I feel your Palin

Frankly, not sure I have anything to say about today's Election 08 topic du jour that you haven't thought for yourself. But for starters: WTF?

First two thoughts that came to mind:

1) Is this the kind of thing that's going to seal the deal for the Hillary's-women-supporters-who-were-considering-McCain-out-of-spite voting bloc to actually go Republican in November? Sure seems like that's what good-time Johnny was thinking. Either that, or he can check off "Lock up up Alaska's hotly contested three electoral votes" on his Road to the White House checklist.

2) I'm sure Sarah Palin is impressive in her own right and all, but I just circled October 2 on my imaginary calendar. (I guess it was also an imaginary circle.) Biden, who's been in the Senate for 36 years, versus Palin, who for the last 36 years has been... hm... older than 8 years old, I guess. It oughta be a barn-burner on the order of, hmm... well, sorta like this.

Here I stand / head in hand

I've had about an assful of people who are Hillary supporters who say they're going to vote for McCain out of spite. If they legitimately think McCain is a better choice than Obama, fine. To each her own. But it's like they think they're in a reality TV show, and this is their chance to reward Spencer for breaking up with Heidi even though they hate Spencer. I don't even know who those people are, but ... aggghhh ... the point is that these misguided morons seem to be forgetting that they're choosing the person who's going to lead the country for the next four years, but they're content to get their jollies playing mind games with people they don't actually know.

But let's move on. Two other quick thoughts on political stuff:

1) Besides those McCain spite-voters, does anyone have a weaker grasp of reality right now than Kwame Kilpatrick? There's no way this guy can keep his job as mayor of Rock City (and if I ever held that job, you can be sure that's what my business card would say), but he keeps dragging out his long farewell, and every new chapter in this weird saga has to be like a bad dream for everyone in Detroit and, well, just everyone.

It seems like one of those strange episodes people will look back on in 10 years and think to themselves, "Christ, that really happened?"

(Similar situation: Is it actually possible that voters in our nation's capital intentionally re-elected a mayor who had recently been convicted for doing cocaine with underage girls?)

At this point, I'd bet the average Michigander (I once met him, by the way - nice guy) doesn't even remember what the hell Kilpatrick did to get in trouble in the first place. But ol' Kwame has certainly made an ass of himself in just about every way possible since then.

2) I thought Hillary did a nice job with her speech at the DNC last night. I even thought her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" line was a cute touch - poking fun at herself with a 2008 pop-culture reference - even though it made my beautiful wife groan.

But there was one line that left me a little confused. While she was talking about the regular/sick/uninsured folks she met along the campaign trail (or, maybe, didn't actually meet, but who's counting?), Hillary described the coulda-been-touching story about meeting a woman with cancer.

And I quote: "I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism, didn't have health insurance and discovered she had cancer. But she greeted me with her bald head painted with my name on it and asked me to fight for health care."

And I wonder: Why did this woman greet a presidential candidate with her head, instead of just shaking her hand like everyone else would?

And, apparently, only one idea

Y'know how the slogan for the just-completed Olympic Games (hmph, now what am I going to do from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. every night?) was "One World. One Dream."?

Yeah, well, I'm starting to think that around August 8 or so, some big-cheese Democrat exclaimed during some fancy meeting, "Hey, the Olympics has its own slogan. We should have one, too, for our big convention in Denver!"

And some other Democrat exclaimed back, "Great idea, Hillary."

And then some other Democrat posed the not-so-hypothetical question: "Anyone know a good slogan?"

Whereupon yet another Democrat rolled his eyes. Because he knew where this was headed.

"It's a shame One World One Dream is taken. That would have been suh-weet. Think we can use it anyway?"

"Nah, I don't think so. But... wait! I have an idea. Well, it's a little crazy. How about... well, how about this?"