Sen McCain has a hissy fit about DADT

Senator McCrankyPants is upset.

You didn’t consult me!!  You bastards!

HT: ThinkProgress YouTube channel

From a Distance: The Jitters, will Obama lose after all?

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It has been noted recently that, for a foreigner, I was pretty much fired up and passionate about the American Presidential elections. I asked myself, why do I care that much? And the answer on that is fairly easy. When you are restricted from really participating, like voting or actually donating to , or working for a campaign, you have to rely on others to do what you consider would be the right thing. I don’t like that, like I do not like riding shotgun in a car or sitting in an airplane at the mercy of the driver’s or pilot’s competence. And I am not alone. Out there in European newspapers, there are people who say it so much better than I can.

Like George Monbiot in yesterday’s Guardian. He gives voice to one of the specifics in American politics that, like him, I cannot get my head around:

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist? (read more)

Will it be that way next Tuesday? Will the anti-intellectuals prevail once again? Sorry, but to be blunt: A borderline senile and a borderline imbecile joining forces to run the most powerful nation there is, has me in panic mode.

Not only me. There is Mark Steel over at The Independent who has the jitters as well:

McCain could announce he’d bomb Argentina for being too near the start of the alphabet, flash at Oprah Winfrey shouting “Hey Joe the plumber, there’s ONE waterworks that doesn’t need fixing” during the national anthem, reveal he was chairman of a company that’s been selling teddy bears that turn out to be stuffed with petrol-soaked semtex, and admit he didn’t go to Vietnam at all but spent the whole war in the bath. And the following day we’d hear that a string of gaffes had caused Obama’s lead to climb to SIX per cent. (read more)

He has a point hasn’t he? I’m visiting Real Clear Politics like fifty times a day. I’m preferring that Republican leaning site just because I do not want to get my hopes up too high.

On the other hand Daniel Finkelstein – The Times – has everything wrapped up and tells Republicans the stark truth about their impending unimportance. He compares November 5, 2008 with the day after Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997:

There was a feeling of euphoria in Britain that morning, a feeling of freshness and change. Even people who hadn’t voted for Blair were caught up in it. Many of them wished that they had, and his poll rating soared. Much of the good feeling about new Labour was generated in the months after their landslide, oddly, rather than in the months before it.(read more)

This makes me feel slightly better. After all, the conservatives’ predictions have been more right all those years than mine. My wishes for a President Gore and then a President Kerry haven’t been granted. To be honest, it has never been good news for a candidate, if I supported the guy. Mine tended to lose.

On to the Economist, they are really good at analysis, every time. They say McCain’s campaign was looking doomed.

JOHN MCCAIN has survived against long odds before. But, despite a stubborn televised interview on Sunday October 26th, in which he touted a poll showing him just a few points behind Barack Obama in the race for the White House, soon he may have to tape up his windows to keep out bad news. Pollster.com, a website that aggregates poll results, suggests that the Republican is now behind Mr Obama by an average of just over seven percentage points. Other pollsters give Mr Obama a slightly smaller lead. Intrade, a betting website, indicates that those risking money on the election result believe that the Democrat has nearly a 90% chance of victory next week. (read more)

But, but have they ever heard of rigged elections? No, this is not comforting at all. And then, there are the Chinese zodiac signs.

Maybe most impressing is Simon Heffer in The Telegraph. He grudgingly and moodily writes about the time when Obama will be President. He doesn’t like it, but then – it will most probably happen.

One can find two kinds of voters in this great city in the week before the presidential election; those Democrats who can see no possibility of defeat for Barack Obama next Tuesday, and those who wake with a jolt at 4am imagining he has lost, and feeling in their bowels the fear that something might happen in the next few days to stop the saviour of the United States from fulfilling his mission. I have yet to find a Republican, despite this being the city that returned Rudy Giuliani twice as mayor. But then it is hard to find anyone in the city that gave Hillary Clinton a big victory in February in the New York state primary who will now not admit to being a dyed-in-the-wool Obamamaniac. The fat lady has yet to sing, but, as far as New Yorkers are concerned, the show is over already. (read more)

I am still as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers, but I am confident I am not alone in this. There is a Global Electoral College in the Economist and as far as I can see, my anxiety is shared by many.

Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell

Just in case you missed this:

Is it finally open season on McCain?? – Corporate media are blasting his judgment!

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It seems it is finally open season on John McCain in the Mainstream Media for his poor judgement in his irresponsible decision to chose Sarah Palin as a running mate.

On TV

CNN

Scarborough (H/T wordie):

And on the News sites in America:

The New York Times here and this is David Brooks speaking:

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

and here:

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

[…]“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen says:

One of the great sights of American political life — a YouTube moment if ever there was one — was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: “She’s the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television,” Gingrich said on the “Today” show. “So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she’s been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.”

and adds, rather pointedly:

It’s a pity Gingrich was not around when the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula, reputedly named Incitatus as a consul and a priest. Incitatus was his horse.

It doesn’t stop here, there’s the European media, too:

The Times calls her half baked Alaskan and concludes:

Mrs Palin’s selection has made for great political theatre. It is also profoundly irresponsible. This was Mr McCain’s first Cabinet-level appointment, and it reflects as vividly as any of his battles over campaign finance reform the maverick tendencies that continue to define him. Such tendencies are of huge value on the American football field, in certain corporate settings and, indeed, in the US Senate. Whether they belong in the Oval Office at a time of grave and unfamiliar challenges to Western civilisation is far less clear.

The Telegraph likens the frantic post factum vetting to a political hit squad:

Senior allies of the Republican presidential nominee insisted that the team of press officers will handle the worldwide media frenzy surrounding the selection of only the second woman ever on a presidential ticket.

But they also admitted that they have operatives on the ground in Alaska to probe more deeply into her background.

Democrats detected a whiff of panic in the McCain camp, amid growing claims that Mrs Palin’s personal history was not properly vetted before Mr McCain announced his pick on Friday.

I think it is more than a whiff of panic. I bet, they didn’t even google her name before the announcement. They couldn’t have, because if they had they would have come up with what we have have come up with:

About the Independence Party of Alaska

About the Issues

About the Real Sarah Palin

About Who Is Sarah Palin

About Governor Palin and Creationism

and this, this and much more

I’d say we vetted Governor Palin here and as far as I am concerned, this appointment is an insult to every American voter.

UPDATE: More international media comments in Open Season II

Republicans Asked to Change Their Hats for Gustav

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In light of the massive Hurricane Gustav bearing down on New Orleans, and wishing to spare his party the embarrassment of appearing unconcerned while hundreds die and a major American port city drowns (again),

A mighty fine American hat

Senator John McCain announced that activities at the Republican Party Convention would be scaled down. The Senator said that this was a time for his fellow Republicans to “take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.” For me, this begs the question, “Don’t the Republicans wear their ‘American hats’ all the time? Or does this support the contention that Republicans put party before country on a routine basis?”

Three years ago the President blew it big time and a lot of good people died as a result. They have pledged to do better this time, but we’ll only know for sure once the damage has been done and the hurricane has passed. May whatever Gods our people believe in have mercy on all their souls. Good luck to our fellow citizens in the path of this hurricane (and, possibly, the one right after it.)