Bone In The Fan

Katie Couric can keep a straight face through anything.

I was called a snob the last time I said that Sarah Palin was an idiot. But if thinking that the following quotes indicate a lack of the sort of….what’s the word I’m looking for…. on-the-ball-itude necessary to be the Vice President of the United States makes me a snob, then I’m the snobbiest bastard I know.  What’s immediately apparent when you read or listen to these bits (and they’re both fun: reading and listening that is) is that Palin’s been given a few talking points to use but doesn’t seem to know how or where to use them, or even exactly what they mean.  So she spins the wheel of random slogans (c’mon big money!  no whammy no whammy no whammy) and whatever pops up she jams into a semi-coherent sentence that doesn’t answer the question.

Couric exercising an almost inhuman ability to NOT LAUGH. Or maybe she's just really worried. (Stop clicking - it's not a clip. Link below to video)

Both of the following quotes have been lovingly transcribed by yours truly for your reading pleasure.  There’s a link to the video I got them from at the end of the post.

Quote number one comes to us from the part of Palin’s brain that spun the slogan “shore up”.   It’s her answer to Couric’s question about what the alternative is if a bailout bill isn’t passed:

The the alt…as I say, inaction is not an option, we have got to shore up our economy. This this is crisis moment for America - really for the rest of the world also looking to see what the impacts will be if America were to choose not to shore up what has happened on wall street because of the the ultimate adverse effects on main street and then how that effects this globalization that we’re a part of in our world.

And here I didn’t even know that we were part of the globalization in our world.

Our next quote sadly appears to have had to contend with a malfuntion of the wheel of slogans.  Random catchphrases were flung into the middle of sentences where they didn’t belong.  It’s like a movie in which the robot that everyone thinks is human starts short-circuiting and saying all kinds of weird random shit.  Here then is her answer to Couric’s question asking why it wouldn’t be better to spend $700 billion dollars helping families stuggling with health care, mortgages etc (which could actually be answered really easily by saying “because that would be stupid.”)

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out. But ultimately what the bail out does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, um helping tho uh….it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and and putting it back on the right track, so health care reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade - we’ve got to see trade as opportunity not as a a competitive um scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation, this bailout is a part of that.

Impressively stupid.  It’s like political Tourette syndrome.  She just threw every fucking phrase she had ever heard at the wall to see if anything stuck.  Health care reform! Shore up the economy!  Job creation!  Reigning in spending!  Trade sector!  Job creation!  And, of course, reducing taxes, tax reductions, AND tax relief.  All three (and in the same sentence!)

This woman has no business running for VP, period.  Sure, you can say that anyone should be allowed to run for office (I agree - why, I myself am running for office, just this once) but John McCain had a responsibility to select someone who could actually do the job.  Not to mention someone that could take over as President should he die in office.  But he didn’t.  For me, as long as he was picking someone that couldn’t do the job I wish he had at least picked someone that actually intends to be funny, like SpongeBob.  At least he’d bring Patrick along to help defend the borders from the Russians.

Yeah it's a reach, fitting Sponge Bob into this post, but I happen to like SpongeBob and it's my blog, and Palin has really inspired me to use more non-sequiturs. Plus, I know that Putin would fear them.

Fareed Zakaria put it like this (in the article in which he had the same section I used for my second quote transcribed, and which I could have stolen from him had I seen it before I transcribed it myself thereby saving myself much typing, but I didn’t so I suck):

In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Bingo.

You can check out the original video here.

Bookmark and Share

Lisa Schiffren is neither. And Chris Rock is a funny, funny man.

After I watched the Presidential debate tonight (about which I do have a few things to say, but they’ll keep,) I flipped over to HBO to watch Real Time with Bill Maher.  I’m not much of fan of Maher, who purports to be a libertarian  but is actually just a third rate comic and an arrogant douche bag.  Sure, he smokes pot so he’s in favor of legalizing it but that’s about as far as it goes for him.

So I find him annoying but he does get some good guests who say stuff you won’t hear other places, so his show is worth a watch. Except of course when he has people like that horrible no-talent hack Janine Garofolo (who’s name is so unimportant to me I refuse to take the time to spell check it.)  Tonight he had Ralph Nader, some actor I’ve never heard of, and Lisa Schiffren on as guests.  First though, he did a quick interview with Chris Rock who’s new special is on HBO tomorrow night.  Plainly a cross-promotion.  Normally that annoys the hell out of me, but being as Chris Rock is hilarious I’ll allow it in this case.  I’ll also watch his special, and I’d advise you to as well.

Anyway, the interesting part of tonight’s Maher was seeing how fucking insane Ralph Nader appears to be.  Full disclosure: I’ve always hated Ralph Nader just for his part in killing the Corvair, not to mention every other dumb-ass, invasive, save-me-from-myself policy he’s espoused since.  But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a raving lunatic; watch a replay of Maher if you don’t believe me.

Ralph Nader, pictured here in 1966 getting pumped up to do to Corvairs what he'd later do to Democrats in 2000.

On the other hand, Lisa Schiffren (who I wasn’t very familiar with) was really good.  While I’m not in agreement with her on everything, she’s smart, didn’t engage in misleading rhetoric, and appears to enjoy playing devil’s advocate.  I like that a lot.

One final thought that I refuse to make into a fourth post on the topic.  Sarah Palin, while having had a great moment at the RNC, appears to be almost as dopey as the media implied way back when.  The reason it popped into my head this evening is that after the debate, Biden went on all the news shows to spin for the Democrats.  NBC explained that while Palin was invited to do the same, the Republicans had elected to send shrunken-apple-face Rudy Giuliani instead.  This clip of Palin on CBS News might help explain why:

So it turns out that when my mother referred to Palin as a brainless beauty queen she wasn’t far off the mark.  Yes, mommy was engaging in a little extremist rhetoric of her own, but really - did you just watch that?  And you’ve got to assume she was prepped for that question.  Which was pitched underhand.  At like 3 miles per hour.

If any person reading this would be comfortable with that woman as President of the United States….well shit, I don’t even know what to say.  Did you watch the clip?  Say what you want about taking sections of an interview out of context, but….did you watch the fucking clip? I never thought I’d actually prefer Biden over anyone, but I think I’d even like that lifetime politician and monumentally gung-ho drug warrior to sit in the oval office over Palin.

At least we’d maintain a little street cred that way.

Bookmark and Share