It will irk some of the more partisan amongst us, but a Republican National Convention without as much of the partisanship and more of the rolling-up-sleeves and helping out with Gustav works exactly for McCain’s political persona. I know Donnie Fowler feels that God sent the storm because he loves the Dems, but Fowler was probably drunk when he uttered those words. In reality, this “convention” could well be a chance for Americans to see John McCain being John McCain.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

PREFACE:

They don’t know what hit them.

On FOX News Sunday, lone guest John McCain described Sarah Palin as a “partner and a soul mate,” in changing the business of politics-as-usual even if it means taking on some in their own party.

On ABC’s This week, Senator Lindsey Graham said that Sarah Palin was “absolutely” qualified to become President, more so than is Obama: “What’s he done?” Next up was a clearly angry and flustered John Kerry, who declared that John McCain is a “radical,” not a maverick. He added that Sarah Palin is the next Dick Cheney.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator Tom Brokaw made the case that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be President by citing her mother-in-law. Governor Tim Pawlenty, who gave as good an interview as I’ve seen from him, deftly turned the question around on Obama. This raises the question of whether Tom Brokaw was prepared to step in to Tim Russert’s role.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Rudy Giuliani said that in Joe Biden, Obama had picked “more of the same,” while McCain had opted to select a partner. Joe Lieberman said that the Palin selection was like “opening the door and bringing some fresh, Alaska air into Washington.” Next up, Carly Fiorina said that she has talked to some Hillary supporters who are “ecstatic” of McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin for his ticket.

On CNN’s Late Edition, Fred Thompson delighted in the fact that everyone is comparing the Republican vice Presidential nominee’s preparedness with that of the top of the Dem ticket. Next, Chris Dodd accused President Bush of letting New Orleans drown three years ago, and he added that the Republicans would have held their convention anyway this year if they were certain that President Bush would handle the emergency management properly.

The full, show-by-show reveiw is beneath the fold.

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For Sunday, August 31, 2008

FOX News Sunday (FNS): Host Chris Wallace has Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos has the candidates wife, Cindy McCain. After that, he’ll talk to Senator Lindsey Graham and the insufferable John Kerry.

Meet the Press (NBC): Moderator Tom Brokaw spends the show speaking to Tim Pawlenty.

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer interviews Rudy Giuliani, Senator Joe Lieberman, and McCain advisor Carly Fiorina.

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer chat with (deep breath) John Boehner, Charlie Crist, Tim Pawlenty, Fred Thompson, Mark Sanford, Eric Cantor, Nancy Pfotenhauer, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, and FEMA director David Paulison.

= = = = =

I discovered Thursday afternoon that Pawlenty was the lone guest on MTP, and it made sense when the solid(ish) rumor that he’d get McCain’s nod was circulating. It made sense, but I was still hoping for a game breaker pick like Lieberman. (Hindsight says: YIKES!) Governor Palin had dropped off the radar. Friday morning, I welcome her back.

McCain makes his pre-convention appearance on FOX.

Cindy and Lindsey (TW) know aspects of McCain as well as anyone besides his mom, I suppose, and John Kerry would do us all, including himself, a world of good by staying off the air. He’s embarrassing.

Bob Schieffer will talk to Lieberman without Wes Clark.

A lot of erstwhile GOP veep possibilities this week: Graham, Pawlenty, Rudy, Lieberman, Fiorina, Crist, Thompson, Sanford, Cantor, and Pfotenhauer.

I’ll do my best to round these shows up tomorrow.

I have to remind you, and myself, that it is only the veep pick. When has any veep pick made a real difference in an election? Of course, when has any election been like this one? The Democrats have made history by nominating an African American, a half-term Senator, to head their ticket, and a blowhard plagiarist at #2; the Republicans have countered with a Navy pilot/P.O.W. and maverick at top complimented by a first-term governor from Alaska, a small government conservative who is the first woman on a major party Presidential ticket with a serious chance to win the election.

Listening to Governor Palin speak this morning, I came away with the impression that she clings to her God and to her guns, but evaporates Obama’s untrustworthy observation of bitterness. To many of us, she is one of us. She seems to be the kind of person whom Axelrod figured would be attracted to Obama with the addition of Joe “From Scranton, Darnit” Biden.

I know it is early, but I’ve observed people who said they were supporting McCain over Obama of a sudden enthusiastically supporting the Republican ticket. Is this the product of instant excitement, doomed to fade? Perhaps.

My measure — and many of you will understand this — is my wife. She is fired up. Last night, she asked me about Palin and I told her that I liked Palin, but she wouldn’t be the choice. For me, trying to read the thoughts of a Presidential campaign, it was mostly geography. Alaska? And inexperience. My wife was disappointed, but I told her that we’d never know for sure who it was until the name emerged from John McCain’s lips.

Sarah Palin can handle Joe Biden, which might actually matter given the media hype concerning McCain’s age. An interesting note is that Biden’s top debating skill is his condescension. He won’t be able to get away with that here.

Like I wrote last evening, I was prepared to accept Joe Lieberman as my party’s Vice Presidential nominee. He was a solid, workaday pick who made sense in several ways. Then I was prepared to support Pawlenty after that pick became rumored. What I saw today, however, changed the game.

Sarah Palin’s selection is a game changer.

Club for Growth President Pat Toomey likes McCain’s Palin pick:

“At a time when many Republicans are still clinging to pork-barrel politics, Governor Palin has quickly become a leader on this issue,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “She is a principled reformer who understands how badly wasteful spending has marred the Republican brand.”

But he said “clinging.”

UPDATE: More good MSNBC feud stuff from Jossip. And (via Michael Calderone), the WSJ’s Rebecca Dana thinks that this public/private war might be due to the absence of the late Tim Russert and the vacuum left in his place.

There is a third network for cable news, and they are… well, MSNBC. Sure, they’ve dropped the MS, and sometimes NBC must feel that way, but they’ve adopted the sportscaster Keefums Olbermann and his better shtick, and they’ve surrounded Keefums with a supporting cast befitting the man with half O’Reilly’s ratings.

They are having a series of spats at the third-rate[d] news network, heedless of Axelrod’s please for “unity.” Matthews and Keefums are having at it. Olbermann and Scarborough are getting nasty. Scarborough has launched into David Shuster. Matthews and Keefums have vented about Hillary’s old com director Howard Wolfson signing on with FOX, and Wolfson has struck back.

Jon Stewart, alas and at last, has put it all into perspective (via Michael Calderon):

Of course Stewart, once an MTV VeeJay, maintains that Obama would be a “far less imperious” President than is Bush. Does he know what the term means?

I want to destroy the Dems. I want to destroy the terrorists. I will accept a Lieberman vice presidency provided Joementum changes his registration.

As Patrick Ruffini pointed out in a related medium, though not in this manner, with a split government – R-Prez, D-Congress – no one is doing squat domestically in the next four years.

Pawlenty and Romney and Cantor are all nice fellows, but they aren’t game changers politically. Attorney General Lieberman, as my Connecticut wife still sometimes calls him, is.

I wrote it down contemporaneously, so now we can all remember together.

In 1999, the Democrats were ready to party like it was 1973. Saturday, September 25 of that year was the final day of the Democratic National Committee under National Chairman Joe Andrew and General Chairman (and Philadelphia Mayor) Ed Rendell. In the next year, they would nominate Al Gore to run for President wearing their imprimatur.

On the Sunday after that ill-fated plenary session, I wrote:

Al Gore’s people are idiots. As Gore walked to the podium at the DNC’s plenary session, they played a ’70s hit called “Love Train.” So there was Gore, shaking hands with all and sundry, while the speakers were blaring: “We’re on the love train, the love train.”

Al Gore went on to lose the election.

We’ll fast forward to this evening: Wednesday, August 27, 2008. The Democrats still want to party like it is 1973. After that woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, moved that the convention elevate their messianic fraud by acclimation, the speakers in the Pepsi (no Coke) Center blared Love Train, by The O’jays. Straight from 1973, via 1999.

If you want to read the lyrics of the song which unites Al Gore and Barack Obama, they are right here.

The only question left: If Barry called collect, would Naomi Wolf accept the charges? (They have nothing to lose but their chains. They have enourmous adulation and celebrity to win. Alpha dudes of the world, unite!)

John Edwards is one sorry dude:

John Edwards is burning up the phone lines begging former aides and backers to forgive him for lying about his affair - but hearing their rage instead.

As Democrats kick off their convention Monday, the onetime presidential contender is a man without a party - or a political future - trying to rebuild bridges through dozens of remorseful phone calls.

[ . . . ]
When Edwards reached one longtime confidant asking for advice, he was cut off with a terse: “I don’t want you to call me again.”

The conversation ended abruptly.

There goes another brilliant career. And that woman, Ms. Druck, didn’t even save a dress.

I know, Barry has a lot of mentors. Well, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones is an erstwhile Obama mentor. (I think Barry let him keep the name tag, and he might have gotten a pocket watch.)

Jones referred to Hillary’s delegates as “Uncle Toms.”

From the Associated Press:

Chicago political consultant [and Hillary delegate] Delmarie Cobb says Jones made the remarks Saturday night while discussing her support for Clinton. She called the remark “fighting words” and unacceptable.

Jones, who also is black, said Monday that he never uttered the slur. He says he referred to Cobb and other Clinton supporters as “doubting Thomases.”

Cobb says she confronted Jones about it at the time, and Jones did not tell her that she’d mistake “doubting Thomases” for “Uncle Toms.”

I do not know who is telling the truth, and I don’t much care. I believe that the real solution, obviously, would be to join their fellow Dem delegates and have a good, American riot. (I’ll have to ask Blackhedd if they sell pop corn futures.)

If you wish to insult me in a meaningful way, look to my ideology, my pen-pushing proclivities, or my cancer. Sure, that’s fine.

I was not surprised that a few Sundays ago, a lad named Matt Stoller had referred to John McCain as “a crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman [sic].” (The bracketed Latin is there because he skipped the commas. ) This was after a rant in which he complained that Obama “should crush” McCain. He blames David Plouffe for not consulting the lefty netroots on how to do this. (Mr. Stoller really wants to talk to Axelrod, and Axelrod has probably heard what happened to Ned.)

True enough, John McCain once had cancer. He was not cancer-ridden – Is it possible to be ridden with melanoma, skin cancer? – but don’t begrudge the rabid American left a little hyperbole when poking fun at a deadly affliction like cancer. You know, John McCain, his medical records inform us, is cancer free.

I’d never read a word written by Stoller until someone sent me a link to Matt Stoller’s post defending himself for attacking McCain on his battles with skin cancer. A cancer surgeon had written to Matt Stoller:

As a cancer surgeon, I found that bit about “cancer-ridden madman” to be a truly despicable rhetorical gambit, not to mention irrelevant. John McCain had melanoma. He was successfully treated for it, and has been cancer-free for seven years, making the likelihood of a recurrence very small.

Matt’s defense?

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PREFACE:

On ABC’s This Week, David Axelrod guffawed that McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. Next up, Rudy pointed out that the Joe Biden selection was one made from weakness. Hillary was the obvious choice, he said, her having received half the votes in the Dem nominating contest.

On FOX News Sunday, Governors Bill Ritter of Colorado and Tim Kaine of Virginia advised Barry to keep doing what he’s been doing. (I wish Ritter, a Western governor, had advised him not to “shoot the horse that brung yer,” but he didn’t.) Next up, Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed Joe Biden’s bizarre scheme to divide Iraq into feuding, ungovernable bits, pin a sheriff’s badge on someone, and leave in this manner: “Everybody’s had a lot of different strategies.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, w/Tom Brokaw, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg said that she thinks and hopes that Obama’s selection of Joe Biden is as good as her father’s selection on Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1960. Nancy was next. She called Joe Biden, in a nice way, a “disruptor.” She declared that Congress’ 14% Gallup approval rating was simply because they have not ended the war, for which she blamed Bush. She accused President Bush of misleading the American people into believing that drilling offshore would instantly lower the price of gasoline, and Brokaw told her that the American people understand that it won’t. Nancy’s willing to consider offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive package, she said, if oil companies are willing to “pay royalties to the American people.”

Sebelius, Rendell, and Jackson Junior on CBS’ Face the Nation. Rendell thinks that both Joe Biden and Hillary are ready to be President. Sebelius thinks Joe Biden understands “working class issues.” Jackson sees Barry with the chance to be the next Martin Luther King, uniting the party and the country with his acceptance speech.

On CNN’s Late Edition, Representative James Clyburn of North Carolina said that Joe Biden’s “clean and articulate” remark was not at all racial, and host Wolf Blitzer chimed in that Joe Biden has an excellent record on race relations. Next up was Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, campaigning for McCain in Allentown. When asked if he could debate a master like Joe Biden, Pawlenty described Barry’s veep pick as “very long-winded” and suggested that whomever McCain picks would do fine against Joe Biden.

The Review is, of course, beneath the old.

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Lord Neil Kinnock, the former boss of Britain’s Labour [sic] Party, has endorsed Obama’s selection of Joe Biden to be his running mate.

“He is a man of immense maturity and unmatched in the Senate, and probably much more widely, as an analyst and advocate in the foreign policy and defence [sic] policy areas.

This is significant… why? Oh, you remember.

In a 1987 speech to the Welsh Labour Party, the then Neil Kinnock asked why he was “the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to go up to University”.

The Welshman’s emotive style must have struck a chord with the Biden camp, because three months later he made a strikingly similar claim and his campaign unravelled when aides to presidential rival Michael Dukakis handed a video tape splicing the two speeches together to reporters.

Whole sentences from Lord Kinnock’s speech, as well as glaring similarities in syntax and ideas, seeped into Senator Biden’s stump speech.

Senator Biden even copied references to the Welsh politician’s mining heritage in his speech, given at the Iowa State Fair on August 23, 1987.

See the above linked piece. The London Daily Telegraph rehashes examples for us. They also point out that at Syracuse University, Joe Biden ” had failed a course after being caught plagiarising other people’s work.”

It’s nice to know that this veep nominee designed to shore up the Obama ticket’s lack of foreign policy experience is still a figure of fun on foreign soil.

For Sunday, August 24, 2008

FOX News Sunday (FNS): Host Chris Wallace has some Dems: Governors Tim Kaine of Virginia of Virginia and Bill Ritter of Colorado. Then he’ll have Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs. No sign of Ned.

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos talks to David Axelrod, whom we all know, and Rudy Giuliani, whom we remember. No sign of Ned.

Meet the Press (NBC): Moderator Tom Brokaw talks to Caroline Kennedy, who co-chaired Barry’s veep search committee, and… Nancy. No sign of Ned.

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer talks to Dem Governors Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. He’ll also talk to the junior Jesse Jackson, Congressman from Illinois. No sign of Ned.

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer talks to a bunch of Dems, including: Junior Casey; the woman who’ll pick McCain’s Senate replacement, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano; James Clyburn; and… guess who: Terence McAuliffe. No sign of Ned.

= = = = = = = =

Okay, Joe Biden is Obama’s veep selection. There was a time, very recently, when it seemed the two most common guests on these shows were John McCain and Joe Biden. This had forever altered Sunday mornings for me.

Joe Biden. You know, I think it a shame that it’s not going to be Ned. The only person I’d sooner have seen Barry Obama selecting than Joe Biden is Ned. Why doesn’t Ned have a speaking role at next week’s Democratic National Convention? Ned should keynote! Barry should have selected Ned! Ned should be at the top of the ticket! The slogan could have been: “Gee, gang! C’mon guys! Let’s elect Ned! YEAAARRRRGH!”

Alas, it’s Obama/Joe Biden. We can dream of…

This next week is going to be a blast, folks.

Does anyone have an over/under for the duration of any riots in Denver next week? That political party, the Dem one, is not united and excited.

The Miami Herald ran a story today by Beth Reinhard: Clinton stumps for Obama in South Florida. It deals with Hillary talking to 1,000 senior voters who in a town north of Miami who, it is reported, hate President Bush more than they fear Obama.

They run opening of the story on McClatchy’s web site, with a link to the Herald for the rest: Clinton preaches to her faithful in Florida, and mentions Obama.

The first headline gives the impression that her speech was an attempt to sell Obama’s candidacy to her aging loyalists. The McClatchy headline makes it appear the story deals with Hillary rallying her supporters, mentioning Obama as an afterthought.

So which is it?

Hillary did say this about Obama:

”We started on two separate paths, but we are on one journey now,” Clinton told the audience. “And that journey, if we do our part, if we lend our hearts and heads to the campaign that lies before us, that journey will lead us back to the White House.”

An Obama mention! Yet the story, quietly violent, continues:

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When the Yankees aren’t playing, and when Erick is a guest on Hannity & Colmes, I watch FNC’s prime time stuff. One thing I’ve noted about Alan Colmes and Bob Beckel is their reluctance to accept that Obama actually believes that you can leave living babies, survivors of botched abortions, to die without medical treatment. They think the claim cannot be right; there must be some explanation. So they question the facts rather than defend the indefensible.

I wish someone would say to Colmes: “Alan, that is what Obama thinks. If you dislike that sort of baby-killing, you ought to rethink your support of Obama.” That’s the message we have to get to every Dem. Obama has lost his soul in an intellectual vacuum masquerading as nuance, and he supports something this grotesque.

John McCain has made some powerful enemies of late, none more so that the majority leader of the United States Senate, Dingy Harry. That’s Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to those of you who respect the man.

His hometown paper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal , asked Reid about Joe Lieberman, and Dingy Harry defended his old friend:

“He has a close personal relationship with John McCain. I don’t fully understand why he does,” said Reid, who said Lieberman called Tuesday from the Republic of Georgia to alert him to the move.

“I told him last night, ‘You know, Joe, I can’t stand John McCain.’ He said, ‘I know you feel that way,’ ” Reid said.

But Dingy Harry promises that he won’t throw Lieberman out of the caucus over this. In fact, after praising Joe Biden, he excused Lieberman’s heartfelt policy positions:

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) tells us that this has been the coldest year in at least the past five [link].

The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.

Oh, they try to explain it away and tell us that we’re still steaming towards our certain doom, but baby, it’s cold outside.

Barry Obama’s real estate buddy and fundraiser Tony Rezko is set to be sentenced for “wide-ranging fraud, connected to taking kickbacks from state deals.” Rezko’s sentencing date is scheduled for October 28, a week before the Presidential election.

Don’t look at us. We didn’t nominate the guy and his baggage.

From ABC News.com’s Political Radar blog:

“I thought it was very odd and very strange and out of character that the senator would just toss a bag out into the middle of the street,” said Bayh neighbor Ashley Allen.

It was his son’s lacrosse gear, but that does not excuse the would-be veep’s obviously aberrational behavior.