Especially in politics it's very important to understand why someone is saying something. This weekend one message from the McCain/Palin campaign was that "I love to visit pro-American parts of the country."

What is Palin actually saying? She's calling attention to the fact that she's visiting rural areas of conservative states. Why would Palin ( Read more... )

This evening's vice presidential debate pits Joe Biden, a politician with a long history of embarrassing slip-ups, against Sarah Palin, a politician who at times renders parody obsolete. And now seems like as good a time as any to discuss Geoff Nunberg's two kinds of gaffes: 'typos' and 'thinkos':

"There are two kinds of linguistic missteps, the ( Read more... )

During lunch today I wondered why the McCain campaign made a big deal about Sarah Palin being able to see uninhabited parts of Russia from uninhabited parts of the United States. If she's looking to justify her foreign policy experience with proximity to a foreign country isn't there another one nearby? Doesn't Alaska share not just limited line- ( Read more... )

I was looking at this picture and I noticed something funny about Sarah Palin's glasses. Specifically, they don't seem to actually be refracting. In all the other pictures I've found her glasses don't seem to be doing any refracting either. The profile of the side of her face isn't distorted and the caustic refraction of the light onto her face ( Read more... )

My officemate just sent me this clip of Sarah Palin answering a question about oil, which is supposedly her area of expertise.

Click to view

Oil of coal? Of course, it it it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where where it’s going and where it’s not. But wh- in the, in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are ( Read more... )

On September 1, CNN's Campbell Brown interviewed Tucker Bounds and asked him to explain "why Governor Palin is ready to be commander-in-chief". He gave a line of double-talking bullshit and CNN actually called him on it. But the McCain campaign called foul and cancelled a Larry King interview on the 2nd, saying the questions were "over the line ( Read more... )

A friend just asked a very good question:

is it hypocritical/racist/unPC to not be surprised by black Republicans voting for Obama because of his race but being amazed that many Clinton supporters are expected to lean toward McCain/Palin?

I don't think it is hypocritical, racist, or unPC in this case. Here's why ( Read more... )

The more I think about McCain's VP pick the weirder the decision seems.

One of the main criticisms of Obama from day one is that he's an inexperienced neophyte who got picked because he's black, implying that the guy's age (47) or his credentials (president of the Harvard Law Review, graduated magna, community organizer, Illinois Senator, US ( Read more... )