Posse Incitatus

Sarah Palin...Palin 2008

Okay, I've been so completely over this election since the beginning.  But now, I'm inspired.
 

Sarah Palin as VP is crazy cool. She hunts, plays basketball, was a beauty queen, now in her early 40s, a governor and has five kids.
  She ROCKS!

I love this Vogue cover of her.
 

She's all about reform.  She blew away the Alaskan Republican machine and saved the state hundreds of millions.
 

What is even more amazing...she could run for President in 4-8 years.
 

I can't wait to watch the VP debates now.  I want to watch her blow Biden away.

McCain's brilliant selection

Electric.

That's the reaction to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his VP.  I was going to vote for the GOP regardless, but the rest of the Posse was apathetic.  We might pull the lever, but that was about it.

Now, however, there is talk of volunteering, t-shirts, yard signs and donations.  Looking over at the Corner, I see this reaction is far from unique.  A few thoughts amidst the euphoria:

1.  So much for the Democratic convention bounce.  McCain's selection brings real hope and change to an otherwise tired election. 

2.  There goes the gender gap.  By picking a sitting governor, McCain has demonstrated that there ARE qualified women for the Veep slot, putting his thumb squarely in the eye of the Democrats.  Biden has never looked like a worse choice.

3.  Let's talk about abortion.  Obama's "kill them at any cost" vote on the Born Alive Bill will come to haunt him.  As a staunchly pro-life woman - and mother of a Downs Syndrome baby, Sarah Palin will drive home as no other could how cruel abortion really is.

4.  Michigan became a little redder.  Northern Michigan was liking McCain anyway, but an accomplished outdoorswoman really seals the deal.  Not only that, she has that "Northern Exposure" vibe that will play very well in the suburbs.  Watch for Obama to be on defense in Michigan from now on.

Obviously, a lot could happen between now and the election, but at this point it is looking like McCain is in control.  His staff is sharper, message clearer and his base is really coming home.

Blog becomes convention-free zone

I haven't watched the Dem convention and can't really bring myself to start.  Besides, it's what everyone else is blogging about.

So, as an alternative, I offer...Johnny Cash singing Trent Reznor.

Sithkitten has been on a big Nine Inch Nails kick of late, so she's the one who tracked this down. I'm old enough to remember when "Head Like a Hole" hit the scene and it was very popular in my crowd in high school, but I'd kind of lost track of Reznor in the years since. I guess he's doing well and judging from what my nephew says, has a new following amongst the young folks.

My thoughts on this are that Cash now owns this tune, just as Whitney Houston took "I will always love you" from Dolly Parton. Great stuff.

So it's Biden

So far, I've seen two realistic reactions to Obama selecting Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate:

1.  It undercuts the change message by using an old, tired, career pol, and
2.  Biden has even more of a tendency to shoot his mouth off than Obama.

I think that both critiques are true.  I also have to wonder, however, if point 2. is, from the the Dem perspective, a feature rather than a bug.

Right now, the GOP is having fun with Obama's many gaffes.  If you add Biden, there is the potential for the Dems to actually create more gaffes than the Republicans can use.  Call it "saturation gaffing."

Since the press is heavily invested in their success, the Dems know that they will pretty much get a pass on even the most grossly stupid misstatements.  Therefore, the McCain campaign - with finite coverage, will have to waste all its time pointing out the Gaffe Twins' idiocies - leaving little time to do much explaining of their own positions.

It is a risky strategy.  McCain may be savvy enough to simply run the clips for his ads and avoid the trap altogether.  The fact that Obama is essentially tied, means that he can't really afford to run the prevent - he has to pull ahead, and do it soon - especially since the GOP convention is later and McCain has a great chance to bring his base home and take a commanding lead during the debates.

As for me, Biden is a fool.  In other words, a perfect fit.

This mummy shouldn't have returned

Though I rarely agree with movie critics, I usually consult them before deciding what to go and see. Most often this is an exercise in contrarianism: if the critics hate it, it may be worth seeing.  The important question is why they hate it.

When I saw a new mummy movie was coming out, I omitted this step.  After all, it’s set in China (cool) and has Jet Li (very cool) and Michelle Yeoh (way cool) and they fight each other (way ultra cool).

I figured that given the talent, and special effects, this was a sure thing.

Whoops.

Maybe some Hollywood insider will explain to me how someone can take a fun concept (Chinese armies of the dead!  Does it get better than that?) and turn it into a boring clunker.  Seriously, this thing sucked.  It was actually boring to watch.  Even Sithkitten, who is remarkably tolerant of mediocrity so long as there is something redeeming, was ready to bail after the first few minutes.  We hung in there in the hopes that at least the culminating fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh would be worth watching.  It wasn’t.  I mean, it was okay, but only in the sense that it should have set the stage for a bigger battle later on.

And where was Rachel Weisz?  No doubt she had better things to do than participate in this clunker – and from the looks of it, so did Brendan Fraser, who totally phoned in his part.

Gah.  What a waste.

The dog days of the election

Having been out of circulation for most of the week, I find that the mainstream press and many of the blogosphere pundits are where I was a couple of weeks ago:  McCain is looking more and more like he is going to win this thing.

Barack Obama has a huge problem: when he isn’t reading from a script, he says really stupid things.  The litany of his errors are is out there, and people labeling him a “gaffe-o-matic” are spot on.

Regardless of what the “experts” are saying, Michigan is very much in play for McCain.  All Michigan polls are skewed in favor of Democrats.  It’s not necessarily a purposeful thing, it’s just the way things are here.  [I’m not one to give the media a pass where they don’t deserve it, but I know that even the GOP’s internal polls show a Dem bias.  Don’t ask me how I know, but I know.]

Anyhow, the latest one shows Obama up by four points.  Not good for the Obamessiah.  In 2002, Jennifer Granholm was up by double digits and barely sqeaked past an anemic (and aptly named) candidate named Dick Posthumus.

There’s another dynamic at work: the more people learn about Obama, the less they like him.  Conversely, the more they learn about McCain, the more they like him.

I guess in a week or so we’ll know who the running mates are, which will prove interesting.  I don’t much care for the speculation, but I will say that my sense is that if McCain picks Romney, he will take Michigan.  It may cost him elsewhere (Mormon theology is…fascinating, to put it mildly) but I think those doubts will be offset by the “native son” effect.

Anyhow, that’s my take.

U.P. road trip

The Posse was on the road last week, blitzing through Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  We visited Sault Ste. Marie, Whitefish Point, Newberry, Manistique, Gladstone, Marquette and Munising - more than 1,000 miles over five days. 

It had been more than 20 years since I was last in Marquette (the Junior Posse Members had never been there at all), so it was nice to see the changes.  I still like the Soo more, though.

All of which is to say: blogging will start picking up again.  I've enjoyed the respite from computers and the clean, cool wind off of Lake Superior.  Now it's time to shake the sand out of everything and get back to work.  Odd notes and observations from the trip will follow at irregular intervals, but here's one: Fox News.  No one watches CNN up there.  No one.  Every hotel, bar, lobby - basically any place there was a television on, it was showing Fox.  Interesting.

The guns of August

Blogging has been and will continue to be light.  I prefer spending my evenings taking in the weather rather than staring at a monitor.  But today brings ominous news.

The Russians are in Georgia!  No, the other one.

Reading Wretchard’s take does not calm me down in the least.  Yes, the hope is that this crisis, like so many others, will fade into a muddled diplomatic settlement and a series of massacres that end being widely ignored by the rest of the world.

What makes me uncertain about this outcome is that Russia is involved.  This isn’t Darfur, where none of the major powers has a major stake in the situation.  Russia is deep in it.

What is more, the US has a stake as well – Georgia has been seeking to join NATO and has provided troops for Iraq and Afghanistan.  While not a formal ally, it very much wants to be one.  For us to repudiate them could have dire consequences.  How dire?

Think Taiwan.

If the US lets Georgia twist in the wind, China may decide to see how determined we are to honor our commitment in the Formosa Strait.  The Bush administration is played out, or at least that’s the perception.

I almost wonder if the Russians timed it with the Olympics, which in turn might set the stage for some Taiwan exercises.

At any rate, the current dustup does help focus the mind wonderfully on the election.  I disagree with John McCain on many things, but I believe he could handle this situation.  Obama would still be fumbling for the teleprompter.