Just because Dick Cheney is practically dead and buried doesn't mean the old hunter doesn't still have a couple more bullets left in his rifle to take down the rest of the room. Most recently the oldest, meanest Grinch was on Fox News Sunday mocking Joe Biden and generally acting as dickish as we've come to know he can be.
CONTINUED »
"As your world changes, stay with Fox." Right: as your world turns into some scene out of Se7en or Saw with a bunch of quick edits and scary, pounding techno music, remember just who warned you that the country was going to literal hell.
Because it was Fox News.
So Saturday Night Live milked the last they could out of the election last night, during the "Live" Presidential Bash, which wasn't very live at all but, for the most part, pre-taped. Okay, whatever, Lorne. It's your reputation.
But as for the "guests" who stopped by, there wasn't an Obama or Biden to be seen! But you know who did try their hand at comedy, for the umpteenth time? You betcha… John McCain and Sarah Plain and Quirky.
Ha ha ha? That was more somber than funny, Palin. Especially the part where you threaten NBC with revoking their broadcasting license once you are sworn in as Vice President. Lady, you are terrifying.
Here's John McCain, not doing much better, after the jump.
Sure, everyone was impressed by how 21st century this election has become: Those CNN undecided voter squiggle lines, to those amazing "magic" electoral maps, and perhaps the most impressive feat of all, Barack Obama's promise to text his VP choice to interested citizens, landing him the largest bank of volunteered cell phone numbers in history.
But in describing how great it is that Barack Obama has harnessed the power of new technology for his campaign, Slate's Farhad Manjoo inadvertently brings up an unasked question: Why are you giving Obama anytime access to your free text minutes? CONTINUED »
Barbara West, the 60-year old Florida anchor who started asking the most insane questions ever to Joe Biden this weekend (an ethics professor at the Ponyter Institute compared West's line of questioning to the loaded example, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Where the assumption is embedded in the statement and there is no right answer) has been subsequently "thrust" into the public spotlight, this close to the election.
West is obviously a polarizing figure all of a sudden, but says she's received "over 10,000" letters so far because of the interview "that were 9-1 positive." Wonder what her producers did with the rest of them?
Funny, the GOP didn't think it was that cute when Campbell Brown started asking Tucker Bounds "tough questions" on CNN, and they ended up pulling John McCain from his Larry King interview because it was on the same station. But when Obama's camp pulled Jill Biden from doing an interview with Barbara West herself after seeing how she promoted a conservative agenda with her Biden questions, it means Obama's camp is "hedging." Sure.
Oh, and just for fun, Ms. West appeared on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday. Naturally.
CONTINUED »
Awesome, you guys. Joe Biden's first publicly viral appearance since the debates, and it's because of this seaward (say it out loud) WFTV anchor Barbara West, hammering him with such leading questions that even Cousin Vinny would know enough to object to.
The whole interview is jaw-dropping, and the Florida station's anchor hits all the GOP attack points (ACORN, Joe the Plumber, Socialism!), but it's when West pulls out the Karl Marx quote at 2:17 that things start to get interesting:
CONTINUED »
Sarah Palin has always been in the VP spotlight this election. We have no idea what Joe Biden's been doing with himself since the debates three weeks ago, but we do know where Sarah Palin's been as recently as Saturday night. But Biden can afford to play the defense for the rest of the campaign: as long as he doesn't make any huge blunders or gaffes, he looks like a saint next to all the swirling negative publicity surrounding Palin.
Tonight, Sarah Palin speaks to CNN, and tomorrow Brian Williams. She's had a chance to bone up on her newspaper reading since talking to Katie Couric, and she's shown herself to be a good sport in front of haters like Alec Baldwin. Maybe it's time Joe steps out from whatever tax-free Delaware mall he's been hiding in and give a couple of those speeches himself, before people forget who is running against the Alaskan pageant queen.
Vogue's November issue features four generations of the ladies in Joe Biden's life. "All The Potential Vice President's Women" just didn't have the same ring to it, so Anna Wintour went ahead and just stated the winner of the election. Forget Gerard Butler, Anna Wintour's new man is named Nate Silver.
I like to watch the debates on PBS with all the original gangstahs, but it's always great to go on a forum or Youtube the next day and see what was going on at CNN. By now, the "squiggle lines" at the bottom of the CNN screen — where 30 undecided voters in Ohio get dials and turn them up or down while reacting to candidate's statements — are pretty addicting, if only for how goofy they look. Seriously, we're going to decide who wins this election by a seismographic of some guys in Ohio? It's more of one of those quirks CNN has added to the debates to draw viewers to their coverage, like an extra application box on Facebook.
But those hypnotizing squiggles might actually be influencing your opinion on the candidates more than you think:
CONTINUED »
Most assessments today of last night's presidential debate are grim. Under a picture of Barack Obama and John McCain squared off in Tennessee, the Drudge Report presented a single-word critique: "Boring." Politico is calling it the "worst debate ever."
We beg to differ. Instead, how about worst electorate ever?
CONTINUED »
Joe Biden likes a good chuckle as much as the next guy. Just because he's the least well-known candidate on the campaign trail (and is sometimes confused for John McCain) doesn't mean the senator for Delaware can't take a good rib-tickling when it comes to Jason Sudeikis' impression of him on last week's SNL episode.
In fact, Biden likes the clip so much when they played it for him this morning on GMA, it starts to freak out Diane Sawyer in a big way and she had to cut to commercial:
1. (idiomatic) to fail at something; to mess up; to make a mistake.
I blew it and forgot to start the spaghetti, so I had plenty of sauce and no pasta.
Sherri Shepherd, bless her heart, reared her slightly empty head today on The View to stand up to resident crazy Elisabeth Hasselbeck. The ladies' Friday show was pretaped, so today they threw in extra chirping about Thursday night's debate. Can you guess who Elisabeth thought did the best job? She tried to convince the other women, which is when Sherri "I haven't thought about whether the earth is flat or round" Shepherd got riled up and spewed some semi-coherent thoughts for the first time in her life. We never thought we'd say this, but: Good for you, Sherri!
There was a lil' bit of righteous feminine indignation over from this tent when Huffpost started carrying on about Sarah Palin's lipliner perhaps being of the permanent, cosmetic surgery variety. This is a dangerous road to go down, because it adds more fuel to the RNC's fire that Palin is being discriminated in the press because of her gender, which is an unfair accusation: the real reason Sarah Palin is being discriminated against is because she is terrible. Like, the worst.
But looks like all is fair in love and presidential races: guess which candidate is on the chopping block for perhaps adding a little Botox to his brow:
CONTINUED »
When Matt Drudge last week "broke news" that Gwen Ifill — at that point the upcoming moderator to the vice presidential debate — was writing a book about black politics in America and releasing it on Inauguration Day, conservatives quickly shaped the story to make everyone think the PBS (and NBC) veteran was authoring a pro-Obama book and, thus, wasn't qualified to moderate what will likely be the most-watched of the debates. Except, as we explained, Ifill wasn't writing a pro-Obama book, and she's about the most objective, fair journalist out there who's absolutely perfect to moderate a debate. Yesterday, then, Ifill appeared on Meet The Press (alongside a sleep Peggy Noonan) and, because this is a NBC network, was also forced to sit through Queen Latifah's tame Saturday Night Live impersonation — minus Latifah plugging Ifill's book. "Being played by Queen Latifah is not a bad thing."
Meanwhile: CONTINUED »
Finally, Sarah Palin will have to answer questions about her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. Except whoops, she's doing it on Fox News, and the big revelation is that she seemed flustered and ill-prepared because she was annoyed that Katie wasn't asking the right questions. The questions the American People wanted to hear!
Watch after the jump, and decide for yourself if this is what you've been waiting for a politician to say all your life:
Best moments of the debate included Palin winking, Palin telling Biden that his wife's reward was in heaven (4:15 into the clip), and everyone agreeing on gay rights.
But what did the guys who are paid to analyze the debates think? A pundit round-up, after the jump:
Another good reason why Sarah Palin can't be trusted with foreign policy: she's just too attractive. While meeting Palin for the first time Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari (the widower of Benazir Bhutto) made a couple cracks about the VP candidate's attractiveness, calling her ""even more gorgeous in life" and saying he could see why "America is crazy about you." He also threatened to hug her, and that apparently, was what set off radical Muslims and Pakistani feminists alike:
CONTINUED »
So the debates last night! So good! Everyone got wasted because Sarah Palin overused "maverick" and then got called out on it by Biden at the end there. Shit, if that woman was any more colloquial she'd be the mom from CONTINUED »
So John McCain waited until the last plausible second before the vice presidential debates tonight to release a video attacking Joe Biden for his tendency to goof when under pressure. Clever political move, or shooting yourself in the foot by drawing more attention to your own gaffe-prone contender?
Below, the ad and a point/counterpoint discussion:
