So the top of the Republican ticket is a senile, cancerous septuagenarian and the bottom is the first-term governor of Alaska. Prior to November of 2006 (you know, two years ago), she was the mayor of the triving metropolis of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 6715).

This is the most qualified person?

Are we supposed to take this seriously?

What. A. Joke.

Frank Serpico has a blog.

A study in contrast

If John McCain had an ounce of personal integrity or self-respect, would he be teaming up with the people who smeared him, as well as manipulated voters' bigotry in order to help the ethically retarded George W. Bush win the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary? Specifically (emphasis mine),

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

But I guess that Republican so-called "values voters" gave up on voting for candidates on the basis of their personal integrity a long, long time ago.

Six-word critique of McCain's foreign policy

We need more options than escalation.

Alternate realities

PBS, NPR and the BBC: Russia just attacked a US ally!!

CNN and MSNBC: John Edwards had an affair two years ago!!

FOX NEWS: I don't watch FOX. You think I'm an idiot?

Tin-foil hat thoughts

If I were Putin, I would rather face a US head of government who was 71, bitter, and easily provoked (and therefore easily manipulated) into impotent rage rather than a calm, pragmatic, and slow-to-anger 47 year-old. And if the 71 year-old was the head of the political party who benefited from aggressive nationalism and a heightened sense of crisis in foreign policy, I might create a foreign policy crisis.

However, if I were a citizen of the US, I would rather have the pragmatic 47-year-old at the helm. Unless, I guess, I was an amoral cynical war-mongerer.