Oh Hugo!

Where would U.S. political humor be without Mr. "Crackers from Caracas" (as The Bugle calls him), Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Quoting him:

"I saw the vice presidential candidate, there she was talking about 'the dictator Hugo Chavez.' The poor thing, you just feel sorry for her.…She's a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead. We need to say as Christ did: Forgive her, she knows not what she's saying."

Invoking Jesus (Luke 23:34) to take a verbal swing at Sarah Palin — you stay classy, Hugo.

Run for the hills!

Armageddon is coming! On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol said this of John McCain's campaign:

It's a stupid campaign. It's not a horribly mean spirited or racist or disgraceful campaign. But it's...it's really become a pathetic campaign, in the sense that there's no strategy. They're flailing around. They do things that don't work and keep on doing them. They're out of sync with their own candidate now...

To which McCain campaign spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer replied on Fox News yesterday (emphasis mine):

Well, you know Bill is entitled to his perspective. And I used to work for Bill. And I can tell you personally sometimes he’s brilliant and sometimes he’s not. And this is one where it’s the latter category. You know, I think unfortunately he has bought into the Obama campaign’s party line.

Yes, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of Project for the New American Century (you know, the geniuses who thought the Iraq War would be a really good idea), is now accused of being "in the tank for Obama" (to borrow Keith Olbermann's words).

To John McCain or whoever it is that's running your campaign: please stop this insanity. Please stop wildly accusing people of "wrongly" supporting Obama. Better yet, please stop driving people with whom I generally have vehement policy disagreements from actually endorsing Obama. Otherwise, I'm going to have to keep on agreeing with Bill Kristol, and that can only lead to horsemen, rains of fire, and the end of days.

Hat tip to Think Progress for the video links.

Did I miss something?

I'll confess — I didn't actually watch the entire VP debate. I gave up after about 30 minutes and realizing that Biden and Palen weren't actually debating, but were rather just trying to squeeze in sound bites (to put an overly simplistic view on things). Blame it on the silly "debate" format.

What I want to know is this: did I miss something in the candidates' replies when they were asked about whether the United States should or would ever use nuclear weapons in a first strike capacity? Palin seemed have started off saying about Iran and ended up talking about how to fight the war in Afghanistan (and nothing about nuclear first strikes); Biden seems to have taken a circuitous route to end up talking about the non-proliferation and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

However, neither one of the candidates seems to have answered the damn question. How hard could it possibly be? When asked whether the U.S. would consider a nuclear first strike, just say no!

Addendum: Yes, I'm aware that low-yield tactical nuclear weapons exist. But, I'm also aware of the moral and political stigmas against emploing any sort of nuclear weapon. So, using even one low-yield weapon would lead to opening a can of worms that we simply could not contain.

Oh wow...

When asked about what happens when democracy (meaning "elections, free or otherwise") leads to results that aren't exactly favorable to the United States (in this context, Hamas winning elections in the Palestinian Territories), Palin gave this response:

She completely ducked the question, but I'll at least give Governor Palin points for pronouncing "Ahmadinejad" correctly. And to be fair, she can't actually see Gaza from her house; come to think of it, she hasn't exactly seen Russia, either. So much for foreign policy "experience".