Stumped the candidate

We all knew it, but finally a Republican said it. Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel is questioning whether Palin has enough foreign-policy experience to serve as the country’s second-in-command.

“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials,” Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald. “You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.

“I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,” he added. “That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.”

Of course, her followers will argue that comments like that are unfair to Palin by being so critical. That's what one supporter at a town hall meeting thought when she lobbed this softball to Palin.

"Please respond to that criticism and give us specific skills that you think you have, to bring to the White House, to rebut that or mitigate that concern," asked the sympathetic questioner.

But Palin did not list specific skills, instead she gave a broad, incomprehensible response:

"I think, because I am a Washington outsider, that opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize, and they can kind of beat the candidate here who chose me as his partner to kinda tear down the ticket," Palin responded. "But as for foreign policy, you know, I think I am prepared and I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we'll be ready. I'll be ready. I have that confidence. I have that readiness, and if you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead. You can ask, you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."

Play stump the candidate? We don't need to play that game. She's already stumped.

She who knows not and knows not that she knows not is a fool. Shun her. - Unknown.

This Palin thing is ridiculous

It is ridiculous. It is flipping ridiculous.

Two weeks after an unqualified "hockey mom" air head is nominated to be vice president, and we are still taking her seriously. Her only claim to national security experience had been that she lived close to Russia. You can see it on a clear day, she says. That's like saying I can surf because I lived near Hawaii. Ridiculous.

On her interview with Charlie Gibson she took air head to a whole new stratosphere. This slogan queen didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was... Could only recite that we 'shouldn't second guess Israel' to every question about Middle East policy. Didnt' get the effect of letting Georgia into NATO while Russia is invading them. She thinks energy policy is an answer to foreign policy expertise. Ridiculous.

Her only trips outside the country were to Canada and Mexico...the only two countries that didn't require passports or documentation. Coincidence? No. It's ridiculous. Even worse, her trip to Germany was a trip of a lifetime. You know where I'm going with this. Ridicoulous. Flippin ridicoulous.

See for yourself.



It's not over. See part two.



Ridiculous.

Charge it to my head but not to my heart

Two weeks and two conventions later, this much is clear — Democrats love with their heads and Republicans love with their hearts.

How else do you explain Democrats working themselves up into a lather by repeating a litany of facts and stats to point out all the failures of the Right? Or the Republicans who gather to worship at the altar of 9/11, claim America as their exclusive own, and celebrate an anti-abortion neophyte as their next best hope? It's clearly a head vs heart phenomenon.

I admit that I'm biased. I do my political thinking with my head. I enjoy a little heart on the side, but I vote based primarily on what my head thinks. That's why I was completely miffed that a major party nominee could give an acceptance speech that paints no vision of the future, that offers no specific prescriptions for the nation's ills, or that looks longingly backwards while trying to convince us that they are the party of the future.

We can cede the hero argument to John McCain. John, 40 years ago, you were the man. You were a bad ass's bad ass. Lord knows not many of us could continue flipping the bird for five years at people who were treating us like a doggie chew toy. For me that would get old quickly. You win that argument hands down.

Forty years later however, you run under a theme called "Country First" that only talks about you the individual. Republicans are frothing and crying, and I'm scratching my head. You pick a running mate whose primary qualification seems to be that she is a spunky hockey mom of five kids with quirky monosyllabic names.

Speaking of running mates, how do you nominate someone and keep them from granting a single interview for a full 10 days now? How are you going to stare down Vladimir Putin when you can't even do a soft shoe with Wolf Blitzer?

How? Because she is an anti-abortionist. It seems a Republican could nominate an axe murderer as long as he/she was committed to overturning Roe v Wade. Speaking of the he/she story, how do you do you nominate a woman and laud it as a giant step forward for women and then have conventioneers wearing buttons that say "I'm voting for the hot chick from the cool state?" Isn't that one step forward and three steps back? That's like saying "I'm voting for the night-Black guy from the sunny state." Doesn't strike me as flattery.

Finally, if fighting your own party is such a great thing, why are you with them in the first place? What's wrong with a guy agreeing with the party he has chosen. Isn't that the point?

Of course these are all head arguments that only prove that when it comes to the Republicans, my heart just isn't in it.

Rain, rain go away. Come again another day?

This is irony at it's best.

On a Focus on the Family video, Stewart Shepard asked "would it be wrong to pray for rain?" He then asked people to pray for torrential rain on Obama's acceptance speech.

As it turns out, God answers prayers because Hurricane Gustav is tracking to wash ashore — during the Republican Convention. Seems God has a sense of humor, too.

Oh yeah... Focus on the Family had to remove the video because its members thought he was serious and actually began praying for rain. They must have forgotten to specify where they wanted the rain.

You can't make this stuff up, Folks. Here is Stewart's prayer request.



Thank you, Jesus.

Any woman will do

I'm not sure if he was trying to piss off Hillary Clinton, but I'm sure she must be spitting mad right now.

After spending the last two years trying to break the "last glass ceiling" for women, John McCain selected a relatively unkown governor from Alaska to be his vice presidential nominee. John McCain's selection effectively ends any pathway for Hillary to run as the first potential woman for president in 2012. That's gotta smart.

What's probably even more insulting to Clinton is that Palin was mayor of a city of 9,000 people and, for two years, governor of a state with the same population as the city of Austin.

After bashing Barack Obama for not having experience, John McCain chose someone who has never held a national office, never had to think about national security or the country's fiscal issues in a serious way. She has never had to withstand the rigors of a national election or have her every word scrutinized by the entire nation.

Just for a bit of perspective, when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States, Gov. Palin was running a city with fewer people than the number who saw John McCain introduce her as his running mate. Sen. Obama had eight times as many people present for his acceptance speech as she did constituents. This is the executive experience she will tout.

Why would John McCain pick such a person to succeed him if, God forbid, something should happen to him? The answer seems pretty obvious to most — because she is a woman. McCain must have calculated that there are still a fair number of unhappy residents of Hillaryland. If He can pick off even a few percentage points of them, he can make a pretty good run at the presidency.

Nobody quite knows if that gamble will pay off, but I've heard many women who felt that pick was insulting to women. In her recent Vanity Fair article, Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary for President Clinton, said "too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don’t go right."

I can understand their frustration. After Justice Thurgood Marshall retired from the bench, President George H.W. Bush reached past a slew of qualified judges of all colors and persuasions and nominated Clarence Thomas. At the time, Thomas had a meager record that could charitably characterized as mediocre. Since being on the bench, Justice Thomas has carved out a record as an incurious justice who blindly follows the right wing agenda. And he is there just because he is Black. The 'any Black person will do' selection annoyed me as it did many people of color.

I've never been a fan of Hillary, but I can imagine this 'any woman will do' selection must annoy her. I feel her pain.

Paris for America

Surely by now John McCain must be rethinking his decision to put Paris Hilton on his advertisement deriding Barack Obama.

Ever since the ad compared both as big celebrities, he's faced a ridicule of his own. Republicans have called the ad childish. Obama laughed it off as silly. Conspiracists saw it as racists. And Paris Hilton's parents saw it as unacceptable. (By the way, the Hilton's had maxed out on donations to McCain. There go his Hilton Honors points.)

But the ultimate is Paris Hilton's comeback. She's released her own ad where she dispenses the advice of her own energy policy and calls McCain wrinkly, white-haired guy. The last thing McCain wants is a sweet young thing calling him old and wrinkly. But, alas, he brought it on himself.

Paris Hilton for President, Y'all. Only in America.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

He doesn't understand

They toss it out so casually, most observers seem to miss it.

While bloggers and the press ballyhoo about Obama being called arrogant and uppity, I see a more serious slight being tossed around: He doesn't understand. McCain led with this offensive when Barack Obama returned from his week long trip throughout Europe and the Middle East.

"He doesn't understand what's at stake in Iraq," McCain said repeatedly. McCain and now Republican operatives repeatedly tell us what Obama doesn't understand on Iraq, the economy, on energy. On every issue, Barack Obama doesn't understand. Is it me or is this a not-so-subtle belittlement of Obama's intelligence?

Here is a man who went to Columbia and Harvard University, two of the country's best schools. He excels...becoming the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He goes on to practice civil rights law and teach Constitutional law. He rises through the ranks quickly at both the state and federal senate levels. He displays a command of the issues and articulates his positions clearly. And McCain wants to tell us that Obama doesn't understand.

That's insidious.

If McCain disagrees, he should say so. If he has a difference in opinion, so be it. But to say his opponent doesn't understand? This is from a man who has never proven to be an intellectual heavyweight. He graduated third from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. This is with the privilege of two generations of four-star Navy Admirals in his lineage. Everyone knows that should get you every benefit of the doubt. And yet he was less than stellar.

This is also from a man who claims he didn't really understand the economy after 26 years in congress. This from a man who mistakes the border of Iraq and Sunni from Shia.

This man has the gall to say that Barack Obama doesn't understand, and no one challenges him. Is it that it seems plausible that the older, more experienced senator should logically be wiser than his younger counterpart? Is it that when people look at them together it seems like a plausible scenario?

How in the world can he continue to get away with that? I don't understand.