Drill Baby Drill!!!!

Well ding dang we had the goddamn vice-darn-it-presidential debate on this mornin! And that Missy Little Palin got up and did her darn best….god bless her!

As much as I would love to say that Republican VP Nominee Sarah Palin's performance in the VP debate with Democrat VP Nominee, Joe Biden was an absolute catastrophe ….it was most definitely not. I listened to the vice-presidential debate this morning Australian time. After the disastrous media encounters Palin has had in the last two weeks, it was expected that she was going to implode and pretty much bring the McCain campaign to its knees. I think we all expected to see some sort of Beverly Hill Billy Stepford Wife Carry On movie with Ms Palin at this event. She proved otherwise. Even though I still believe she's a Stepford Wife built by the McCain camp, Palin performed reasonably well as a debater and came across as charismatic and warm; unlike McCain last week. However her grasp of details at times were lacking particularly with respect to McCain's legislative history in the Senate. And she still had some cracker quotes together with a continual penchant for winking….I felt like she was trying to pick me up in a bar. Tina Fey is going to have a field day with quotes like these:

"McCain knows evil."

"McCain won a war." (which one?)

"Aw, say it ain't so, Joe"

"I want to take you back to my energy policy." (in response to questions about tax, wall street, foreign policy, iraq, homosexuals….)

" darn gone it"

"drill baby drill" (her energy policy)

"God bless her"

"You betcha.."

"Her award is in heaven…."

"Yee yay…."

"A shout out to the third graders…." (maybe she thinks they can vote…)

"Burn all the homosexuals….." . No she didn't say that but I wish she had, it would have been easier to hate her then.

Joe Biden's technique was to continually attack McCain's history in the Senate which worked. He also tried to be as non-patronizing towards Palin as possible…I suspect almost too much because at times he came across as being a little soft.

Both he and Palin tangoed around the issue of gay marriage. Biden came out straight away and said that he and Obama did not support gay marriage in a literal sense but suggested that such an issue is a spiritual decision. He does support gay couples having the same financial rights and rights to health care as heterosexual couples. Palin almost short-circuited over the issue by saying that she has a "diverse" group of friends (:"diverse" is Alaskan for poofters) and that she would support her "diverse" group of friends being entitled to the same rights as her less "diverse" group of friends. But marriage is only between a man and a woman……so no wedding gift registers at Macey's for her "diverse" group of friends.

I found the debate more entertaining than the one between McCain and Obama; not only because of Palin's "ding dang" hillbilly tone but because both nominees attempted to engage the audience, unlike last week where McCain thought he was addressing the chair person and no one else.

I think the horse had bolted on Palin long before this debate. Even though her performance has far outplayed expectation, I think that people can see that she has been schooled within an inch of her designer Kawasaki frames; and that at this stage she just doesn't have the judgment and policy experience to be vice-president ….or a potential president. Having said that, I don't support the intellectual snobbery that she is an air head, bimbo or otherwise. Such criticisms are sexist and ignorant and will only assist in expanding her working class support base; look at Pauline Hanson at the Queensland State Elections in the late 90s.

Palin has been an interesting distraction in this presidential campaign; however at the end of the day, the American public is not concerned about the deputy headmaster, they are concerned with the top dog and that is where this battle will be fought and won. The only contenders in this fight are Obama and McCain and they meet again on Tuesday.


C