TOBY PETZOLD

For some reason, I liken John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin to General Eishenhower picking Richard Nixon for the Vice Presidency in 1952. I think McCain is rewarding her primarily for the potential she represents, as well as hoping that he will stand to reap the benefits of choosing a woman. He made a boldly political decision that is justified by what he sees as a woman of character and strength. This could be a stroke of genius and an appeal not only to women but to younger Americans. I am trying to learn all I can, although I heard from a relative of mine this morning that the Wikipedia entry for her said that she “began life as a man.” Interesting.

John McCain has just made himself and the Governor of Alaska the President and Vice President of the United States.

I’m finally getting to watch Sarah Palin address her first audience as the presumptive nominee and she is a delight. I am just beaming. She seems to have real respect for McCain, if not the personal chemistry just yet. And what a beautiful family. They say she calls her husband —who I would guess is most women’s ideal man— the “First Dude.” Ha, ha. Great-looking kids and just amazing details of her biography.

I think, if fair-minded women voters are honest about this election and what Palin’s elevation means for them, they cannot doubt that this is a courageous choice McCain has made and that Sarah Palin is a woman worthy of considering for the job.

Oh, and Barry? Epic Fail. Then again, maybe McCain’s announcement did you the favor of a mercy flush for last night’s bacchanal of banality. And how did you respond to the most interesting news of this day? With a graceless post-it note with your contempt for certain of our citizens. You lose, liar.

Where is Bill Clinton taking this speech? It is weirdly constructed and lurching. And just lousy with the cliches. I believe almost none of it. But he certainly gave the McCain campaign plenty of top-notch ad footage.

Thanks, Bill.

It moved me deeply to see Edward Moore Kennedy address the DNC on Monday. That remains my favorite emotional moment so far. Hillary’s speech, however, was a masterpiece. It is the most impactful moment yet. I thought Mrs. Obama was lovely and exquisitely controlled. La Pelosi reconceived the white pantsuit in famous fashion. Biden needs a monster performance tonight. And Obamachrist? I predict he will emerge before those fluted Greek columns tomorrow night with a whacked-out professional wrestler mullet-weave and a boast in his throat. It will be a moment like the one a person feels in the split second he knows he’s going to fall a long way. There’s an adrenaline rush that makes nonsense of time and propels him into the air: “FLY, damn you! FLY!!!”

Just go with the look, man. It works.

I don’t approve of American politicians standing before the world proclaiming the end of partisanism that will come by the election of Barack Hussein Obama. These people completely misunderstand American history and culture. When partisanism is finally defeated here, this will have become a totalitarian country. I don’t want to live there. I want to live with a cinnamon girl, not some bloodless angel of homogeneous heaven.

You know what? If the post-American Left are so interested in exporting our Constitutional rights to the enemies of Western Civilization, why don’t they take to the firmest possible position there can be on the question of a nuclearized Iran and the next- phase al-Qaedists? Why don’t they have a coherent message on immigration reform and border security? Why can’t they stand up for the legalization of hemp and the reform of our drug laws? Why do they support candidates who don’t support gay marriage? When can we end the corn subsidies and the other kinds of protectionism in a global economy? What’s wrong with school choice, vouchers, credits, and vocational schooling? Can we exploit more of our own natural resources, please?

Start making sense, losers.

According to Sam Youngman at The Hill, Bill Clinton isn’t done hatin’ on a certain playa:

The former president, speaking in Denver, posed a hypothetical question in which he seemed to suggest that that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in choosing Obama as its presidential nominee.

He said: “Suppose for example you’re a voter. And you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?”

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.”

It’s hard not to notice that Bill Clinton no longer matters to his party. He may again, but it’s truly remarkable to see how quickly he’s been reduced by this new crowd to some cartoon racist complainer. And it’s almost completely wrong! Him and Geraldine Ferraro getting called racists? This bunch of morans running the Democratic Party are taking identity politics to a whole new plane of reality. Watch out.

She’s a beautiful lady and she did her husband a great service tonight. It was an almost perfectly delivered speech with many of the same oratorical tricks Obama himself uses to mimic human concern. But then he showed up as some sort of disembodied head —like them spooky fuckers from the trial scene at the start of Superman. What a thoroughly unnecessary intrusion into what was otherwise a thespian triumph. The man is absolutely helpless before the might of his ego. Sheer preposterity!

Nancy Pelosi, who showed how to wear white out (yeow!) before Labor Day this evening, apparently doesn’t know that natural gas is a fossil fuel. In her appearance on Meet the Press yesterday, she repeatedly made this ignorance clear, as John Hinderaker culled from the transcript in the quotes below:

BROKAW: Well, I think most people understand that, but at the same time, if we work our way off carbon-based fuels, in the meantime, this is not going to happen overnight.

PELOSI: No, it isn’t, but you could — again, you could reduce the price at the pump immediately with (inaudible). You can have a transition with natural gas. You can have a transition with natural gas. That is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels.
***
PELOSI: I’m — I’m investing in something I believe in. I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.
***
PELOSI: Well, that’s not — that is the marketplace. The fact is, the supply of natural gas is so big, and you do need a transition if you’re going to go from fossil fuels, as you say, you can’t do it overnight, but you must transition.

These investments in wind, in solar and biofuels and focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives.

That’s remarkable. Does she really not know that natural gas is a carbon-based fuel? This is the woman who has the power of life and death over our energy policies? Remarkable.

Michael Calderone is reporting at Politico:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give “closing remarks” during this afternoon’s Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s George Stephanopoulous and CBS’s Bob Schieffer — but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage[.]

Ruh-roh.

“MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign,” Rendell said, who called their coverage “absolutely embarrassing.”

Chris Matthews, Rendell said, “loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons.”

At that point, PBS’s Judy Woodruff, who was moderating the moderators event, said: “Why don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down.”

That was met with applause from the crowd of big-time media figures, which included Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill, Al Hunt, and Chuck Todd.

You don’t have to say that MSNBC’s primaries coverage of Hillary was sexist to say that the obvious infatuation they had —and still have— for Obama constitutes real assistance to him. That’s not assistance that Hillary was often offered past, let’s say, the Texas and Ohio contests. The quasi-homosexual fussing over this unqualified liar from the TUCC by Matthews and Olbermann is notoriously unhidden. Good on Ed for pointing it out right there in the midst of the whole smelly lot of them.