John Cole at Balloon Juice found a wonderful reader comment at Townhall.com that beautifully illustrates the palpitating paranoia and crushing stupidity of the Republican base today:

The flag that the mouthbreather is talking about is the state flag of Ohio:

Well, the final presidential debate just wrapped up and, like the previous two, Obama took it handily.  Snap polls of undecided voters from CBS (Obama 53%, McCain 22%) and CNN (Obama 58%, McCain 31%) indicated a serious trouncing.  I love these instant debate polls.  They pretty much make it impossible for the cable news pundits to decide the victor anymore, and you can tell they’re upset about that.   The douchebags on CNN really wanted to turn this into a McCain victory (they want this to be a close race, for the sake of their ratings), but those damn snap polls had to go and ruin it for them.  And honestly, how can they say McCain won with a straight face.  He was caught on numerous occasions flatly lying about Obama’s policies, and he generally seemed cranky and desperate.  The best moment of the debate, no contest, was Obama’s smackdown of the claim that his health care plan would fine small business owners who didn’t provide health care coverage for their employees:

The look on McCain’s face is priceless. Could it be that McCain really doesn’t know that he’s lying about Obama’s health care plan? Wouldn’t surprise me. The only other thing that really stuck out was McCain’s bizarre, almost mocking dismissal of exceptions to late-term abortion bans in the interest of the mother’s health. Watch for it at the very end of the following clip:

Concern for the health of the mother is an extreme position? Goddamn, is he trying to lose female voters?

Overall, this debate will probably have no impact on the dynamics of the race, which is devastating to McCain. He’s down big and needed an epic performance along with a catastrophic Obama meltdown to get things moving in his direction. He got neither of those. I hate to say it, at the risk of jinxing things, but at this point President Obama is almost a certainty.

The Connecticut Supreme Court today overruled the state ban on gay marriage.  This means that I now live in one of only three states that allows homosexuals to marry.  Feels pretty good.  I just saw the story, so I haven’t read the decision yet.  I’ll post something after I get a chance to look it over.

Honestly, how can anyone be undecided at this point in the election? And what exactly do these people need to see in order to finally settle on a candidate? Are they just going to waltz into the voting booth on election day and flip a coin? The Daily Show is absolutely right, anyone truly undecided at this point has to be rockin’ a below-room-temperature IQ. And, best of all, the rest of us have to sit through presidential debates that cater exclusively to these dim bulbs.

The VP debate is about to start.  I doubt that it will be train wreck I’m hoping for, but I’m sure it will infuriating nonetheless.

First question:  Palin is already trucking out the aw-shucks, “I’m a mom” schtick with her kid’s soccer game remark.  This could be painful.

9:13-9:20:  Palin spews the lie about Obama increasing taxes on families earning $42,000 a year.  Then she wiffs big-time defending McCain’s deadly health care plan, despite being asked about studies indicating that it will increase the number of uninsured.  Biden did pretty good defending Obama’s tax plan as well as attacking the McCain health care plan.

9:27:  How many times is she going to say the words, “corruption and greed on Wall Street”?  And does she know she’s running with John “Keating 5″ McCain?

Ifil asks her about climate change, this could be good.

Yep, she waffles about anthropogenic global warming, but then says we have to reduce emissions. Biden clearly states that warming is anthropogenic.

Unggh…she brings up “drill, baby, drill”.  Here’s a chart showing just how much oil that will produce:

Read the rest of this entry »

From a beautifully vicious article about Sarah Palin in Rolling Stone:

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague — they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation — at the Xcel gates.

“She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin’ Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

Hard to imagine it being said any better.  I recommend reading the rest.

Oh boy, Bill Dembski sycophant DaveScot has published a post on Uncommon Descent entitled “Fun With Google Trends-ID vs. Darwinism vs. Creationism”.  In it, he posts the following image from Google Trends, and then smugly asks, “Any questions?”

The blue line represents search volume for the term “intelligent design”, while the red line is for “darwinian evolution”.  Well, DaveScot, I’ve got a question.  What in the hell is this supposed to demonstrate?  If it supposed to indicate some sort of public preference for ID over evolution, then you’re sorely mistaken.  Let’s see what happens if we apply Google Trends more appropriately and use “evolution” instead of “darwinian evolution”:

The red line is “evolution”, blue is “intelligent design”.  Oops.  Another epic fail for DaveScot.