Good Post Alert: Sarah Vowell's "Party Guy"

Ah, we have a great treat this morning!

Sarah Vowell (Disclosure: Always a favorite to see, hear or read) is on the NYT Op-Ed pages today, with "Party Guy", riffing on, that as much as we think we may know about our presidential candidates, we really know very little at all, how they will perform once elected.

It's packed with Vowell's wryly hysterical observations, going through various past presidents and their shining moments of glory (the Harry Truman line is killer).

As to Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain;

Despite his consistent party-line voting record, some independents and Democrats still think of Senator McCain as the most palatable, independent-minded Republican. But this is the sort of empty compliment a friend of mine once compared to being called “the coolest Osmond.”

And all that newly-discover excitement, with Mommy Moose now on the ticket;

Senator McCain’s name will not appear on ballots under the category “Maverick.” A vote for him is a vote for the Republican Party, which is to say the people who were standing there on the floor in Minnesota all week long chanting, “Drill, baby, drill,” or rattling maracas to cheer on Mitt Romney as he bragged, “Just like you, there’s never been a day when I was not proud to be an American.” Really? Not even on Abu Ghraib thumbs-up photo day? Or Superdome bedlam day(s)?

Those conventioneers are the party faithful Senator McCain will appoint to run our government. Those are the people who have his ear, the people who chose his running mate, the people who will choose his — or in the event of his demise, Sarah Palin’s — Supreme Court appointments. We let presidents surprise us for only four years a pop. Justices can keep us guessing until they die.

Grab your cup of coffee and check out Sarah Vowell's "Party Guy"





P.S.

For you younger, or cartoon, fans, Sarah Vowell was also the voice of Violet, the teenager in the animated film, 'The Incredibles'

Legally Alaskan

Or: Base Hit

The more obvious (stated numerous time last evening) reference may be Reese Witherspoon's "Election", but I saw it more like Elle Woods all growed up.

Her early, narcissistic beauty-parlor life tossed away, fueled by the whiff of success, and imbued with ambition that even that Alaskan pipeline wouldn't be large enough to contain.

As the old saying goes, everyone gets 15-minutes of fame, and Sarah "Midnight Sun" Palin is not wasting hers, determined to make it the loudest, widest-screened, most enhanced technicolored 15-minutes your ever saw.

Ironically, back in 1972, Hunter S. Thompson noted that "the ego of a man running for president is equivalent of a moose in heat."

Perhaps, in the spirit of progress, the changing political landscape, and with Sarah "Midnight Sun" Palin in the race, that can be inclusive of vice-presidential candidates as well.

Is this the Republican Convention or a VFW jamboree?

Rather than bust, once-and-for-all, that ceiling with "18-million cracks", Moose Mommy went along reading, for her defining, national party debut, a man's speech, sprinkled with her up-from-the-snowshoe-straps Wasillian wahoo life, and doused with a Mount McKinley-sized dollop of Fly Boy's POW-POW-POW saga.

Speaker, after speaker have run the POW-POW-POW story to dizzying heights, akin to a fish tale, the catch getting larger-and-larger with each repetition.

The previous evening, boy, ol' pick-up truck Fred Thompson, he didn't just lather on the Aqua Velva, he also slathered the POW-POW-POW mantra, embellishing it with details.

I don't know if that was wise, as that certainly will raise the bar (which Palin happily picked up) on the Stumblin' Bumblin' McCain's daily use of it.

I'm a bit surprised he didn't take his over-acted line from 'The Hunt for Red October' to really scare the bejeezes out of the crowd;

"If we don't get behind John McCain, this election will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it"

Last evening Sarah Palin referred to it constantly, almost as if it were a break-point refrain in the speech.

Or that, if she didn't mention it enough, a giant red hook would yank her off stage.

The POW-POW-POW thing has been so marginalized, so watered down, no doubt, there has to be a few dittoheads out there, calling their travel agencies today, looking to see if they can use their Frequent Flyer Miles to book rooms at the Hanoi Hilton.

We're All Wasillians!

If McCain was rallying the NeoNitWits with his "We are all Georgians", than Sarah Palin mailed out the membership cards to the base that "We are all Wasillians".

The pundits are telling us today that she didn't need to talk about compassion and the middle class, just her being on stage last evening was the flashing neon billboard for that.

She highlighted her family with her hockey mom bona fides, to the point, I expected a campaign stump speech that she should be elected on the basis that she has a family.

"I have a husband ... I have children ... Elect me!"

She promised to be an "advocate" for children with disabilities once inside the White House, yet, offered not a single policy, action item or idea, let alone, branish evidence of anything she's done in Alaska.

Midnight Sun touted her lies of killing off the Bridge To Nowhere and boast of the reformer that she is (since her running mate believes middle class is people that earn $5-million-per-year, perhaps Moose Mommy has a similar threshold for reformers - that if you rake in $27-million in Earmarks, you can refer to yourself as a reformer - apparently the dividing line must come at $30-million, or more).

Eva Fairbanks, over on TNR;

Tonight, diminished expectations combined with Palin’s known-to-be-remarkable charisma made for the speech-making equivalent of putting a champ bowler two feet in front of a set of plastic duckpins.

It convinced me that she makes a good PTA mom, that she may make a fine mayor, that she hasn’t totally bombed as the essentially brand-new governor of the third-least-populous state in the Union, even that I might like to have a beer with her, or a glass of fermented whale milk or whatever one drinks with mooseburgers. But just because we’re a nation of a hundred thousand Wasillas doesn’t mean all those hundred thousand mayors ought to be in the White House. Tonight, she sounded for all the world like an unusually sharp version of those “regular people” they drag onstage at conventions to tell their stories in the off-primetime hours.

And her case for John McCain? Let’s just say I hope he has a better one for himself in store for tomorrow night. Extremely heavy on the POW material, it sounded less like an argument for a presidential nominee and more like the introduction to a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her speech was three-pointed;

Wasilla - Bash Obama/Biden (and a significant portion of the country) for being leftist elitists - McCain POW-POW-POW

Who needs substance and solutions, when cheap hits and one-liners have the media drooling, with their tongues hanging out, ready to carry Palin off on their shoulders.

She hit it out of the park ...

The operative word, as pundits fanned themselves today, flush with equating Palin's speech with being cured at Lourdes, is that "she hit it out of the ballpark"

Poppycock!

She hit, at best, a seeing-eye single, a feat bringing the home crowd to its' feet, much like a rookie being called up from Triple A, getting into a game late in the season, and having a successful first-at-bat.

Sarah Palin is the "new" maverick.

Perhaps, but that remains to be seen.

Her record certainly doesn't carry the fibers of the maverick suit (we will have to check that, to see if she hoovered up a earmark to purchase herself a maverick title)

It should also be said, that a 72-year-old, party-toeing, multi-presidential-race loser being called maverick is like calling a 72-year-old Willie Mays "slugger".

It's a affectionate moniker, tossed at days gone by.

And there's always something creepy about people who give themselves, or referring to themselves constantly, by a nickname.

The country doesn't need a "pit bull with lipstick"

For it would come to a flat-brained pit bull (with or without lipstick) to stick one of their paws in their mouth, not only dissing, but insulting community organizers.

People who give of themselves to aid, help, assist and better others.

Oh, wait a minute ... That's right, she's a Republican.

They don't have community organizers, they, as evidenced by the Bush Grindhouse, have "corporate organizers", always at the ready to hand out a no-bid contract to a crony company.

Al Giordano called it "The Rookie Mistake", while Barry Crimmins labeled it "Tonya Harding with a speechwriter", and Chris Hayes, over on The Nation delivered the knockout blow;

But this kind of hits me where I live, since my dad is a community organizer, so lemme spell this out: the difference between a community organizer and a politician is that a community organizer can't tell anyone what to do. They have to listen. So they can't order books banned from a library to indulge their own religious sensibilities. They can't fire someone because they didn't follow orders to fire an estranged family member. They can't ram through a $15 million dollar sports complex that leaves their local town groaning underneath the debt. Unlike politicians, they don't have any power other than the power of people who want to see something changed.

Decades ago, before the ADA and a raft of other legislation, schools had essentially no requirements to provide decent education for special needs children. Then a movement of parents, engaging in - gasp - community organizing changed that. And they continue to fight day in and day out for educational equity for children like Sarah Palin's.

Too bad Sarah Palin just spit in their faces.

Now, spitting in our faces, is that what candidates who put "Country First" do?


Bonus Mommy Moose

Will Bunch - Attytood: Palin's speech to nowhere

Gloria Steinem - Palin: wrong woman, wrong message; Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger

Mark Kleiman: Palin v. Reality

Steve Benen: THE TRUMAN SHOW...

FiveThirtyEight: Cognitive Dissonance

The 1,001 Points of Light

Well, Well, Well ... We Found Those Republican Hats!

I knew they were out there, somewhere.

The other night, in your post "There Is No Greater Cause", we brought up the issue, raised by Laura Bush and Cindy McCain, of these nefarious "Republican Hats" they were talking about;

But this thing about hats ... WTF is up with that?

We have to have a "hat controversy" now.

Who knew, in the first place, that there were "Republican Hats"?

What do they look like? ... Where do you get them from?

Do Republicans wear these hats all the time, so, as indicated in the speech, to do something else, they have to take off the Republican Hat and put on whatever hat it is to get the job done, in this case, an "American Hat"

And where are they hiding these "American Hats"?

Is this a new "Lapel Flag" thing they're trying to cook up?

Will we soon see the Right Wing Freak Show start hammering Obama and Biden for the hats they wear?

Or don't wear.

I suppose, if either Obama or Biden went hatless yesterday or today, we'll see something from Michelle Malkin, that Biden must want the people of New Orleans to drown, because he wasn't wearing his "American Hat" (or "Democratic Hat", if there is such a thing).

Jonah "Prom Dress Boy Goldberg will have a 15-million word essay on how, Barack Obama going around hatless, means he's a fascist.

Or friend, Nick Zaino, over on The Optimistic Curmudgeon, found'em!

This is one of the most disturbing, Orwellian images I've seen in quite some time, coming from a story in today's New York Times. The image of the president, looming in a dark cave with hats that appear to be headless looking up at him. Are these the "American Hats" we're all supposed to be wearing now because the Republicans have decided to finally react to a potential crisis?

If ya got'em, wear'em ...

There Is No Greater Cause ...

The GOP opened up, officially, last evening, in St.Paul, Minnesota (where they are road testing the new, 2009 Police State) though tonight is when the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds take the stage.

Other than legally, having to gavel the the thing open, perhaps the biggest feat achieved by Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain was managing (on the third day of his VP choice setting off sparks like a radio thrown in a bathtub), keeping the chief occupants of the Bush Grindhouse away from the joint.

Hurricane Gustav is the credited saving grace, that, getting a second chance to act like they knew what they were doing, The Commander Guy and Darth Vader figured, even thought they be gone in a few months, they wouldn't get away with blowing off, again.

With the Labor Day news dominated by Gustav, on television, and Sarah "Midnight Sun" Palin (take your pick - A) Pregnancies, B) Vetting, or C) all of the above), on the World Wide Web, the Dead Campaign Express was taking fire from all sides, and the more they pushed back, the more fire would deluge them.

Check this out, as Campbell Brown, of CNN, toys with Stumblin' Bumblin' McCain Campaign mouthpiece, Tucker Bounds (oh, what a treat it would be if he named one of his children "Out Of"), who, either has a hearing problem, or he just couldn't go the distance in defending the Fly Boy's choice of Wing Chick.

(I suspect, by the time the Republican Convention ends, Sarah "Midnight Sun" Palin will have more "experience" that FDR, JFK, Ike and Patton - combined).

So, the opening night for the Grand Old Party had been pared down, and embued with just enough somberness (sans any black bunting) to get the suck-up from the media on "taking the right tone", with the hurricane lashing away at the friends and relatives of the Louisiana delegation.

In fact, it was announced that those fatback Republicans wanted to pitch in, do something for the victims of the storm.

And they came up with one of their snappy names, much like the horrendous branding of "Country First" (we wrote, previously, how it sounds like the name of a bank ... John McCain + Bank ... Keating Five!);

Cause Greater

Of course, you go out to the website and you get the full monty on it - "Serving A Cause Greater Than Self"

However it's a McCain website, so they have hanging over that "Country First" slogan, so, again, it looks like a bank is sponsoring this "Cause Greater" thing.

No generic agency, like the Red Cross, gets the nod ... No, you get pushed, via links, to programs in states controlled by Republicans, that may, or may not have, been hit by the hurricane.

And who do they get to make the sales pitch?

None other than First Lady Laura Bush, and Mrs. Stumblin' Bumblin' McCain, Cindy (who, no doubt, was on-line earlier in the day, seeing if she could lift any of Sarah "Midnight Sun" Palin's family recipes ... A, kind of, culinary vetting, if you will).

So, the two woman married to dolts put all the heart into it;

"Our first priority now - today - is to ensure the safety and well-being of those living in the Gulf Coast region," Bush said, adding that "our shared American ideals always transcend party politics."

"I would ask that each one of us commit to join together to aid those in need as quickly as possible. As John has been saying for the last several days, this is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats," McCain added.

See how sly they are ... Cruising, so subtly, right into that "Serving A Cause Greater Than Self" thing.

But this thing about hats ... WTF is up with that?

We have to have a "hat controversy" now.

Who knew, in the first place, that there were "Republican Hats"?

What do they look like? ... Where do you get them from?

Do Republicans wear these hats all the time, so, as indicated in the speech, to do something else, they have to take off the Republican Hat and put on whatever hat it is to get the job done, in this case, an "American Hat"

And where are they hiding these "American Hats"?

Is this a new "Lapel Flag" thing they're trying to cook up?

Will we soon see the Right Wing Freak Show start hammering Obama and Biden for the hats they wear?

Or don't wear.

I suppose, if either Obama or Biden went hatless yesterday or today, we'll see something from Michelle Malkin, that Biden must want the people of New Orleans to drown, because he wasn't wearing his "American Hat" (or "Democratic Hat", if there is such a thing).

Jonah "Prom Dress Boy Goldberg will have a 15-million word essay on how, Barack Obama going around hatless, means he's a fascist.

OMG!

They're trying to stir things up again ... Another false issue, another one of those "small things" Obama warned that this election doesn't need.

Now, I don't know if these guys were wearing any hats, whichever kind of hat, even if they owned whichever type of hat they were supposed to own.

But these guys, apparently, didn't get the memo on the "Serving A Cause Greater Than Self" thing.

Or, the one about the hats.

GOP parties as Gustav rages



Oh well ...

Bonus First Day GOP Riffs

Bob Cesca: Liveblogging the RNC - Day One

FiveThirtyEight: St. Paul, Kinda Day One

John Emerson - Police at Republican National Convention: links

Nicole Belle: Republicans Are Coming To Minneapolis…Quick! Hide The Bill of Rights!

Al Giordano - Addams Family Values: GOP Convention Make-Up Night Preview

Glenn Greenwald: Scenes from St. Paul -- Democracy Now's Amy Goodman arrested

Amy Goodman Arrested at RNC

H/T to Lisa Ballard, Via Barry Crimmins