PolitiCrazy

Yes, you just saw FOX News’ Megyn Kelly standing up to McCain surrogate and chronic idiot Tucker Bounds on his inability to stay on subject, and his useless attacks on Obama. I never thought I’d see the day when a FOX News reporter stood against McCain attacking Obama (O’Reilly’s half-assed remarks of a week ago fell on deaf ears [literally, considering his audience]), but it seems that even America’s least fair-and-balanced news network has decided that McCain is a terrible candidate.

It had been reported that Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp which presides over FOX News, recently took a liking to Barack Obama. However, his comments were outweighed by the director of FOX News programming, conservative Roger Ailes, who said FOX News would not be “in the tank for [Obama] like CNN and MSNBC.” Roger Ailes, if you hadn’t guessed from that quote, is not a very smart man, especially since he made that comment to Obama’s face.

But apparently FOX News, or at least Megyn Kelly, is trying to turn over a new leaf by actually challenging both sides for once. We’ll see how long that lasts, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying it.

Sarah Palin has gone on the type of journey that is only possible in America. She came out of nowhere; a little-known politician from a relatively insignificant state. As governor of Alaska, she participated in many questionable acts. She took funding from Congress for a project that was going nowhere, she abused the same earmarks that John McCain claims to fight against, and she has the same kind of shady past that McCain supporters have claimed that Barack Obama has.

So how exactly did she become a GOP superstar? The simple fact behind the choice of Palin was that John McCain needed a woman. It didn’t matter to him who it was (many more qualified women in the GOP), he just had to have a woman. Now he is allowed to use sexism and the gender card as a firewall against any attacks. This came at a perfect time for McCain, as people were beginning to accept the fact that being a former prisoner of war doesn’t mean he can never be questioned. Now, McCain can use anything Obama or Biden say against Palin, or even himself, and twist it into sexism. This poses an instant problem for Obama, who is good with words but cannot possibly tell what can be twisted one way or another, and for Biden, who doesn’t exactly have a reputation for saying what people want to hear.

By picking Palin, McCain also dug into two key demographics: young people, and women. Young Republicans who may have felt alienated when their party passed on Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for a 70+ year old with a documented history of health issues, are now being excited by the McCain/Palin ticket. Also, women now view McCain more favorably than before, even though any intelligent women would know that he was attempting to pander to them with the pick of Palin. A true feminist would never vote McCain, but unfortunately women voters haven’t come as far as we thought they had.

While the pick of Palin should not have worked and on Election Day likely will not work, for now it’s certainly interesting, and sad, to watch.

Yesterday, the large investment firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the largest failure of an investment firm in 18 years. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch has been bought off by Bank of America. AIG, a large insurance company, needs $20 billion in government lending, which today NY Governor David Paterson said he will allow. To bring all of this into perspective, Dow Jones was down 355 points and NASDAQ was down 56 at the time this article was written.

What can be made of all of this? Well, simply the fact that we’re beyond a recession now. This has officially gotten serious, with a major investment bank failing and an insurance company struggling to stay even.

This news has already made an impact on the campaign trail. Barack Obama has blamed the failed policy of George Bush, and linked John McCain to those policies, whereas McCain says the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Unfortunately, fundamentals won’t get us out of this mess.