Is she smarter than a 5th grader?

During these last few days, it's been hard to find some humor in the ongoing demise of the United States of America. A laugh or two can be a good thing on the way to the gallows.

So it's been good to have Sarah Palin around; not so much that her idiocy reminds me of the class screwup trying to bullshit his way out of being totally unprepared to answer the teacher's questions, but I'm amused on a daily basis by the desperate contortions of reality Republicans are forced into when attempting to justify her appointment. She's confident, she's a fighter, she will stand up to the good old boys, she has attitude; never mind that she shares all these things and more, with the exception of education and intellect, with a host of people from Che Guevara to Leon Trotsky. That bit of humor will of course be unobserved by those who share the belief that she's better off for not having graduated Summa cum Laude from Harvard.

The "gotcha journalism" gambit may work on an incident or two, like advocating the invasion of Pakistan or having no clue as to what the Bush Doctrine might be, but it's a bit flimsy when applied to her complete inability to name one Supreme Court case other than Roe V. Wade from more than 200 years of American history. Even that other class screwup, George Bush, was able to cite Dred Scott albeit in a very inarticulate and somewhat inapposite way. That yet to be aired clip would be high comedy were it not so illustrative of her real mission: to spread the fundamentalist gospel and help bring on the destruction of most of mankind by Jesus in war mode. That's why it doesn't matter that she's an uninformed mediocrity: these are the last days.

A candidate for the second highest office in the US; a candidate who may well become the next president, nuclear codes and all, who thinks The Flinstones is historically accurate is so funny that it borders on horror. I suppose the hard and irrefutable proof that such is not the case could also fall under the umbrella of the Gotcha Journalism Defense, but then the American public, particularly the public that pretends she's fit for office is far less discriminating than any elementary school teacher I can recall. Indeed most Middle School teachers can expect their students to answer questions Sarah has never heard before. Perhaps the Palinists will put on serious faces and nod when Sarah tells us that the dog ate her homework this Thursday. I can't wait. I need a good laugh and I'm ready to embrace the horror.

Cross posted from The Reaction

Bye bye Miss American Pie

Indications are that a majority of Americans still oppose anything like a bailout for financial institutions. An unscientific CNN poll today has 59% answering "let risk-taking financial institutions fail." A Time Magazine article says much the same thing.

I think many people underestimate the risk of doing nothing. I think the smug, Reagan era idea that Government is essentially bad, can't fix anything and can only make things worse, plays a role and I think it's only human nature to distrust a plan drafted by the people who not only told us only days ago that it was foolish to think ( or to whine ) that we are experiencing recession; the people who have been preaching deregulation and advocating "anything goes" markets for decades, the people who refer only to dogma and ignore reality.

I have to admit that a part of me wishes it would all fall down and plunge us into depression simply to punish the slight majority who have been mocking reality and the people who recognize it, and mocking anything to do with government participation in anything but warfare. Of course I know that even bread lines and 30% unemployment wouldn't change such minds; they would simply blame it on Liberals with the same instinct that causes a land crab to run for the darkest place when you're trying to chase it out of your garage. Conservatives blamed the Great Depression on lazy shiftless workers. Not much has changed.

So seeing the intransigent stupidity and self-delusion of America, I have to believe we're in need of some kind of rescue; some kind of government intervention. Judging from events elsewhere however, I think the Post-bailout America would be only marginally different from the post "let them fail" America and either way, we're in for 5 years to a decade of high unemployment, inflation and increased marginalization of our position in the world. We're in for a long period of blaming, scapegoating and scurrilous propagandizing. Faced with a stalemate in Iraq, a rapidly declining position in Afghanistan and a Pakistan that cannot control its borders or prevent itself from being a haven for al Qaeda, it's hard to be optimistic no matter what is done, who wins the presidential election or which party controls the Congress.

I would like to believe that we will eventually see a leaner, more fiscally fit and saner America, but I don't believe in our ability to learn from mistakes, to recognize that we have made them or to see beyond the rhetoric and dogma and slogans when looking for solutions. Instead, I see more excuses for cute and perky incompetence, more praise of folly and more of our eternal hunger for fast food, fast solutions and the comfort of false certainty.

America - I wish to hell I could quit you.

I don't know anything

Nobody knows anything. I've heard the quote attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, but I don't know. I don't know anything.

I don't know how the economy can go straight to hell in a supersonic hand basket and yet the dollar can gain strength against stronger currencies.

I don't know how John McCain can bellow about Obama's lack of leadership when he can't rally his own party to fix his own party's disaster and I don't know how he can mock Obama for being aloof regarding the deliberations when McCain continued his campaign after his "putting it on hold" play to the grandstand, and he and Lieberman went out to dinner at an expensive restaurant while it was going on.

I don't know why it's a good thing to be a maverick who can't get along with his party or the other one when leadership is required and I don't know why it isn't a bad thing when a senator or congressman votes against the wishes of over 80% of his constituents.

I don't even know why McCain, who despite his hyperbloviations has reversed 26 years of experience in backing this bailout can blame Obama for being more fiscally conservative and a big spender at the same time. I don't know why McCain bellows about lowering taxes when the Democrats' tax plan lowers them for more people and I don't know why his party doesn't simply fall down and die of shame after telling us we need an immediate, no questions asked bailout only days after insisting that the economy was sound and debt didn't matter and in fact we needed more of it. I don't know how leadership consists only of blaming others while weaseling out of responsibility for having been part of the collapse that I and many others predicted would come of borrow and spend economics. I don't know how leadership involves lying repeatedly, consistently and thoroughly and I don't know how one gets points for snickering and grimacing in a debate.

I don't know why this flyblown, disease ridden, dishonest old crank has more than a dozen supporters, but he does. I don't know anything and that's an understatement.

The quiet American

It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt. ~Abraham Lincoln

We haven't been hearing a lot of words from either Republican candidate recently and of course that brings Honest Abe's quote to mind. It's obvious that the handlers are terrified of some monstrous gaffe from Sarah - something that would dwarf the Iraq-Afghanistan border groaner or confusing the Spanish Prime Minister with some South American insurgent. Hence the retreat to the safety of silence.

It's harder for McCain to justify his Cheney-like seclusion, but it now seems he's found a way to counter the public impression that he has no interest in fixing the economic crisis, no ability to understand it and is too close to the people who made it happen. Here he comes to save the day; Mighty Mouse McCain goes to Washington and he can't be troubled with pettiness like debates.

According to an ongoing CNN poll, 71% of the respondents at this point see it as a political gimmick and only 24% as an honest attempt to deal with the economy. I agree. Will it backfire? It might, as public sentiment seems overwhelmingly against the proposed bailout and being identified with it may be politically dangerous.

Spear chucker Obama

According to Raw Story, Mark Salter, a top McCain aide, told the Wall Street Journal last Friday that the campaign was tired of "catching the spears." That's right, he called Obama a spear-chucker.

The "spears" of course were allegations of McCain's unsavory connections with unsavory people, enough of which are sufficiently beyond question that the McCain campaign needs to invoke the victim image again in order to distract from the lobbyist crew that run the McCain/Palin Cirque de Sleazy.

The plan is to go negative, and this from a campaign Karl Rove thought was too negative already! This from the Swift Boat Party, the party who dragged McCain's baby daughter through the racist mud. The party that regularly paints war heroes as malingerers and familiars of bin Laden.

I really can't wait to see them resurrect the Pastor Wright controversy against the background of Sarah Palin's witch hunting "spiritual" leader. So far they have been rather successful in convincing us that McCain was exonerated in the Keating affair (he was censured for bad judgement) and in tap dancing around the information that despite his phony anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his top aides were lobbyists for Burma, various African dictators, oil tyrants and child enslavers, but the Clean John image is too flimsy to hold up for long.

I have a feeling that the mud slinging will backfire with all but his most psychotic admirers, but for connoisseurs of hypocrisy it's going to be quite a show anyway.

Good times

Any time you meet a payment. - Good Times.
Any time you need a friend. - Good Times.
Any time you’re out from under.
Not getting hassled, not getting hustled.
Keepin’ your head above water,
Making a wave when you can.

"And I know that many of you here are watching how the United States government will address the problems in our financial system."

George W. Bush said in his last speech before the United Nations as President of the United States Tuesday. Having been buffeted by questions from all corners as to what he was going to do about the disaster he and his party had so assiduously worked for all these years, he reassured the world:

"I am confident we will act in the urgent time frame required.''

Did anyone ask why the hell he didn't do something 8 years ago; why did his party continue the easy credit rip off; the supply side shell game; the deficit spending, the deregulation, the tax cuts in time of the most expensive war in 63 years? Did anyone need to?

Temporary lay offs. - Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs. - Good Times.
Scratchin’ and surviving. - Good Times.
Hangin in a chow line - Good Times.
Ain’t we lucky we got ‘em - Good Times.

It's my party and I'll lie if I want to

They're taking the girl from the streets of London to Ascot and passing her off as a debutante. A few weeks of diction lessons, some new clothes and they can pull it off, but for Chrissakes, don't let her say more than two words to anyone! No cameras, no audio, no reporters to observe what fork she uses, what diphthongs she distorts -- and be careful to introduce her to the Duke and the Dauphin so she won't mistake them for the Prime Minister.

Yes, you've seen the Broadway show, the movie, but no, this isn't a bet between two upper class gentlemen over brandy and cigars at the Reform Club. It's a bunch of thugs, goons, warmongers, Jesocrats, robber barons and Mafiosi trying to pass off the most unsuitable major candidate in American history as a statesman by pretending she's having substantive conversations with important people.

Palin's crew locked out AP and CNN from her introduction to Mohmmad Karzai today before they could catch her picking her nose on camera or asking the President of Afghanistan how things are in Australia. She will go through the same farce with other leaders tomorrow and her supporters and other damned fools will look shocked if we mention the absolutely unprecedented ( at least in America ) attempt to usher a candidate into office with no questions asked.

No, it's not a couple of tweedy old professors playing condescending games with the proles, it's the outfit; the wise guys taking over the country of the gleefully oppressed.

Cross posted from The Swash Zone

Can't win for losing

Fed Chairman Bernanke says that failure to pass the trillion dollar bailout will threaten the economy. He may well be right, but experience with bailouts in other economies suggests that passing it may do the same thing; at least for a number of years.

Although most Americans treat the idea that what applies elsewhere may apply here too, Finland, Sweden and Norway faced a similar crisis in the early 1990's and the 5 years of economic misery that followed may provide a lesson to us. The Nordic bank bailout didn't end the recession which continued to deepen as unemployment rose. Would a recovery have occurred without the bailout? I certainly can't say, but if the Bernanke/Paulson plan is implemented, the new president may well have to deal with the continuation of the problems caused by deficit spending and revenue reduction for his or her entire term.

If by some miracle, Barak Obama is elected, the Republicans certainly won't show any restraint in blaming the cesspit that laissez faire supply side economics dug, on him and on the Democrats. Continuing recession may even persuade voters to return to the party that caused it - and make no mistake, most Americans do blame the Republicans for this mess.

If McCain wins, they'll blame the Democrats for everything, whether the bailout is implemented or not. They can, as always, depend on the loyalty of their flock and impugn the more objective voters as Libarals and Elitists. They will get away with it.

In short, I think it's hard to see a Democratic win in November as a win for the Democrats. It's hard to see an unqualified win for Americans no matter who wins.

From lie to shining lie

Many of us saw the photos of the anti-Palin rally in Alaska recently and patriots took heart at the negative reception. The Palin Rally in The Villages, a planned community near Orlando, Florida yesterday was a different scene entirely. Estimates of the size of the turnout ran from 30,000 to 50,000.

The South is Palin Country read the banner, although the area is home mainly to retired people from the North. Just as her performance with Sean Hannity suggested, she spent 23 minutes slinging wild and wicked lies about Barak Obama because, like her enthusiastically stupid supporters, she has very little to brag about in terms of knowledge, experience, education or intelligence.

The Tax and Spend straw man, which should have been relegated by current events to some bonfire of the vanities was aired, along with the promise that more regulation is what the Republican ticket is all about. No word yet from the Reagan grave site as to subterranean rumblings.

McCain "fought for the surge" lied Palin, as if that surge and not the ethnic cleansing, slaughter and forced exile had caused the death rate to descend from cataclysmic to simply horrible. Of course although she claims to have been on the battlefield, she's never been to Iraq. She briefly visited Kuwait and lies about it. Perhaps we should forgive the gross ignorance because you can't see either country from Alaska. '

'At a decisive moment in the course of the war in Iraq, John McCain fought for the strategy, the surge, that has brought victory within sight,''

said Palin, neglecting to note that it's been in sight and around the corner since 2003 and failing to explain what the hell victory might mean in terms of long term occupation of a devastated, depopulated country that insists we leave now.

Although Obama does openly favor responsible offshore drilling, along with investment in alternative energy, Palin continued her bleat with:

''Maybe if he'd been the governor of an energy-rich state, he'd get it. Maybe if he'd been on the front lines of securing our nation's energy independence, he'd understand.''

Of course she's never been on the front lines of anything. Although she lies by insisting that Alaska, with 3.5% of domestic production provides 20%, in truth it doesn't have enough oil to make a dent in energy independence and Texas provides more oil. Canada provides the lion's share of imports. George Bush, whose qualifications regarding oil greatly exceed hers, hasn't proved to be much of a help in the energy independence department and both Palin and McCain are staunch and relentless foes of energy conservation and alternative energy.

Her reception confirms several things, among which are that there is no lie so transparent or so gross that the party faithful will not believe it with enthusiasm, nor is there a candidate so obviously unqualified by intelligence, knowledge or character that she will not be supported. A new Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll showed that 40 percent of voters who back McCain said Palin made them feel stronger about their choice. Meet it is, I set it down -- a woman can lie, and lie and lie and be Vice President.

''She's the sunrise, not the sunset,''

said Linda Cusumano, 57, of Orlando, quoted in today's Miami Herald.

"She makes me feel there's nothing we can't do.''

Indeed she's right. Linda and the other Visigoths can destroy the United States of America far better than any invading army ever could, much less a ragtag bunch of amateur suicide pilots. Linda and her ilk have, in fact, made it not worth saving. Perhaps future historians will try to fix the exact point at which the collapse became irreversible. Perhaps that moment will be this one.

Pass it forward

Does Sarah Palin's nomination and her smug arrogance have you feeling like you've been slapped in the face by the GOP? Mad as hell at this campaign to take away reproductive rights, to reduce access to birth control and counselling? Here's how you can return the feeling. Kate Goldstein at Huffington Post suggests that you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. They will send her a Thank You card.

Make sure you use this link and use the McCain headquarters address so that everyone at that viper's nest will see the card:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online."

Sleaze and slime

Do you really think that 52% of the country thinks Palin is qualified to be Vice President? Do you think 52% of those responding to a Public Broadcasting System poll would say so?

I don't either and I see the slithery hand of the Slime Lords attempting to influence polls. They've been sending millions of e-mails in an attempt to bias this poll. Don't let them get away with it. Cast your vote here. Now.

Relief is just a swallow away

Well, what a relief - the Dow is on its way back up and that means things are getting better, right?

I'm not swallowing the Kool-Aid medicine, but I am chuckling to think that the party whose backbone for so many years has been that government intervention is bad; a party who has been screaming that government is part of the problem, not part of the solution and that an offer of government help is the scariest thing in the world, is now proposing that we get out of our troubles by starting another huge agency for the bailing out of institutions that got into trouble because of deregulation. We are to escape from a world of debt, by handing the taxpayers another mountain of bad debt and yet another level of hack-packed bureaucracy.

Is this any different than getting a new credit card to charge the payments we can't afford to make on the old credit cards? A financial apocalypse won't arrive on horseback, it may well arrive by not arriving. When foreign buyers spurn our debt instruments we're in the deep stuff and repackaging bad debt isn't, in my opinion, going to make an attractive product.

If I were ever to feel even a grudging respect for the Republican geniuses who have been selling us war and indebtedness, it would come only if that party acknowledged that their foreign and economic policies have been wrong from the beginning, and not just in their implementation but in principle. Yes, I know.

A majority of Americans may believe in the reality of Guardian Angels, but I don't. I believe in getting out while the getting is good.

George is on the job.

This morning's brief "rebound" has fizzled, Morgan Stanly is in trouble, talking about selling a bigger stake to China or merging with Wachovia. US commercial paper has suffered the the biggest percentage-point decline in at least 26 years. The August leading indicators fell more than expected and world confidence in the US Dollar and US treasury securities is evaporating; for good reason. There hasn't been such a great need for economic leadership since the Great Depression and the likelihood of our idiocracy electing anyone on the basis of intelligence and education seems "iffy" at best.

George W. Bush ( doesn't he look good in a flight suit?) reassures us that he's regularly conferring with the same economic advisers who have been preaching the deregulation dogma that produced this mess. He's even cancelled more days off - after all he owns the world record.

Sarah Palin, who believes in witches and believes that all this happened because rich people pay too much taxes, assures us that we need to keep regulation from stifling growth: what growth?

Is this only the beginning; the first ripples of the storm surge to come? Perhaps we will be bailed out by the rest of the world; unwilling to have an American albatross around their necks. Perhaps not. Michael Bloomberg (what does he know about money?) thinks the next wave may be worse. I see no sign that he's wrong.

Burn witch, burn

There are enough red herrings strewn about this campaign to stink up the foulest fish packing house in Alaska or any place else. All those people pretending there is any doubt as to which candidate to support, inquiring into credentials and policy and all the rest are lying to themselves. Nothing about the Republican ticket is about the economy, Iraq, the constitution, national security, patriotism, health care, social security and particularly not about freedom.

If we had any suspicion that The McCain campaign might not be about fixing the country's problems, Sarah Palin is the clincher. No candidate and no party that has the effrontery to offer her as a candidate has any legitimate reason to claim sanity, much less honesty or serious concern for the future of the country.

Sarah Palin isn't unqualified, inexperienced, crooked, deceitful or ignorant as much as she is fucking nuts, batshit, barking at the moon loony, spinning head, green puking psychotic -- and dangerous. Sarah Palin believes in witches and is the disciple of witch hunters.

George W. Bush may have had his higher father, but Sarah listens to shamans who hunt witches. It was witch hunting Pastor Thomas Muthee to the Wasilla Assembly of God who intervened with heaven and made her governor, who went to Kenya and nearly got some poor old African folk medicine practitioner killed for being a witch and the consort of demons. Sarah practically worships the guy.

This to her is Christianity - the religion of those divinely appointed to show us all how to live and raise our children and care for the needy; those appointed to persecute science, unwed mothers, rape victims and people of the same gender who love each other - and witches.

The republicans want the support of these malicious paranoid psychotics that they will put witch hunters in the White house, and they give such a small part of a damn about our problems in a collapsing economy and hostile world because you see - God is going to attack and destroy America and save Alaska.

Not one of the doom and gloom forecasters of economic, social or any other type of collapse has ever foreseen the depravity we face now. We fret about flag pins, we whine about pledges and songs and elitists and taxes as though we had a plausible pretense to intelligence and we vote for more witch hunts. We cheer demented, foaming at the mouth, brainless idiots who can't wait for God to kill the unbelievers - and the witches.

Cartoon crap

Dear Mr. McCoy,

Using it up now is not the same as saving it for the future. Drilling it now is useless not because the results are 20 years away, but because the results won't matter. In fact the small amount of oil in the Gulf will be more valuable if we leave it there. Your analogies are really lies aren't they? Of course Obama isn't opposing drilling for oil, you just made that up because you're a liar, aren't you?

Waking up in a crazy house

As an indication of the insanity level now rising past the levies and flood gates and embankments of humanity, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of Lord Evelyn de Rothschild and more tightly connected to the ultra rich and well connected than can be achieved with epoxy, thinks Barak Obama is an elitist and so will support millionaire McCain. Either words mean nothing any more or the disease of belief has destroyed any remnants of cognitive function in America. It's impossible to have a sense of irony and not be in pain this morning. I'm sure someone in a clapped out 40 year old trailer in Belle Glade Florida agrees with her opinion and will join her in supporting John McCain's all-jive express.

I've been awaiting a terrorist attack since the McCain campaign began, the benefits of a hysterical population being pivotal to his pretended image of a tough, militaristic defender. The embassy bombing in Yemen can't of course be blamed on McCain, but George W. Bush's attacks and incursions into Pakistan certainly are sufficient provocation and McCain is the heir apparent to the the puppethood of Bush. It's obvious that fear of Islamic evil is being promoted. Is it too much to wonder if actual attacks are being provoked?

Well do you feel more entitled this morning? We all now own 79% of AIG along with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and it only cost us -- well, don't ask, it's only borrowed money anyway and debt doesn't matter. Eventually China will bail us out in turn since our continued indebtedness is to their advantage. Maybe they will be satisfied with a 79% share.

I hear from Raw Story that George had a prepared speech about the health of the economy ready to deliver to reporters about his meeting with key economic advisers like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others. He decided to slink home without comment. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, back at the McCain campaign, John says, according to Crooks and Liars, that he can offset the $315 billion price tag for 45 new nuclear power plants by cutting earmarks. Maybe that's why he took on Palin the earmark queen, because the only way to do that is not to do that and say you did. Besides, what's another 300 billion pound monkey on our backs? We can all just go out and marry millionaires like he did.

Anyway the Dow has now erased yesterday's "rebound" plus another 80 points and I think I'll go back to bed.

Fear sells, fear smells

Images of the World Trade Center wreckage may be the number one sales gimmick of our time and when one pops up in your mailbox, it's safe to guess that some appeal to paranoid patriotism is attached and that some candidate, some group, some idea is about to be presented as somehow allied to or supportive of violent, radical Islam.

I was a bit baffled when a DVD arrived with the Palm Beach Post; one of about 70 papers nationwide that were paid to include this "advertising supplement" with the September 11th edition. I'm sure many people thought it was an informative offering from their newspaper, but cynic that I am, I looked carefully for the small print conveying the information that this was a product of the Clarion Fund, a year old 501(c)(3) group dedicated to telling us to be afraid of the "urgent threat" of radical Islam. They claim to be independent, but aren't really very informative when it comes to telling us where the money to send out tens of millions of DVD's came from.

This being the information age however, the boasts and evasions of such groups have a hard time hiding. Popular Progressive shows us that, for all its bravado about National Security, the men behind the screen aren't necessarily Americans. The founder, it seems, is a South African national. Isn't it nice of a South African to be so concerned with our welfare?

Is it a big stretch to postulate that the distribution of these discs in 70 papers in swing states is an attempt to boost Republican support through fear mongering? 501(c)(3) corporations aren't allowed to endorse candidates or parties, but obvious as it may be to many people, it would be hard to prove that this wasn't an "educational" attempt, as claimed, but blatant Republican propaganda even though there is a link to the groups web site Radical Islam.org, which endorses -- you guessed it -- John McCain (my, oh my,) and warns that Obama may make things worse.

Popular wisdom is a euphemism for prejudice and it's not a coincidence that letters to editors seem to include warnings about how Obama is Black and Farrakhan is Black and Farrakhan sympathizes with Palestinians and Palestinians sympathize with terrorists and therefore Obama is a terrorist. Enough people were annoyed (including of course, Muslims) however, that the Miami Herald had to state that they accepted the money because they are against "censorship" and for "Freedom of expression" a bit of sophistry that shouldn't escape criticism.

At the very least, the public is owed an explanation and a disclaimer by the "Liberal Press" and Clarion is owed a call by the IRS. I'm not going to hold my breath until either event occurs.

Going down slow

I have had my fun, if I never get well no more.
All my health is failin on me, oh yes, I'm goin down slow.

Please, write my mama, tell her the shape I'm in.
Please, write my old mother, tell her the shape I'm in.
Tell her to pray for me, forgive me for my sin.


-Howlin' Wolf-


Conservative financier though I may be, I'm always condemned as a Liberal by those whose ignorance, superstition and general malice has been packaged and sold as Conservatism. I'm also told that I'm cheering for America's defeat because I so often seem to be pointing to evidence that our current course will soon take us on the rocks. It wouldn't be at all surprising then if I were indeed gloating over the slow motion shipwreck that is sinking our financial institutions one by one, just as I've been predicting all these years, and for the very reasons I've given. I'm not, of course, gloating over all the suffering Republican preoccupations have been causing and will likely cause much more of. It would, I fear, take a disaster of gigantic proportions to wake them from their idiocies just enough to notice that we're not in prosperity any more. It's the rest of America that needs to know that we're taking on water faster than the pumps can handle and listing ever further to starboard. It's not Palin's daughter, it's not small town values, it's not Gay marriage, it's not selling oil leases off Florida - it's the economy, stupid. It's what the crooks and the gibbering Jeezmongers have done to the economy.

The credit crisis now has Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merril Lynch following on the heels of Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae while the universe of public and private debt expands on a cosmic scale. It's the economy, stupid and if it can be fixed at all after 8 years of Bush's Animal House party weekends, it won't be fixed by people who brag that ""The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should" and tell us he would rely on Greenspan while Greenspan is calling him a bungler. It won't be fixed by some corrupt small town mayor who doesn't actually know what Freddy Mac is or who owns it. and most of all it won't be fixed by candidates cramming freaky-fringe religious rubric down our throats and lying like unholy hell about what their positions were last week.

Flag pins won't save us, nor pledges nor patriotic songs, in fact the nitwit nationalism growing like a cancer in America is a part of the problem, but it's the economy and we are stupid, or preoccupied or afraid to admit just how deluded we have become since Reagan convinced all the idiots to vote Republican. They're still championing the same nonsense that blew the hole in our hull and they're still lying about what they said and did only months ago. The Republicans are still telling us it's all right, that the termite eaten structure of our economy is sound. To me it's a bit like telling the Titanic passengers that land is only three miles away -- straight down.

No, I'm not gloating, but if I'm dreaming that the earth will open up and swallow the people who perpetrated the sell-off of our birthright and our future, I think I can be forgiven.

Consider the source

The Army Times can't easily be dismissed as part of the Liberal Elitist press, but guess who is questioning the honesty of John McCain? Flip Flop or Fib? asks staff writer Bradley Penniston today.

Obama promised, according to a McCain statement on Sept 8th, to "slow our development of Future Combat Systems."

Future Combat Systems is a program that is seen as the core of the program to modernize our military in keeping with future requirements.

“This is not a time to slow our development of Future Combat Systems"

said McCain -- the very same McCain who back in July of this year declared to the Washington Post about the Army's FCS program:

" that should be ended and the entire Pentagon budget should be scrubbed."

So what is this -- a flip flop or a fib? To answer the question, the article quotes the Lexington Institute, a Libertarian think tank, as calling McCain "deceitful."

“McCain’s interpretation of Obama’s position is typical of the way in which the Republicans have twisted Democratic views in order to undercut their opponents and at the same time obscure the past positions of the Republicans,”

Considering the source, this is amazing material. Could it be that the troops have figured out who really supports them? Could it be that John who has never been on the web doesn't realize how easy it is for people to relate his words of today with his words of yesterday? Anyway, to see such no-nonsense criticism in a publication that seems unlikely to support a Democratic candidate against a military "hero" might be seen as a glimmer of hope. If McCain loses the military vote, he may lose the election. If so the question "is there a God" may still remain, but "is there a Democracy" will be answered.

There's no tomorrow

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money,"

said the man, and the man isn't a farleftliberal weenie with McCain derangement syndrome. It's Alan Greenspan talking about the tax plans of Lyin' John McCain who likes to brag that he knows nothing about economics so that the proletarian snobs he panders to will think he's a regular guy who keeps a fridge full of Budweiser in all 9 houses - and on the jet.

Of course Joe Sixpack and Mary Mooseburger are happy to tell you he'll cut spending to offset the 3.3 trillion dollar loss in tax revenue, but there isn't that much to cut unless it's the military budget and the reality is that he will borrow, borrow, borrow like there's no tomorrow.

John who said he never once has flipped or flopped, now supports the same Bush tax cuts he once opposed and apparently no longer believes in his call to "get the best minds in America together and fix this tax code." Unless of course he's begun to believe in the wisdom of those who also know nothing - like Simple Sarah Palin. I mean what does Greenspan know? He has hardly any experience and he went to some elitist, la-de-dah school without a football team.




Cross posted from The Reaction

Derangement

They're still pitching the "derangement syndrome" defense and I have to ask myself whether in the vast, seething sea of stupid, there remains anyone deranged enough to buy it. I'm afraid of the answer.

John Fund launched into Bill Maher on Friday night, claiming that questions as to the superiority of Sarah Palin's intelligence and the comprehensiveness of her knowledge were part of a "Palin derangement syndrome." It's a gambit that should cause a two year old to kick the slats out of his playpen in laughter, but I still receive comments here and elsewhere indicating that my frustration at the corruption, incompetence and criminal intent of the Republican administration is explained by my derangement and not by the things and deeds to which I object. If you don't like crime, you must be deranged and in proportion to the degree to which it angers you. Tell it to the judge.

Indeed the mendacious Michelle Malkin began to peddle the idea a week ago: that the immediate reaction to an unknown candidate with the most questionable qualifications of any in my memory, indicates not the need to know the facts so essential to the democratic process, but derangement. Of course the degree of scrutiny one encounters when applying for a job at Dairy Queen far exceeds anything Mrs. Palin has yet seen, but it's derangement or just plain nastiness as Fund implies, to enquire into the background and qualifications of a received candidate. That's just deranged and we are simply to accept whom and what we are offered by the GOP God.

The crude speciosity is offensive enough without remembering the kind of campaigns that laugh at the man who had his arm and legs blown off for being a malingerer, a decorated veteran for being a coward, a man who tried to bring back POWS a collaborator and worse, but face it, the Republicans, for all their posing as rational and responsible, are making no attempt to be factual and have run completely wild in their irresponsible accusations. They're not even attempting to argue like conservatives. It's been a long time since they represented small government, restrained spending, balanced budgets or even conservation.

This election is about pushing failed and doomed dogmas, both religious and secular. It's about Evangelical Fundamentalism, about economic fundamentalism and it's about imperialism. It's about using the snobbery and bigotry of the ignorant to promote an oligarchy of the powerful. Regardless of the childish games and silly names, that's all it's about, and treating them as rational people of sound mind and good intentions is the most deranged thing we can possibly do. Reasoned debate only works for reasonable and intelligent people. It's no defense against bibles, bigotry and bullshit. It's time to get angry -- very angry at people who try to impugn your patriotism and shout you down like Brown shirts in some Munich beer hall. This may be our last chance.

Huston has a problem

And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

-Ezekiel 25:17-

Has anybody noticed that Hurricane Ike is headed straight for Crawford? I mean it's only a prediction, but I'm just sayin'. After all, Texas gave us Bush and Bush gave us war, recession, debt, torture and a whole lot of incompetent Bible babbling idiots to tear the country apart. Of course I could be wrong, but it makes more sense than blaming Katrina on tolerance and I'm just sayin'.

The secret Cindy

The smokescreen of "family values" surrounding the distasteful activities of our Republican candidates isn't all that hard to penetrate. Perhaps that's why they have to distract us with constant spurious and concocted attacks on their competitors. Take Cindy McCain's smug little off-center quip that followed Michelle Obama's statement about being really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life: "I don't know about you, if you heard those words earlier, I am very proud of my country." I'm still hearing comments unfavorable to Obama resulting from that, but I'm hearing no comments at all about how proud Cindy founded a charity and used it to steal drugs to feed her habit. Until today I heard nothing about how she payed a doctor to make out prescriptions for her own use in the names of charity employees and summarily fired one Tom Gosinski when he objected to being used as an accessory.

Ariel Levy's New Yorker article on Cindy relates how the McCains retaliated against Gosinski when he rightly filed a wrongful termination of employment suit. The doctor of course lost his license, Gosinski lost his job, while McCain cooly avoided any unpleasant side effects from her multiple felonies and any damage to her flawless makeup. It's good to be rich and white, ask Rush Limbaugh who did much the same thing.

Cindy McCain has been described as being very concerned with secrecy. Perhaps we can begin to understand why when we discover that Cindy, who is fond of calling herself an only child, has two half sisters. Being an only child serves to diminish discussion of why Cindy inherited her father's fortune while her father's other daughter got ten thousand dollars -- and of course it hints at why Cindy avoids her sister or any discussion of possible unfairness resulting from some inexplicable family value. It doesn't explain how she could smoothly eulogize her father's generosity at his funeral and claim to be an only child while her disinherited sister sat there sobbing. However much she values family, one is tempted to think that she values something else far, far more.

Those Americans sober enough to remember John's first run for the presidency remember how the family values party smeared him with allegations of having an illegitimate daughter by a black woman. Of course the daughter in question was an orphan from Pakistan whom Cindy brought home from a trip claiming Mother Theresa asked her to. It would have been a moving story if Mother Theresa had actually been at that orphanage.

Cindy's a Republican. As a Republican, you say what sounds good and you do what you do in secret and you scream at the "biased" press when you trip on the facts. As a newly minted Republican saint, she has enough hounds at her side to drown out any protest with their barking.

It's the lies, dummy

It keeps rolling in. The latest was titled I never thought of that and perhaps that was an inadvertently apt title. The central theme, or gravamen of the argument, if you prefer, was that Obama has had only143 days of government experience and is therefore not qualified to be President. Now for my part, I think experience is vastly overrated, particularly when intelligence, education and integrity are balanced against it. After all Nixon was superbly qualified in the experience department and Goerge Bush certainly was the governor of a largish state.

But, of course the recurrent 143 day motif was designed to slip by unnoticed -- that is to say it was designed to be read by people who still haven't decided whether the Harvard review editor, University of Chicago Law instructor with two terms in the Illinois senate and about 3 1/2 years experience in the US senate, is more presidential than the proven liar, failed pilot and class dummy who got into school with political connections and never says the same thing twice. Such people are more likely to find only 143 days in 11 1/2 years or at least to be afraid to ask.

Of course as sheer idiocy it pales in comparison with another one by some "retired Marine" screaming about how Clinton got us into a war in Somalia and was too busy with Monica to retaliate against terrorists. Do I really have to explore this one?

Yes, these things are of dubious origin, but the speechwriters who created Sarah Palin's acceptance speech, entered it onto the teleprompter and coached her in it's delivery aren't any more honest, and the millions who thought it was wonderful aren't any more intelligent than those who pass along these e-mails.

"this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state senate"

slipped past the lipstick as smoothly as the clear water of an Alaskan stream over polished stones. It's a lie of course.

""Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights"

That's far more than hyperbole, far more than a lie, actually. Not to dwell too much on the fact that she also thinks God is plotting to destroy all life but that which subscribes to her religious belief, but there is a gulf of unsurpassed size between ignoring constitutional rights and civil liberties even for citizens, a gap as wide as the space between galaxies between years of torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial in secret prisons and the kidnapping of people because of rumors or similarity of name and "worry about reading them their rights."

Would this be an administration we could trust to be more honest and open than the Bush/Cheney lunigarchy? They're not off to a good start if they would like us to believe it. Smearing one's opponent with this kind of disregard to moral scruple and common decency makes the crapulous claims to piety and "values" reek all the more. I think we have to conclude that this is simply a would-be administration with no qualms about saying and doing whatever it needed to do to promote the Christian/industrial domination or our waning republic.

McCain's goals are nebulous. Palin's are obvious: no birth control, no abortion, no books sympathetic to homosexuals, no sex education, no paleontology, no geology (except for petroleum exploration) no evolution, no heresy, no social services, no subsidised medical care, no equality for people who don't fit in to her religious utopia. Her personal and official record of feeding at the public trough while posing as a cost-cutter is there for all of us to see.

Is it too much of an extrapolation to see in her cynicism about civil rights an affinity for domestic spying and torture, or contempt for freedom of speech, assembly and religion? It doesn't matter. She has so little qualification in terms of common decency, intelligence or even sanity anyway. In that respect she's a mirror for the Republicans.

9/11

How are you observing 9/11, asks CNN.com. I guess the assumption that it's still a day of wailing, sobbing, self pity and recreational anger is still with us.

Perhaps like 12/7 or an endless host of infamous dates, 9/11/01 will continue to live in infamy amongst a dwindling number of old men for a while, but eventually become one with the date on which the battleship Maine sank (2/15) and itself sink into irrelevance to anyone but historians. 4/19, the date on which a right-wing Christian terrorist blew up the Murrah Federal building, has long disappeared from the list of American passion plays.

We're no longer, for the most part, bombarded with daily warnings of mysterious Internet "chatter" and mysterious unattributed warnings or "terror," and fear of invasion by bearded, dark skinned maniacs isn't rampant in the streets of small town America.

To me it's a day. It's a Thursday which means my wife volunteers at the Red Cross and I pay bills, take out the garbage and do chores. Yes, I will be thankful nothing fell on my son and I do remember an old acquaintance who didn't make it out alive, but I'm not going to follow the many e-mail suggestions to put flags on my car, or have moments of silence or forward messages to everyone I know. I'm not going to help inflame more anger or self-pity or any of those things George Bush used to get us to support a bogus war during the first day of which more innocents were killed than died in New York.

I'd rather remember that Osama bin Laden is still unaccounted for, that "the troops" we're supposed to support are being let down by the government who sent them overseas under false pretenses, false assumptions, without proper reinforcements, with insufficient planning and resources. I'd rather remember, if I must remember something today, that this country seems poised to refuse to learn a simple lesson and put people of the same mindset and even less integrity into office to replace him.

I have no way of knowing whether my grandchildren will still be "observing" 9/11 when they are my age, or even if they will have any idea of what happened subsequently. Their ideas of history may very well be wildly different from my ideas about current events. A lot of that depends on what happens on 10/4 of this year. Will it signal a return to sanity, to the basic principles of secular, liberal democracy, or will I be observing it in the coming years from the Windward Islands?

Bridge of lies

But wait -- what light through yonder window breaks?

My gloom at the impending election of another dynamic duo of dimwitted and larcenous liars has brightened a little bit. Michael Stickings at The Reaction tells us that the Sarah Palin "thanks but no thanks" trope the Republican ringmasters have been trooping about may have had a hole punched in it. The Mainstream Media has begun to sober up a bit and admit that it's a lie. Now before you put your hands over your ears and start babbling "liberaliberaliberal" I'm talking about Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Let's hope the collapse of that hot air balloon brings the campaign back down to ground level where we can begin to see and smell the lies. There are a lot of them.

Of course much of the momentum of the Bullshit express depends on the fable of the inherent soundness of our crumbling and increasingly corrupt financial institutions and the health of our economy.

" When the history is written on the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it will go down in the annals of corporate scandals as one of the greatest accounting scams committed in broad daylight"

says Jonathan Weil, writing for Bloomberg.com Perhaps, but then the scams that started the Iraq war will ultimately be far more costly. The scam called Supply Side Economics may prove disastrous once again. It remains to be seen whether or not our slide into penury and depression will continue; whether it can be brought back to health with competent management, but of course we're still trusting the people that sold us that scam; expecting more Supply Side economics and more fraudulent accounting to cure the illness it caused. The scam that is the McCain campaign offers nothing else but more of the same and more lies about the opponent's ideas.

The scam that is the McCain campaign: the pandering to small town, small-minded bigotry that is the Palin promise; in saner times and saner countries, such revelations of dishonesty and incompetence would topple a government. Unfortunately we're in 21st century America, still fighting against the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, still hunting witches and still believing in believing. Odds are that we will continue to elect anyone who appeals to class snobbery, religious bigotry and nationalism -- but maybe -- just maybe, there's a glimmer of hope.

We Buy Old Lies

For a former news junkie, it's not easy to give up TV news, but for someone with high blood pressure, I'm afraid it's mandatory. It's not that I'm missing anything; the little cliques of talking heads aren't doing anything but pretending the propaganda is something that needs to be presented with respect to the liars who produce it. There's very little coverage of anything else. There may well be laws against repackaging canned cat food as Fillet Mignon, but there's no law, for instance, against presenting McCain's tax proposals as though they really were lowering taxes more than Obama's. There's no law forcing the media to do the math and present it to us and if they do, they'll probably be dismissed as "Liberal."

Still, you can't avoid that GOP stench unless you do as I now do: record it all and skip through the commercials. Still, when you're a hurricane target and you're "in the cone" (all Floridians know what that means) you watch the weather reports and you endure the crudely fashioned ads insisting that St John and Sarah Magdalene are "mavericks" and reformers while the Democrats won't balance the budget as Republicans do and will get us into huge debt as Republicans never do. I assume the media aren't dissecting those claims either.

They also aren't telling you how the Maverick Reformer Palin billed the State for attending basketball games and dogsled races. There have been bills of $45,000 picked up by the state so that her daughter and husband could attend a Thanksgiving game and her husband has run up bills of a similar amount. So much for being a cost cutter in a state that claims not to be able to afford to help unwed teenage mothers and of course she really didn't sell the state plane for a profit on eBay like Smilin' Jack told us. No wonder she has to be kept in a bunker until the shredding is done.

But what's the point? Is the country even worth saving from itself? I'm already preparing to leave and who would want to come back to a hellhole full of religious doodlebugs where the Statue of Liberty holds a banner saying: We Buy Old Lies.

Debt is to Republicans as blood is to vampires

The government emergency takeover of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac will place trillions of dollars of risk on the shoulders of American taxpayers. How does this fit with the "hands off -- the market will take care of itself" twaddle we've heard from Republican pulpits since Herbert Hoover?

It doesn't, but it fits nicely with the Republican practice of saying one thing and doing another and having their constituents not notice. It certainly would have brought down fire and brimstone from Olympus if the Democrats had hinted at such "interference." Americans don't care; it's easier not to have to think that such massive failure could have resulted from Republican policies in the first place, and it's probably only God's wrath for picking on Larry Craig and Mark Foley and tolerating non-Republican homosexuals.

It's good though that Poor Little Sarah won't have to tell us her feelings about it and be exposed to any less than deferential treatment though. She won't have to answer questions about why she left Wasilla deeply in debt or whether she knows Freddy Mac from a Big Mac. We know she will feel our pain when we're out on the street, even though she won't be able to find the funds to build poorhouses and shelters because that would be like Socialism. Meanwhile we get raped at the gas station while Alaskans get a subsidy from the oil companies. I'm sure she'll she'll be able to explain the Alaska First idea as soon as she finds a deferential reporter.

McCain however, even though he brags about not understanding economics, assures us that everything is just fine and all these troubles will go away as soon as trickle down economics starts to work and the ultra rich will be able to hire you to work in their gardens and plantations after we chase out the Mexicans.

Of course your personal share of the 5 trillion, 400 billion isn't that much, but it comes on top of the monstrous war debt and John has no plan or desire to pay it down - it's cheaper and more effective to pretend it's all about those big spending Democrats.

I almost sound like I'm gloating, don't I? Perhaps I am. Perhaps the only way the good gullible citizens of Americaundergod will ever notice what's being done to them is when they're on the bread line and it's starting to get cold out. Even then they'll have the consolation of knowing that Mythology has replaced science in the schools and any 14 year old who gets knocked up by Uncle Fester won't be able to have an abortion. God will be so happy. I'll so be living in the Caribbean and laughing.

The candidate in the Iron Mask

Poor Little Sarah's handlers pretend that the only interest the Evil Press has in her is digging up more dirt about how well her "sex education begins at home" program worked. Can you smell the Red Herring? There are some signs that we may be able to view the candidate some time soon, but the party faithful aren't being specific. I'm sure she'll be getting a cram course and will be pulling all-nighters until later in the week so that when reporters ask her her opinion about the bailout of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae, she can do a convincing job of pretending she knows what those entities are.

Meanwhile, campaign manager Rick Davis told us last night that what is normally afforded the press without delay will be forthcoming

"when we think it's time and when she feels comfortable doing it."

One hopes that when that 3:00 AM call comes, she will think it's time and will feel comfortable doing it.

" We run our campaign, not the news media. And we'll do things on our timetable"

said Davis. It's nice to know the Imperial Spirit is still alive amongst the Party of the People. I mean, the nerve of America, asking to know something about who the Master Party tells them God's choice is! She's against abortion - that's all the GOP is about and all you need to know.

My dinner with Fox

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain

-Hamlet-


I had dinner with some boating friends Thursday evening. All retired engineers with advanced degrees who have had important careers. It's probably safe to guess that they are intelligent. All couldn't resist telling me how terrible it was the way the media were treating Poor Little Sarah and wasn't it unforgivable that the Liberals were sending planeloads of people to Alaska to dig up "dirt" on Poor Little Sarah. Wasn't the courage and poise of Poor Little Sarah, just remarkable? Didn't she tell the Liberals off?

I managed to mumble something about the dozen papers I read every day gushing nearly as much as the stadium full of drunken delegates did and that the only thing she really told was a pack of lies. Isn't a convincing liar more dangerous than a bumbler? I don't know how much more I can take. Of course to cite any source, verifiable or otherwise other than Fox is to provoke the hands over the ears Liberaliberaliberal chant. It reminds me very much of the films I used to watch as a psychology student before I decided dealing with the insane wasn't for me.

Of Course, FactCheck.org and AP have shown in detail that virtually every word from this campaign has been a lie, whether it's been to praise their own wonderfulness or to decry the perfidy of the Democrats. FactCheck.org has a summary of what John has been slinging, and I earlier referenced an AP summary of Poor Little Sarah's flim-flam, but at this point perhaps there's no point in bothering. If it's coming from the Republicans, it's a lie and besides, all the proof in the world will not affect the programming of the possessed and the demented voters. It might as well be true anyway.

It's not so much the whoppers I worry about, it's the little things, the little embellishments and half truths that cement the whole into one huge concrete crock. Take McCain's swooning praise for the governor who put the executive jet up for sale on eBay and made a profit. Yes, that's the same Poor Little Sarah who left Wasilla with a $3000 per capita debt when she slithered into the governorship. But you have to admit it sounds great even though it isn't true. It failed to sell on eBay and was sold through a broker at a loss.

There is a difference between a profit and loss. A president should know what the difference is.

Of course there's a difference between the truth and "truthiness" as Colbert would call the plausible but untrue little statements. The would-be president probably knows it and apparently doesn't care.

Watch that smile!

From the mouths of babes

I got a list of Sarah Palin "quotes" in e-mail today and spent a lot of time looking for some source, because it would make for some great laughs at the expense of Johnnie's Little Angel. At this point however, I'm positive that it's another hoax and while it would be gratifying to see the Republicans suffer from the same tactics they've been using on the Democrats, I do have a conscience. I have to admit I fell for some falsified palin images and pulled them when I found out.

The quotes were supposed to come from the Alaska Daily News. They didn't, but others, namely Editor & Publisher turned up some interesting insights in Alaskan newspaper archives. The trade publication for -- you guessed it -- editors and publishers has a list of items from Alaska about the that Palin girl, some of which seem to show a trend of personal embellishment. Apparently she exaggerated her work experience when she ran for mayor of Wasilla and the local papers weren't amused. There was talk of recalling her when it was found that the lodge she claimed to have acquired her "management experience" in had no license and had payed no taxes and may never have had any customers or employees. [Frontiersman, 1/22/97, 2/5/97]

Wasilla hasn't always been so proud of her as she lets on that they were. A Frontiersman editorial wrote,

"Wasilla residents have been subjected to attempts to unlawfully appoint council members, statements that have been shown to be patently untrue, unrepentant backpedaling, and incessant whining that her only enemies are the press and a few disgruntled supporters of former Mayor John Stein."

[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]

"Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth."

[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]

There is more at Editor & Publisher, of course Perhaps you'll enjoy the part about using state property to conduct her campaign. The GOP gets very irate about Democrats doing that.

Of course none of this seems very large when compared to the tuned up, repainted 2008 model Palinmobile, complete with plastic wing and funny tires. Presenting herself as having opposed federal pork when she campaigned on support for it and solicited it in Washington, and when Alaska is the largest per capita recipient of Federal largesse is a bigger evasion. Neglecting to mention that her inauguration party was sponsored by BP is sleazier.

None of it is quite as funny however, as her furniture salesman brother describing himself as an "office environment consultant" when trying to get a date.

But as we all know, facts don't matter and the contest isn't about reality. As long as we have the Republican Machine and the Corporate media to PUMP UP THE BULLSHIT - PUMP UP THE BULLSHIT, we'll keep dancing to their tune.

Poor little Palin

The Republicans have so far been successful with several of their propaganda gambits. and it seems to show in the polls. The foremost of these relies on the decades-old myth of the Liberal Press. Although the press has all but ignored Palin's "misstatements" and has continued to put her inexperience in good light and has stayed away from discussing her extremist religious views, any suggestion that the "liberal press" is picking on her finds instant acceptance. I saw it myself during a luncheon yesterday; hearing people complaining about how dad it was that "people" were harping on her daughter's plight - an idea they got all gift-wrapped in red paper from the media, of course.

There's a germ of truth there, but it had largely blown over already, and to say Sarah Palin is a victim of malicious press seems as woefully far from the truth as her assertion that the Pledge of Allegiance in it's 1954 edition was "good enough for the Founding Fathers." None the less, they have managed to draw attention away from the legitimate and serious concerns by stressing a non-issue about her daughter and dressing her up as a victim. It works.

The results of a Rasmussen poll were released today, showing that half of US voters "think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage." Of those, 24% say it will influence them to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. We have to remember that half the country has an IQ in the two digit range and the few that actually do read respectable news sources don't remember what they read by the following day, if they had the reading comprehension to understand it in the first place. They will remember what Wolf and Sean and all the other twinkle-toed cheerleaders tell them they remember.

Obama, on the other hand, has suffered from the other edge of that rusty sword. By inventing the "Fact" that his supporters think he's a victim of racism, his status as a candidate who can transcend racialist nonsense is diminished.

I'm sure however, that we can expect the press and the media whores in general to keep telling us what a good mother she is, how she represents what's good in America, how charismatic and fresh and exciting she is as a "game changing" choice and a bold move by the wise Saint John McCain -- even while we believe they aren't saying it. Rasmussen itself mentioned "her highly successful debut" last night and how people were likely to agree about her superior experience.

"Obviously un-intimidated by either the savage onslaught to which the left-leaning media had subjected her, or the incredible challenge she faced — and oozing with confidence — she strode defiantly to the podium and proved she was everything and even more than John McCain told us."

says Michael Reagan, who tells us she is the reincarnation of his father. What savage assault? Why, the one they set up, stuffed with straw so they could make the dogs bark and the idiots howl. It works.

How can there be any hope for sanity, much less for democracy when we're in a world where every fact immediately generates an equal and opposite anti-fact which usually is more fun to believe?

If it's not all over, it's all over.

I'm keeping a plastic bucket under my coffee table. One too many McCain ads right after dinner is sure to bring it all up before long. Have you seen the one that was running last night: the one where they're saying that electing Obama will bring wasteful spending and soaring debt? If that doesn't make you hurl, you've got the stomach to work on a Bering Sea crab boat.

Of course you don't need an investigative reporter to remind you that bloated bureaucracy, record debt, and a level of spending that surpasseth all understanding have been the hallmarks of the last three Republican presidents; each outdoing the previous one. It's the one that inexplicably flashes a picture of Chick Schumer looking like Fagan the Jew as it tells you how the Democrats will borrow. No one lies like a Republican. No one believes like a Republican

Of course these days you need to watch comedy shows if you're looking for anyone to check the facts, compare the contradictory claims or do any investigative reporting at all, so it's a bit of a surprise to see AP doing even this mild form of keeping it real. Stretching the truth may be an understatement the BBC would be proud of. Damned lies is the epithet that occurs to this American.

All in all there were more whoppers told last night than in Burger King's fondest dreams. Will exposing the lies change any Republicans minds? Perhaps it's better to ask how many Republicans have such things, but my opinion is that there won't be enough of them to matter. The the incessant chant of Liberaliberaliberalibral, throbbing like drums in the jungle night will continue and the faithful will continue to dance around the fire

Some Republicans however are more pessimistic. Peggy Noonan it seems, was overheard telling Mike Murphy that "it's all over." I hope she's right, because if it's isn't all over, it's all over.

The Alaskan Candidate

The Wasilla Assembly of God, the church in which Sarah Palin grew up and where she claims to have been "saved" and where she has given many a sermon herself, has taken down their web site that formerly carried video of her rather hair-raising speeches, but you can still still see video of her praying for dollars (30 billion of them actually) at the Huffington Post.

That church, very proud of their Stepford Governor and the intense programming that produced her is known for certain opinions and for portraying Jesus as being "in war mode" left us with a page admonishing us that God wants obedience to political leaders because God selected them all.

This afternoon, some talking head told me she represents America. I wonder if any statements ever made were more contradictory to the ideas behind our founding.

There's something quite chilling about listening to some perky little voice speaking utter madness as though she were discussing sports scores, but that's Sarah Palin. That's what she does and what she's about. It's what her church trained her to accept gleefully and without question or introspection or scruple.

If you want to see how well she fits with traditional American values, Simply compare Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, or any of those whose erudition and philosophy created this country through disobedience to authority and the creation of a state where authority comes from down here, not up there; compare it to what you'll read on the Wasilla Assembly of God site: As believers, we are reminded in 2 Peter 2.13 that we are to submit to those in authority.

We are here as Americans because we didn't, We created this country by denying precisely what these cheerful subversives advocate - the divine right of rulers. Sarah is so profoundly ignorant of American history that she thinks George Washington was responsible for the Pledge of Allegiance and she's so profoundly opposed to the ideas that created this country that as her pastor brags, she puts Jesus first: before America, before you and me and our families; before peace, prosperity, justice, compassion and stewardship of nature. She puts her twisted views of Jesus before her governorship and would certainly put it before her duties as the president of a free and secular republic.

John Kennedy pledged to put America before his beliefs. Palin will not. All presidents must pledge to uphold and protect the constitution, she belonged to a party that advocates "biblical law" instead.

What more do you need to hear? Want to talk about flag pins or singing the anthem and "terrorist fist bumps? Want to chant liberaliberaliberal with you hands over your ears untill it all goes away?

Thy will be done

Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in Vain.

"I think God's will has to be done"

said Sarah Palin. Was this in reference to taking care of the helpless? She certainly wasn't advocating for helping unwed teenage mothers or any such liberalmarxistfarleftcommie stuff. She's talking about the Gas God. His name is greed, his name is selfish, his name is vanity itself.

"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,"

she said to her pentecostal church.

No matter what the media pretends to advocate, Sarah Palin's religious views are not off limits because Sarah Palin's religious views are the reason for her being raised up to the big time arena of religious crusades the American political theater is played in. She's McCain's sellout to the religious crazies, the insurgents, the theocrats and Dominionists who think freedom itself is an insult to God.

Not only Does the will of Sarah's God include sending teen mothers out in the cold with their infants so that the sinners will be punished along with the innocent, his will includes the uprooting of our constitution to be replaced with whatever dogma her church believes in at the moment. Sarah's God really wants the energy companies to have a pipeline and Sarah's God will have his will done in Iraq:

"a task that is from God."

Naturally Sarah's God hates birth control and especially teaching about it to those most vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy - as with most Republican tyrants, her God would rather have an infant suffer the consequences of having an indigent mother and a child father because that creates the kind of squalor and hopelessness that RepubliGod thrives in. Sarah, speaking for God of course, would rather have a woman die screaming than to abort a foetus the size of a pinhead or even a fertilized egg.

We quibble about her experience. We pretend she's intelligent and honest and moral. We pretend the press which never asks embarrassing questions or investigates any claim is giving her a hard time - because they're liberal.

I no longer ask how insane things have to get before anybody notices. I no longer ask how a democracy gives its consent to tyranny. I know the answer, we're living the answer.

Cross posted from The Reaction

Lay off my kid -- screw everyone else's

The Palins are quite happy to tell you how they will provide support for their unwed teenage daughter and her soon to be pushed into marriage husband. Gee, that's big of them, but too bad these elitist bastards want to make it as hard as possible for underage parents not possessed of well to do and politically connected families to have the same benefit.

I read in the Washington Post that Governor Sarah vetoed a line item in an Alaska spending bill last April that would have helped provide temporary shelter for teen age mothers with no place to go. Thanks for the "cost cutting" Governor! You're happy to take federal earmarks for useless projects, but children in need can just die and decrease the "sinning" population. No wonder the Republicans love you.

Of course McCain opposes spending a dime on sex education or on preventing teen pregnancies and that fits' with silly Sarah's desire to substitute Biblical Law for our Constitution. I can only wonder whether that includes blowing up sinful cities, letting loose plagues, floods and imposing other disasters on the sinful multitudes just to keep them in place until Jesus comes back to kill most of us.

The media should lay off people's children, they say - not that the Republicans have ever considered private life to be anything but fodder for politicians and biblical blowhards. So I don't particularly feel like leaving her private life alone and that goes for members of her party who would deprive all of us of any kind of privacy or personal choice. If she and her theocratic insurgents in the Constitution Party and the Republican Party want to use our young people as sacrifices in their crusade -- making sure they are barefoot, ignorant and pregnant -- everything is fair game.

This is how it ends

As disturbing as is Mrs. Palin's former membership in The Alaska Independence Party may be, an explanation of who that party really is is far more alarming. It's basically the Constitution Party in a Parka. The goal of the Constitution Party, according to Ezra Klein is

"to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations."

That is of course complete double-talk and couldn't be flown past a competent legal historian without being swatted down like a pregnant mosquito, but it certainly fits with her views of Christian Reconstructionism, an idea I consider to be more treasonous than her support of Alaska going the way of the Confederate States of America. The AIP asserts that Alaska is not a legitimate part of the Union. Indeed, it's obvious to everyone but her fatuous supporters that her appearance with a "country First" banner clashes violently with the AIP's motto: Alaska First -- Alaska Always.

McCain's knee jerk reaction has been to deny her membership, but it would be hard to explain her having appeared at their State Convention this year by video and harder yet to discount the affirmation by the party itself. Voter records show her husband was a member as well.

The CP is a Theocratic movement, having the clearly stated objective of replacing our constitution with some vaguely defined word-wooze about Biblical authority. The AIP in addition is opposed to any environmental regulation whatsoever. It's opposed to abortions in the case of rape or murder or danger to the life of the mother. It's opposed to stem cell research.

Of course, whether or not McCain was aware of or cared about her affiliations with organizations committed to the destruction of the United States as we have known it, he was aware of her iron clad and intransigent commitment to stamping our Roe V. Wade and to something sufficiently close to Dominionism as to be indistinguishable. She's a creationist. There is evidence that she favors censorship of literature not compatible with her religious beliefs.

Did the Council for National Policy tell McCain all this when they forced this Manchurian Candidate on him, or did they simply insist that he accept her without question in return for the support of the Theocratic Right. I doubt we will ever know, but I do know that far more than being a question of whether to continue on with Failed economic policies, continually weakened civil rights, growing poverty, everlasting military conflict and shrinking liberty, this election is about the short term survival of The United States of America as a free, democratic, constitutional Republic.

The McCain ticket may be the most dangerous internal enemy this country has had, at least since the Civil war. If Americans gleefully accept this grotesque slate of candidates, it certainly deserves to descend into the third world, totalitarian morass it will inevitably experience. This is how freedom ends, not with a bang but a brass band and the cheers of the ignorant.

Cross posted from The Reaction

Valley girl

I continue to receive e-mails chastising me for not recognizing the obvious qualifications of Sarah Heath Palin to lead our country through difficult times: war, economic crises, natural disasters. True, I can see her at a G8 meeting asking "like what do you guys actually do?" I can see her negotiating with Putin, with North Korea over nuclear proliferation.

Here's Sarah in an unguarded moment - now ask yourself if she's really so much more brilliant than Obama, more informed, more inspirational, more educated, more commanding of respect and more of a charismatic leader who can inspire us to do the difficult out of love of country.

It's time for some more honesty and far less Republican hype.

First things first

So, you continue to ask yourself why, in a nation of 300 million people, Sarah Palin is the most qualified to take over the office of President should John McCain die in office? If you don't, read no further.

The first thing to note is that "the maverick" didn't make the choice, it was made by a little known, ultra right religious group known as the Council for National Policy and Sarah Palin was handed to McCain on a platter, ready to be their mole, their representative, their tool. Does this call into question the man's loyalties, confidence in his own judgment, independence? Doesn't this illuminate his real concerns, his real agenda? If she was an ideal candidate, it is because she's too ditzy, too inexperienced, too ignorant to make waves: grateful enough for the honor that she won't do anything but serve her purpose which is to oppose abortion, oppose equal rights for people the Council doesn't like and to be the cheerleader for the Christianization of the United States Government.

According to The Nation, it was to this group that W. pledged to appoint only anti-abortion judges in 2000. In 2004, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group that ""The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." In 2008, John McCain sold his soul to the same group. In return for his abandoning a leadership position; for his capitulation to the group that has been behind the selling out of America, John McCain will reconcile with the group sworn to overturn the US constitution by foisting a totalally and absurdly underqualified Sarah Palin. No wonder he only saw her twice: his opinion means nothing when it comes to insuring our country's future. He didn't need to interview her, he only needed to follow orders.

A vote for John McCain is a vote for a secret club of Christian supremicists meeting secretly out of sight of reporters and unbeknownst to the general public and with the goal of making this a country governed by their religious convictions - not yours or mine or by the secular constitution that guarantees our religious freedom. Like George W. Bush, McCain is only The Decider in as far as he decides what other people tell him to decide. A man prepared to take an oath to preserve and protect the constitution, yet who has bargained to undermine it in return for political support is in my estimation flirting with treason. If you support this man, you are an enemy of America, an enemy of freedom. You're a dupe, a patsy, a chump and a fool being led around by the promise that your religion will have a special place above that of others. You don't belong here.