Poor John McCain. Musicians keep banning the use of their music in his campaign. He can't even get Big and Rich, only Big. Rich supports Obama. Jackson Browne sued McCain as well and McCain's beloved ABBA too. Now Heart:
CNN: UPDATE: Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart said Thursday night that Universal Music Publishing and Sony BMG have sent a cease and desist notice to the McCain-Palin campaign over their use of 'Barracuda.'
"We have asked the Republican campaign publicly not to use our music. We hope our wishes will be honored," the group said in a statement that said they "condemn" the use of the song at the Republican convention.
Maureen Dowd: Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.
Unable to stop the onslaught of wild soap opera storylines erupting from the Palin family and the Alaska wilderness, McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt offered caterwauling reporters a new mantra: “Life happens.”
Indeed, it does. Only four days into her reign as John McCain’s “soul mate,” or “Trophy Vice,” as some bloggers are calling her, on the ticket known as “Maverick Squared,” Palin, the governor of Alaska, has already accrued two gates (Troopergate and Broken-watergate), a lawyer (for Troopergate), a future son-in-law named Levi (a high school ice hockey player, described by New York magazine as “sex on skates”), and a National Enquirer headline about the “Teen Prego Crisis” with 17-year-old daughter Bristol.
Here's some more
As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.
“If this doesn’t resonate with every woman in America, I’ll eat my hat,” Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times’s Ashley Parker.
Even as they push Sarah Barricuda as the glamorous but tough hunting and fishing mom who can juggle it all — she’s the only nominee, as Fred Thompson bragged in his convention speech, “who knows how to properly field dress a moose” — they rant at reporters who wonder how she will juggle it all and question some of her judgments.
Listening to McCain's Ohio event this morning, Sarah Palin was audibly nervous and spoke little of her own experience (she has little) and instead cheered for McCain and pandered to Hillary.
The way she spoke was cheerleader-ish in content and tone (maybe it's just her high-pitched voice). As a woman, what an insult. What an insult to think that women just want a woman in high office. She has to be qualified. She has to be even more qualified, given that McCain hammered Obama on experience. The audacity.
The choice shows McCain lacks judgment in choosing a vice president, someone to take over in case he gets sick or otherwise, who's lacking. Alaskans say: it's like one of your friends was chosen for one of the highest offices in the nation. They're shocked.
Alaska? I could run Alaska.
She has five children, so she obviously doesn't believe in birth control. I admire her not aborting her baby with down syndrome but she's not a special case. I'd argue most women wouldn't have an abortion if they were carrying a downs syndrome baby. But even still, that does not make a vice president or a president. Abortion is not the single most important issue to this nation, contrary to what conservatives preach.
She's against putting the polar bears on the endangered list. It would hurt oil business, she said. She doesn't believe the ice is melting, contrary to scientific evidence. She wants to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I'm so sick of oil.
She likes to hunt and fish and eat moose burgers. She was called Sarah Barracuda. Who cares.
McCain chose Palin purely for politics. He did NOT choose someone to help him govern. This was an effort to shock, gain attention, sway a few Appalachian women voters (PUMAs). He's out of touch, no doubt.
