Twenty-seven. That’s the number of times I urped in my mouth watching pundits drool over the human interest story that is Sarah Palin on today’s Sunday morning shows. Several of them admitted that the only reason they thought it was a good pick by McCain is because it will spice up a convention none of them were looking forward to covering. They really are that transparent and self-interested.
And check out Face the Nation‘s lineup: Rudy Guiliani, Joe Lieberman, Carly Fiorina and David Brooks. The only way they could have made the show more pro-Palin was if they added a hundred cheering hockey moms (if that many actually exist) and a really angry aborted fetus.
But, hey, I’m still not worried. The media’s love affair with her will be short-lived, more Palin gaffes and past dirt will quickly unspool in the next few weeks, and I still stick with my prediction that this pick will be a large net-negative for McCain when it comes to the undecideds. Hell, her mother-in-law isn’t sure who she’s going to vote for.
Asked about Palin’s credentials, Cindy McCain told ABC-TV’s “This Week:” “The experience that she comes from is with what she’s done in the government. And also, remember: Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So, it’s not as if she doesn’t understand what’s at stake here.”
Yesterday people were wondering aloud if McCain and Republicans thought women were that stupid. Today we can safely ask if they think women and men are that stupid. According to McCain, we are all Doocys now.
In the mid-1970s, a tragic event occurred in Arizona. An intrepid reporter for the Arizona Republic was investigating organized crime when he apparently flew a little too close to the sun. His name was Don Bolles. His investigation was leading him to a wealthy Arizona businessman named Kemper Marley.
On June 2, 1976, Bolles was mortally wounded by a car bomb. Before lapsing into unconsciousness, Bolles uttered the words, “Adamson, Emprise, Mafia.” He died 11 days later.
John Harvey Adamson confessed to luring Bolles to a Phoenix hotel parking lot and placing a bomb beneath the reporter’s car. The bomb, Adamson testified, was detonated by James Robison, a Chandler plumber. Adamson testified he was hired to kill Bolles by Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor and close associate of [Kemper] Marley’s. Marley had extended a $1 million loan to Dunlap, which had not been repaid. Adamson said Dunlap hired him to kill Bolles because Marley was upset over Bolles’ stories.
Kemper Marley is a decades old business partner of Jim Hensley, John McCain’s father-in-law. If you dig into the archives to learn how Jim Hensley, a convicted felon, acquired a license to distribute alcohol, say, for a Budweiser distributorship, you’ll find no answer. As late as 1988, Hensley was still lying in sworn affidavits to the government about his felony convictions. No one in government today can explain how Hensley acquired the necessary permits to sell alcohol. Recently, John McCain, in a return volley about how how many homes he owned, had a few words to say about Jim Hensley.
I spent some years without a kitchen table, without a chair, and I know what it’s like to be blessed by the opportunities of this great nation. Cindy’s father, who barely finished high school, went off and distinguished himself in World War II in a B-17 and came back with practically nothing and realized the American dream, and I am proud and grateful for that, and I think he is a role model to many young Americans who serve in the military and come back and succeed.
We should all thank 5th-from-the-bottom-of-his-class John McCain for mentioning Cindy’s father as his role model. It gives us another chance to examine the Senator’s judgment. The following is from a meticulously researched expose published by the Phoenix New Times in 2000:
Republican strategist Karl Rove said on Face The Nation Sunday that he expects presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama to choose a running mate based on political calculations, not the person’s readiness for the job.
“I think he’s going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice,” Rove said. “He’s going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he’s going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He’s not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president.”
Rove singled out Virginia governor Tim Kaine, also a Face The Nation guest, as an example of such a pick.
“With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years, he’s been able but undistinguished,” Rove said. “I don’t think people could really name a big, important thing that he’s done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America.”
Rove continued: “So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I’m really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States.”
OUCH: Palin giggled when a radio host called one of her female political adversaries a “bitch” and didn’t object when he referred to her as a “cancer,” even though the woman is a cancer survivor. Did the McCain camp vet this woman at all? I think we may have the Republican’s first Eagleton imploding before our eyes. And it’s been only one day since the announcement. Someone tell Pawlenty and Romney not to make any big plans for the next couple of months…
ABC’s Jan Crawford Greenburg reports: It wasn’t until Sunday night that John McCain, after meeting with his four top advisers, finally decided he could not tap independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to be his running mate. One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt. McCain concluded he could not go that route.
As I wrote in the comments there:
Was the base upset that Lieberman didn’t have enough solid PTA experience? Or was it because Hadassah is TEH SUCK on snow machines?
MORE SOMEWHAT RELATED: From marindenver below in comments…
Absolutely loved that story on the Clintonistas website because that is the exact same thing my 84 year mom told me about a couple of her friends she talked to this morning. She is a moderate Republican who has been supporting Obama for awhile but her friends have been on the fence. The are all Obamacans now thanks to his terrific speech and McLoonyTunes ludicrous response to it. Th-th-th-thas all folks!
I guess Darragh McCainphy and her merry band o’ de-clawed dimwits have decided that the PUMA brand has been irreparably damaged, because now she’s forming “The New Democratic Party,” which represents ... oh, the fuck if I know...
We are NOT Republicans, though millions of us will vote McCain/Palin in November.
Our Platform is the Platform of the TRUE Democratic Party
* Healthcare for All
* Equal Rights for women, LGBT, and people of color
* Reproductive Rights
* Worker Protections
* Envmtl Protections
* Fair Immigration Policy
* Help for working class college students
* Good public schools
WE MUST PREVENT A REPUBLICAN TAKEOVER OF THE ELECTORATE.
I was having a discussion with icebergwedge on the phone yesterday and we were trying to decided who’s dumber, PUMAs or nutters? Personally, I’m stumped.
And how many times will this Alaskan be referred to as “exotic”?
p.s. Hillary Clinton supporters, John McCain would like you to notice that his anti-choice, Pat-Buchanan-lovin’ VP pick has a “vagina.” Please make a note of that.
You think that because I loved Hillary Clinton, gave money to Hillary Clinton, stood in the freezing rain for two hours to see her speak, put a sticker on my car, wore my pin around town, and supported Hillary Clinton to the very end, that I will vote for you.
You think I will forget every single one of my personal and political values just because there’s a vagina on your pro-war, anti-woman, anti-science ticket.
The selection of Palin strikes me as a “stunt” nomination and an admission that even in the misty recesses of former prisoner of war John McCain’s mind, he knows that he is truly fucked. Therefore the campaign seems to be hunting for the PUMA vote; the PUMA being a mythical creature with the body of a middle-aged woman and the head of an idiot.
Heard a wonderful NPR interview with Maya Angelou, a former Hillary supporter and now a big backer of Obama, about the import of America electing a black president. There’s no transcript, but it’s worth a listen if you have a few minutes.
We used to do these “Alter This” challenges at my old blog Catch.com and a few of them were pretty successful (our Alter This of Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment got a ton of traffic). Here’s a fairly simple Alter This. Photoshop the PUMA PAC “We Are the Ones” logo below and email it to bringit|at|rumproast.com and we’ll post the best ones at some point tomorrow. I may also turn on the ability to embed images (hosted elsewhere) in the comments if I get enough requests. Anyone can participate. Get to it.
I missed it, but my lovely wife Chris told me that both Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan were saying the same thing on today’s Morning Joe that I was saying last week: the Democrats need to stop barking out “I honor his service” like a Tourette’s tic every time they mention John McCain’s name. Both Scarborough and Buchanan pointed out that Republicans would never do that. If fact, they went out of their way to dishonor John Kerry’s service in 2004. Enough.
“I’m sorry—we’re going to have a debate about whether or not the Earth is flat? It doesn’t make sense to have a debate about whether offshore drilling is going to bring down gas prices. You know what? It’s not. The fact that it’s false ought to be reported, or you’re advancing a lie.”
"[W]e wholeheartedly endorse the excellent Rumproast blog" -- Jim Newell, Wonkette
"Mind you, don’t let yourself be trapped dialoging with these guys: truth is their enemy; pyschological warfare and misinformation dissemination is their profession." -- TeaParty.org
