mccain gets even older

sarah palin is in cedarburg, wisconsin today. (oh, right...grampa is there too.) will someone please tell me the joke is over? this isn't a real person, is it? that accent! she could be from wisconsin. whenever she opens her mouth, i'm convinced it's a saturday night live skit making fun of my home state. and every time she mentions john mccain, i say out loud for her (in my best wisconsin/alaskan accent) "...whoo i just met a week agoo."

there she is in wisconsin giving her campaign speech again, word for word (which is good, because many people in wisconsin don't own television sets.) but – and this is telling – the cable news shows cut away from barack obama in a small town-hall meeting in pennsylvania (actually talking about something) to show palin (again dissing community organizers) speaking to a cheering crowd. bit of a reversal there? it's usually obama we see with the big, raucus crowds.

and she is talking about john mccain's brilliance in supporting "the surge". am i crazy? when palin or anyone else talks about how the surge has worked and it was mccain's idea and he knew all along it was going to be a huge success, why doesn't anyone point out the fact that john mccain is one of the reasons WE ARE IN THIS WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE!? if we'd all listened to obama back then, instead of "next up, bagdhad!" mccain, nearly 5000 families would have their kids or their dads or their husbands back. surge? surge?? what about being right on the war?

to me, with sarah palin standing next to him, mccain actually looks even older. his little ticks – his odd, forced smile at the end of sentences; his habit of repeating the catch phrase of a sentence two, sometimes three times; that grating "my friends" deal (good god, will he stop that? i am not john mccain's friend!) – it all looks, um...tired. and old. here's this young, energetic, snippy woman who bounds up to the podium and talks like the student council president, and look! she's brought along her grampa!

i think people will see that. (the republican party is probably thinking to itself, in another reversal, "maybe mccain could drop out.")

and whoops...there she goes again: "i'd like to introduce to you my friend (who i just met a week agoo) john mccain!"