Author: jen-sorensen

We interrupt our regular bursts of political hand-wringing to bring you an important message. The results of Charlottesville-Albermarle SPCA‘s election between the DemoCats and RePuplicans are in, with victory going to the DemoCats.

Sammy the DemoCat handily defeated Zachary the RePuplican 57% to 43%. As someone who hopes to see Virginia turn blue November 4, this is heartening news; however, as a dog person, I am also slightly disappointed.

According to CASPCA’s press release, Sammy’s win can be attributed to a platform that included "reducing greenhouse gases by requiring the picking up all of poop"; "legalizing catnip for medicinal purposes"; and "universal vet care."

Among Zachary’s proposals were "digging for bones in ANWR" to offset high bone prices; "requiring parental notification prior to spay/neuter"; "supporting citizens’ right to bear/own many pets" and my personal favorite, "Crap & Trade legislation." The Crap & Trade program would gradually reduce greenhouse gas emissions by "alloting 3 poops a day with the ability to sell/buy poop rights."

Frankie the Green Party ferret was unavailable for comment.

At a panel on election cartooning this past weekend, a member of the audience asked whether we’d be at a loss for material if Obama wins. He corrected himself: "Or I should say, when Obama wins."

He was partly joking, I’m sure, but methinks recent polls have some people feeling a wee bit overconfident.

McCain and Palin have already demonstrated that they are willing to mine fabrications about Obama from the most remote recesses of their posteriors, and repeat said fabrications shamelessly, even after they have been widely debunked. And that was when they were up in the polls! Now, like a froth-flecked, diseased raccoon, McCain and company are lashing out, desperately saying anything — anything! — to scare voters about Obama. As I mentioned at the panel discussion, I would not underestimate the number of Americans who actually think Obama is a terrorist or the Antichrist, or both. If the internet is any indication, they are everywhere. And their rhetoric appears to be growing increasingly violent.

What remains to be seen is what BS bombshells will drop between now and November 4. My guess is that McCain will play it relatively low-key at the debate tonight so as to counter the growing perception of him as an unhinged nutcake. Speaking of which, if you haven’t read this Rolling Stone piece yet, grab yourself a nice seasonal ale, plop down on the couch, and do so.

Comedy bonus: this article from The Daily Mash, a sort of British version of the Onion.

BASTARD AMERICANS RUIN YOUR LIFE

ALL your hopes and dreams were shattered by bastard Americans last night, just as you suspected they always would be.

…"I just assumed I’d be horribly maimed as a knock-on from one of their insane, catastrophic wars, but instead they have, in the most beautifully co-ordinated fashion, demolished the system that provides me with a job, a home and the vague hope that life may not an elaborate waste of time.

Unlike the first debate, in which the candidates seemed more or less evenly matched, I’d say Obama pretty solidly topped McCain this time around. Obama’s answers seemed clearer and more down to earth. McCain came off as, well, dated, detached, and kinda weird at times. My notes:

The first thing McCain says about his plan to fix the economic crisis: energy independence, keeping taxes low, and stopping spending in Washington. Can you say inserting talking points where they don’t belong?

McCain, in response to Brokaw’s question about his pick for Treasury Secretary: "Not you, Tom!" Prickly and strange.

McCain to audience member: "I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before this crisis." Is it just me, or does that seem a little condescending? I would guess most people have heard of Fannie, at least.

Obama: CEOs making much more than teachers are "living pretty high on the hog." Uh oh, the McCain campaign is going to say he called Palin a pig again!

McCain: "I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy." Wow.

Obama made an excellent point about most small businesses earning less than $250,000 a year, and small-business owners having trouble paying for health insurance. I get the sense McCain doesn’t even know about that.

Hmm… I wonder why McCain isn’t calling Social Security "an absolute disgrace" here, like he did a couple months ago.

McCain seems to end every answer with a lie about Obama that Obama needs to spend his next turn rebutting.

Obama is right on again about health insurance companies excluding people with pre-existing conditions. That’s a HUGE problem, and I’ve heard nary a peep from McCain about it.

Good response from Obama that state laws regulating health insurance companies are consumer protections.

Every time McCain attempts humor, it’s toe-curlingly awkward.

How many times can that man say "my friends" in one night?!

McCain: Judgment about military intervention requires "a cool hand at the tiller." Um, are you sure you want to say that, dude?

Also: "You have to temper your decisions…" If I were McCain, I would avoid using the word "temper."

Oh god, not the "crossing the Pakistani border" question again.

Obama likes to "talk loudly" about foreign policy? As opposed to the dulcet tones of McCain and the neocons? Confidential to McCain campaign: that one ain’t gonna fly.

***

Do you agree that Obama conquered? Let me know below.

I am troubled by the suggestion that because Palin did not have a truly spectacular brain-fart moment, that means she somehow "held her own." She did not hold a candle to Biden.

I am not just saying that because I favor Biden. I was genuinely undecided about who won the first Obama-McCain debate, as followers of this blog know. Biden spoke deftly and specifically, and seemed genuinely engaged in the conversation. Palin spouted platitude after platitude in some of the most un-musical language I have ever heard in my life. My notes:

Palin: "Can I call you Joe?" A little forced folksiness already.

Palin repeats John McCain’s "fundamentals of the economy" equals "the American worker" hogwash… and with a wink!

Didn’t take long to get to Joe Six-Pack and hockey moms.

Sarah trots out the $42,000 lie again. Biden should mention her regressive sales tax hike in Alaska.

Gwen Ifill should not be using the right-wing "class warfare" frame. An unnecessary defensive move on her part.

Biden: Nice line about McCain’s health insurance tax hike as the "ultimate bridge to nowhere."

Palin: Mortgage lenders "were starting to really kind of rear that head of abuse." Just like Putin rearing his head over Alaska. Lots of head-rearing going on in Palin’s world.

Biden, you shouldn’t have voted for that damned bankruptcy bill along with McCain. Gwen got you there.

Palin keeps going back to energy policy no matter what the question is.

Terrible answer by Palin on climate change. Her words are like a mallet hitting you in the forehead over and over and over.

Nice of Palin to correct Biden that the chant is not "Drill, drill, drill!" but "Drill BABY drill!"

It’s "Drill baby drill" versus "raping the intercontinetal shelf." For such a prude, Sarah’s getting pretty explicit.

Now she’s being "straight up" with Americans about opposing gay marriage!

Keith Knight (fellow cartoonist watching with me): "If there’s no change in the way these people say NU-CU-LAR, they won’t change anything else."

Palin keeps saying she’s gonna put government back "on the side of the people." As opposed to… rich and powerful Republicans?

Palin: "Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again…" Laying on the prefab snotty lines a bit thick there.

Wow, Biden just choked up a bit there talking about being a single dad. That was a strong answer.

Palin: McCain "is the man that we need to leave" — OOPS!

Good of Biden to allude to McCain’s vote against insuring children (SCHIP). Why haven’t the Dems talked more about that?

Palin closes with line about the "filter" of the mainstream media. Sarah, those answers you gave to Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric were filtered by nothing but your own cluelessness.

***

Clearly the Republicans are taking the same tack with Palin as they did with Bush — turning the folksy charm up to eleven, hoping her inarticulate speech makes her seem "honest." It’s an insult to our intelligence. The question is: will it work?

I’ll be watching the Vice Presidential debate in the company of cartoonists and cartoon fans in Bethesda, MD, where I’ll be for the annual Small Press Expo. Should be an entertaining, if gut-wrenching evening.

I suspect that we’re going to hear more rhetoric from Palin Thursday night about the "elite" media being hostile to her hi-diddly-ho neighbor candidacy. As if raised eyebrows on both the left and right have had nothing at all to do with her inability to name a newspaper she reads, a Supreme Court decision she has opposed other than Roe v. Wade, or that line about Putin "rearing his head" in Alaska (Russian military incursions into Alaskan airspace apparently have not happened in several years).

Well, color me a nattering nabob of negativism! Frankly, I’m getting plenty sick of this intolerant woman putting anyone who opposes her into the "urban snob" box. Enough with the silly binaries. As I’ve said before, I grew up in a rural, red part of a blue state (PA, which was actually a red state when I was a kid), then I came to Charlottesville, which is a blue part of a red state that’s turning blue, or at least purple. I think the fat wild turkeys that waddle around my backyard currently give me some country cred. Did you hear that, Sarah? I’ve got TURKEYS! That means I’m a real American, dammit.

I mentioned to a colleague recently that the GOP might try to stuff Palin full of intelligent-sounding verbiage, which would remind me of this bit of oratory from Paris Hilton (included here for reference more than humor value, which is not that great). Upon further reflection, I’m not sure Palin will be so smooth.

Note to self: Start thrash band called Toxic Assets.

So you may have noticed that the Dow lost nearly 800 points on Monday. Yep, I caught that one too.

Opposition to the bailout (in its current negotiated form, somewhat improved over the initial blank check Paulson wanted) seems to follow a couple different lines. On the far right we hear something like, "This is a big-government solution! Government sucks! Did I mention I hate the government?" Others see the bailout as nothing more than a gargantuan scoop of Meow Mix for the fat cats. After all the lies and the looting by the Bush administration, this suspicion is not entirely unfounded.

A conversation with a friend who knows a lot about housing and financial markets — and who is certainly no fan of Bush — confirmed for me what I’ve been reading, however. The bailout is intended to stanch a growing credit crisis. Already, banks are having trouble borrowing from other banks. This can affect ordinary people in short order. As my friend put it, say a company has $2 million in a payroll account. The bank lends that money out, as banks are wont to do. Payday comes around, and the company needs to withdraw part of that — but the bank can’t borrow the money back. Workers don’t get paid. This is just one possible grim scenario. My friend was adamant that members of the House (hi, Virgil!) who voted against the plan did not understand the situation.

Recommended reading: Paul Krugman’s blog, this post on Daily Kos (via This Modern World), and this NYT article that just popped up tonight.

You know, I was thinking this weekend about my extensive foreign policy experience. I have several Facebook friends in other countries. Also, I have enjoyed many beers of the world, giving me some diplomatic bona fides should we ever enter a cold war with Ireland or Belgium. I have even toured the EU Parliament building in Brussels — on my honeymoon! (Hey, some people find beaches romantic, others parliamentary procedure.)

By now I imagine most of you have heard about Palin’s calamitous interview with Katie Couric, and the second Fey-as-Palin SNL skit that lampooned it. Concerns about Palin’s readiness are spanning both parties. My father bet me $5 that Palin would drop out before the election, citing a need to "spend time with her family." I’m wagering that Her Spunkiness^TM is staying put. My dad, incidentally, is a veteran who once guarded Air Force One during a JFK visit, and he’s very worried about a McCain-Palin White House.

Judith Warner recently wrote in the NYT about feeling a pang of unexpected sympathy for Palin. I’ll admit I felt it too — momentarily — as I watched her flub Couric’s question about how Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience. How the McCain campaign could not have prepped her with even slightly better BS is a mystery to me. Same goes for her nonsensical answer about the bailout.

Yet it only takes one thought of her divisive RNC speech, when she sneered "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities," or a quick read of this Salon article about her ruthless political style, for that feeling of sympathy to disappear.

Well, the first debate is in the can. The two seemed pretty evenly matched in terms of debating skills. I present to you the notes I took while watching:

McCain looks like he has powder caked into his forehead lines.

Wow, he actually used the word "Republicans!"

Good framing on Obama’s part about the need for 21st-century regulation. Makes a nice distinction between past and future.

Oh god, there McCain goes again, brown-nosing the American worker. You opposed equal pay for equal work, dipwad.

McCain keeps talking about earmarks, yet his running mate is a champion porkstress.

McCain: "I didn’t win Miss Congeniality in the U.S. Senate." So that’s why you picked a beauty pageant queen as your running mate?

McCain is whining about business taxes. I bet all those people who’ve lost their homes are really losing sleep about that. Also, Enron didn’t pay any taxes for years!

Obama: Good point about how McCain wants to tax health benefits.

Is "cut spending" all McCain can say?

Obama needs to point out McCain’s campaign is run by lobbyists.

That’s a lie McCain just told about Obama’s health insurance plan, saying the federal government would be making decisions that should be between you and your doctor. Please. If anyone wants to do that, it is the anti-choice ticket of McCain-Palin.

What’s this about a spending freeze except for defense and vet programs and entitlements? That sounds a bit draconian. And highly selective.

Good, Obama finally mentioned how Iraq is costing us $10 billion a month.

McCain: "Low taxes will help our economy recover." Yeah, those Bush tax cuts worked wonders, didn’t they? I’ll take Obama’s middle-class tax cuts over McCain’s elite tax cuts, thanks.

Obama’s really hammering McCain on his Iraq judgment, WMDs, Sunni/Shia misstatements. Also doing a good job of making some of McCain’s assertions seem duplicitous.

McCain on Obama’s support for strikes against terrorists in Pakistan: "You don’t say that out loud." But it’s OK for Palin to threaten Russia in a Charlie Gibson interview?

Nice comeback by Obama about McCain’s "Bomb Bomb Iran" ditty.

McCain’s faux earnestness grates on me. Also, his patronizing repetition of "What Obama doesn’t understand…" when McCain has been so blindingly wrong on foreign policy.

McCain gets very animated talking about Iran and Israel. Judging by his body language, it’s what he cares about most. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are certainly a problem, but he has such a neocon boner about this, and I’ve had enough of neocons who get all excited about foreign policy and don’t seem to give a damn about what’s happening here.

Obama: good point about McCain’s voting record against alternative energy.

Did McCain just say we shouldn’t ever torture a prisoner again? He just voted for torture during the Republican primaries. Obama shouldn’t give McCain credit for being anti-torture when he flip-flopped on it.

Obama also needs to hit McCain on his vote against Jim Webb’s GI bill. Why isn’t he doing that?

McCain is talking about flexibility of thinking. This is from a guy who doesn’t use the internet.

***

So there you have it. Obama went on the offensive well at times, but he missed a few opportunities to zap McCain. I’d like to see a bit more bite next time. McCain seemed to attack more at the end, yet his stance on the issues often seemed out of step with the concerns of ordinary Americans. I’m not sure there was a clear "winner" as there was when Kerry faced Bush (again, not that it mattered). What do you think, esteemed readers?