Bent Corner

The Obama campaign’s first reaction to the news that John McCain had chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running-mate was to attack Palin for not being experienced enough. Seriously, the Obama campaign was actually criticizing someone for not being experienced enough. From Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Evidently when they all calmed down and took a deep breath, they realized how ridiculous it sounded for anyone in the Obama campaign to be call anyone else out for not having enough experience. It would be like someone from the McCain campaign criticized someone else for being too old, especially if the other person was actually younger then McCain.

Also, the comment about a “town of 9,000″ sounds like another dig against bitter small-town people that cling to religion and guns.

They later issued a much nicer statement:

We send our congratulations to Gov. Sarah Palin and her family on her designation as the Republican nominee for vice president. It is yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics. While we obviously have differences over how best to lead this country forward, Gov. Palin is an admirable person and will add a compelling new voice to this campaign

Now that’s more like it.

Cindy McCain’s half-sister tells Us Magazine that she isn’t voting for John McCain. She will be instead voting for Barack Obama. Kathleen Hensley Portalski claims to have a different political viewpoint then her half-sister and her half-brother-in-law, but she recently told NPR’s All Things Considered that she felt like a non-person when Cindy McCain described herself as an “only child”.

Kathleen Hensley Portalski is 11 years older then Cindy McCain and they have different mothers.  I’d imagine that with the age difference and the fact that the two woman were born to different mothers, the two women grew up in different homes.  I would imagine then that Cindy McCain feeling as though she was an only child was indeed genuine. [Us Magazine]

Over on Daily Kos is a post — they call them “diaries” — that points out that George W. Bush also accepted the 2004 Presidential nomination standing in front of a fake Mount Olympus set.  Except it’s not really Mount Olympus, but a fake White House looking set.

I’m guessing that the Obama campaign was shooting for something more like this then they were Mount Olympus.  While watching ABC News tonight, they showed the set where Obama will be making history by accepting the Democratic nomination for President.  The set looked a lot less “Mount Olympus” then it did before.  It was covered with American flags. Lots and lots of American flags.

So maybe Obama isn’t trying to emulate Zeus on Mount Olympus.  Maybe he is trying instead to emulate George W. Bush.

Isn’t that . . . .  worse?

Remember the commercial produced by the John McCain campaign comparing Barack Obama’s fame to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? Quite a few people got ticked off over it.  Personally, I kind of liked it.  It was all the chanting that won me over.

Obama!  Obama!  Obama!  Obama!

It turns out that the tacky Mount Olympus set Barack Obama will appear on tonight when he accepts the Democratic nomination for President was built by the same crew that built the set for Britney Spears’ last concert tour. That’s what I call ironic.

Does this mean K-Fed gets to be a Secret Service agent?  [New York Post]

I’m not watching the Democratic National Convention. I have been spending the evening trying to call my brother to wish him a happy birthday, put a coat of paint on a shelving unit, and watch reruns of Two and a Half Men. I’m now wishing I had put on the convention. I would have been able to see Dennis Kucinich freak out for Barack Obama.

Evidently he told America to “wake up” and shouted “Up with Obama-Biden!”

He then ended his speech by firing a pair of matching six-shooters in the air while he kicked up his heels and did an old fashioned prospector dance. [The Swamp]

When I first heard about the controversy concerning the fact that John McCain did not know how many homes he and his wife owned, I honestly thought it might just be because he doesn’t actually own any homes. Like all good marriages, his wife is the one with all the money. She is the one that actually owns everything.  Like most rich Republicans, she got all her money the old fashioned way.

She inherited it.

From Politico:

The presumptive Republican nominee, though, may have some wiggle room in explaining why he couldn’t immediately provide an answer when asked by Politico how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. Sen. McCain himself does not own any of the properties. They’re all owned by Cindy McCain, her dependent children and the trusts and companies they control.

I saw a commercial last night while watching Big Brother 10 that the Obama campaign quickly slapped together. It was making fun of McCain because he couldn’t remember that he owned seven (7) homes. The number is actually eight (8), but they are all owned by his wife Cindy.  Why should the actual facts get in the way of a good dig?

I was kind of surprised to see the Obama campaign even touch upon the subject of home ownership. Obama has no business criticizing anyone about their real estate holdings. When he and his wife Michelle bought their Chicago mansion, they not only received a special interest rate not available to most people, they received some special assistance from convicted felon Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

I guess the Obama campaign is trying to paint John McCain as some out-of-touch multi-millionaire.  The reality is that Barack Obama has far more money then John McCain.  In 2007, John McCain made a total of $419,731.  In 2007, Barack Obama made a total of $4,238,165.

So the guy that made ten times as much money as the other guy is trying to paint the other guy as an out-of-touch stinking rich multi-millionaire.  Only in America.

This is George Hussein Onyango Obama. He is Barack Obama’s 26-year old half-brother. A brother from a different mother. He lives in a tiny shack in the slum town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.

To be fair, Barack Obama has quite a few half-brothers and half-sisters.  His father liked to get around if you know what I mean.  He’s only met brother George twice. They didn’t grow up together and there is a pretty big age difference between to the two.

It just seems a real shame that something can’t be done for brother George’s predicament.  I know that if I had a half-brother living in a shack in Africa, I would do something about it.  Maybe Barack is waiting till he becomes President of the United States to do something for his brother.

We can only hope.

Link

I’m not sure exactly what to think about this. Erik Larson’s comic book character Savage Dragon is endorsing Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Savage Dragon is the one on the left.  The green one with a fin on his head.  Barack Obama is the one on the right.  The one with his sleeves rolled up a little bit and ready to get to work for America.

I guess this a smooth move if most of Larson’s readers are Obama supporters.  It’s not such a smooth move if a lot of them are John McCain supporters.  According to Real Clear Politics, they actually exist.  McCain supporters that is.  RCP currently shows Obama leading McCain 45.5% to 43.5%.

If those numbers show anything, they show that Larson may very well be pissing off nearly half his readers.   As Michael Jordon once said when asked why he didn’t endorse the Democratic challenger running against racist Senator Strom Thurmond, “Republicans buy shoes too.“

I’ll admit that I thought it was funny that the McCain campaign made a TV commercial that tied Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to Barack Obama.  I thought it was funny to compare the chanting crowds that Barack Obama attracts to the people that flock to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

Not that I am aware of anyone chanting their names.

You would think that someone from the McCain campaign would first look to see if either Britney Spears or Paris Hilton had any connections to either the McCain campaign or the Republican party. It turns out that Kathy and Rick Hilton, mother and father of Paris Hilton, have donated $4,600 to the McCain campaign.

Oops! One of the first rules in Republican politics is do not piss off the rich white people. John McCain is an idiot.

Kathy Hilton to McCain: This is Where My Money Goes?! [E! Online]

It looks like presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama is taking a page from Republican Presidential nominee John McCain’s playbook and might now be willing to go along with offshore drilling.  He is willing to “refine” his position on offshore drilling.  From the AP:

Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.

The problem I have with drilling for more oil whether it be up in no-mans land up in Alaska or off our shores is that we don’t control the world oil market.  The oil market is global.  OPEC controls most of the global market.  The members of OPEC decide just how much oil will be made available on the world market.  If we were able to increase the available oil on the oil market by drilling off our coasts or up in ANWR, who’s to say that OPEC wont just decrease their oil production to keep prices where they are?

The other problem I have with drilling off our shores is that I remember when it was done off the coast of California and they were never really good at it.  As a kid I can remember swimming in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara and getting coated with a gummy tar like substance that came from the derricks right off the coast.  My father would have to remove the gunk from my brother and me with gasoline and a rag.

We aren’t going to drill ourselves out of this problem. We need to concentrate on ways to use less oil, not try to come up with new ways of increasing the amount of available oil.  Some of us just use way too much gasoline.