As far as I’m concerned, the running mates of the major party candidates are a complete wash. Barack Obama picked an old, white man. John McCain picked a young woman. Two Vice Presidential nominees, two attempts at appealing to swing voters who might have been leaning in the direction of the other party. Both choices so horribly transparent, if you stood one in front of the other, you could still see the jungle through both of them.* Can we go back to talking about the candidates now?

* If it panders, we can kill it.

Hundreds of dogs got to go for a ride in the car on Tuesday afternoon. They (and their owners) gathered outside the Pennsylvania state Capitol in Harrisburg for a rally in support of House Bill 2525. The legislation, sponsored by Representative James Casorio (D-Decent Human Being), would bring tighter regulation and improved minimum conditions to commercial kennels in the Pennsylvania, and hopefully start reforming the state’s lousy record of monitoring the dog breeding industry.

• Archaeologists find an ancient bowl with an engraving that claims Jesus was magic. (Ancient weed “totally bogarted.”)
• New Humanist suspects that Sarah Palin may be downplaying her actual creationist beliefs. (Also suspects water might be just as wet as claimed.)
• Another transitional fossil, a fish with rudimentary fingers, rudely insists on existing. (Creationists celebrate creation of two new gaps in fossil record.)
• Lawsuit against operation of Large Hadron Collider dismissed by U.S. court. (Lawyer for Mad Scientist lobby unavailable for comment.)

I can’t decide if it’s worth it or not to try liveblogging the Vice Presidential debate tomorrow night. Joe Biden has a solid track record of at least one completely insane statement per public appearance, and Palin appears to be a big, flaming bag of whackjob incompetence. It could be comedy gold, and a lot of fun to write about. On the flip side, the candidates’ aggregate bat-shittery should be impressive enough on its own, and might not gain much from my commentary.

It might be worth it just to wait and embed the video of the best moments.

What do you think?

I won’t be liveblogging the Vice Presidential debate tonight. It turns out I’ve got too much else to do tonight. If I come up for air long enough that I can even watch the debate, the last thing I’ll feel like doing is typing the whole time.

I hope that Biden is his usual crazy self. I really hope that he doesn’t go soft on Palin because she’s a woman. The misplaced chivalry that leads a male politicians to back off a female opponent is well-intentioned, but ultimately does her a disservice.

If Palin is qualified to be Vice President*, she has to be capable of holding her own in a debate without any special treatment. Let her succeed - or crash and burn like the Tunguska meteor - on her own terms. We can’t coddle her, and we can’t let her get away with any bullshit that we’d set on fire and ram down the throat of a male opponent.

Enjoy the spectacle, folks. I expect at least one new catchphrase to enter the cultural continuum by tomorrow morning.

* Very few sentences simultaneously make me want to laugh, puke and cry. Good show, Senator McCain.

I finally get it. I have seen the light. Sarah Palin is the perfect Republican candidate. She is the future of the party. She is the distilled, fortified and artificially sweetened essence of all the farcical faux-populism that the party has cultivated since the 1960s.

She is everything that Bush aspires to be. Home-spun, aw shucks, just folks. Where Bush is a millionaire Ivy League graduate playing redneck, Palin actually is a rural girl. Uneducated, unsophisticated, unconcerned with anything more complicated that the feelings of her moose-fed gut. Palin appeals to the bedrock narcissism of red state voters, who can’t abide being governed by anyone with more intellectual ability than them. Educated people are the enemy, and Sarah Palin will smite them with a spear fashioned entirely from small-town charm. 

She is the solution to the ultimate political equation. She manages to wed the “one stoplight and a general store” narrative to actual charisma. She’s the lady who, with a wink and a “darn right,” could wrangle the middle class into voting for the party of unfettered greed and unregulated business. If they can’t make it to the polls, they will write their choice on the back of their foreclosure notices, and mail them in as absentee ballots.

Palin is the perfect front for the Republicans. She is the tempura icing on a cardboard display cake in a wedding catalog. There is nothing of substance, not even empty calories, but the look is all that matters.

In order to stay in the White House, The Rove-publicans have tapped that woman who makes it her life’s work to take over the PTA, who quits the book club in a huff because that Amy Tan is just too naughty, who writes letters to the newspaper when the library won’t get rid of Heather Has Two Mommies, and made her a national politician. They have gambled that, in the event that John McCain’s coal-fired cyborg heart finally gives out, this person can lead the most powerful nation on Earth. And we’re falling for it.

Our only hope is that the Rapture makes it here before election day.

If I manage to get through this election without a serious cardiac event, it will be a small miracle.

Sorry, dear reader(s) for the long-ass break. I could come up with tremendous excuses, rants, lies, and otherwise made up stuff about why I was out for so long, but the truth is I just haven’t found anything compelling enough to write about.

Until this week, however. . .

Thus Waldorf’s Week in Review–

Like many of my other ideas, I’m sure this one will plummet from the heights I aspired to into the depths of reality, but I shall press on and beat a dead horse. If I’ve learned anything from TV, it’s that I need to pound my points home relentlessly and make my opinion seem like fact, which shouldn’t be too hard. That, and giving up is for Democrats (see note below).

So I give you my take on the week’s events with or without facts. You know, biblically.

(–) To Sarah Palin and the Republicans. I heard so much about how expectations were lowered for the debate Thursday evening, and lowered, and lowered, and lowered. Then, this morning, the Repunditry showered her with glowing reviews because, basically, she didn’t fuck up as much as they thought she would. She just needed to show “basic competency” at the debate. Well, that’s just super-fantastic. Can I have that job? Since when does No Child Left Behind apply to Presidential Candidates?

(-) To Democrats waiting to see if Biden would fuck up by speaking his mind. What the fuck? Why not just pretape messages spoken by computer synthesis instead of actually having candidates with views, opinions, and thoughts not quite mainstream? Come on, Dems, you are better than that, aren’t you?

(-) To Palin at the debates. I couldn’t get past the “Fargo Factor” (she sounds like an extra from the movie) or the snarky, smug grin.

(+) to Biden, for showing class and poise at the debates even while stretching the truth (comparatively Biden’s truth-stretching was like trying to fit into a pair of jeans two sizes too small while Palin was trying to put Jumpsuit Elvis in a condom). But seriously, I thought he looked and sounded and acted a lot more. . . “Presidential” than any of the other three.

(+) To the Obama Campaign for recently showing two ads in the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan area that did not attack his opponent. I think that’s FANTASTIC that the ads were issue and policy based. Well, one does have a dig or two about McCain, but they are far from the venomous attack ads put forth by the Republicans.

(–) Boo on the McCain camp for pulling out of Michigan. You’d never cut and run in Iraq!

(—) Boo on Republicans and Democrats for that crappy-ass “rescue” package. What the fuck are you thinking? I’m all for more regulation (I guess that means I’m for big government) of industries, and now so is John McCain (I guess that means he is for Big Government, too!), but I’m also for not screwing the Middle Class on a daily basis. The whole thing stinks like three-day old smelt and it distracts from the real issue - people are losing jobs. Normally companies sheds jobs near the end of the year to give their stocks a boost and their CEOs a bonus. This year the stocks will go nowhere but the CEOs will still smoke cigars wrapped in Franklins. (See, I’m so Middle Class that I think burning a Hundred is a travesty!)

(—) BOO on the idiots who keep chanting that the economic crisis is because of deadbeat mortgage holders (b-Prime Debtors). Hey shit for brains - all of you - turn off Fox News for a second. The economy has been shedding jobs for a few years now, the economic stimulus went to savings accounts, the tax breaks did NOT create any new jobs or stimulate the economy, and we are still getting raped daily by high insurance premiums that won’t cover a lot of what ails us. Excuse me, I’m foaming. . .

(+) I taught some fifth-graders yesterday and they were awesome!

(-) To anyone who says “Joe Six-Pack” in an unsatirical way.

(EVEN) To Fox for the first cancellation of a Prime-Time show this season - Do Not Disturb. While the cast looked promising, I admit it was Down the Shore bad and my only boo to Fox is that they should have axed it sooner, like before the first episode aired. My prediction is that the next three cancellations will be Worst Week, Gary Unmarried, and My Own Worst Enemy.

(-) Neil Diamond. Seriously. Come on. I don’t care if he is considered “hip” to a generation raised on Nick Hornby. I can’t stand him.

(—-) Broadway stealing from movies for the next hit vehicle. High Fidelity, now? Come on, Big Wig Producers, get someone to write something original! I understand Rodgers and Hammerstein (and Sondheim) also stole a lot of material, but at least they put new clothes on the stories.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. I’m sure next week will be more of the same.

• Malaysian family beats two members to death as a smoking cessation ritual. (Ritual stops smoking, breathing, heartbeat.)
• Sarah Palin isn’t a clueless fundamentalist mouthpiece. She’s a poet. (I think I forgot the word “just” back there somewhere.
• Pennsylvania Republicans invoke electioneering laws to stop voters from wearing campaign t-shirts to the polls. (Darn kids loitering on polling place lawns next on list.)
• Russian government promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories on state-run television. (Vladimir Putin’s eyes report that his soul has no comment.)

Mayor McCheese. 

Thank astronauts, Jeffrey Rowland is on the case.