McCain Guarantees He's Going to Win

I hate to be overly paranoid, but John's statements this morning on Meet the Press sound eerily like W.'s statement days before the 2000 election, "You know something, we're going to win Florida, mark my words. You can write it down." I happen to be of the school of thought that Our Only President was not elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court, an example of judicial activism one never hears the freepers bemoaning. We have also seen blatant vote manipulation in national elections since 2000, enough that already hearing of early voting irregularities such as those in West Virgina, where voters attempting to cast a ballot for Obama saw the machine they were using switch their vote to McCain, is rather disturbing. What worries me more is vote tampering after the voter has left, a very real possibility when there is no voter-certified paper trail to be used in case of a recount. My vote is very precious to me, and the idea that elections could be so cynically manipulated hits me where I live. In this instance, if I'm paranoid, it might well be valid. And if it's valid, I'm not paranoid.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, The View's lone voice from the right, has been doing some campaigning for the Republican ticket this weekend, and reinforcing the many reasons I dislike the woman. Weirdly, she's bringing back up the subject of the Palin haute couture shopping spree - that most of the press has actually gotten past - as a distraction from the issues, and quote, blatant sexism. I'm sure Hillary Rodham finds this, well, hilarious. The issues primarily are the abyssmal economy, trashed by supply-side theories made real, and the waste of a wrong war. Sarah's Nancy Reagan propensity for fancy geehaws and her habit of sleezing per diem at the taxpayers' espense is simply more evidence of a party sidelining itself by reminding the voters that their basic platform is Greed is Good, and that graft and entitlement is the natural side benefit of high office, be it public or corporate.

Kudos to SNL and Seth Meyers for the best point of the weekend -- Sarah may get the state of Alaska to pay for her kids' travel, but then again, if she leaves them at home they get pregnant. $150,000 for clothes and shoes? That makes Bill's famous two hundred buck haircut seem like a flea market bargain.

The fact that McCain picked Palin, an underqualified but plucky, supposedly homespun VP candidate, is notable not only for the bad judgement John has a disturbing tendency to, but also the assumption on his part that disaffected Hillary voters would be tickled to death to vote for a different skirt. That's what I find sexist.