Breaking News from Andy Borowitz

McCain Replaces Palin with Startled Deer

Hoofed Running Mate Could be Game-changer

 

With less than a week to go before the crucial vice-presidential debate, GOP presidential nominee John McCain announced today that he was replacing his running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, with a startled deer.
According to campaign insiders, the decision to select a hoofed mammal to replace Gov. Palin evolved after Sen. McCain watched his running mate’s performance in a series of interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.
“Good Lord, a startled deer could do better than that,” Sen. McCain reportedly said, prompting his aides to draw up a shortlist of startled deer.
The Arizona senator supposedly brushed aside concerns that a startled deer would wilt under the pressure of a televised debate, telling aides, “At least a goddamn deer won’t go on about Alaska being close to Russia.”
The McCain campaign said today that Sen. McCain’s new running mate, Bucky the Red Deer, would not be made available to the press prior to the debate.
“Bucky is very much a work in progress,” said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. “Right now we’re working on keeping him from bolting off the stage.”
Bucky’s opponent in the upcoming debate, Delaware senator Joseph Biden, appeared today to be trying to manage expectations for the high-stakes face-off with his four-legged rival.
“Bucky the Red Deer is articulate, bright and clean,” Sen. Biden said.  “That’s storybook, man.”
Elsewhere, former “American Idol” star Clay Aiken revealed that he was gay in an exclusive interview with Duh magazine.

The Sarah Palin Meltdown

Okay, so sue me.  It turns out that I couldn’t go a whole week without mentioning Sarah Palin.  It’s just that the whole Sarah Palin thing is unraveling in a big way.  Never mind that David Brooks and George Will questioned her fitness;  Kathleen Parker actually called on her to voluntarily step down.  Parker said she could cite a need to spend more time with her family (a classic excuse for getting fired), but the point is, that only Sarah can do it.  McCain can’t actually fire her and choose someone else, because that would call into question his decision to choose her in the first place.  In reality, even if she quits, it will still call his judgement into question.  As well it should. 

It isn’t that McCain chose a woman for a running mate.  It’s the particular woman he chose.  That’s why Hillary Clinton didn’t win the Democratic nomination.  It isn’t that she’s a woman, it’s that she’s Hillary Clinton. 

This week, Judith Warner of the New York Times wrote a piece called “Poor Sarah”.  http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/poor-sarah/?em  Summarizing, Warner sees the picture of Palin with Henry Kissinger as a woman with that deer-in-the-headlights look.  She’s out of her league and knows it, and is desperately trying to fake it. 

Elsewhere this week–perhaps in Kathleen Parker’s commentary, perhaps on the blog Mudflats on WordPress–I read the opinion that first, John McCain is using her for his own ends.  He thought that selecting her would shore up his “maverick” credentials.    I was so amused during the debate that McCain talked about the “earmarks” Obama requested.  Can we talk about the Palin earmarks?  Second, that her anti-abortion stand and other fairly outlandish beliefs would bring in the “base”, who don’t like him very much. 

All of this makes me sort of feel sorry for Sarah too, except for the part where her ambition and ego outpaced her ability.  She could have said No.  As in, “Thank you, Senator McCain, I’m honored, but I don’t yet feel qualified to accept your offer.”  Now they are both stuck.  He can’t fire her, and she can’t quit without losing face in a major way.  Stuck to each other like glue, like a recent quote I posted about Iraq.  Can’t fix it, and can’t get out of it. 

So it’s sink or swim together for them, and here’s my prediction:  Sink.

Critter for the Day

You know, a person cannot live by politics alone. Therefore, in an effort to rest my brain, sorely taxed by last night’s presidential debate, and further taxed by the ignorant blogs on my hometown newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, I turn to the comfort of my other obsession: animals. Behold the cassowary:

This amazing photograph comes to you courtesy of www.smithsonianmag.com. 

This is a southern Cassowary, which is native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northern Australia, where it is considered endangered.  Here’s a quote about them from the Smithsonian article:

“The ornery cassowary is not an easy creature to love. In fact, it ranks as the world’s most dangerous bird, at least according to Guinness World Records. A cassowary can charge up to 30 miles an hour and leap more than 3 feet in the air. On each foot are three claws—one slightly curved like a scimitar, the other two straight as daggers—that are so sharp New Guinea tribesmen slide them over spear points. The last person known to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean, whose throat was punctured on his Queensland ranch in 1926. There have been plenty of close calls since: people have had ribs broken, legs cracked and flesh gashed.”

Once a female cassowary lays her eggs, the male incubates them for about two months; then the young follow him around for six to nine months while he protects them from predators and teaches them to find food.  I like that in a man. 

Smithsonian magazine is, in my view, the best magazine in publication.  Like National Geographic, it has spectacular photography, but its content is not limited to nature.  The October issue, which contains the article about the cassowary, also contains articles about the history of Iran, the demise of chinook salmon fishing off the coast of California, and the Italian sculptor Bernini.   

There now.  I feel better already.

Debate Analysis…or Not

First let me begin on a personal note.  I feel like hell this morning.  My brain has been replaced by a peach, complete with fuzz on the outside.  I have aches and pains in muscles and joints that I’m pretty sure weren’t part of my body yesterday.  And why?  Because I did, in fact, stay up and watch the entire Presidential debate last night. 

It isn’t that I didn’t get enough sleep; I got the same number of hours of sleep I usually get.  It’s that the sleep started at the wrong time, and apparently my Circadian rhythm is very specific about when I’m supposed to sleep, and when I’m supposed to wake up.  Defy the Circadian rhythm at your own peril:  you will be punished. 

So usually at 9:00 P.M., I’m winding down.  I may watch a little TV, or read a book, and I’ll be asleep between 10:00 and 10:30.  What I am NOT doing at 9:00 P.M. is gearing up to watch something I know will last a couple of hours.  And no drifting off, either.  Not only must I watch, but it’s my civic duty to pay attention. 

I was highly annoyed already that the debate didn’t begin until 9:00 P.M.  Why couldn’t they have started it at a normal human being hour, like 8:00 P.M. ?  What–were they afraid that giving people a choice between McCain and Obama and Jennifer Love Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer, that Hewitt would win?

I finally decided the reason had to do with time zones.  If I have my time zones straight (see: peach, fuzz), 9:00 P.M. EDT is 6:00 P.M. on the West Coast.  I guess they felt they couldn’t expect someone on the West Coast to start viewing the debate an hour earlier, at 5:00 P.M.  At that time, half the population of California is stuck on a freeway somewhere.  But what difference did that hour really make?  My guess is that in order to watch the debate at 6:00 P.M., the entire population of Los Angeles had to leave work at noon. 

In summary, I feel this morning like McCain apparently felt last night:  grumpy, and a tad combative. 

Naturally, I felt compelled this morning to torture myself further by reading the opinions of pundits too numerous to count.  Gail Collins’ op-ed in today’s New York Times was by far the most entertaining: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/opinion/27collins.html?ref=opinion  But the most revealing may be a comment by Ben Smith of politico.com:  http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/The_reporters_and_the_polls.html?showall

I believe the CBS and CNN polls Smith references proves what I said yesterday:  if you’re for McCain, you thought he won.  If you’re for Obama, you thought he won.  It seems to me that the majority of the country is for Obama. 

In closing, Note to McCain:  Grumpy and combative is a loser’s tactic.  Note to Debate Organizers:  Please have the debate at a normal human being hour next time for those of us on the East Coast.  Note to the West Coast:  Get Tivo.