a tale of two campaigns

via twitter:

ari rabin-havt: clearly biden warmed up with some p90x tonight

oliver willis: fox calls ryan "the budget whiz." ffs.

jasons linkins: NOBODY BEATS THE WHIZ

just picture the candidates

and a new meme is born ...

if you know what i mean

i'm not aware of too many things, but i know what i know, and i know what i mean, starting with the realization that, despite the fanfare of both her convention and debate performances, sarah palin has outlived her usefulness to the mccain campaign.

while her fate was in dire question after her disastrous interviews with charlie gibson and especially katie couric, her circus-animal-like barking of freshly-injected and barely-understood republican talking points cemented her place in the hearts of social conservatives everywhere — while driving fingernails into the brains of anyone to the left of bill o'reilly:

it's become clear that palin is not winning mccain new voters. instead, she's proven only able to keep an increasingly shrinking and increasingly repugnant hard right bloc from jumping ship.

unfortunately for mccain, when you're drowning, treading water is a tactic, not a strategy. neither is climbing on the other guy's back.

knowing what i know now, i feel confident enough to call a landslide victory for obama:

this is what a coalescing landslide election looks like on a distribution map of all possible election outcomes in the electoral college based on polling on oct 2. there is no part of the distrubtion across the red line, shutting out a mccain victory. the highest peak of obama's blue lines now reaches 14% and it is for more than 350 electoral votes.

at the end of the democratic primary, i wrote that whoever won would be the de facto next president and that november will be simply a formality. the primary was, in effect, the general election. i wrote that because i saw then no chance for a republican victory, and i see now too many obstacles stacked against mccain, and none greater than his loss of credibility and even respect of the public, which was famously the best thing he had going for him.

in his attempt to alienate the voters from obama, mccain has only alienated them from mccain. and without any new muck to rake up for the voters, who found the old muck wanting when they heard it from clinton, mccain can only pointlessly sink further into the cesspit he's still digging for himself. still, there may yet be time for his loved ones to stage an intervention with some long-postponed straight talk:

lose with grace, you stupid bastard.

... that is, if the man wants to exit the stage with a semblance of his soul intact.

as for sarah, i predict for her a long career as a conservative darling and political footnote, someone republicans can always call on to help fill shrinking convention halls with downcast party apparatchiks looking for a little spunk, eye candy and stream-of-consciousness right-wing poetry.

so with a nod and a wink, this vid's for you, moose gal:

not just a river in egypt

overheard on the net:

am i the only one that thinks palin has been sandbagging in interviews to get biden to put his guard down? she came out so brilliantly when she was announced, and has seemed to fade a little.

i have this confident feeling that she's been setting up the enemy and she's going to knock 'em dead in the debate.

i know she's a great vp candidate and a very smart lady. i just have to wonder why she's been "homely" when it comes to interviews. i know that the interviews she has been in weren't appropriately conducted and that she is the only candidate asked hardball questions throughout her interviews.

poodles and pitchforks

after eight years of cuddling at the decider's feet, have the media poodles become terriers?

sounds like mcworse has neglected feeding the pets, after waving treats in their faces for weeks ...

bear with me for a short rant on another subject, because frankly, i have had it and i know a lot of other women out there are with me on this. i have had enough of the sexist treatment of sarah palin. it has to end. she was here in new york city today meeting with world leaders at the u.n. and what did the mccain campaign do? they tried to ban reporters from covering those meetings. and they did ban reporters from asking governor palin any questions. tonight i call on the mccain campaign to stop treating sarah palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment. this woman is from alaska for crying out loud. she is strong. she is tough. she is confident. and you claim she is ready to be one heart beat away form the presidency. if that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now. allow her to show her stuff. allow her to face down those pesky reporters, just like barack obama did today. just like john mccain did today. just like joe biden has done on numerous occasions. let her have a real news conference with real questions. by treating sarah palin different from the other candidates in this race, you are not showing her the respect she deserves. free sarah palin. free her from the chauvinistic chain you are binding her with. sexism in this campaign must come to an end. sarah palin has just as much a right to be a real candidate in this race as the men do. so let her act like one.

a noun, a verb and ...

ok, so if newly-crowned pageant-winner joe biden goes all the way through to november without saying

... a noun, a verb and pee-oh-dubya!

to john mccain's face, then i'm sorry, i gotta call obama's pick a failure.

hard to believe it was only 10 months ago that america's mayor!™, rudy giuliani, was busy turning his dubious 9-11 cred into a tiresome morbid fetish. rudy was counting on his fellow republicans' unwholesome and unrelenting sanctification of 9-11 and the democrats' paralyzing fear of committing blasphemy to grant himself wholesale license to beat everyone else over the head with it.

that is, until then-fellow-presidential-hopeful joe biden finally stepped up to the plate and smacked some silly off him:

"there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11!"

so here we are 10 months later and mcHulk is on a rampage, gratuitously dealing a sickly-green cockslap to any puny human foolish enough to even fart in his general direction.

just check out some of the swings at his critics during just the last seven days:

the mccain campaign is road-testing a new argument in responding to obama's criticism of his number-of-houses gaffe, an approach the mccain camp has never tried before: the houses gaffe doesn't matter because ... he was a pow! "this is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison," spokesman brian rogers told the washington post.

... mr. mccain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of mr. obama, that he was not as isolated during the obama interview as mr. warren implied. nicolle wallace, a spokeswoman for mr. mccain, said on sunday night that mr. mccain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions. "the insinuation from the obama campaign that john mccain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous," ms. wallace said.

the mccain campaign has offered a novel defense against critics who hit him for offering up his wife cindy as a contestant at a topless biker beauty pageant: he was a pow! ... the wall st. journal reports that mccain spokesman brian rogers fired back by saying that americans "know that john mccain's faith and character were tested and forged in ways few can fathom."

for decades it's been part of our hallowed washington mythos that the straight-talking-john-mcsame™ "doesn't like to talk about" (read: exploit) his years as a p.o.w. — if that was ever true.

so here we are two months out from the finish line, and look who's turned his ticket stub from the hanoi hilton into his all-purpose get-out-of-jail-free card.

he needs to have it revoked — with extreme prejudice. it's like he's bloody chokin' for it, my friends.

so if biden doesn't do it, who will ... ?

like writing on toilet paper

it sounds like bush is getting tired of all the carping know-it-alls-without-a-plan:

president bush on saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in baghdad. "to oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," bush said. — "bush: war skeptics 'proposing nothing'"

but if bush is genuinely interested in seeing other plans, he need only check his inbox.

it's where he'll find, among others, the murtha plan, the kerry-feingold plan, the biden plan, the edwards plan, the levin-reed plan, and not to mention the baker-hamilton plan, otherwise known as the iraq study group plan, which bush already sounds familiar with, since he was recently overheard describing it as "a flaming turd".

and then there are the seemingly daily growing roster of freely-dispensed blogger plans like the johnson plan. it's plainly apparent to none but the willfully blind and deaf that at this late date there are no lack of thoughtful alternatives.

unfortunately (and i do say this with the utmost respect to all those who have been applying the necessary brain-power and wisdom that's been heretofore lacking in this debate) all these plans represent nothing more than idle academic masturbation. they're all quite pointless. and that's why you'll find no trademarked and patented "aarrgghh plan" on this site.

because unless the first step in your grand strategy reads:

my grand strategy for iraq by carping know-it-all 1) remove george bush and dick cheney from office.

... then your plan is nothing but toilet paper.

because unless you're willing to let events continue to spiral for at least another two years, george bush will give your precious plan all the due consideration he gave to the over-anticipated iraq study group report — that is, as steve gilliard remarked, he'll "wipe his ass" with it.

which leaves us with only one plan — the only one that matters — the kagan plan, more fondly known as "the surge".

and what makes this one plan oh-so irresistible to the commander-in-chief?

frederick kagan, 36, is the author of choosing victory, a blueprint for the surge adopted by president george w bush. just as everybody had begun writing off the influence of the neocons at the white house, genial, chubby-faced frederick gave the muscular intellectuals a lease of life. it was at camp david last june that kagan, a military historian and fellow of the american enterprise institute, outlined his plans for pouring more troops into iraq to bush and his war cabinet. donald rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, was unimpressed, but kagan's views got another hearing when bush was searching for ways to ditch the seemingly defeatist recommendations of james baker's iraq study group. "wow, you mean we can still win this war?" a grateful bush reportedly said. — "... bush's final baghdad gamble"