novatownhall blog

Heh.

Thank you, Ace.

UPDATE: Welcome to our Other McCain visitors!! And thanks to our buddy RS for yet another Stacylanche, of which few have been repaid by even the barest attempt at a Rule #2 reacharound. My bad. I have a post in the works on some of the brightest stars in the blogosphere and R.S. McCain will be featured prominently, it’s just this year has been a bad year for getting anything serious done in my off hours so I have been totally remiss in acknowledging the latest developments such as the new majordomo of DC blogs.

Color me surprised: The National Organization for Women (NOW) has actually acknowledged that David Letterman is a scumbag for his comments about Sarah Palin and her daughters.

David Letterman used his June 10 “Late Night” program to confront the daughter-raping issue head on.

Insisting that when he talks about daughters being raped, “Late Night” host David Letterman said on his June 10 broadcast that “I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl” and noted that when he spoke of Sarah Palin’s daughter being raped, he was referring to the 18 year-old, not the 14 year-old.

Nipping the recent controversy in the bud, Letterman went on to declare “you can rest assured, all of your daughters under the age of 15 are perfectly safe around me.”

It’s looking very good for Saxby Chambliss to become the 41st Republican senator in the upcoming session.

Click here to follow the results at the AJC blog. Just keep hitting F5.

He’s running much stronger than he did in the general election.

If Chambliss does win in a landslide, let me be the first to say: Thanks, Sarah.

UPDATE: at 9:00 pm Chambliss leads by over 250,000 votes – more than 60% – with over half the precincts reporting.

UPDATE II: … and at 9:05 pm, AP calls the race for Chambliss. Thanks, Sarah.

Not one to avoid controversy for long, Alaska Governor and former Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is back in the news for an interview she gave at a location that was possibly not thoroughly vetted by her public relations staff.

As Palin nonchalantly fielded questions from reporters in an ad hoc press opportunity on the occasion of her annual “pardoning” of a turkey for the upcoming Thanksgiving Day holiday, both the television cameras and audience noticed something terrible occurring in the background as the governor blithely continued the back and forth with the press.

Just outside the governor’s field of vision but completely observable by everyone else, an apparently crazed political candidate from Minnesota was crushing small dogs one after the other, saying “THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win.”

During the course of the nearly 10-minute interview, an estimated 17 small dogs were either suffocated, or mortally wounded from massive blunt force trauma.

Confronted with the video evidence, neither the governor nor her staff would comment on yet another major miscalculation by the woman who would have been next in line for the presidency of the United States of America.

Just an observation as to why Sarah Palin has become such a phenomenon that she has literally (and I mean that exact word) been getting more television time than Barack Obama since the election. Add in the Internet and (such as it is) print “media” and I’d say it’s Palin over Obama by about 20%.

Why is such a crazy thing happening?

Obviously reason #1 is because Americans by and large are fascinated by Sarah Palin and want to know more about her. From the perspective of the mainstream media people, who are largely liberal but also quite concerned about making a buck these days, Sarah Palin represents eyeballs. As a longtime liberal Democrat, even I can accept this obvious fact.

But I think it is also because Sarah Palin represents an extreme anti- figure to us liberals. She freaks us out completely. Oh yes, the media workers are liberal but this means they are also 100% in touch with the liberal mindset, which means they think she is a monstrosity, and they recognize such things can be profitable so all the more justification to cover the airwaves with all-Palin all the time if that is what viewers want.

Remember: liberals gave us Planet Death and the Terminator movies. Same basic concept.

UPDATE: Here is a pretty interesting final perspective on the 2008 and campaign (and a first glimpse at 2012).

Right Wing News poll has it as Palin/Jindal:

7) Rudy Giuliani: 2%
6) Mike Huckabee: 4%
5) Ron Paul: 5%
4) Mitt Romney: 6%
3) Duncan Hunter: 6%
2) Bobby Jindal: 23%
1) Sarah Palin: 48%

I’d be down with that. If on the off chance I am not working wholeheartedly for President Obama’s re-election bid.

I can’t tell for sure if there is a compliment tucked into this column, but by cracky I wager there is!

My view of Sarah Palin has changed in the two months since John McCain named her as his running mate. I’m guessing that McCain’s view of Palin may be changing, too, and not entirely in a good way.

I thought Palin was a lightweight; she’s not. I thought she was an ingenue; she is, but only as long as her claws are sheathed. I thought she was bewildered and star-struck at her sudden elevation to national prominence; if she ever was, she isn’t anymore. I thought she was nothing but raw political talent and unrealistic ambition; it turns out that she has impressive political skills. I thought she was destined to become nothing more than a historical footnote; I now think that Democrats underestimate her at their peril…

BulletProof Monk has photos.

Well, obviously it’s too little too late in the sense we did not get to vote for Sarah Palin in the Republican primaries. But the recent strategic getting-a-clue movement among the GOP campaign intelligentsia which is now allowing Sarah to pretty much do whatever the hell she wants highlights the huge missteps since September 1.

Stacy McCain has the best analysis of the misuse of Sarah Palin that I have seen. Go read it all.

Scott Conroy of CBS gives an instructive report that should have Republican hands striking Republican foreheads while highly-compensated Republican mouths say “what were we thinking?”

In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.

By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23.

Though she often turns the “mainstream media” into a punching bag on the stump, Palin clearly enjoys interacting with reporters. She seems to relish the opportunity to demonstrate that her breadth of knowledge far exceeds what she offered to CBS News’ Katie Couric in a series of interviews that were marked by vague, often convoluted answers to straightforward questions.

Sarah Palin is the Republican Party’s best weapon right now because she has instant credibility with regular Americans and she drives the liberals bonkers nutso.

Too bad our party geniuses held her back for so long.

Here’s an idea: Instead of spending John McCain’s remaining campaign war chest on more John McCain commercials and direct mail, why not buy a half hour on prime time television for Sarah Palin?

[Scroll down - links to the NBC video clips of Sarah Palin on SNL are at the bottom of this post.]

Anybody else watching this?

She was pretty good in the opening “skit” – not much of a skit, but some humorous banter with Lorne Michael and Alec Baldwin (said “Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother”).

Not sure if that’s it or what, but more power to her for doing it.

UPDATE: Boy, it is going to be a little painful having to watch all the non-Palin skits in the meantime. Maybe it’s like that philosopher dude once speculated about music – that eventually all the possible melodies would be used and that would be it: Maybe all the jokes have already been written, and there is nothing left for SNL to do but play out the string. At 11:45 pm this is some unfunny stuff going on here in this first sketch and it is supposed to be the good material at the beginning, right?

UPDATE II: The real VW and Burger King commercials are FAR more entertaining than the SNL “MacGruber” McGyver parody. Lorne Michael should go to Madison Ave and hire some writers.

UPDATE III: 11:56 pm – Maybe no more Palin? The Suze Orman sketch was lame. I’m gonna surf the Web while this is on because this is one upcoming hour of life I know I won’t get back.

UPDATE IV: Elsewhere, African Press International says the Michelle Obama story will be updated tomorrow. This could be big news. Michelle apparently called in to complain about something and let slip that Barack Obama was adopted by a foreign national after he was born, and thus was not a U.S. citizen. Supposedly API is going to release the audio of the phone call from Michelle Obama, a phone call the Obama campaign reportedly says never took place.

UPDATE V: Powerline was worried the Palin appearance would be like going into the lion’s den but if that at the beginning was it, no harm done to her and she performed fine, certainly reminded why people love her. And a nice counterpoint to the Tina Fey impersonation version of herself which was playing at the same time. Made Fey’s look pretty insipid. But all in good fun.

UPDATE VI: She’s back, on Weekend Update. “I’m not gonna do the piece we rehearsed … I think it just might cross the line.” A rap. Sarah is playing along … heh. This is pretty funny actually.

UPDATE VII: Man, Sarah Palin is a natural in front of the camera. No wonder she strikes such apocalyptic fear in the hearts of her opponents. I know I speak for all of America when I say: We want to see more Sarah Palin!

UPDATE VIII: Whoa. Barack Obama and Bill Ayers shared an office for three years. That does not seem like it’s made it into the narrative yet; it will be interesting to see how this will update the “when I was 8 years old” data point, you know, the one where Barack Obama knows practically nothing about Bill Ayers.

UPDATE IX: NBC says the video of Sara Palin’s appearances will be up on their Web site, not there yet though. Here’s a snippet of the first portion on youtube. (May not be there long … copyright issues).

UPDATE X: Sarah came out for the farewell from the stage, about 15 seconds. Tina Fey did not appear to be out there.

UPDATE XI: NBC videos coming up now. Here is the opening. (Does Sarah Palin look good in comparison or what?) And here is the Palin rap.

UPDATE XII: Wow, Palin brought the highest SNL ratings in 14 years.

McCain-Palin now within 4 points (after trailing by 9 points last week).

The Obama campaign held a “20 point lead in terms of enthusiasm” when the survey was taken, but I am going out on a ledge to predict that is about to change.

“Who is the real Barack Obama?” indeed. He’s the guy who peaked on October 1 on a message spun of gossamer threads.

Sarah Palin is Iron Man on the stump:

She led the 2008 Republican offensive before the 2008 Republican offensive was cool. We need to clone this woman.

Oh, the humanity.

I sincerely hope this story gets out … perhaps via the mainstream media itself? Is it too much to hope for? That Gwen Ifill feels she was disrespected in her journalistic greatness?

Because what little else we know about John Q. Public, we can be certain that John Q. will wholeheartedly relish the notion that Sarah Barracuda made the PBS “journalist” feel put out.

Testify, Gwen, shout it from the rooftops.

Gotta work today for a change, but here are some initial thoughts while I’m waiting for all the machines to warm up and Dr. Pretorious releases the kites up into the electrical storm:

Gwen Ifill did a pretty good job, though Ace notes she did not ask a single question on any of Sarah Palin’s strongest issues – ones she might have spanked Joe Biden with. I thought it was well and fairly conducted, though. Maybe the hullabaloo over Ifill’s book had something to do with that? Morton Kondracke suggested beforehand if he was in her shoes he would be excessively fair. Anyway, I have no darts to throw at the moderator.

Too bad McCain was not there!! Biden had effective machine-gun blasts of charges about John McCain’s actions in the Senate. I’m sure no one would have expected Palin to be in a position to dive into those arguments and she wisely did not attempt to. McCain just got a great preview of what the opposition considers his biggest weaknesses.

Good work by Joe Biden. He certainly “won” the debate in that he had a lot more information at his command and scored more points – all jabs, no power shots. His delivery was excellent, I thought; probably told a bunch of lies but that’s part of the deal. I thought he came across as likable. If his charge was to do no harm as all the commentators were saying beforehand, he did his job and then some.

Sarah Palin surprised me, after what we saw in the mainstream media interviews. That lady is smart as a whip and has self confidence to spare. Clearly she does not have the massive repository of facts (or lies – let’s say “data points”) that Biden has in his quiver, but she sure held her own. Like I told my wife afterwards: It was like if some really clever person off the street came in to debate me about the business I’ve been in for 19 years, spent a week studying and then I could not put them away in the debate.

I think she surprised Biden also, in the way she came back time and time again with effective, substantive ripostes when he must have been thinking “Surely she won’t have a response for this.” She had a month to prepare and everyone else in the contest has been at it for years. Not too shabby.

Palin was able to control the discussion when necessary and ensure some of her key issues were discussed – most importantly, grabbing the steering wheel from Ifill and launching into the discussion of energy independence. At times it became a little tiresome towards the end when Palin reverted to a talking point – though Biden did the same thing almost as frequently, so she lost no points for that. She should, however, expunge the word “again” from her vocabulary because reverting to a talking point is annoying enough; no use telegraphing it.

But if anyone was wondering “does this woman have what it takes to grow into the position of U.S. president – really quickly if necessary?” there is no doubt the answer is “YES.” She is a stunner. She is going to be a force in American politics no matter what happens in November.

What will really matter, of course, is what happens in public opinion the next few weeks. Sarah Palin just ensured that the McCain ticket will not lose because of her. She definitely enthused Republicans and probably took some heretofore uncommitteds who will be charmed by the fact she is quite the “regular guy” persona – a huge change from what we usually see in Washington. She might not have made much of a dent among the Zimzo demographic, but she’s going to bring some votes with that personality.

Now it’s up to John McCain to make his case to the American people.