

Click here for the full article.

The McCain Campaign's Sacrificial Lamb

Tucker Bounds, the sacrificial aide from the McCain campaign, continued to take beatings from various network anchors. It is such a pleasure to watch journalists do their jobs.


OMG!!! Fox News called out the McCain campaign's lying-ass ads that say, (erroneously) that (1) Obama plans to raise taxes for the middle class, and (2) Obama supported a bill for sex ed for kindergardeners (um, hello! it was a bill about sexual predator education so that kids know not to get in the strange man's car for candy! UGH!). Something is wrong when it takes Fox to call you out on your effing lies.




Campbell Brown goes to town. This one's my favorite. Her mocking smile when he blatantly dodges her questions makes me love her.