The Ship of State

God, those cartoonists can be stupid, simply stupid sometimes.

Palin has _lifted_ the McCain ship back to normal attitude and steaming _hard_.

who's the artist, Jazz? I wonder if they have a body of work

dr.e

DLS, I sincerely, sincerely hope that was sarcasm. The Palin pick was a transparently political ploy: secure the base and possibly pick up some non-gruntled Hillary supporters. It's not something that I would characterize as restoring McCain, or anything like that. It seems a little odd that, you know, the guy who called certain right-wing Evangelicals "agents of intolerance" would choose an Evangelical running mate and that this would somehow magically "restore" him to his good ol' mavericky self.

BTW, I just found this interesting link about the effect Palin's speech last night may have had on Obama's fundraising.

No idea, Dr. E. Just one of the many, many things people seem to delight in mailing to me every day and it wasn't attributed. It was kind of funny though, so I thought I would share. If the owner pops up we'll be happy to either attribute properly or delete it as per their wishes.

Is that an anchor or a submarine firing torpedoes? Does it mean that Palin is sinking McCain's chances or taking him down to the dark side of politics?

I interpreted it a a huge anchor, but I might be wrong. Good question.

Jazz, how do you keep sane with that kind of email?

It may be to early to tell, but I don't think Palin is pulling McCain down. She's energized the GOP Base that never really trusted McCain anyway. Will her appeal expand past the base? Also, too early to tell.

I was intrigued by her pick for VP, but the more she talks the more I see she's nothing but your typical modern-day divisive Republican politician.

DLS, this is a more primitive piece of art, but it does remind me of a New Yorker cover that you conservatories were slapping knees over a few months back.

"Jazz, how do you keep sane with that kind of email? "

How do you leap to such huge assumptions without spraining something? ;-)

I agree that it's too early to tell, and we'll need a good five day polling cycle following both Palin's speech and McCain's tonight, but we've had six days since the announcement of her as the running mate, and as of this morning, Gallup shows Obama extending his new lead since the convention, not losing any of it. But the speeches might turn some of that around. Time will tell.

"It's not something that I would characterize as restoring McCain, or anything like that"

It has reenergized the campaign and put missing life into the convention. The TV viewership numbers for Palin's speech are almost as high as Obama's speech numbers. This was before ever having Palin make a speech before a nation-wide audience. Do you really believe that the numbers would have been there had McCain chosen Lieberman, a conservative such as Thompson, or Pawlenty, say?

Prior to choosing Palin, McCain's campaign was going nowhere -- other than for one or two recent clever ads, and at least one of these, too late to have greatest effect, so that was one of his numerous mistakes -- and nobody expected any substantial level of interest in "the other" party's convention after Obama, the favored candidate this year for the Presidency, and the Dem convention was so good. (The normal question on people's minds was how far into and through the GOP convention that Obama and the Dems would still be on people's minds instead.)

Palin has changed all that (and put life back into interest among so much of the public in an alternative, in McCain-Palin's case, a reform-minded alternative, to an Obama-Biden reverse course to the 1960s-1970s). The TV numbers show this.

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"Is that an anchor or a submarine firing torpedoes?"

It's an anchor. No torpedoes being fired at the ship by subs in sewage far beneath the surface -- the media and other lefties were left out of this misleading cartoon.

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"it does remind me of a New Yorker cover that you conservatories were slapping knees over "

I range from moderate to conservative on various issues, and I was slapping my knees over the idiotic overreaction to the cover by the Left -- while spending most of my time with the New Yorker reading the article on Obama that was in it ("Making it"). The cover I left to the lefties; it's their level of play, I reckon, while I prefer the more serious play: I read the stuff with mainly text rather than pictures.

I think it's an anchor that represents Palin that is dragging down SS McCain.... there seems to be a chain attaching the anchor to the boat...

Whether Palin is lifting McCain up or dragging him down depends on who you are. If you're a Republican, then it is energizing you. If you're a Dem, then it's dragging McCain down. I think many independents like Palin now, but once they examine Palin's issues and see how far right-wing they are then they will go towards the Dems....

Given that Palin has received a lot of attention (and IS energizing a certain group of people), when I first saw the cartoon the first thing I thought was, "SHouldn't Palin be the boat and McCain be the anchor weighing her down?"

:)