John McCain is a fighter who fights and he'll keep on fighting, he'll fight and fight, just as he as kept on fighting the words on that radical extremist contraption called the Teleprompter.  Last night the Teleprompter was especially evil as it added phrases and subtracted commas, but McCain fought back:

Praising his new running mate, McCain said:

"She's helped run a small business, worked with her hands and nose,"  Pause.  Grin. 

Nose?  Palin has worked with her hands and nose?  Is this another coded message that appeals to the far-right? 

"And knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries."

Oh, *knows*.  Not nose.

Inspired by McCain's constant need to fight, I fought the urge to keep watching this snooze-fest and turned off my TV.

Seeing how most Americans are self-reliant and don't need the government's help and seeing how the private sector takes care of most needs (purely communist sentiments, I know) why would we hire a CEO?  We already have CEO's.  What we need is someone to inspire America the community to come together and achieve great things.  Would a CEO have won the Civil War?  Would a CEO have signed the civil rights movement into law?  High schools, churches, the armed services-- these aren't divisions of AmericaCorp.  They're all part of the community that, when we put it first, we put our country first, instead of Big Oil and the defense industry lobbyists.   If you think "community organizer" is the punchline to a joke, you're a joke.

I've spent the past few days saying Sarah Palin is probably a smart, tough, articulate person and could very well give an excellent speech.  As unqualified as she is to be Vice-President, as nauseous as her politics are, and questionable her honesty, I thought she might look convincing on television.  Then she walked on stage in St. Paul last night.

Palin isn't ready for prime time.  She left me wondering why McCain didn't choose the founder of eBay, the ex-CEO of Hewlitt-Packard or even the governor of Hawaii.  They gave credible speeches and each delivered her message with authority.

Or why didn't McCain choose Giuliani?  He lied, he sneered, he was about as mean as anybody I've heard-- but he gave a pretty good speech.  He had the crowd in the palm of his hand.  Palin was smaller than the moment, and the adoring crowd swept her along rather than the other way around.  She was mean enough in her zingers-- but it was merely a bratty, annoying sort of meannness, not the direct hits that Giuliani delivered.  Clearly, the city-slicker celebrity ex-mayor of cosmopolitan, fashionable New York City does not have a "soulmate" in the ex-mayor of Wasilla (Pop: 9,000, less or lesser).

Fifteen minutes into Palin's speech, I wondered if she had anything to say other than introducing us to her family-- whose business we ought to stay out of completely.  I thought it was all wrong.  We knew Palin was a "hockey mom" with conservative values-- America needs to know if she's ready to tackle the problems of a struggling economy and neverending war.  Decidedly unstateswomanlike.

Still, I tried my best to avoid jumping to conclusions about right-wingers finally getting their wish-- a Fox News anchorwoman in the White House.  "SportsCenter" from the VP's mansion.  She's a governor.  She has accomplishments.  But what Vice-Presidential nominee thinks it's appropriate to blow a little kiss to the P.O.W. in the front row?

That's when it hit me: the bizarre, black-is-white, day-is-night world of Bush-Cheney continues, where reality is what you say it is.  The crowd loved her; she got "angry leftist" Tom Brokaw's stamp of approval.  And she has pissed off "the liberal blogosphere."  We're right back in Karl Rove's comfort zone.  An election about insults, realities and counter-realities.  Your millions in marketing versus mine.  Kay Bailey Hutchison-- that's a choice that would have made sense.  But this election isn't supposed to make sense.

Nevertheless, I'll still say it, even if it won't matter one bit: last night Sarah Palin, whatever qualities she may have, gave a dreadful performance.

Obama was supposed to be the "roll of the dice."  He was the "exotic" choice.  Great speaker, charismatic, he has tapped into America's hunger for change-- but should voters take a chance?  The media had bought into this narrative.  The polls were close.

Then McCain chose Palin.  Suddenly the GOP ticket looks riskier and much more "exotic" than Obama-Biden.  A 72 year old with a history of melanoma and someone who was mayor of a town of less than 9000 residents only two years ago.  Troopergate, Alaska Independence Party, trying to fire the librarian who wouldn't help her ban certain library books, and familial issues that don't fit the Ward & June Cleaver paradigm promoted by the GOP (until their behavior contradicts this image, then it's strictly a private matter).

Palin may be smart and tough and she could give a great speech tonight.  If it's even just OK the media will praise it to the high heavens.  But as McCain tries to win over the far-right with his extremely pro-life, pro-NRA, pro-drilling, anti-gay marriage pick , he's losing the confidence of the "mushy middle," the voters who maybe saw him as a safer, more responsible choice than Obama.  I have uncles who are as conservative as Palin is, but they aren't ready to be President either.

Did Kay Bailey Hutchison turn McCain down-- or Karl Rove override that choice too?  McCain-Hutchison would have reassured voters and won immense media acclaim.  Now they know what many knew already: all along McCain was the actual gimmicky candidate, the roll of the dice.  Never inspirational in this election year, McCain no longer even inspires confidence.