Palin did well? Really? REALLY?

So I'm not exactly sure how she gets away with this on a national stage, how is it possible in this day and age to completely flop in a debate and be credited with doing well. Flop. Yeah, I said it. Here's the driving force behind that notion: interchange the answers from Biden and Palin. It becomes pretty clear that Biden completely fails.

However, Palin just had to speak in complete sentences to get credited for doing well. Is this how far this country has fallen? It's gotten to the point where we don't bat an eye when there is a woman who is so clearly absent-minded that we grade her on a different curve than everyone else. She totally refused to answer her questions, and if a news organization comes out and says it... Well, they get discredited because they have the so-called liberal bias.

This is sexism at it's finest, and I'm not afraid to say it. She's a pretty white girl, and regardless of the fact that she's totally devoid of anything resembling a rational thought, she can wink at the camera and everything's cool. If a man was doing the same thing, McCain would have already dumped him for somebody else.

That brings me to another thing that annoys the crap out of me. Palin says that regular people like her becasue they seem to believe that she's just a regular person. It's pretty clear she's not a regular person, she has a tanning bed in her mansion after all. That said, so-called regular people shouldn't be elected to president. Big Sal at Max's Bar should never be  anywhere close to the presidency, and he's a regular guy (although perhaps more qualified than Palin, he's a factory manager... He's experienced at running things!). If someone is holding the most powerful position in the free world, wouldn't like to have someone who's got an Ivy League education?

Joe Six-Pack, because all "regular people" are apparently alcoholics, should NEVER be in the White House.

Ugh, Sarah Palin...

Look, I don't really want to get too much into the bullshit story that is Sarah Palin. I think it's funny how she could be getting such a free pass on certain things because no one wants to be called sexist. It's BS, she lied in her first speech as the VP nominee, and not a single media source called her on it. Hell, she says the same damn thing in every interview or speech? And why? Because no one has the balls to go at her on it. That's not the only thing that bothers me either.

SHE DID SUPPORT THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE. It's on tape. Hell, it's in print. And it wasn't even like it was a long time ago. When she says she sold the plane on eBay, she didn't. She sold the plane, but it was at a loss. She took per diem pay when she stayed at her own home. Not exactly fiscally conservative, is it? Hell, when she was mayor of Wasilla, AK... she left the city 20 million dollars in debt. Let me say that shit again, she is a so-called fiscal conservative who left a town of less than 10,000 in a state with a population less than that of Charlotte, NC TWENTY million dollars in debt. And we expect her to help get rid of a trillion dollar plus debt at a national level?

That doesn't even mention the fact that she's not even that familiar with her job. Just a couple months ago, someone asked her if she would accept the VP spot. Her answer? She said she wasn't even sure what a VP does. Hell, Charlie Rose asked her about the Bush Doctrine, and she didn't even know what that meant. The issues in the U.S. prior to this recession revolved around foreign policy. John McCain couldn't tell you that Czechoslovakia wasn't a country. Sarah Palin probably couldn't spell it.

The experience issue is BS too. The conservative keep going on and on about her so-called executive experience. If executive experience mattered that much, why didn't they elect Rudy Giuliani? Hell, Giuliani was mayor of city that's got a LOT more people than the state of Alaska. Besides, just because someone can be manager of Wal-Mart doesn't mean that same someone can be the CEO of Wal-Mart.

The sexism claims from the right baffle me too. Shoot, the most sexist action by anyone in this election season has been from John McCain. McCain chose Palin because he thought that the Hillary voters would swing to him regardless of the fact that Palin is polar opposite of Palin on almost every issue. I'd like to think women aren't that dumb. I can't see a woman making an informed decision to vote for a woman that she disagreed with on every issue just because the candidate is a woman.

But I digress...

Heh

I just realized I've been posting kind of mad today... Really freaking frustrating past couple days of news (and I really haven't touched half of them)... Isn't it annoying to watch the news and realize that you're the one more informed than the people who get paid to inform people... Heh... Sorry...

Offshore drilling is a FAKE issue

I'm not gonna write a whole lot about this because it is beyond the point of frustrating. So what happens if the U.S. drills offshore? Companies, which have had access to thousands of other untapped areas for decades, try to go find oil elsewhere. Should they find oil, guess what? It goes on the market to the highest bidder, just like regular old foreign oil does. There's another part to that too, an oil we find offshore won't have a significant effect on the global market, because the amount we're looking for is pretty negligible on the whole.

Now here's the MOST OBVIOUS part that the news NEVER talks about. It's gonna be several years before people even get to see the results of offshore drilling. It might take a decade for us to even see the results of all that! Think about that. I wanna shove my head through a brick wall when people constantly talk about this. We're talking about oil that may or may not exist, or if it does exist, its effects will not be felt until Britney Spears's kid is getting ready for high school!

Obama is the presumptuous one?

I really don't like this whole story. I'll just say that Dana Milbank really screwed up, and came off like a total asshat. The argument over who is acting like he's already president is stupid. Looking presidential is part of the criteria to get elected, always has been, always will be. Either way, even though McCain comes off like an old guy at the bar yelling at the television, he sent out a pretty interesting e-mail earlier in his campaign...

Republican Senator John McCain was elected president last evening, defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic nominee. McCain's victory came by winning the "red" states that supported President Bush in 2004, while also winning independents to capture the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

McCain ran a disciplined campaign that focused on the issues of reforming the culture of Washington and vigorously prosecuting the war on terror. Political experts expressed surprise that McCain was able to wrest the mantle of change away from Clinton, given that she represented the party out of power which normally lays claim to being the agent of change.

Yeah, so about that...

This whole Ludacris thing is...well, ludicrous...

As someone who is a pretty avid watcher of news stations (which usually leads to an inordinate amount of being pissed off), this story about rapper Ludacris is pretty ridiculous at this point. In an hour-long segment last night one commentator (I refuse to ever call a lost of these bozos strategists) referred to Ludacris as being "from Obama's camp" and another said this will be like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story. If it turns out to be anything more than a rapper releasing a song, the entire American public deserves to be punched in the eye.

First off, before I talk about why this IS NOT a story, let me explain why the news media is going to act like it is for the next day or so. In 2006, Ludacris met with Obama in Chicago to discuss, among other things, youth activism. This one meeting is apparently enough to make them "friends" in the eyes of some commentators. Earlier in his campaign, Obama also said that Ludacris (and other rappers like Jay-Z) were on his iPod. Of course, Obama followed up those questions while voicing his "concerns" over the language in hip hop music (but every politician has to do that because people won't vote for hip hop fans without any disclaimer, but that's a completely different topic for a different day).

So let's think about this, really. Obama is at the center of controversy because a rapper he met one time two years ago and occasionally hears on his iPod made a song urging people to vote for Obama. Of course the song won't help his campaign, but let's not act like Obama gets his tips from the guy who co-starred in 2 Fast, 2 Furious. To act like this reflects on Obama is the absolute highest echelon of absurdity.

I'll tell you why it's a story though. The media keeps getting accused of giving Obama favorable treatment, though studies show it's actually the other way around, and they're trying to "balance" the coverage. Whether it's bringing up a week-old Luda song or attributing a quote to him without giving the full quote...

WNBA Brawlers

Heh, I think is gonna end up a bigger story than it should be. For those that don't know, in the Palace at Auburn Hills last night, the Los Angeles Sparks and Detroit Shock got into a bench-clearing brawl towards then end of the game. Now, this is being blown up about how it hurts an already hurting league immeasurably. I still don't understand why.

Similar fights happen in every league in every sport every year. Someone takes offense to the way a play happens, some arguing and fighting goes on, and five minutes later everything goes back to being copasetic. The only difference here is that the participants are women. News flash, women can be just as competitive as men. And you know what, it DOES bubble over on occasion. 

This story is not that big.

The press and Obama

John McCain's campaign website is now hosting videos where they basically complain that Obama is getting a free pass from the press. Heh, there's a huge problem with that ruse... The main one being that it is utterly hypocritical.

McCain is considered a foreign affairs expert, and every time that his name is mentioned, the news people act like that's obvious. I don't even see how it's a fact. Why is he an expert? Because he was a prisoner of war several decades ago? That's the only reason I can come up with. In the last year ALONE, he's made so many gaffes that often get ignored because he's the "expert." He doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia (you know, the main sects in Iraq), he got Nazi Germany confused with Communist Russia, he talked about Czechoslovakia which hasn't been a country since I was in elementary school (on two separate occasions), and he continues to say entirely undiplomatic things about Iran (a country in which we are negotiating with). I mean, if that's the expert, I'd hate to see the amateur.

The second problem with the ad is that, while Obama has gotten more coverage, not all of it has been as glowing as McCain likes to say it was. Jeremiah Wright was the LEAD story for several weeks. Hell, when a Catholic priest started talking at a service Obama wasn't even at, it was a headline for a week. I'm sure with the amount of gaffes that McCain's made, he'd hate to be in the spotlight like Obama's been in...