Seriously?

Sarah Palin? I guess McCain's decided to stop bringing up Obama's lack of experience. It's McCain's 72nd birthday today. By the end of his first term, he'll be 76. He has had health problems. Neither his age nor his health is a disqualifier for president, but it makes the VP choice very important. There is a very real chance that, if he is elected, Palin will eventually have to step in as President.

Sarah Palin's experience includes 2 years as governor of one of the most sparsely populated states in the Union, and Mayor of a town most people have never heard of until today. She has less foreign policy experience than Obama, less domestic policy experience than Obama, and (considering she's younger than Obama) less life experience in general.

On top of this, bigots from red states who may previously have come out to vote against Obama might stay home now. Female PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) voters might also stay home, considering the fact that Palin, though female, is pro-Life, whereas your average Hillary voter is strongly pro-Choice.

Oh, and there's nothing like naming a running mate who is currently involved in an ethics scandal to boost your credibility as a straight talker.

I think this was a bad decision for McCain, and we really won't know until after the election's over. Any bump he gets from this is going to get lost in his Convention bump. If he doesn't get a bump from picking Palin or from the Convention, that could just be because Obama's speech last night was such a success. Maybe we'll be able to see if she's helping him after the VP debates, but by then I think we can expect so much political background noise that it will be hard to pin down. And even if she does give McCain a big bump or a big dip at the VP debates, that could easily be Biden's fault (or vice versa).

This is going to be an interesting election....

Polyhedral Die You Can Believe In

Recently there's been some talk about whether McCain is taking bits and pieces of his speeches from other sources. I doubt much will come of this, since there was similar talk about Obama earlier this year and that has all died down. Plagiarism doesn't really have legs as a story, and I think the reason is that people care more about what the candidate says than where he got the words. Otherwise, they'd be criticized for having paid speechwriters and not doing all the work themselves, right? On the other hand, the most recent example is about a story McCain tells about his time in captivity. This goes to the heart of his personal narrative, the way the public perceives him, etc, etc. If McCain did not really share a special moment with a covert Christian in that Vietnamese POW camp, that would be like discovering Obama's white grandmother was actually the picture of a perfectly tolerant, color blind, civil rights activist, rather than a woman with some occasional moments of prejudice that taught the future Senator that even if you don't like everything about a person, there are some people you just can't disown.

All that aside, what really caught my eye was this bit from the McCain campaign's response:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

To be clear, whoever wrote this blurb on McCain's website (I think his name was Michael) is talking about bloggers. Bloggers, of course, all play Dungeons and Dragons, and live in their mothers' basements. In short, what otherwise passes for a reasoned and well thought out response to a possible embarrassment to the candidate is suddenly brought down to the level of ad hominem attacks. School yard insults. He's calling liberal bloggers nerds. He is, presumably, exempting right wing bloggers from this charge.

And of course, we all know, nerds are losers. They'll never amount to anything. And I thought maybe McCain was making progress when he stole from Wikipedia.

Green Bandit out.

Tolls of Death

I've read that Obama wants to remove troops from Iraq, but put more on the ground in Afghanistan. Now, I'm more anti-war than Obama (in fact, he once quipped that he was not against wars, only against "dumb" wars). But facts on the ground, as they say, seem to support this move if one is militarily inclined. The US has already lost nearly as many troops in combat Afghanistan in the month of August (today is the 1st) as it did in combat in Iraq for the entire month of July.