Not a Big Truck

Looks like it has gone for Obama.  Congrats to WashingtonRocks for being the only one in our pool to predict it.

Wolf Blitzer suffers from an affliction that my high school English teacher would’ve called “diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.” He has no insights to share, so he repeats obvious and vacuous statements and sprinkles in unnecessary narration of on-screen graphics, seldom pausing to organize his verbal mayhem into sentences but instead using “um” and “uh” to keep the stream of shit flowing without interruption.

Here he is during the seconds leading up to the polls closing on the West Coast last Tuesday night.

Transcript of his remarks:

So in a few seconds, those states will be closing their polls and uh, presumably we’ll be able to, uh, see what’s going on and uh, make uh, perhaps a major projection at that point, uh, this is a moment that a lot of people have been waiting for.  This is a moment that potentially could be rather historic.

“Potentially could be rather historic.” What a dolt.

Just want to follow up on the electoral pool (which I most clearly didn’t win).

If we use electoral votes as the criteria: RedLine wins, unless Missouri goes for Obama (in which case Ying wins)

If we use state as the criteria: RedLine wins, unless Nebraska second district goes for Obama (in which case WashintonRocks wins) or if Missouri goes for Obama (in which case Ying wins)

It’s truly amazing how much better McCain looks as he is giving his concession speech than he ever did during the campaign.  Physically, his face looks relaxed; he isn’t grimacing and he looks comfortable.  He isn’t making Frankenstein faces and herky-jerky motions and he appears to be at peace.  He looks more like the John McCain we all used to know.

It’s roughly 9:40pm Eastern Time…the election is basically over since Ohio and New Mexico (and Pennsylvania) have been called for Obama. But a quick visit to www.barackobama.com directs you to a page begging you to call voters in swing states. Someone tell these guys its over

(Well, at least they realize it’s election day, doesn’t look like McCain’s site has changed other than a small link to a find your polling place part of the site).

As Obama continues to hold onto his leads in national and swing state polling and expands the playing field into what were expected to be solid GOP states, the emails from the Obama campaign pleading for money are starting to make me chuckle. See this bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping email from yesterday evening:

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain’s negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee. … [J]ust this week, we’re facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

Oh no!  The Republicans are having to defend Montana and West Virginia, states that the Democrats never expected to have much of a chance of winning!  I’m surprised they didn’t mention that McCain is having to spend money on robocalls in Arizona now.

Saw this at the Dish.

Saw this gem on Ben Smith’s blog over at Politico and thought it was good enough to repost here:

Sen. John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate’s decades-long interest in Latin America.

Speaking at a panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president’s Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain’s, who recently emerged in the press.

”Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years,” Fontaine said. “In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She’s a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region — in the most positive terms.”

I am mildly dreading the vice presidential debate scheduled for this Thursday evening.  Not because I fear that my chosen candidate (Biden) will not perform well; on the contrary, I suspect he’ll do just fine.  My sense of unease is because I expect an embarrassingly awkward and incompetent performance by Sarah Palin.  It’s the same sense of dread I felt when I went to a stand-up comedy show where the first comedian was not only not funny at all but also a poor match for the general sensibilities of the audience.  Even though I didn’t have any personal stake in how the guy on stage was doing, watching him struggle made for an awkward and uncomfortable situation for everyone there.  I dislike Palin and her political views but nonetheless I’d rather not have to cringe through an hour and a half of her bumbling responses.

Maybe Palin will perform better than expected, perhaps even well enough that the debate is labeled a “win” for her.  That’s possible, though I doubt it.  But I feel sure that even if she beats the absurdly low expectations, she will commit some notable gaffes.