Observe Sarah Palin on her way to the Vice Presidential debate:
She has her hair down. Palin never has her hair down.
If she wears it that way for the debate, I suspect it will be to cover the earpiece in her ear.
(Also, what the hell did she do to her hand?)
John McCain has been accusing the media of practicing "gotcha" journalism and jumping on any opportunity to twist Palin's words and make her sound uninformed (see: the Pakistan thing).
Sadly, they don't need to twist her words. Here, for example, is a transcript of her exchange with Katie Couric re: the bail-out.
Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Gov. Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
Gov. Sarah Palin: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
Err.... WHAT? Granted, it was a poorly worded and heavily weighted question, but there wasn't a complete, coherent sentence in her entire response. She sounds like a sound bite generating robot with a short circuit.
The shame of it is that I like John McCain. If he'd beat out Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000 I would have voted for him in a heartbeat, but I think he's missed his window. (He even admitted that himself in 2000, saying that by 2008 he'd "be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.") Still, I might have been swayed back into his camp with a solid Vice Presidential pick, especially after Obama (who I love) picked Biden (who I loathe). Palin, however, couldn't be farther from solid and I am terrified of the thought that she could someday sit in the Oval Office. No chance in hell I'd cast a vote that would put her anywhere near the Vice Presidency. No fucking way.
Please somebody, anybody, talk some sense into the Republican party so that this woman steps down. She's so clearly out of her league that her continued presence on the Republican ticket is nothing short of an embarrassment.
To quote Michael Seitzman:
Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.
Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.
So it's been, uh, four months since my last "montly" update on my 101 in 1001 list... Oops.
Still, I've been busy and have managed to cross several things off my list. Twelve items down with just under two years left to accomplish the remaining eighty-eight, not bad as far as progress goes!
Yes, The Dow fell 777 points yesterday.
Yes, it was the biggest point-loss in history.
It was also only a 7% drop. The drop that triggered the Depression was closer to 25%, and Black Monday's was about 22%. Funny how that little statistic barely got reported in the mainstream media.
Seven percent is significant certainly, but not necessarily the harbinger of another Depression, or of a market spiraling out of control. The NYSE does have a tool in place to prevent the market from free falling: it's called a circuit breaker and had the market continued to plummet, trading would have been halted.
Doesn't it make you breathe just a little bit more easily to know that there actually are some balances to keep things from running away unchecked? And yet, that little failsafe mechanism has barely been mentioned in any of the news coverage either.
I blame the armchair economists.
Specifically, the armchair economists who are whipping the country into an absolute frenzy based on insufficient (or incorrect) information and perfunctory analysis (at best). As it turns out, they are just as knowledgeable, and just as prone to gloom & doom hyperbole, as nuns teaching a Sex Ed class.
They're just as effective at teaching people how to make well-informed decisions, too.
I wrote a huge essay about all of this last night, but it was very long and I was getting very snarky near the end, so I've chosen instead to just hit you with some of the highlights. Bullet points after the jump:
EDIT: I was in a rush to put this up before I left for work, so neglected to mention that one of the people responsible for (and featured in) the video above is a friend of mine. I also neglected to quote his response to the feedback that he's gotten about this: Who says the Religious Right are the only folks who get to cherry-pick the Bible?
This, folks, is why I love my friends.
I had a good day today; read about it over at Butterlfy Fray.
With the apocalypse looming, I decided to buy myself a little belated-birthday-hooray- for-a-new-job gift.
I mean really, what else is there to do at the end of the world but shop?
After much thinking and browsing, I settled on this lovely wallet from the Pick a Petal store on Etsy:
I absolutely adore it and cannot wait for it to get here; I will be extremely put out if CERN prevents me from receiving my wallet by accidentally causing the destruction of life as we know it.*
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*Read the source code on that page. Seriously.
