Credit where credit is due, or, The Audacity of Bullshit

I'm sure you've already seen this EPIC FAIL on the part of sometime Weekly Standard editor and current McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb.



Seriously, how does one show up for a live interview on national TV so unprepared? But lost in our guffawing is the gutsiness of Goldfarb's bullshitting maneuver here. Not enough to make up for being a clueless twit, but executed with total, balls-out gumption.

Sanchez: You said [Obama] hangs around with people who are anti-Semitic. You--OK, we've got Khalidi on the table, give me number two. Who's the other anti-Semitic person that he hangs around with that we, quote, "all know about."

Goldfarb: Rick, we all know who number two is.

[Pause.]

Sanchez: WHO? [Pause] Would you tell us?

Goldfarb: No, Rick, I--I think we all know who we're talking about here.

Sanchez: Somebody who's anti-Semitic who he hangs around with?

Goldfarb: Absolutely.

Sanchez: Well SAY IT!

Goldfarb: I think we all know who we're talking about, Rick.

McCain to Democrats:

"I see your pantsuits and raise you one corsage."


John McCain just announced Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP pick, to the surprise of many. (WP) He is sure gunning for Hillary Clinton supporters and I imagine this choice fits into that plan.

Palin is young (44), anti-corruption, firmly anti-abortion, has posed for Vogue, and differs with her new running mate on the subject of drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

She also really likes to wear giant flowers on her lapel, a la Carrie Bradshaw in 1999. I thought the pic above, from her gubernatorial inauguration, was an anomaly, until I ran across this one too.

If you happen to have any other documentation of Governor Palin's floral fashion statements, send them my way. It is certainly a distinctive calling card.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The things you learn on the Colbert Report. I would never have known, until watching last night's "The Word," that John McCain keeps using the word "transcendental" in a really weird way. To wit:

"I believe we are facing the transcendental challenge of the century of radical Islamic terrorism." (johnmccain.com)

I am pretty sure McCain is not proposing yogic flying or a devotion to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson as key elements of the radical Islamic terrorist challenge. He, or someone on his staff, is dealing a few tarot cards short of a full deck, because what McCain really means is something more like "surpassing" or "overarching." Or maybe "existential?"