Archive for September, 2008

Obama’s Smack Down
09-24-2008

In what I am now calling the best political response ever to an attempted curve ball, I get a great F*#K Yeah moment.

Let me set this up, if you’re not paying attention. McCain announced today that he is suspending his campaign to head back to Washington to help negotiate a deal in the Wall Street crash. He urges Obama to follow and to agree to postpone Friday’s debate. As a result, Obama faces the problem of going to Washington and looking like he is following McCain’s lead, or not going and looking like he is putting politics above country.

Which did he choose? Well, he’s not going, but he has set up a smack down of his own.  It’s not about politics. It’s about talking to the people. Now is the time.

“With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once,” Obama said. A hint of a smile crossed his face after he delivered that line. He then added, “I think there’s no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand … So in my mind, actually, it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy.” – Senator Obama

And to make it worse, Senator Reid does not want them. Why should McCain and Obama now head back to Washington to look like we’re huddling around the President that helped get us in this mess. Keep your distance. Weigh in from the road. Huddling around the president does not make you look presidential.

Now is the time for Obama and McCain to speak directly to the largest possible audience about what they want to do and how they are going to do it. If they want to change anything, change the focus of Friday’s debate from Foreign Policy to the economy.

Maybe McCain should suspend his campaign for another reason. Neither he nor Palin are ready to answer any questions.


lechtanski
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Palin’s Not the Pig; She’s the Lipstick.
09-15-2008

So, I was listening to last week’s Political Gabfest and one of the topics was Palin and the brouhaha around Obama making the “lipstick on a pig” comment. I thought three things:

  1. OMG, are we still talking about this.
  2. Palin’s the lipstick.
  3. McCain’s the pig.

Whether Obama meant this or not, I understand why no one in the McCain camp wants to clarify what they think he really meant. Palin as the lipstick on McCain the pig is a much more biting, accurate, effective and funny analogy. Thinking and saying Obama meant to insult Palin makes no sense, but there is little sense at this point of a presidential campaign.


lechtanski
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Weirdness in McCain’s Speech
09-06-2008

I found such high a level of weirdness in McCain’s speech Thursday night, I now feel compelled to share.

  • Those were some wacky images on the enormous screen. From a not-so-random school in California, iStockphotos of people and windswept prairies, the pictures didn’t seem to match the speech in any way. They were just big and weird. Plus, I had a feeling there were some subliminal words or messages hidden in there.
  • During the I-feel-your-pain section, McCain mentioned people he’d met on the trail, along with their State of residence, to share their sad stories (lost their house, bad health). This was weird, because at the mention of each state, that state’s Republican Delegation would start cheering. So it worked like this: “Bob and Sue Smith from Pennsylvania lost their house.” Followed by the hooting and woo-hooing by the drunk Pennsylvanians. Umm… timing… which leads me to the next point…
  • Bad, bad timing. I am certain the most common phrase on the teleprompter was “Wait for Applause”. Not that applause was warranted. Only that when you stop talking, back up and smile creepily, people don’t know what else to do. They applaud.
  • That creepy, creepy smile. Aghh.

McCain is now running the same basic campaign as Dole. The “It’s my turn” campaign. Only this one includes a woman VP candidate, instead of Jack Kemp. He’s done his duty after being racked over the coals eight years ago. His party owes him. It’s his turn. But he’s just so creepy!


lechtanski
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Who will point out Republican Hypocrisy? The fake news.
09-04-2008

From BoingBoing:

The Daily Show has a segment with video clips of Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly, and others complaining about the media’s unfair treatment of Sarah Palin, along with earlier video clips of these folks dishing out the same garbage about other women, including Hillary Clinton.


lechtanski
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Bizarro VP
09-03-2008

Ok. Ok. Sarah Palin. I just don’t get it. Every time I try to rationalize a reason the VP choice should make sense I just have to stop myself, because my rationalization becomes irrational.

So, I’m in a political bizarro world.

She’s a woman who will attract the disappointed Hillary supporters who were solely concerned with electing a woman. But she’s a far right-wing woman with radically different positions on social and economic issues. Die hard Hillary supporters are disappointed, not ideologically blinded.

She’s a Washington Outsider who will backup McCain’s maverick status. Right. But she’s such a maverick, she is potentially down with the Alaskan secessionist movement crowd (one could say she is married to it).

She’s young and… ready? She’s young with less experience than Obama, who has been criticized for being too inexperienced for the job. A person in the Vice-president slot should be as prepared to take office as the Presidential slot. If McCain believes Obama is too inexperienced, I find it hard to believe he truly believes Palin’s experience has prepared her for office. To me, it looks like McCain has selected an Obama of his own: a young whipersnapper to energize the young people.

And the thing that’s brought me to total realization of my deportation to bizarro world is the Bristol story. The baby’s daddy has now been flown to Minnesota convention with photo ops and a potential stage presentation?!? I understand empathy for the situation of an underage, unwed pregnancy, and kudos for having and keeping the baby. But are we really going to celebrate this?

My mom was 18 when she had my brother and 22 for me. I know it was hard and she had to sacrifice a ton for us. I’m 36 and I’m still not sure I’d be able to handle the things she shielded us from.

Recognizing the situation and the reality is one thing, but we don’t need to be desensitized to it any more than Juno has already done. The grandchild of the Alaskan governor and potential Vice-President of the United States is guaranteed to have everything it could need. This is not necessarily the case for most every other baby in a similar situation. And if the argument is “no one can get a 17-year-old girl to listen.” I guess that might be true, no one except that is for celebrities. Which is exactly what we just made of Bristol and the baby’s daddy.

The best I can do to rationalize the choice is it was a gamble. That McCain sees his chances as slim and he needed to do something to shake it up and hope for a lucky bounce. If this is so, at some point he’ll need to realize he’s going down a bad, bad road. Will he be too stubborn to change direction?


lechtanski
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