Okay, not entirely fair. The Sarahcuda that showed up last night for the Second Banana Super Bowl was not quite the same naïf that innocently stumbled into the notorious journalistic bear trap that is Katie Couric. She set her trademark burbling to a nervous staccato rhythm, punctuated with increasingly phony, insouciant winks and enough contrived Marge Gundersonisms to run through a snowbound wood-chipper.
She's smart enough to know that Biden has her outclassed, but since her party trucks in fecklessness and gall, she has been given full license to not give much of a shit. Even if it means trying to tie Obama to questionable bills that, um, her own running mate also voted for. Even if it means setting herself up with an ignorant assertion about Iraqi "surge principles" being applied to Afghanistan, and being instantly rejoindered by Biden with word that the American commander in Afghanistan had earlier that day specifically repudiated such a notion. Even if it means, bloody hell, lying outright about divesting state funds from Sudan because of the Darfur genocide.
But a search of news clips and transcripts from the time do not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.
"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.
Gara says the lack of support from Palin's administration helped kill the measure.
"I walked out of that hearing livid," Gara recalled of the February meeting. Because of the Palin administration's opposition to the bill, "We could not get a vote in that committee," he explained. At no point did Palin come out in support of the effort, Gara said.
I got your "thanks but no thanks" right here, bub.
Another thing that struck me as fairly important, but seems to have gone unmentioned in the online necropsies of this thing, is Biden's concise evisceration of McPalin's unremittingly ugly excuse for a health-care bill. A $5,000 tax credit on something that costs an average of $12K/year is not a deal, fucking duhhh. It is merely a sop to corporations, both the employers who would be off the hook to providing decent plans for their employee risk pools, and the insurance/pharma corporations who rake in the bucks already by ass-raping sick people. "Let the free market decide", she chirps in rebuttal, as if it hadn't been lo these many years. How's it been working out for ya, America? I betcha not so swell, doggone it.
But that's what this woman does, it turns out: she compensates for her lack of genuine knowledge and principle with a bottomless sack of twinkly lies, defying any would-be debunkers with a Tracy Flick-like commitment to her internal vision, whatever that turns out to be. Judging from her warm endorsement of increasing the vice-presidential portfolio, as if the grasping opacity of Cheney's tenure weren't warning enough, it's power and validation. Jesus H. Christ, the woman's so clueless, she didn't even realize that her own campaign had pulled out -- and not in the biblical sense -- of Michigan until this morning. I knew about it before she did. That is indescribably weird.
So of course her no-forehead fan club are way on board with all this, heartened by the fact that she wasn't gotcha'd this time around with tricksy questions about news sources and such. Our Lady of the Talking Dolphins has a mash note that makes ya wonder if she thinks Palin is inhabited by the shade of Saint Ron of Rancho del Cielo. There's tonsa pull quotes, doncha know, but this one's a real winner, right up there with Norm's duck stamp:
She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.
Unfortunately Nooners doesn't mean off a bridge. She means the sort of emotionally stunted twits who imbue the people they see on their teevee with their own projected assumptions. They don't want to vote for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket because they sincerely believe that the policies of the ticket will provide the best path out of the messes this country has become mired in. They want to be at the next Sarah Palin event so that they can come closer to their imagined objective of, fuck, I don't know, watching soap operas and having topless pillow fights with her. Whatever it is you chicks do together when we're not around.
I mean, seriously, what kind of a flaming jackass goes through their life like this? It's not just silly, self-absorbed women -- the next middle-aged guy at the office that comes up and makes some dippy "I'd like to hit it" crack without a little further explication is going to get punched in the fuckin' throat. I'm glad you want to fuck her, guys, and it's not that she's unattractive, it's just that there's a lot of serious shit going on here and everywhere else, and you're ready to hand the keys over to some broad I wouldn't trust to do my measly taxes, just 'cause you think she's winking at your scroungy ass.
Your house is on fire, asshole. The fire department shows up, but the chief seems a bit aloof, boring, pompous. Probably drives a better car than you. Looks like he's in better shape. Seems to know how to do his job, but intimidating to your latent inadequacies nonetheless. Then the milf from next door shows up, offering you a place on the couch for the night. It'd sure be nice if she came out and woke you up on that couch, maybe wearing some negligeé, a little sympathy rub-and-tug, sorry about your house, I've never done anything like this before. No no, leave the glasses on, baby, I kinda dig it. Hey, a guy can dream. But that doesn't put out the house fire, especially when it's just a cock-tease fantasy in your head anyway.
The main thing I take away from this overblown event is that Palin is about done. She'll be shuttled off to the Fixed Noise safehouse for the homestretch, to try to rehabilitate her earlier flubs for the mouth-breathers. There's no fucking way they're going to put her on Face the Nation or Press the Meat; there's no way they're going to risk putting her in front of a journalist with an ounce of integrity or self-respect. They'll call her frenetic, over-rehearsed and underprepared debate performance a win for their side, but the only people buying it are the ones who already had their money out. Biden hit back where it counted, attacking McCain instead of Palin, heading into a weekend sure to be dominated by quizzical looks at how we could give a bunch of Wall Street thieves and poltroons $140 billion more than they were extorting from us, yet still have the stock market continue its dive.
And Tuesday is the "townhall" debate, supposedly McCain's strength, but even Chuck Krauthammer implicitly concedes not only the election itself to Obama, but the correctness of that choice of intellect and temperament over an endless series of head-fakes and cheap stunts. An easy guess is for McCain to overcompensate the reports of his refusal to visually engage Obama, and come off looking even more stilted and awkward.
And the thing is, not only is Obama the more gifted orator and debater, the way Biden actually is over Palin (not that it counts in these things), but Obama is also more gifted in the abstract areas "real" Americans care about. Obama has defied his supporters' ministrations to go all Chuck D on the old man and scare the shit out of Peoria, while McCain, irritable in temperament to begin with, has become more erratic in the face of Obama's calmness. He is turning into Cotton Hill, a ranting, strutting banty rooster, barely concealing his indignation at not having received his just reward for what the Tojos put him through. He does not get that his time was eight years ago, that he had a real shot before Rove and Bush ratfucked him in that South Carolina primary, and that he has shown up to the burning house with a half-full bucket and a bad attitude, wondering why the guys with the big ladder truck are getting all the attention.
The thing is, if conservatards ever got over their silly schoolgirl crushes they carry for their candidates, and thought hard about the serious issues they so regularly posture and preen about, they wouldn't let McCain nor Palin anywhere near the levers of national power. That's not an affirmation of Obama's messianic greatness, nor Biden's moral superiority. They both have considerable flaws. But it's not even close as to which ticket is consistently, tangibly worse in every conceivable area. That can't be so easily hidden with a bunch of repetitive falsehoods and bumptious catchphrases, not when people are wondering how much longer they'll have a house and a job, thanks to the current occupant.
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