It's Not Where Rubio & Hot Air's From (But Where I'm At)

You know that moment when someone, maybe a friend, finds fortune of some kind and they start making changes to accommodate it, until you're forced to tell them "you've changed - and not for the better"? That's what is happening to Marco. He's acquiring too much polish for his own good, reducing the best thing about him - that he can clearly and plainly articulate what this country is all about - to calculation, revealing his dark side once the authenticity is gone. 

He'll never be Antonio Villaraigosa, thank goodness, but, ever so slightly, he's moving in that direction.

- TMR, to Marco Rubio's Republican National Convention speech, August 31, 2012

Today's mention of "the disappointment that is Rubio" by Hot Air (and others) made me wonder, "Why on Earth do I still read this stuff?" 

Nothing about the exchange makes sense.

Hot Air is consistently voted the #1 conservative news analysis site.

Hot Air probably attended the Republican National Convention.

Hot Air probably knows Marco Rubio personally.

All 100% true, without embellishment. So boggle my fucking mind, and riddle me this, Batman:

What good is Hot Air if they're just discovering something my black ass nailed, after one glimpse of this wanker on television, last year?

They simply provide no value:

Don't argue with me - I live in "Mormon Country",...

 

It's Good Enough For The Rubes (But Can't Fool TMR,...)

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Ann Romney on August 29th, 2012 at the RNC: 

"We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish,..." 

TMR on September 2nd, 2012: 

"Sure, the Romney's lived on tuna and noodles,...uh-huh." 

Ann Romney on Meet the Press, September 9th, 2012: 

“Mitt and I do recognize that we have not had a financial struggle in our lives.” 

The Right's Problem With Lying (They Forget It's Lying)

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The Macho Response's Truly Conventional Wisdom Roundup, III: Sarah Palin Is Smarter (And Has More Executive Experience) Than Barack Obama

Apparently there is something about Sarah Palin that causes some people to think of her as either the best of candidates or the worst of candidates. She draws enthusiastic crowds and provokes visceral hostility in the media.

The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency" if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less experience-- none in an executive capacity-- and his would itself be the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected.

Sarah Palin's record is on the record, while whole years of Barack Obama's life are engulfed in fog, and he has had to explain away one after another of the astounding and vile people he has not merely "associated" with but has had political alliances with, and to whom he has directed the taxpayers' money and other money.

Sarah Palin has had executive experience-- and the White House is the executive branch of government. We don't have to judge her by her rhetoric because she has a record.

We don't know what Barack Obama will actually do because he has actually done very little for which he was personally accountable. Even as a state legislator, he voted "present" innumerable times instead of taking a stand one way or the other on tough issues.

"Clean up the mess in Washington"? He was part of the mess in Chicago and lined up with the Daley machine against reformers.

He is also part of the mess in Washington, not only with numerous earmarks, but also as the Senate's second largest recipient of money from Fannie Mae, and someone whose campaign has this year sought the advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who was at the heart of the subprime crisis.

Why then the enthusiasm for Obama and the hostility to Sarah Palin in the media?

One reason of course is that Senator Obama is ideologically much closer to the views of the media than is Governor Palin. But there is more than that. There are other conservative politicians who do not evoke such anger, spite and hate.

Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington Beltway.

More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or think the way they think.

Worse yet, from the media's perspective, Sarah Palin does not seek their Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Much is made of Senator Joe Biden's "experience." But Frederick the Great said that experience matters only when valid conclusions are drawn from it.

Senator Biden's "experience" has been a long history of being on the wrong side of issue after issue in foreign policy. He was one of those Senators who voted to pull the plug on financial aid to South Vietnam, which was still defending itself from Communist invaders after the pullout of American troops.

Biden opposed Ronald Reagan's military buildup that helped win the Cold War. He opposed the surge in Iraq last year.

Sarah Palin will not be ready to become President of the United States on the first day that she and John McCain take office. Nobody is.

But being Vice President is a job that can allow a lot of time for studying, and everything about Governor Palin's career says that she is a bright gal with her head on straight. The country needs that far more than it needs people with glib answers to media "gotcha" questions.

Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country's fundamental institutions are beyond question because they have not spent decades working with people who hate America. Nor are they people whose judgments have been proved wrong consistently during decades of Beltway "experience."

— Thomas Sowell, writing for Real Clear Politics

Battered Black And Blue (By Brown)

"The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.

Period.

Palin's speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don't do well on defense.

Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don't want to be seen as defending the status quo.

From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions.

Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense.

I actually went back and watched Palin's speech a second time. I didn't go to sleep until 1:30 a.m. I had to make sure I got the lines right.

Her timing was exquisite. She didn't linger with applause, but instead launched into line after line of attack, slipping the knives in with every smile and joke.

And she delivered it like she was just BS-ing on the street with the meter maid.

She didn't have to prove she was 'of the people.' She really is the people.

There is one thing she should have done: announced when her 17-year-old daughter and the teenage father of the girl's unborn child are getting married and invited all of us to the wedding. It should be like Sunday at church.

As for Palin herself, she is going to be very, very effective on the campaign trail, especially if McCain's people can figure out how to gently keep her from getting into confrontations with the press.

If she can answer questions like she handled herself at the convention, Palin will turn out to be the most interesting person in all of politics, and the press will treat her like they treated Obama when he was first discovered.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

By the way, a note to John McCain: Get rid of the suits.

McCain is best with an open collar, his sleeves rolled up and in a Western shirt.

He doesn't come off well in suits at all.

They make him look old.

And Cindy - keep the hair up."

-- Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, handing out advice - and proving why he's an ace in politics (he echoes my thoughts exactly) for the SFGate.

The Best Palin Cartoon Yet

“There’s something about this lady that scares the left senseless. As if the left wasn’t already senseless.”

-– Neal Boortz

Hat Tip: Death By 1000 Papercuts

And Now For Something Really Different,...

"It was,...where he showed some spark and passion that made me watch John McCain as a whole, instead of concentrating on the disturbing way his upper lip sometimes disappears.

As someone who is neither a McCain nor an Obama supporter, I watched it — as I did Obama’s — looking for something to hook me. While his delivery left a great deal to be desired, the speech helped many of us skeptics look at McCain differently; not as the crazy in a Dr. Strangelove way that some of us viewed him in the past, but as someone who really could change the way things are done in Washington. We saw John McCain the man, not the POW, not the maverick, just a soft-spoken guy with some big ideas — pretty good ones. I may not be completely sold, but he did stir up something within me with that last few minutes, something I have not felt in four years: a passion for my country and a desire to, dare I say it, effect change.

I thank John McCain for that bit of awakening. I call this speech a win in that it had the opposite effect of what I thought it would; instead of putting me to sleep, it woke me up. Whether the rest of the undecided feel the same way remains to be seen."

-- Michele Catalano, discovering there's more "change" in John McCain than she thought, on Pajamas Media.

What Was She Thinking?

Whether you're on the Left or the Right, and for a multitude of reasons - almost all of them having to do with appearances - Cindy McCain is a problem.

There: I said it,..

The Aquarian Conspiracy

"We figured the rookie would be so rattled by all the hot lead our media buddies threw at her those first few days that she’d forget to bring her moose knife to a gunfight.

How were we to know that she was a natural-born killer, and that her first punch would break B.O. Plenty’s glass jaw and sending him rushing into the arms of Bill O’Reilly, where he proclaimed that of course the surge worked, he always said it would work, and furthermore he always said that he always said the surge would work, but that he still thought it was a sucky idea.

Then you delivered another low blow last night when, at the end of your speech you defied that crowd of chanting fascists in St. Paul — those who would deny the plain language of the Constitution’s Article One: A Woman’s Right To Murder Her Unborn Baby for Her Own Personal Convenience Shall Not Be Infringed — and roared through the end of your jingoistic inaugural address. I mean “acceptance speech.”

Fight, fight, fight, America, truth, justice, and all that stuff, blah blah blah. You were so impassioned and fired up it was almost like you believed what you were saying.

Still, we had to put some ice on that. The look in Bambi’s eyes today is like Dolph Lundgren’s in Rocky IV, after Sly Stallone first bloodies Ivan Drago, and the noble, indestructible Russian thinks: O my Gaia, I could lose this thing.

Afraid of you? Hah!

But this morning, maybe we are.

-- David Kahane, noting that "The Home of the Brave" still has a lot of cowards in it, for the National Review Online.