The Fry Side

Apparently all other Veep picks Palin comparison.

To be honest, I can’t figure out McCain’s reasoning. At all. He doesn’t know this person. McCain met Palin once before in person, and who knows how few phone calls. Reading blog commentary for a day has not been kind.

Palin has been governor of a rather different (often self-admittedly so) state, Alaska, for less than two years. She’s a young mother of five children, and has some strict conservative Christian values.

So we have youth and anti-abortion, two factors that McCain has lacked on. Check, and check. It all sounds like five schlubs went down a list of McCain’s weaker points (according to them) and then just picked someone who fit the bill, regardless of what they bring to the table.

What does McCain have? Experience. Sure. Many, many decades of it. Obviously we have no need for that in a next in line to a President with ailing health and two war fronts. We don’t need someone who will have to spend a good deal of time relearning and researching what is going on in the world and the wars.

And while I have no issues with McCain picking a woman as his number two, it seems to me that there should be plenty of other candidates who would meet those two qualifiers along with having some extensive foreign policy experience.

This leads me to see it as pure pandering to disaffected Clinton supporters. I have no doubts that the various GOP leadership in McCain’s campaign team were thinking that most people were voting for Clinton because she’s a woman, therefore Palin will get those women voters to vote for McCain. Certainly all women think alike. After all, in these peoples minds, I am sure that all women are on the same cycle that can be timed with the tides.

Perhaps I am just overreacting. This is just an initial reaction. But it seems to me that when comparing McCain to Obama, and comparing their biggest executive decisions since deciding to run campaigns, McCain just lost the election.

For once, I called dibs on the television and made sure my life was tranquil for 90 minutes. And I watched Obama accept the Democratic nomination for President. Hearing the crowd roar and seeing it with faces to the podium was moving enough, really.

I have checked out for most of the convention. I’d been following some things via blogs and listening to NPR while traipsing over my new commute. This is the week before school begins, and I have about 150 newly created computer stations to ensure are running properly.

I wish I had seen Michelle Obama’s speech. From what I heard, it was phenomenal. I think I’ll look it up and have my wife watch it with me at some point.

But tonight’s speech… it was good. Really good. It was to the point. And man oh man, I hope that it really killed the nonsense about questioning patriotism and comparing celebrity.

What it wasn’t, it wasn’t King. Which is good, because it wasn’t meant to be. Yes it came on the anniversary of that day. And some parts were evoked for sure. But it wasn’t the time or the place for that. One never really knows when it will be, and that is important.

Obama is a grand speaker. I love him for that alone. And while this speech wasn’t I Have a Dream, it had its moments.

Living up to the hopes of his grandparents, that struck a chord with me. America retaining its title as the world’s last, best hope. The promise of dignity while disagreeing. The promise to our gay brothers and sisters. The promise to his daughters.

As an aside, right here: This man wins me over with his rhetoric with regards to his daughters. I don’t think it’s something I could appreciate as I do if I didn’t just have one of my own. I’ve had my son for years now. He’s my boy. I’m as proud and defensive of him as anyone could be of their own. But I have to say there is something special about a father’s mindset when it comes to his daughters. It’s strange, and absolutely no more or less loving than of sons. When Obama stated so loud and clear that his daughters deserve equal pay for equal work, he’s goddamned right.

I don’t know how better to describe that feeling. I’m making a sticky to return to it.

I’m glad I watched that piece of history tonight. I still and will forever regret missing seeing him in person here in the Twin Cities when he sealed the nomination.

There were a couple of things I wished were in the speech. I thought he could have mentioned Joe Biden a couple of times, if nothing else than to say the two of them would work toward some goals. But I wish I wish I wish he could have debunked ethanol. And above everything else, I wish he could have called out the torture carried out by the Bush Administration.

However, one really can’t. I still blame President Clinton and Newt Gingrich that we cannot. Because, for the sake of all that is good, endorsing torture is an impeachable offense. The bar is too low and it’s too soon and too partisan for another impeachment.

I really am digressing a lot in digesting tonight’s speech. Obama did great, and I really am hoping he swept some bullshit out of the stalls. I am thinking this will knock wind out of McCain’s sails and bring about better chances at better debates and better policy speeches.

I recently listened to a Bloggingheads diavlog between one of my favorite bloggers, Megan McArdle, and Ann Althouse. As an aside, I think Bloggingheads is really cool. I like the idea of a solid forty-minute conversation between educated people who often disagree. I would totally dig a chance to do one someday.

Anyway, one point they brought up was wondering why exactly McCain was gaining in the polls on Obama. Both of them really had no idea. It has been quiet on the front, and that’s why silly stuff keeps cropping up (eg, the quantity of McCain properties.)

I think the recent McCain rise is from the amount of media attention. It’s basically a situation that exemplifies ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’. I see it as the fact people talk about what McCain is up to far more than what Obama is doing.

This illustrates what is actually a problem for Obama. He’s boring. Not his speaking or his politics, those are great qualities, the best in a long time. But personally, he’s boring. Obama’s not a cheatin’ womanizer, not an almost legally retarded champion of evil, and not an increasingly crazy old coot. Obama is a good, smart, clean, Christian family man.

Bo-ring! (a la Homer Simpson)

I’m not sure what will help Obama against McCain in this regard. McCain is a celebrity spotlight-monger.

I should also illustrate that even though the polls are saying that McCain is gaining, I don’t follow polls. I have my doubts they take into account the countless newly registered Democrat voters.

Also, no pollster has ever called me. And because that very important piece of the puzzle is missing, I say the polling data is incomplete and inherently inaccurate.

Statistics be damned.

Catching up with the primary results from last night, it appears we did it.  Obama held a nearly 15 point lead in North Carolina and crushed the Clintons’ lead in Indiana to a mere 2.  Delegate-wise, Obama netted 12 more over the Clintons, so once again the math is increasingly against them.

And then there is the popular turnout.  In Lake County, Indiana, outside of Chicago, there was a 95% voter turnout.  I have never heard of such a number.  People were saying the norm is around 20-25%.  Obama helped draw out nearly every single registered voter.  That is what this man brings to the table.  It is incredible, and I am happy to be a witness to it.

I do not know when I was thinking, which is odd as it is such a rare occurrence these days.  I am sure it was while taking a shower.  Good thinking happens in the shower.

Anyway, I was thinking about this election and my kids.  My son is heading right into five, my daughter is less than two months old.  When I was born, Ronald Reagan was President.  My first understanding of politics was when I was six, I think.  I have a vague recollection of being in first grade and gathering that our President was George Bush (now the first).  So that would have been about in 1989.

Back to my kids.  I don’t mention to my son that there is an election underway, a big one, probably because I don’t want to have to explain Bush II to him.  I am just going with the assumption that Obama is elected President (with 90% turnout and 70% of the vote, of course).  By the time my daughter becomes politically aware, Obama’s second term could be wrapping up.  My son would not yet have a memory of a white man being President.

How cool is that?

Almost as cool as this quote.

Just a line I really liked from John Eskow over at The Huffington Post.

As time went on, though, I began to realize that Obama was offering a radical change in tone, mode and template–someone who finally spoke to America as if he wasn’t addressing a roomful of severely retarded eight-year-olds. That alone seemed to offer enough “hope” to merit support for him.

After class last night, I headed straight home.  I sat down on the couch and turned on my television and had the thought in the back of my head, ‘I wonder if the debate is still on.’  So I managed to find it in its last half hour and left it on while I checked some sites live-blogging the event.

Having read up to 9:30, it became readily apparent how awful the whole thing was.  Both candidates were obviously exhausted, and the entire first hour, it seemed, focused on useless gaffe-repair and media-only issues.  Not a word on health care (my favorite boring topic), social security, the war in Iraq, nothing.  Nothing of consequence.

So I turned it off.  I read up and watched for ten minutes, and it was all I could take.  I felt completely reassured that television beyond Comedy Central is useless for getting the news.  Still, I’m glad I pay for cable to at least get baseball and hockey games and some Thomas and Friends on demand.

I could not watch the rest.  But I am a little sorry I did not last.  Apparently, even the audience hated the show so much, they booed the moderators (who were definitely mostly at fault; those questions were asinine).  And the submit a comment section at ABC made me happy.  It is really, really, really good to know that Americans are absolutely sick of being pandered to, played with, and thought nothing of.  We are the original self-governors, and we want our wisdom to be given its due!

Here’s a lovely snippet from the Huffington Post.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0L2GEBhd2w]

When’s the last time you heard a legitimate politician say such honest things?  Think about it.

Never.

Remember not even ten years ago?  The Clintons are liars and, dare I say it, selfish monsters.  In my brief lifetime, I have never lived under an honest leader I am aware of.  Other than my parents, of course.

No wonder I lean most toward libertarianism.

Not that I mean to be a conspiracy theorist, but:  Hmm…

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

It still doesn’t give the Clintons a delegate lead, and the Texas caucases, like its predecessors, should go for Mr Obama.  But still this will go on.  And on.  And on.  It makes life tougher for Mr McCain, who I will vote for, who I will falsify election numbers for if the Clintons get it, because he has to campain against two contestants that have the greater favor across the country.

One thing, after all of Tuesday’s nonsense, has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt: Ohio truly is the dumbest state in the Union.

Oy vey.

All I can think about it watching election results from tonight.

Let us hope.