The Vig

I gotta take a break from all-elections, all-the-time.  So I’m going to take a few days and talk about happier things.  Probably a little Man City.  Definitely my Arizona Cardinals.  And maybe I’ll FINALLY do a picture dump from the summer.  In the meantime, it’s time for a boat drink.

Mudflats says Sarah Barracuda is heading home for the next week.  If true, this will be a grave mistake.  In the next seven days, she will at least need to spend an hour getting massaged by Hannity.  And if she the McCain campaign is smart, she’ll need to spend another half-day doing phone interviews with the Lars Larsons of the world.  Doing these from Juneau instead of Columbus, where she would be taking her message directly to the voters they need, would be asinine.

A week out of the spotlight may wipe out her advantage after her week in St. Paul.

Rick Emerson’s show devolved at one point today into a discussion of suckling pig.  Apparently CBS radio is throwing a party this weekend and a pig is the centerpiece.

This is not a suckling pig.  Curious what it is?  Click here.

I guess this is Microsoft’s response to the Mac vs PC thing. It’s not nearly as clever, but I like it.

I received an interesting email from a regular reader this morning.  She said someone hit her site looking for Chris Snethen and motorcycle.

They were looking for this.

That just sucks.

My sympathy to the family and friends of Christopher Michael Snethen.

Support from other Americans and Alaskans is needed also to move forward with the proposed bridge between Revillagigedo and Gravina islands, she said. “People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,” said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan areas potential for expansion and growth.
Ketchikan Daily News August 9, 2006

“Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer,” said Governor Palin. “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,” Governor Palin added. “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.” The Department of Transportation has approximately $36 million in federal funds that will become available for other projects with the shutdown of the Gravina Island bridge project. Governor Palin has directed Commissioner Leo von Scheben to review transportation projects statewide to prepare a list of possible uses for the funds, while the department also looks for a more affordable answer for Gravina Island access.
The governor’s official website. 9/21/2007

“She didn’t make the announcement here in Ketchikan. She didn’t alert local mayors that she’d made the decision. She didn’t notify Ketchikan’s Representative or Senator, or even the Congressional delegation, apparently, that a decision was made and an announcement was on its way. No, the effective end of three decades of effort towards a bridge was announced in a press release launched – perhaps coincidentally – early in the day to meet the East Coast media deadlines.”

Ketchikan Daily News Editorial, 10/11/07 - on Palin’s abrupt decisions to cancel the bridge funding by sending out a 5am press release to hit East Coast news cycles.

Fast forward to last night…

“I told the Congress “thanks, but no thanks,” for that Bridge to Nowhere.  If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”

So now Alaskans never wanted the bridge?  Weird.  But she still took the money Congress had already given her.  Nice.  I wonder what that went toward instead.

She’d used that line a time or two over the weekend, but was shocked when she went back to it again last night.  The people of Alaska know what she said.  And they know that when the political winds shifted, so did she.

That speech last night scared the heck out of me because it was delivered well and with a smile.  But it’s a long time between now and election day.  You get the feeling that some of those images and quotes could come back to haunt them come mid-October.

Apparently I saw a different speech than everyone else.  I mean I saw the same speech, it was shrill and after 8:00 (11:00 EDT) it went George Costanza “one too far”.  But for the most part, I think she did exactly what she needed to do.  She proved she could read a teleprompter.  She also proved that she didn’t have two-heads.  And she got off a couple of good one-liners.  The hockey mom-pitbull-lipstick line was perfect.  Sullivan thought it looked like an American Idol final.  FiveThirtyEight thought it was over the top.  And this high school forensics coach wants to pull his hair out.

Me?  I think she knocked it out of the park.  Part of her advantage during the last three days is it gave people on all sides time to project and focus that which they wanted to see.  The base sees one of their own while the left sees a backwoods rube.  Boss Hogg in a banana clip.  Neither version is 100% correct, of course, but that’s how it broke down.  The fact that she’d been underground for the last 72-hours or so only helped to foster this thing.  It’s like those last few days before the new summer blockbuster comes out.  You’ve been reading Ain’t It Cool and you’ve been reading Rotten Tomatoes.  You even text Aaron Duran, who’s seen the movie but is forbidden to tell you anything about it.

So it was tonight.  I tuned in just to see if she could read the teleprompter without fumbling over herself.  The answer?  Yes. She. Can.  From the very first minute, I knew Obama and Biden were in trouble.  Deep, deep trouble.  She’s good.  She’s really good.  And she’s going to cause the Dems fits in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  These are the two states, you’ll recall, that went for Hillary on the backs of the “working class” voters.  She’s one of them.  Big time.  And they’re going to love her.

The dynamic of the campaign has reversed as of tonight and it’s going to take a few days to see what damage has been done.  We’ll know by probably Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Here’s the plus-side, though.  Obama is nowhere in sight right now.  And that’s as it should be.  Candidates generally stay low during their opponents’ convention.  So they no doubt watched the speech tonight and are planning their counter.  In the end, I have a feeling Palin is going to look like a yip dog nipping at Obama’s heels and what looked viscious tonight will turn out to just be sad in a few weeks.  There’s a reason Obama overcame this crap during the primaries.  I think people, for the most part, are tired of it.

All that said, it will still come back to Ohio and Pennsylvania.  As of tonight, Ohio is barely tilting toward Obama while he leads in Pennsylvania by about 8 points.  If Obama can pick-up both of those states, the election is over.  If she can tilt just one of them back toward McCain, then things get interesting real fast.  Ohio, a red state for the last two elections, is most likely.  Ohio, by the way, has gone in the winning column every election since 1964.  You want to win?  You win Ohio.

Am I scared tonight?  Yeah, a little.  Fortunately there’s still miles to go before the election.  Oh how I wish Tim Russert could have gotten an hour alone with her.  Instead we’re going to have to settle for a tired Tom Brokaw and Sean Hannity’s bitch, George Stephanopoulos.  We’ll make do with what we have, I guess.

I’m still confiedent, but this thing just got a whole lot closer.

I got into blogging by answering a forum post on O-Live back in 2004.  Kevin “Velveeta” Cosgrove originally brought two of us in to give our insights into the election and blog our thoughts in what turned out to be near real time.  My partner was David B. Wright.  He’s now writing at TwoPennies.

David made up his mind fairly early on that he would be voting for Kerry.  I still had a lot of post-Limbaugh baggage to overcome and didn’t make up my mind until late-October that things had to change.

He doesn’t post much these days, given the fact he’s now got a big boy job down in Las Vegas which allows him to have both a mortgage and a nice sled.  But every now and then he’ll pop-up with some thoughts on what’s going on in politics.  He’s made no secret he’s voting for McCain this time around, partly out of dislike for Obama, but mostly because he prefers the idea of divided government.  Fine.

I asked him yesterday whether Palin changed his calculus at all.  The answer?

McCain could have picked a ham sandwich (to paraphrase) as his running mate, and I still would have to vote for him for the good of the country.  That I happen to like him, and distrust Obama, makes that choice easier.  That he made a questionable pick for VP is a bit troublesome, but I understand entirely why he made that choice.  I’d have chosen differently, myself, but that’s OK.

Gulp.

McCain’s choice, his first true executive decision, shows an impulsive, risk taking side that I don’t think this country can handle during this time of both domestic and worldwide uncertainty.  In my mind it truly is more of the same.  And while I sympathize with Wright’s idea that government is at its best when its divided, I don’t think we can allow a religious zealot to be this close to the seat of power.  Especially post-Bush/Cheney.  This was the argument against Huckabee, you’ll recall.  Two years, or even four, of one-party rule will not bring this country down.  The Dems are particularly afraid of their own shadows and will not stray too far from the middle, no matter their rhetoric.

The question on everyone’s minds now is how many Davids are out there?  We’ll know sooner rather than later.

This guy is good.

Now, we’d like to welcome our newest player to the growing cast of characters in our little drama - Thomas Van Flein. Mr. Van Flein (don’t you just have to say that with an accent?!) has been hired to represent Palin in the upcoming legislative investigation into the firing of Commissioner Walt Monegan.

“But wait!” you may be asking, “What about the state Attorney General? Why can’t he handle this?” Why not AG Talis Colberg? Well, he’s the one that Palin sent out to do a pre-emptive sleuthing campaign to see what the Legislature was going to find out when they investigated her. Just so she’d have a heads up. So now Colberg, who has already been talking to everybody and his uncle about the Trooper, including Walt Monegan, has now opened himself up to being called as a witness! So he’s out. (And incidentally, he’s also going to take over the role of Governor of Alaska should Palin end up as the VP, and her Lt. Governor Sean Parnell win his bid for Alaska’s sole House seat. My head hurts).

Mine does too.  Alaska is a Republican version of Louisiana and this guy knows all the ins and outs.

Someday McCain will regret not leaving this can of worms in a Wal Mart parking lot outside of St Paul and just driving away.  I know he loathes Romney, as do I, but he would have been a much better candidate for the #2 spot.

From TPMMuckraker:

This afternoon, the director of Division of Elections in Illinois Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, told TPMmuckraker that Michelle Obama Todd Palin registered in October 1995 to the Illinois Black Panther Party Alaska Independence Party, a radical group that advocates for Black nationalism Alaskan secession from the United States.Besides a short period of a few months in 2000 when she he changed her his registration to undeclared, Michelle Obama Todd Palin remained a registered member of IBPP AIP until July 2002 when she he registered again as a communist an undeclared voter.

How active were they in the party a decade ago?  An excellent question.  Remember, this was the absolute height of the militia movement and the whole black helicopter thing.  Hillary was coming for your guns and was going to force you to get a chip implanted in order to see a doctor.  Groups like the AIP, the Michigan Militia, and others sprung up around the country during that first Clinton administration, and they had some pretty whacked out ideas about what the government was up to.  Of course incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge only added to the paranoia.

I’ve no idea how active they were or are.  And groups like these don’t keep a lot of paper trails around either.  Videos exist though, I’m sure.  And I’ll bet there’s a guy or two tucked waaaay up north who might have those goods.  Stuff like this here, only better:

These groups have been tolerated by the Republican party for years.  If you’d like to hear what they’re up to today, take a spin over to AM 910 and give them a listen for 10 or 15 minutes.

Tomorrow will be Palin’s big coming out party at the convention.  I listened to Hugh Hewitt and Ralph Reed riff off one another about Palin on Hewitts show today.  Fascinating stuff.  Both hold her in very high esteem, but they also strongly incinuated that Palin may not be the brightest tool in the shed.  Reed went on for 45-seconds about how when Palin is sent to a particular state during the campaign, she’ll be handed a book about that state, giving her all the vital statistics on the economy and local politicians names and such.  He made it seem like all shed have to do is read that book, and she’ll know all she needs to know.  This, of course, is what our current commander-in-chief does when hes not wailing on his pecs on Air Force One.  He, as my dad says, knows just enough to be dangerous.  So, Ralph assures us, will Sarah.

They then went on to talk about how the left underestimates her political savvy.  How she defeated legendary Alaska politician Frank Murkowski in the 2006 Republican primary.  Murkowski, however, despite over a quarter century in office, had become toxic to Alaskan voters and he lost in an “anyone but you” election.  He actually came in third.  So how deft did she really have to be to win that election?  Not very.  As for her 80% approval rating, thats fine.  It’s tied, no doubt, to the fact she’s tweaked some of the old boy network up there, but she still serves at their pleasure and she’ll jump when asked.  In the meantime, they’ll let her whack the head of the state police or whatever.  As long as she doesn’t mess with the oil.

Speculation as to whether she stays or goes will end tomorrow night when they formally nominate her and she gives her “I’m proud of my daughter” speech.  She’s on the ticket and on it to the end.