Abstinence is as easy as taking Candies from a baby!

From TIME:

Bristol Palin — Sarah Palin’s 19-year-old-daughter and unwed mother of 4-month-old Tripp — has been blog-blistered this week for her debut as an Abstinence Ambassador for the Candies Foundation. She made the rounds of the morning shows, appeared at a town hall meeting for National Teen Pregnancy Awareness Day and declared herself committed to discouraging behavior that would leave other girls in the same predicament she finds herself in. “Regardless of what I did personally,” she told Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America, “abstinence is the only … 100% foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy.”

(Note: Time needs to do better fact-checking. Bristol won’t be 19 until October.)

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(And, yeah, the Candies Foundation really does have shirts like that! I think they go very well with their family values advertising.)

A Fight Brewing Over the Budget

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Wednesday offered a budget vision sharply at odds with the Democratic proposal, calling for sweeping tax cuts, major changes in Medicare and a suspension of the economic stimulus program.

The Republican plan, introduced after days of ridicule from Democrats about the absence of an alternative to President Obama’s proposal, would also freeze most domestic spending for five years, increase Pentagon spending, permanently extend the Bush-era tax breaks and eliminate any taxes on successful investments in 2010 as a way to spur the economy. Republicans said they would spend $4.8 trillion less than Democrats over 10 years.

“This is our budget, with real policies and real numbers,” said Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee.

Wow!! Real numbers? Sell it, baby!!!!

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Puck You!

From the New York Daily News:

PHILADELPHIA – She may be the most famous “hockey mom” in the country, but that did not buy Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin much love last night in the City of Brotherly Love.

Philadelphia sports fans, who once booed Santa Claus at an Eagles football halftime show, greeted Palin in similar fashion when she dropped the ceremonial first puck at center ice prior to the Flyers’ season opener against the Rangers at the Wachovia Center. Loud boos rained down when she walked out on the ice just after 7 p.m. with her daughters Willow and Piper.

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Conventional Wisdom, Part I

Hey kids! I thought we would take some of the best quotes from the Democratic National Convention and have some fun with them. First up, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania:

The people of Pennsylvania can’t afford four more years of Bush-Cheney economics, and you know what — with John McCain, that’s exactly what we’d get. John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush over 90 percent of the time. That’s not a maverick. That’s a sidekick.

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Sleep with dogs, wake up with fleas

From CBS News:

(Political Animal) McCAIN’S CHOICE….David Brooks writes today that John McCain tried to run an honorable campaign, but it just didn’t work:

McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.

The man who lampooned the Message of the Week is now relentlessly on message (as observers of his fine performance at Saddleback Church can attest). The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.

The problem? Too many bloggers. A bored press. A stuffy conservative establishment. McCain tried to take on the system, and the system won.

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Punked to the Hilt-on!

From Times Online:

She’s blonde, she’s hot and she wants your vote: Paris Hilton for president?

The American hotel heiress has thrown her bikini into the presidential campaign with a video in which she declares she’s “like, totally ready to lead.”

In the clip, posted on the website www.funnyordie.com, Ms Hilton reclines on a poolside sun lounge dressed in a barely-there leopard print bathing suit and gold stilettos, and promises that, if elected, she will paint the White House pink.

The video is a spoof of John McCain’s ‘celebrity’ advertisement released last week in which the Republican candidate compared Barack Obama’s popularity with that of Ms Hilton and claimed the Democrat was no more than a celebrity candidate who was not ready to lead the nation.

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That’s Not Hot!

From The Huffington Post:

Today Kathy Hilton weighed in on the controversial John McCain ad featuring her daughter Paris, as well as the singer Britney Spears, in a blog on the Huffington Post.

…snip…

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

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Mother Knows Best!

From The Huffington Post:

Sen. John McCain may be “proud” of the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad released this week, but his feisty 96-year-old mother apparently disagrees.

Roberta McCain was a featured guest at a McCain campaign event on Thursday afternoon at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC. The Huffington Post obtained some audio of an exchange after the event where Mrs. McCain is asked about the Paris Hilton ad.

“Oh, well, I didn’t see it — I think it’s kinda stupid,” she says.

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