John McCain has decided to completely ruin my Friday night plans of staying in, ordering a pizza, and ranting and raving at the television the way most people do during sports broadcasts or the way my dad does during the ten o’clock network news.

To wit, McCain is dodging the presidential debates in a feeble attempt to distract voters from his recent drop in the polls (because out-of-left-field stunts, like Sarah Palin, have worked for him before) and to try to make it look like Barack Obama doesn’t care about fixing his country (even though it was Obama who reached out to McCain’s camp this morning to suggest they write a bipartisan statement on the economy), thus buying himself some time to beef up on his econ and to be photographed looking stern and important in Washington (consequently distracting the media and the rest of Congress from the actual crisis they’re trying to solve), even though he (admittedly!) lacks an acceptable understanding of the global economy and really has nothing meaningful to contribute whatsoever.

Because that’s how McCain would lead this country in our time of need: by pulling media stunts to improve his own image, by shuffling papers in Washington, and by hiding and stalling when the going gets tough.

Where have we seen this before? Oh, that’s right … in the very same self-serving politicians that McCain is supposedly going to kick out of Washington.

The world knows that now, during this economic crisis, is actually the most important time for the candidates to defend and debate their plans and qualifications for the presidency of the free world, the way Lincoln did during the Civil War, and Reagan during the Cold War, and Bush during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (both of which he started!) (and he still won the election!).

But The Maverick is going to break from that precedent and … take a time out for a nap and a cookie. He may have invented the Blackberry – the very device that keeps the candle burning at both ends for millions of people — but he sure as hell can’t multi-task.

McCain forgets that it is the independents to whom he needs to pander in order to win this election. And if the independents are what they say they are, they’re going to see straight through this malarky.

Now Ole Miss is going to lose a lot of money if the debates are canceled altogether. So are we going to get a full two hours of Obama, then?

Or how about a debate between Obama and Palin? She has learned a lot in the past few weeks, and she has things to say! In fact, just this week, she sat down with Henry Kissinger and discovered that he can not, in fact, see England from his house. And just today, in her interview with Katie Couric, Sarah was oddly reminiscent of the infamous Miss South Carolina …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

and

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maybe my Friday night isn’t ruined after all!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa WHOA. WHOA. McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for his vice-presidential running mate has thrown me for a loop. And that says a lot, considering these are Republicans we are talking about. I thought I had seen it all when Bush was reelected.

Let me see if I can get this straight.

She was mayor of a town with a population similar to that of a community college.

She was governor for less than two years of East Jesus, Nowhere. 

She lists among her achievements high school athletic contests, beauty pageants, PTA leadership, and not aborting a baby with Down Syndrome.

She supports the rape of her state’s natural resources for the procurement of oil. And speaking of rape, she is staunchly against abortion, no matter what the circumstances.

She minored in political science at the University of Idaho. Idaho! 

That kind of information is surely already old gossip in their small Arctic hometown. What’s wrong with McCain that he didn’t figure it out? And what’s wrong with McCain if he did, but, as he claims, doesn’t see it as an issue? Wouldn’t you think that would put off the Evangelical base to which he’s hoping to pander, lest they should be complete and utter hypocrites?

How strong-arming your daughter into a harpoon wedding to her small-town hockey-star high school-dropout boyfriend and ruining three lives (four, if you include Sarah Palin, who will undoubtedly need to mother her child’s child) (or five lives, if you include mine) is better than teaching high school students how to put a condom on a banana, I will never understand.

I truly cannot imagine what will come of her speech tonight at the Republican National Convention. You know, Rob thinks we shouldn’t send out holiday greeting cards with our photo on it because it just gives people fodder to make fun of us. I have a feeling the same goes for Palin when it comes to public speaking.

While I’m ticking people off, I might as well go whole hog and just say what has been on my mind. Besides, I’m running out of time to say it, because Obama is about to clinch the nomination. Matt Drudge called it, and Matt Drudge does not exaggerate.

I really don’t think we can have a female president.

That’s right, I said it. I’m an unmarried, liberal, working, childless female in the 21st century. But I won’t vote to put a woman in the White House.

It’s not that I think we shouldn’t have a female president. Really, as a global superpower among civilized nations, it’s pretty pathetic that we haven’t had one already. Even Pakistan has had a female prime minister. I mean, that’s just embarrassing.

And of course, women have every bit as much of the intellectual capacity and managerial skill and strategical prowess and yaddah yaddah yaddah as men do. I have no doubt that our nation would thrive under a female presidency, or that our society would experience the kind of real change that we have so desperately needed. I am absolutely confident that our reputation abroad would improve.

And I am certain that other nations would respect her. I’m just not so sure I can say the same for our own.

We are a country that celebrates our hot-shot, cowboy, rough-and-tumble attitude. We do what we want, how we want, when we want. We like our men beefy and our women dainty. We’re the kind of people who still buy Hummers, environment be damned.

We are a nation that elected and re-elected a guy that turns phrases like “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” and “SHOCK AND AWE” and “BRING ‘EM ON,” as though we are playing some GI Joe video game instead of sacrificing lives in the name of an endless war with a vague and ever-changing objective.

There’s no way these same people would actually elect a girl. Particularly when the alternative has a penis. He may be old and feeble, but that only softens him just enough that a Democrat would actually consider voting for him. That, or he’ll die in office and we’ll be stuck with whatever right-wing yahoo he picks as his running mate.

Consider how ri-damn-diculous Hillary sounded this week when she tried out her new rough-rider stance on foreign policy with Iran:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obliterate! Them’s fightin’ words! Can you sense the hesitation before it pops out of her mouth, the millisecond in which a tiny George Bush with horns and a forked tail popped up on her shoulder and whispers the word in her ear?

But what America loves to hear George Bush say just don’t sound right coming from a female-type.

It sucks. I know it does. If a man is strong, he’s capable; if a woman is strong, she’s a bitch. It’s not fair. But it’s how our country operates. I want to see it change as much as the next person, but we have fallen into such a deep political and economic hole, I just don’t think now is a good time to risk our one big chance to dig ourselves out.