Sadly, No!

End program:

MR. BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I’m just going to end on one note, and that is that we continue to poll on who’s best equipped to be commander-in-chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

This was Brokaw’s deeply unfair concluding remark at the end of this morning’s Press the Meat interview with McFAIL strategist Steve Schmidt and Obama strategist David Axelrod. When I saw it, I almost threw the remote at the screen. Then I remembered we were planning to use the TV to stay warm in the winter months. So I gave the kids my maxed-out credit cards to build a fort, put our next-to-last shoe on the stove for supper, and fucked off to stand in the bank-run line at WaMu with a jug of grain alcohol and a dead look in my eye.

But apparently Ann Althouse saw Brokaw this morning, too. And like me, she was hopping mad:

What? Why was it a matter of “fairness to everybody here” to end the debate with a thudding, unanswered poll result? At the end of a discussion in which both candidates were perfectly well represented by their mouthpieces, Brokaw thought fairness required him to say, essentially, “Well, the American people still think McCain is much better on these questions.”

Whubba? Could Althouse finally be getting that media bias, rather than working against Republicans, contrarily, and in quite an opposite fashion, tends to work for them?

Brokaw began the discussion by saying “We’re not going to get into this business about who won and lost the debate.” He made a point of not presenting Schmidt and Axelrod with poll numbers on that subject. And none of his other questions were based on polls, nor did Schmidt and Axelrod bring up any polls. So why did Brokaw end like that?

Why, indeed? Is it because he’s in the tank for McCain? Because he’s a total scrote? Because he likes the fucking shit out of the pulled pork at Straight Talk barbecues? Why, Ann, why?

My guess? Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism. Sorry! That just looked really weird. Consequently, it reinforced the perception that NBC favors Obama.

Please kill me now. And I really couldn’t explain why any better than the very first commenter on this Althouse post:

… few people are so addled that they would bother presenting pro-McCain tidbits as evidence of underlying pro-Obama bias.

So I decided to make one:

ABOVE: Blind Allegiance

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Things have gotten ugly over at America’s Shittiest Website™ since Kathleen Parker said that Sarah Palin was too stupid to be VP and ought to return to Mooseburgerstan to care for her brood. When Kathleen Parker, best known for a column criticizing Obama for not being a “full-blooded American,” ferchrissakes, calls someone else stupid, well, attention must be paid.

This has put K-Lo, who has sworn an oath of fealty to anyone who wants rape victims to bear their rapists’ children, in something of a pickle. So she has a novel solution:

I absolutely refuse to watch another Sarah Palin interview. It’s not because I don’t like the lady and don’t want to hear what she has to say. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s because I want to hear what she’s about and what she believes in and that’s why I won’t listen anymore.

And, you know, if folks refuse to look in a full-length mirror, they can imagine that they “really” look like Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt too.

Because you see, the Palin in the interviews isn’t the “real” Palin either, but just a shell of herself after having been locked in a room, deprived of mooseburgers, waterboarded by the McCain staff, and forced to memorize really stupid shit like the name of the President of Iran and the correct way to say Vladimir Putin’s name:

I see a woman who looks like she’s stayed up all night studying and is trying to remember the jurisprudential chronology of privacy vis-a-vis reproduction, the war on terror, and public figures (add 12 more things, described in the most complicated way possible, to the list to be more accurate).* She looks like a woman who’s been cramming talking points and great Matt Scully lines and Mark Salter-McCain war stories and Steve Schmidt marching orders into her head since that first plane ride from Alaska.

And if you can just let her talk about the stuff she really knows, like moose recipes and why they gave Levi a Camaro rather than a Mustang as Bristol’s dowry, then she’s unbeatable:

When she’s firing at full force, she comes off as authentic, self-possessed, and ready for a fight. If that is Sarah Palin, that’s the Sarah Palin who should be talking to everyone she can. That’s the Sarah Palin who should call up Rush Limbaugh. That’s the Sarah Palin who should go on The View.

Which, of course, makes perfect sense if Palin were running for hockey coach or game warden.

*Kathryn J. Lopez is the editor of National Review Online

It’s a sad commentary on this election when Tina Fey can quote Sarah Palin verbatim and have it be funnier than anything any comedy writer could ever concoct.

I should note that Mona Charen has joined in the chorus of right-wing crazies who think that Palin is coming off as phony because she’s pretending to know what she’s talking about:

That much having been said, and here’s where I slightly disagree with Bill, Palin was atrocious not just with Katie Couric but with friendlies like Sean Hannity. She needs to devise answers for questions about foreign policy that do NOT rely on recent cramming. That will look and sound false. She may make stupid errors. And it plays to her weakness. She should never again refer to her Alaska experience as preparation for the role of commander in chief.

She needs instead to play to her strengths which are, as I see it, good solid instincts. If she is asked about Waziristan or whateverstan, she should say that (unlike Obama) her desire is always to be firm with adversaries and fair with allies – and to know the difference.

Again, this is the very essence of modern wingnuttery — you don’t actually have to know one goddamn fucking thing about anything as long as you have the right “instincts,” i.e., you agree with wingnuts about everything.

Sarah Palin, for all of her charisma and political savvy, knows nothing. Again, wingnuts, I will repeat that so it hopefully sets in: SARAH PALIN KNOWS NOTHING. This is why the McCain campaign is keeping her away from the eeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiilllllll reporters who are asking her policy questions. Because SHE KNOWS NOOOOOOTHIIIIIIIIING. If that doesn’t disturb you in the least, then you really have no business trying to run the country.

This latest Hail Mary pass is too stupid to be believed, my friends:

McCain camp prays for Palin wedding

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

In other words:

See, I already placed money on McCain bringing a helper monkey onstage during the next debate in an attempt to throw Obama off his game. The monkey would bring a laptop with him and would be actively fact-checking Obama’s claims on the Internet in real time. Whenever Obama misspoke, the monkey would screech loudly and hurl poo at his face. McCain would smirk throughout and would say, “Seeeeeee, Senator Hussein? I don’t need to use the Intertubes when I can have Mr. Billzo here KICK YOUR ASS with it!!!”

Again, I did actually place money on this possibility. But even I didn’t think that McCain would be desperate enough to resort to a shotgun wedding stunt. Holy crap.

(Via.)

ABOVE: Mark Krikorian

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First teh gays were trying to destroy the institution of marriage. Now, according to Mark “Brown People Suck” Krikorian, teh gays have been going after financial institutions as well. This means, of course, that the current financial meltdown is the fault of teh gays and teh n**gers.*

Yesterday at America’s Shittiest Website™, Krikorian squeezed out a post titled “Cause and Effect,” about a diversity press release from Washington Mutual:

I really thought this was a joke, but it’s not. WaMu’s final press release, before it sank beneath the waves (h/t Sailer):

WaMu Recognized as Top Diverse Employer—Again

…

SEATTLE, WA (September 24, 2008) – Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM), one of the nation’s leading banks for consumers and small businesses, has once again been recognized as a top employer by Hispanic Business magazine and the Human Rights Campaign.

…

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) civil rights organization, also awarded WaMu its second consecutive 100 percent score in the organization’s 2009 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which measures progress in attaining equal rights for GLBT employees and consumers. WaMu joins the ranks of 259 other major U.S. businesses that also received top marks in the annual survey. The CEI rated a total of 583 businesses on GLBT-related policies and practices, including non-discrimination policies and domestic partner benefits.

Teh gays are, apparently, so busy being fabulous and indoctrinating three-year-olds into the finer points of The Homosexual Agenda, that they just forgot to pay their loans. The next thing you know, bankers at Lehman Brothers were jumping out windows over bad gay debt. Cause and effect, indeed.

After being widely ridiculed over this nonsense, Krikorian tried to refine his connection between the diversity press release and WaMu’s failure. No, says Krikorian, the real problem was that the bank was so busy kowtowing to teh gays that it didn’t realize that it was making loans to inner city deadbeats:

[My] point was not that gay … employees caused WaMu to fail, but rather the irony that the bank was touting its diversity just as it was about to expire due to a mortgage meltdown driven by policital [sic] correctness about diversity.

Silly faggots, loans are for straight white people.

*The meme that the Community Reinvestment Act, which allegedly forced banks to make loans to lazy inner-city blacks, is the root cause of the credit crunch continues to circulate through the cheet-o-sphere, most recently appearing at a blog written by a pretend nun. As I’ve already shown, the idea that the CRA and deadbeat Negroes caused the problem is, succinctly put, cheeto-flecked crap.

McCain’s superfical, rhetorical low-point was the stuttering over ‘Ahmadinejad’.

But the real FAIL by McCain was when he challenged Obama to cut all spending but military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements. Obama parried nicely by talking about the health care crisis and energy independence.

But folks, consider this – McCain is now ON THE RECORD as saying he wants to cut all spending but military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements. This is hammer-able, hammer-able shit. Here’s what McCain wants to ignore in future McCain America:

– Healthcare, as Obama pointed out. Fuck ’em. Let ’em ruin themselves over basic hospital bills.

– Alternative energy, as Obama pointed out. Fuck ’em. Let ’em pay $4->$5->$10->$20->$?? a gallon.

– FEMA. Katrina, Ike? Fuck ’em. Let ’em drown.

– Infrastructure. Bridges collapsing in Minnesota? Trains crashing in SoCal due to operator error? Fuck ’em. Let ’em crash and die.

– Education. Kids can’t read? Fuck ’em. Let the Chinese and Indians do our reading for us.

– Start-ups. Fuck ’em. Let Europe build Technology 2.0.

– International Investment. Fuck ’em. Let all those Sub-Saharan Africans die of HIV-Aids.

I’m sure we could go on and on.

I’m sure one of her editors will be along with a mop and broom soon enough, but right now this is actually what she wrote:

I think Obama supporters are happy enough tonight. But I suspect they wanted McCain to show up tired and cranky and he didn’t he appeared a leader whose dont some of that leading.

Yeah.

AN’ YA KNOW WHAT ABOUT THAT OBAMA FELLER IS HE JUS’ AIN’T A GOOD TELLER OF TRUE STUFF AN’ HE LOOKS LIKE A BUTT!!!! BAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRPP!!!!

Thank you, National Review, for this excellent drunken commentary.

Obama KILLED McFAIL. Pwned him. Forgive the implications, but he was the Globetrotters and McCain was the Washington Generals. Discuss. I’m drinkin’.

Shorter Mark Hemingway:

Above: CONSERVITISM… UR DOIN IT WRONG*

How Not to Vote: Moore Nonsense

• Okay, okay. No, yes. Oh God, no. Oh crap. Okay, no, wait! Wait! Look everyone: Guess what? [does sprightly jazz hands] Michael Moore is fat!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

* Cf. National Review éminence gris Jeffrey Hart.

On Returning: Computer blew up, been offline for days and days unending.

Also, I’d like to reproduce this statement of Roy Edroso’s to further account for my absence:

I thought five-plus years of covering this kind of gibberish had inured me to it, but here it is only September of a Presidential election year and every time I step even into the foot-washing pool of the political scene I feel as if I have been fatally poisoned. The degeneracy of political discourse in the internet age has been my subject, but I feel as if it is getting away from me, screaming beyond my capacity to keep up. Is it really so much worse than it has been, or am I getting soft?

It’s like a stroboscopic drug cyclone. Moreover, it’s like that, and you’re swaying in a chair with a ballpoint pen and a notebook, trying to capture the profundity of the experience. You think you’re explaining how people’s reality-tunnels don’t allow them to experience the quantum verb-act that is ‘being,’ but later, when you look at what you wrote, there’s a drawing of the Zig-Zag man with a speech balloon that says “Zoinks.”

Regardless, I’m back with a bong bang, as it were.