Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.



I expected the last few weeks of the election to be tough. I expected them to be harsh. I expected a lot of negative attacks.



I drastically underestimated the rampant stupidity.



McCain's campaign gets overwhelmingly stupid responding to news that al Qaeda's rooting for him:

The smart move for the McCain campaign would have been to ignore the al Qaeda message. Obama was unlikely to push it, and media attention on the story this morning was sporadic. But perhaps concerned that voters might take this seriously, and realize that McCain's policies complement al Qaeda's agenda, the McCain campaign scrambled this afternoon and hosted a "panicked" conference call.

McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann made two predictable points. First, al Qaeda's message shouldn't be taken at face value. Second, quotes from Hamas and Iran that seem sympathetic to Obama must be taken at face value.

A reporter noted the contradiction.

One especially fun moment on the call came when McCain adviser Jim Woolsey badly undercut the campaign call's message. Woolsey said that Al Qaeda supporters who praise McCain are actually doing it to hurt him, because praise from al Qaeda is the "kiss of death."

At that point, a reporter quite naturally asked whether the same could be said of Hamas advisers who praise Obama,
prompting Woolsey to pull a homina homina homina and dodge the question.

Look, this isn't complicated. It isn't even new -- Richard Clarke, Ron Suskind, and others have written quite a bit on the fact al Qaeda prefers Bush's foreign policy -- it helps with terrorist recruiting and fundraising, undermines America's global stature, and costs us a fortune -- so it stands to reason that the terrorist network would support McCain, since his foreign policy is largely indistinguishable. The smart move for the McCain campaign is drawing attention away from this fact, not towards it.

Full marks for stupidly drawing attention to a subject that could cripple the remote chance McCain has to win.



Michele Bachmann stupidly digs herself an ever-deeper hole attempting to explain away her tirade on Hardball:

On the defensive over her controversial Hardball appearance last Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the St. Cloud Times yesterday that she regretted suggesting that Barack Obama held “anti-American” views. But at the same time Bachmann was apologizing for her remarks to traditional media outlets, Bachmann continued to cast aspersions on Obama’s patriotism in a series of appearances on right-wing radio shows.

On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday, Bachmann declared that “Barack Obama’s views are against America”...

[snip]

On Mike Gallagher’s radio show this morning, Bachmann attacked Obama’s policy proposals, asking rhetorically, “Are they for America or
will they be against traditional American ideals and values?”...

[snip]

During her appearance on Gallagher’s show, Bachmann claimed that media scrutiny of her “anti-American” comments was a coordinated effort “to get my scalp on a platter.”

The intelligent response would have been to stop fucking talking. At least El Tinklenberg can count on riding this wave all the way to the election - Bachmann's a virtual tsunami of supreme dumbassitude.



Not that that's news.



For additional stupidity, check out Rep. Hayes's as he "denies denying" what he said about liberals hating America.



We turn now to our favorite Queen of Stupid, Sarah Palin. If stupid were a renewable energy resource, we could keep America running into the 22nd century.



First, she has no fucking clue what a "precondition" is:

Gov. Sarah Palin has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for being “so off base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met.” When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams what are some of those preconditions she envisions, Palin was stumped:

WILLIAMS: Governor Palin, yesterday you tied this notion of an early test to the new president. Would this notion of precondition –

PALIN: Right.

WILLIAMS: — that you both have been hammering the Obama campaign on. What — first of all, what in your mind is a precondition?

PALIN: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going into a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il, one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a– a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them. So that — that’s — that’s some ill-preparedness right there.

If she can't tell the difference between preconditions and preparedness, I don't think she's quite equipped to negotiate with dictators.



And she sure as fuck isn't ready to deal with the global warming crisis. She's not even ready for a quiz:

Shortly after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) chose Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate, Palin said she is not one to attribute global warming to being man-made. Since then, she has walked that statement back slightly, saying that indeed, man’s activities have contributed to climate change but adding the caveat that “weather patterns are cyclical.”

When asked to name some specific man-made causes of global warming yesterday during an interview with a local NBC affiliate in Las Vegas, Palin couldn’t name one, and instead reverted back to her new talking point that it doesn’t really matter:

Q: I’ve also heard you hint that you do think there might be some man-made causes that are contributing to this. Can you describe what those are?

PALIN: Right, well what I have said about this is really the debate at some point, had better shift to, no matter the cause, whether it all be attributed to man’s activities or just
the natural cycle of climate changes in our earth’s history. We have seen this before.

It's truly pathetic when a candidate for vice president can't name even one cause. Any fifth-grader in the country should be able to do this, and so, sadly, the verdict is: Sarah Palin is most certainly not smarter than a fifth-grader. And she still can't speak coherently. Did the above make any sense to you? It didn't make any to me.



This could be why she has a hard time stating whether or not she's an intellectual:

In an interview with Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), People magazine commented that “you don’t get to be governor without being smart” and asked, “Do you think you’re intellectual?” Palin responded, “Yehhh-sss”:

PALIN: Yehhh-sss. And you have to be up on not only current events, but you have to understand the foundation of the issues that you’re working on. … You can’t just go on what is presented you.

The correct answer, Sarah, was "Fuck no."



Thank you for playing.