Mud mud mud. Fake mud, since there isn’t a lot of real mud to throw around. Lies.

Shrill. Yes, I agree. It’s an unfortunate physiological fact that Gov. Palin has a nasal and shrill speaking voice. Edie McClurg redux. I wonder if that’s why she didn’t make it as a newscaster? Her voice is even more grating to my ear than Sen. Clinton’s, and that’s saying something. (OH MY GAWD, listening some more, her voice is terrible! and the snark isn’t going to play well to anyone but the adoring, rigid conservatives, I don’t think. It’s not becoming.)

Lies, off the bat. Lies about Obama’s tax plans, energy plans, record. Just because you say it, doesn’t make it so.

This elite-bashing!! Hey why would you want to elect the people who excelled at learning at tough schools? Let’s elect the people who went to third-tier schools, or who came almost at the bottom of their class at a really good school (oh, and he was a Legacy, too).

What is wrong with being elite? isn’t it better than being ordinary? what’s the opposite of elite? low, ordinary, common. Homespun? nothing wrong with homespun. In being a proponent of elitism, which I am, I am espousing excellence. I believe in competence and I believe in excellence. Which isn’t any kind of put down of class or anything else except willful ignorance. I don’t champion the lowest common denominator. I greatly prefer to be the best, rather than the worst.

I wonder, by the by, if she got a fair price on that “luxury jet” on eBay to repay the people of Alaska? and is she planning on eschewing Cindy McCain’s luxury jet whilst campaigning?

MY UNMARRIED TEENAGE PREGNANT DAUGHTER! LET ME SHOW YOU HER! OH HERE’S HER BABY DAD–BOYF–FIANCÉ! LET ME SHOW YOU HIM! OH WAIT NO DON’T TALK ABOUT HER YOU L33T MEANIES! (nice to see that she or her people reads the criticism: she finally held her “4-month old Down syndrome child” publicly. The one whose life she horrifyingly risked by flying home to Alaska from Texas after her water broke. There’re some Family Values for ya!)

And hey, Rudi, when is the last time a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate had a 4-month old “special needs” infant at home? it may be an unfair charge, but it’s unprecedented, and I think it’s a fair question. Maybe Todd is really great at infant care. Well then, tell us so. The fact is that in 99.99999% of cases, an infant’s mother, not father, tends to it for the first 6 months or a year. Well, at least in civilized countries that have parental leave.

And “Hottest VP”? that’s right, that gal’s a real firecracker, isn’t she?

Jeeeebus. Who’s sexist, again?

The thing I’ve noticed about 95% of the pundits in my relatively-infrequent bouts of CNN-watching is that they listen to each other to a point, but don’t tend to actually answer the given question or respond to the point made, they’re always off getting in their next zinger or talking point. They’re so busy rejecting each others’ hypotheses that they can’t actually have a dialogue within most people’s understanding of that word.

So I guess it brands me a liberal (which I’m OK with), but I tend to believe the New York Times‘ reportage more than random partisan talking heads on TV. And last night was very frustrating for me, because I’d read several articles (starting with wiki, and then NYT, Reuters, AP) about the GOP Veep pick, trying to get a handle on her. Saw parts of her acceptance speech and clips of her from the past. And when that blonde republican pollster woman on Larry King last night started going on about her “vast executive experience,” I had to laugh. Her vast executive experience, which is more than Obama’s, according to the pollster, consists of being Mayor of a 6,000 to 7,000 inhabitant town. After having been a city councillor. And then she’s had less than two years as Governor. She has vast experience, yes, of overseeing a 25-member police force, which she sought to enlarge. That ought to serve her really really well if she ever has to run a country of 300-odd millions, with armed forces of about 3 million, active and reserve. (A 25-member police force makes me think of Knighthood! Tcha! I have more vassals than that, lady!)

Madam Governor is vaunted as a champion of anti-pork barrel politics, and the shining jewel in her anti-pork crown is that she voted against the “Bridge to Nowhere.” What her Republican proponents are not so quick to tell you is that she voted against the Bridge to Nowhere after she spent several years (including those executive experience years!) lobbying for it. How I wished that Paul Begala and James Carville knew about that yesterday. Carville could have used a solid rebuttal point, he was babbling incoherently in his astonishment, and too polite to talk over the woman who kept interrupting him.

We women are supposed to be ecstatic and vote for her because she has a vagina. Newsflash: I wouldn’t have voted for Hillary’s vagina, and I wouldn’t vote for this one’s either. I’m not going to vote for someone simply because of their gender, and I’m hardly alone in that.

Vice Presidents are often tapped to travel internationally to pay visits to heads of state, attend functions, and such. Gov. Palin, who is two and a half years my senior, applied for a passport in 2007. Last year.

She’s so folksy that she says she works “real hard.” Really is an adverb, madam, don’t you remember the ABC School of Rock about adverbs? they get an LY stuck on the end. I hate bad grammar for the sake of it. Although I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than simply not knowing.

When she was runner up to Miss Alaska in 1984, she won Miss Congeniality. How nice. Has a BA in journalism from the University of Idaho. Ah.

She’s a hardcore conservative. She fundraised for Pat Buchanan’s presidential run. He, in return, calls her a “gal,” which was the first thing I saw coming. She thinks “intelligent design” should be taught in school. I think “intelligent design,” also known as “Creationism,” oughtn’t to be taught outside of catechism or whatever the Fundies call it. Church is where church beliefs belong; school is where science belongs.

She’s a “feminist” of the type that believes that abortion is wrong under any circumstances. Which obviously endears her to the conservatives. And, you know, feminism is what you make it, but I don’t know too many people who call themselves feminists who think that Roe v. Wade is a bad idea.

What’s funny is that while Obama said in his acceptance speech that “I am my brother’s keeper,” he didn’t say that he had to agree with everything his brother thought, or make his brother do or not do anything.

She thinks the polar bears are swimming for fun.

She wants to drill the shit out of Alaska and extract every bit of natural resource it has, I guess profit is the only thing that matters.

In any case, this choice was so off the wall that it has occurred to me that it’s a what do you call it, a trial balloon that is so outrageous that the real choice, to be revealed during the convention, will seem rational and logical. That’s my plotline imagination working though.

If McCain were 20 years younger, it wouldn’t be nearly the big deal that it is. I’m sure she’s a very capable woman, and she’s clearly quite opinionated and persuasive, as well as being a darling of a lot of conservatives who were not really big fans of Sen. McCain. But at his age, and with his previous health problems, she is pretty far from someone that I think the majority of Americans, let alone all the rest of us out here, would want to see in the Oval on a permanent basis.

Is that short for Trigonometry? Triglycerides? Trigger? (and if so, the gun or the horse?)

First son is named Track? Bristol (Raceway? presumably not intended as a reference to the British slang for, um, breasts), Willow, and (Rowdy Roddy? OK, probably not) Piper are the girls.

Interesting. Incomprehensible to me so far, but interesting. O_o