The Anchoress
:::Scroll Down for some very cranky updates:::
Reducing everything down to base politics: it’s what we do! James Pethokoukis, at US News and World Report wonders who Wall Street’s woes helps and hurts. I say hurts McCain. Obama is “blaming the government” which is vague and easy for him to do, and also vague and easy for everyone to believe. It’s not the smart answer, but it’s the savvy one, especially if you’ve been in DC for only 4 years and have managed to acquire $126,000 from Fan & Fred. (Yes, misdirection can be a strategy.) McCain needs to come out with serious solutions, not just blame.
This thing has been brewing since the 1990’s – there is lots of blame to go around. Whoever can articulate something that sounds like a real solution, offering real change, will win. Blame – and the usual media-hysterics – will not travel very well, I don’t think, except to the fringes. The sane center wants responsible restructuring, responsible oversight and a few heads to roll. (Listen to the crowd in that video of Palin, but specifics are still needed). I also suspect the majority of Americans do not want to see taxpayers stuck footing the bill for this mismanagement. Although, seriously, how we’ll avoid that will take some creative thinking. What it will not take – what we cannot allow to continue, anymore – is creative law-writing that sounds like something but is actually NOTHING.
Fausta is serving up some straight up “snap out of it” on the importance of an economic lesson being learned.
Completely anecdotal and unmeasurable, but interesting, nonetheless: I was just chatting with one of my MIL’s best friends, a retired lady who keeps abreast of current events and is pretty well read. She’s a lifelong Democrat, and a Hillary supporter who was looking askance at Obama, but not quite ready to jump to McCain. Had a chat with her today and she said, “the press is deplorable. I’ve never seen anything like what they did to that woman, Sarah Palin. They need to get out of the way and let the candidates sink or swim on their own, and stop all this garbage and mud-flinging.”
I included this lady among those I wrote about, anecdotally, here, in describing how much trust the older population still had in the mainstream media.
If the Mainstream press has lost the confidence of the over-70 crowd for Obama, and it seems they may well be doing just that, then they’ve really, really destroyed their credibility. 3:20 PM
Victor Davis Hanson has a good piece up at PJM about the whole top-of-the-ticket and disproportionate-media issue. You’ll like. 3:22 PM
Interesting piece on Palin and her hairdresser by Rod Dreher. My Li’l Bro Thom found the last few graphs, quoting Ezra Klein, pretty interesting, too. 3:50 PM
Um…help me out here. Is this guy spectacularly out of touch and misreading things, or am I? 3:59 PM
And can we finally, finally get someone, somewhere to ask Obama a penetrating question (and maybe a followup question) about his long association with Bill Ayers? And no, the dialogue can’t go like this:
Talent: So, you’re not good friends with Bill Ayers, right?
Obama: No, not at all, sat on a few meetings with him but nothing like real association. That’s just another lie.
Talent: So, to followup, that’s just a filthy lie and you and Bill Ayers would barely recognise each other if you passed in the street, right?Obama: Yes, that’s right.
Talent: There, now we’ve covered Ayers, and no one can say we didn’t! Let’s talk about different aspects of the Bush Doctrine, and how it can mean both pre-emption and the holding of our allies to certain understandings about how we will respond to the harboring of terrorists…you do understand the Bush Doctrine, right?
Obama: Yes, in every respect. The Bush Doctrine can mean both pre-emption and the holding of our allies to certain understandings about how we will respond to the harboring of terrorists. I don’t like it because it’s called the Bush Doctrine. When I am president, I will rename it the Obama Doctrine and we’ll all love it much more.
Talent: Good, moving on…how’d you get to be so great? 4:10 PM
Via Ann Althouse: “What’s Happened to John McCain! He used to be so nice and agreeable!”
What’s happened to McCain is simple: he dared to actually start fighting back. When he was being all “honorable” and “noble,” lecturing his campaign to not use Obama’s middle name, telling local campaigns not to run “negative” ads against Obama, no one was paying attention; he was simply laying down and letting himself get steamrollered by the pansy-press and their prince. Now he’s playing the game the way it must be played if you’re serious about winning while the media is literally carrying the opposition nominee on their shoulders. The press asking “what’s happened to McCain” is the equivalent of Tweedledee crying that Tweedledum had broken his nice, new rattle. It’s a waaah-tantrum; he’s not just letting things happen around him! He’s actually going to try to win this thing! That’s not the John McCain we loved in 2000! Pathetic. 4:35 PM
And speaking of tantrums: As we see, John McCain is no longer “the maverick.” That only applied when he was their Boy-against-Bush. Now…hate, hate, hate. Welcome to Adolescent Tantrum City, where everyone sounds like a 14 year old on the latest cell phone, prone on the bed, gazing at a halo’d poster of their boyfriend and bitching savagely, and immaturely, about the girl who is getting all his attention:
Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama’s mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt.
I hate that she makes Joe Biden look like John McCain and John McCain look like the maverick he is not.
[Palin is not a feminist, either, according to this lady. She’s not. She’s just not! -admin]
I hate that Palin reminds me of Susan Sarandon’s feisty character in “Thelma & Louise.” I loved Sarandon in that movie, yet I couldn’t stand Palin’s feistiness at the Republican National Convention.
Sarah Palin makes me sick — not because she may speak in tongues — but because she is a fast talker.
…
Frankly, Sarah Palin scares me.
Can you imagine the uproar if anyone had written something so infantile, so childish, spiteful and spittley-harridan as this about Barack Obama? (Yes, I made up my own word, I like it.)
And this woman gets paid to write this stuff! Someone pays her to vomit on her keyboard, stamp her feet in the mess and call it a column. If someone would pay me to do it, I would gladly put my finger down my throat and heave one lung and a pancreas onto my keyboard and call it a column. But I must get paid. I want to be at least as respectable a big-time professional journalist as this woman, Mary Mitchell!
Mitchell – a lifelong feminist – concludes with a stunning confession that flies in the face of 40 years of feminist rhetoric:
After all, there’s no such thing as a superwoman, and children of driven moms make their own sacrifices. [emphasis mine -admin]
Sarah Palin makes me sick because although black Democrats have been responsible for giving white candidates the boost they needed to beat their Republican opponents in tight races, these voters are now being insulted by feminists who say they will cross over into the McCain camp because of her.
How can that be?
Palin’s extreme views on abortion (she once said she would be against her daughter having an abortion even in the case of incest or rape) and her support of abstinence-only programs should make her a laughingstock to feminists.
Instead, she’s a star.
That ought to be enough to make any true feminist sick.
Or, more likely, the feminist establishment of “Official Women” mouthing the “Official Woman’s Position” on abortion have never been fully in sync with the majority of American women, who likely do find Palin’s “no exceptions” position too extreme for them, but who also recognise that partial-birth abortion is the other extreme end of “no exception.” Likely they understand that since Democrats hold both houses in congress, the next president will be as unable to do much about restricting abortion as the last president was- even with his party in power – and so they’re willing to roll the dice. Perhaps, finally, the long-held fear-mongering about women losing “all of their rights to abortion” is being seen for the money-making manipulator that it has long been.4:55 PM
H/T on the Mitchell piece to Vanderleun, who dares to suggest that the writer is suffering from PMS (Palin Mania Syndrome) and risk being denounced for a sexist. Clearly PMS is not just for women, anymore. Although, the women really are disgracing themselves and discrediting professional women with their utter whackdoodle shrieking.
Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m just in a really cranky mood today!
One last observation: Gov. Palin will not have a voice much longer if she does not get a voice coach to teach her how to use her diaphragm and save her vocal chords. Otherwise…she really is an astonishing natural.
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