Bring in the McClowns

It seems I write the same things over and over again because the Republican pattern repeats indefinitely.  It's OK when we do it or say it or demand it, it's anti-American, tyrannical, too little, too late, too much, too soon when they do it. Even if Republicans invented it or pioneered it or used it until yesterday it's different when "they" do it.

How long ago was it that John McCain and  Fox News and the rest of the merry bunch made a circus act with all three rings full of how Obama is a "tyrant" for appointing all those Czars?  "More Czars than the Romanovs," tweets the funny man.  So where's the big red nose and oversize pants when John McCain tells us that hapless weakling Obama isn't appointing the Czars we need?  That's right, John McCain has joined Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), sponsor of H.R. 3226 (111th): Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009  in condemning the administration for this egregious failure, invoking the "if it's bad, it's Obama" clause in the Party rules. 2009 is when George W. Bush left office -- just coincidentally -- and of course George had 33 of them, but let's keep that quiet.


Of course there's no public office with the title Czar on the door as far as I know. It's a media epithet that began in the 1940s and of course there's nothing unconstitutional about the President appointing "other public ministers" no matter how much they chuckle and chortle and lie in the Fox newsroom.
But quoting history and public record never seems to have much effect on the magic thinkers and pea-brained partisans of any stripe.  The public's eyes are always on the jugglers and clowns and what they're doing now, not what they did ten seconds ago.

"No one knows who's in charge," says McCain, his face revealing nothing of how his party, with the help of the NRA has blocked the nomination of a Surgeon General, an office designed to take control and coordinate the process of informing the country of what's being done.  Yes, the NRA, because the Surgeon General might just get involved in gun policy.  Can't have that. Better a plague than risk a gun grabber liberal doctor commie near our weapons. Better this country perish from the earth.

The world is the Battlefield

I find it remarkable that the proposed provision of the Defense Authorization act enabling a President to detain anyone suspected of belonging to a terrorist organization indefinitely and without trial, can be presented as one of those bits of "evidence" that Barack Obama is trashing the constitution. Obama's Indefinite Detention Powers is the title of more than one article. Remarkable indeed since he's threatening to veto the abomination if it passes.

I do recognize that since the Authorization for Use of Military forces (AUMF) that Congress approved after the September 11 terrorist attacks was used to bolster somewhat unfair arguments that Bush was trashing the revered document, an equal and more ridiculous counter charge has to be leveled against his Democratic successor. That is a principle we had beat into our consciousness when Bill Clinton had to face charges, some contrived and some with marginal merit that were so like unto those Nixon was glaringly guilty of.

But I digress. I'm not surprised to hear such things slithering in the murky Senatorial cistern, but I'm surprised at the bipartisan support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) bill and the astonishing lack of debate over this shocking redaction of the Bill of Rights. I was however surprised and pleased to hear Rand Paul declare opposition is heatedly as I would do, given the chance.

I was nauseated and enraged to hear our former Presidential contender, John McCain rail about how dangerous "these people" were without regard to how we determine fairly whether or not the accusations are true. I have been raised to think that justice demanded a fair trial and no decent civilization has failed to provide a process to determine the truth of an accusation, sometimes made under duress or torture or out of jealousy or greed or worse. A less stuffy writer might simply ask: how the hell do we know the charges are true without a trial?

Senator McCain doesn't seem to care, although with his history, he might just give the opposite position tomorrow and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seems proud of his shiny new black boots, claiming that now we can jail any American citizen because "it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland." Did he mean to say Vaterland?

"The FBI publishes characteristics of people you should report as possible terrorists. The list includes the possession of “Meals Ready to Eat,” weatherproofed ammunition, and high-capacity magazines; missing fingers; brightly colored stains on clothing; paying for products in cash; and changes in hair color. I fear that such suspicions might one day be used to imprison a U.S. citizen indefinitely without trial. Just this year, the vice president referred to the Tea Party as a bunch of terrorists. So, I think we should be cautious in granting the power to detain without trial."

writes Senator Paul in the National Review.

Yes, I think our legislators have earned their 8% approval rating and can only wonder why it isn't lower. John McCain, you're a goddamn terrorist yourself, attempting to make Americans afraid for political purposes. Rand Paul: you may be far right, but you're right none the less.

Father's Day

Things change, everyone gets older. You start to wonder how many more father's days will pass while you still have a father to spend it with. It's good then, to see how some things never change; things like the bitter, miserable, vicious lies that spew from the GOP. Take the current Elmer Fudd of the Party, John McCain, the tortured war hero who didn't have the courage to stand up to the party's support of torture. Take John, who is making this Father's Day so much happier by blaming the Arizona wildfires on illegal immigrants rather than on the drought.

But he has substantial evidence, which he will, no doubt, reveal eventually, or not reveal or simply forget about after the wildfire of hate has got beyond control. Remember when Mexicans were bringing leprosy across the border? Many will long remember Lou Dobbs' accusations but not the lack of evidence and perhaps the wildfire libel will stick long after McCain's slide into dementia becomes all too obvious.

Well thanks John, for all you do and for reminding us of Republican fathers long gone like Joe McCarthy with their vaporous claims of "evidence" and I'm sure your legacy will stink long after you're gone.

The Odd Couple

No, not Felix and Oscar, but Joe and John: Lieberman and McCain. Putative Democrat and the Republican quondam candidate. Often appearing to be on the same side, their opinions drive us to confusion and not to any conclusion.

The right wing outrage machine has been like a chorus of vuvuzelas, blaring accusations that the classified rules of engagement instituted by General McChrystal on his own initiative were in fact forced on him by president Obama and his opposition, despite his sworn public testimony to the contrary, was the reason he was relieved of command. I suspect Joe Lieberman agrees, although I know he knows better.

The policy of trying to reduce the heavy civilian casualties so as to give the US less of the appearance of an invading horde bent on its own objectives and with no concern for innocent life or limb, is misguided says Lieberman; as though to say we shouldn't be concerned to appear as liberators with the best interests of Afghanistan at heart. We shouldn't care that people whose children we've cavalierly blown to hell aren't going to try to make our efforts any easier and so he's advising General Petraeus to shoot first and ask questions later. It's hurting our morale, says he as though 9 years of getting nowhere can be blamed on being the kind of nation we're supposed to be and more importantly as though it were president Obama's fault for worrying too much about worthless Muslim lives.

Perhaps John McCain's statement that even another ten years of war may not be too much to ask of our country, fits with Lieberman's disinterest in having the country we tell ourselves we're helping on our side. Ten more years of shooting up innocent families at weddings, on the streets, in their cars and in their homes will likely draw us into many more decades of war, and that McCain thinks this war is self justifying if not actually morally or functionally satisfying is not beyond conjecture. Another ten years, another 3, 4, 5 trillion dollars and who knows how many more dead: economic and moral collapse -- that should make the country crazy and enough to elect another Republican.

Pretty clever, and to think I thought McCain was an idiot.

I'm with McCain

The Supreme Court is about to revisit prior decisions that in some cases for as much as a century have been restricting the ability of corporations and trade unions to finance political campaigns. That there should be one vote for every eligible citizen is inseparable from any definition of democracy, but is a corporation an eligible person with human rights like any person?

John McCain says no, and I absolutely agree. In a press conference with Russ Feingold, McCain said:

“The one thing I know is that if the court overturns long-standing demands — long before McCain/Feingold as it’s called, the ban on corporate and union campaign contributions, I think you will see an era of corruption.”

That's an understatement. Massive amounts of money give massive political power and that turns democracy's somewhat level playing field into a cliff. As voters, we can't mount trillion dollar ad campaigns, produce movies, buy networks. As voters in a system where money does all the talking we might as well not vote. In fact, we're already in a position where this will be decided without our vote and thanks to the consistent appointment of ultra right wing judges over the past decades, it will be decided by long gone administrations whose policies are no longer in vogue.

Can we look forward to the Toyota administration? The Cigna Presidency? ( I almost said the Halliburton Administration, but arguably, we've already had that.) What's to stop it, since there are corporate entities, foreign and domestic, big enough to put anyone in office. It's a situation far more frightening than losing the health care reform battle.

Cross posted from The Swash Zone

Poor little Palin, part II

"I continue to be surprised at the vicious attacks on her. I've never seen anything like it"

says John McCain on CNN.com. Of course that's not nearly true or credible and of course "viciousness" is not what distinguishes the many criticisms of Palin from the criticism McCain himself endured; criticism that he handed out and that he observed being handed out to people like John Kerry while standing by saying little or nothing. Indeed the hypocrisy of anyone in any way part of the Republican establishment of the last decade who is still crying about how poor Sarah has been treated is something the like of which I've never seen. What distinguishes complaints about her ethics with accusations that McCain sired an illegitimate, black daughter or that Barak Obama was born in Kenya and is a Marxist who wants to destroy the country, are the facts behind them -- or not behind them.

McCain and his party would very much like you to think that what really sours people like me on candidates like Palin are her daughter's pregnancy or some details of her private life that should be beyond public scrutiny. Indeed the campaign was complaining about such things far in advance of public awareness, making it apparent that they intended to make her an antihero and to run on sympathy rather than on any strong capabilities she might have. Of course any suggestion that anything in a candidate's life should be beyond scrutiny when made by a Republican is so hilarious as to be horrifying while there is ongoing hysteria about things that are not part of Obama's life being treated as controversial by people who know better.

That Palin lied about refusing earmarks, about being opposed to running up debt, is a small matter compared to the accusations of treason she smilingly made against Barak Obama in her pedantic sing-song tones and nothing said against her suitability compares with Republican accusations against McCain made by the Bush camp. Of course complaining about criticism alone and without reference to the content and the facts of the matter constitutes deliberate misrepresentation. Is it vicious to accuse Palin of ethical violations when there are legal proceedings based on formal accusations? Is it vicious to mention misstatements, to mention lifelong dedication to witch hunters and heretic persecutors or other things which are incontestably true?

If so, what then are accusations based on lies and distortions? If so what do we do with a candidate whose entire campaign was run upon such things while she whined about how unfair it was to criticize her at all?

It's rare enough for a governor, even a governor under indictment, to simply walk away from the job without explanation, yet Mr. McCain would like us all to believe that she was forced out by the nefarious and vicious Liberals who just can't stop asking why she did it. It's an insult to the electorate, of course, but no more of an insult than the McCain/Palin campaign was. They've been getting away with insulting and assaulting us for a long time -- because we're stupid, because we're emotionally and tribally driven and too often only informed by those who insult us.

That McCain is still playing the victim game; the poor, suffering and forgotten hero game, doesn't speak well for him. That he's still viciously attacking efforts to fix the problems his party created while offering no other suggestions than the same policies that caused them and the same policies that turned the crash of '29 into the Great Depression, doesn't recommend him either, but his misplaced loyalty that drives him to cover up for the VP candidate who may have cost him the election all by herself certainly suggests self-delusion, a total lack of independence and the kind of situational honesty that makes me so very glad he lost.

rags to bitches

The McCain Campaign is unloading their surplus property this week in Arlington,VA. I'm surprised that they didn't put the laptops, Blackberrys and folding chairs up for sale on eBay, but perhaps the failure of Sarah Palin to sell that surplus Airplane on eBay (despite the fact that McCain said it sold at a profit) was a lesson to them. Too bad, I'd have liked to run some undelete software on one of those bargain laptops and see what kind of porn the righteous right prefers.

But one thing we aren't seeing is that fantastic wardrobe of Sarah Palin's -- the one she claimed would be returned to the GOP after the campaign. She certainly seemed well and expensively dressed when she was cheerleading for Chandless. Nothing she wore looked like the small town resale shop she claims to frequent, but perhaps I'm being premature. Perhaps it just takes longer to remove the stains of hypocrisy and the odor of mendacity than it does to erase those blackberrys and hard drives.

Joe the Maoist

I picked up the clip below at A Silent Cacophony, one of my regular reads. Looking for Joe the Plumber in the crowd, John the Candidate tells the audience to stand up because they're all Joe the Plumber. I'm sure the man with umpteen houses and cars and a private jet wishes it were so. I'm sure the Man who has never had a private sector job, much less a blue collar trade, would like us to think of him as a man of the people, a Maoist hero.

The idea of the wise peasant, the log cabin born leader is nothing new and it's typically American, but it's also a central mythology of Marxism. We remember Mao Zedong's cultural revolution during which the professional, academic and educated classes were all but exterminated in favor of leadership by peasant farmers, coal miners and yes, plumbers. That one learns to swim by swimming was a Maoist cliche that implied that education was not only not necessary, but not desired. It took China a generation to begin to recover from the destruction.

The idea still lives here in America, despite our continuing obsession with Communism and Socialism. We still believe in the wise fool; in the wisdom of those untainted by information and intelligence and culture and we still believe in superstitious suspicion of all others. We still believe that Joe, whose name is Charles, and isn't a plumber and can't do basic arithmetic much less understand the tax codes, has the answers we need because he's one of us and not one of them. We're still yearning for the Worker's Paradise promised by Communism. We still admire Forrest Gump and marvel at his wisdom, but we still can't seem to differentiate between the people who exploit us by invoking our class identifications and snobberies and class prejudices, and people who actually serve our best interests. All we seem to see is the working class uniform and not the wolf wearing it.

Only in America would the accusation of Marxism arise from a plan to add 4% to the burden of the top 2% elite in the interest of recovering some of the debt we have incurred in making them rich. Only in America would the accusation of Socialism arise from restoring the top tax bracket we had under Reagan; the progressive structure advocated by Adam Smith and Teddy Roosevelt and that we have had during the most prosperous years of our history.

I could go on endlessly about the irony of invoking a worker's paradise and the bogeyman of Communism to sell economic feudalism, but odds are, if you've read this far, you don't need me to do that. It's the dumb people that can be fooled all of the time. It's Joe the Plumber and everyone who stood up when John the Rich Man asked them to who enjoy the flattery and the snobbery and the smug, stupid certainties sold to them by Sarah and the old man.

You're no Maverick

John McCain, you're no Maverick and you're certainly not the original. In fact the original Mavericks are so disgusted with you, at least two of them say they'll shoot. . . . the TV if they see your face on it again.

The Real Mavericks in fact are Liberals with affiliations going back to FDR and the New Deal, not to George Bush and the shady deal.

But don't take my word for it:

Blah, Blah, Blah

John McCain has begun to repeat the nuclear power song and dance he gave during the last debate. The song goes like this:

" We talked about nuclear power. Well, it has to be safe, environment, blah blah blah."

The word environment is a Pavlovian stimulus to Republicans and of course McCain is preaching only to the dogs at this point. "Enviros" are a favorite bogeyman because of course, "gimmie-gimmie, I want it for free" Republicans don't want to talk about the dangers inherent in nuclear power plants at all. They don't want to talk about the huge amount of time they take to build and to make them as safe as they are. When dogs, children and Republicans want something, they want it now, now, now and lying politicians like John McCain are always there to dangle it in from of them.

So what is McCain saying; the hell with safety? I want cheap energy no matter what the risk? I don't give a damn if New York or Chicago become the next Chernobyl? Yes, he is. That's just what he's saying and he's saying it in full knowledge that having it in the near future is out of the question.

"we've been sailing Navy ships around the world for 50 years with nuclear power plants on them."

Aye, aye Captain, but they're small, extraordinarily expensive and aren't spending most of their time parked in Phoenix or Denver or Little Rock. Unlike the expense of building and maintaining a Nimitz class carrier, the public sees the cost of electricity every month. New power plants are going to appear on your electric bill long before one Watt gets generated. To replace the oil we import today, we will need far more plants costing far more billions than High Roller John is willing to discuss.

Indeed there may have been accidents on Navy ships, despite what Mr. McCain says. Of course Three Mile Island comes to mind too. But hey - the hell with safety - we want nukes. We don't want to think about what to do with radioactive waste or what to do with obsolete plants after they have been shut down. Screw safety - Now, now, now!

"I have news for Senator Obama, nuclear power is safe, we ought to do it now."

So far it's been relatively safe but with nukes it's not only about odds, it's about the unbelievable consequences of an accident. A bad accident or terrorist incident can render large areas unlivable for thousands of years. That's why building them takes a lot of time and money. That's why we can't "do it now." McCain will likely be dead before nuclear power makes a dent in our importation of oil and he certainly won't have to worry about the long term consequences of his blah, blah, blah, arguments, will he?

Of course the cornerstone of this argument is essentially false. As with the offshore drilling argument and indeed most of the negative tirades we're hearing about Obama, it's based on what they say Obama said, and not necessarily what Obama actually said or meant. The arguments are so noisy just for this reason: to drown out reason, to obscure the facts. The fact is that to say we need to be careful when playing with dangerous things is not to oppose nuclear power. John is putting words in Barak's mouth only because he wants to win and doesn't care how much he lies to do it or how much his lies would cost you.

The man who wasn't there

John McCain is at it again. Just a short while ago this evening he was whining to Wolf Blitzer and pleading to voters on CNN about how he's been tested. He did the same thing yesterday in Moon Township Pennsylvania. He took part in the Cuban Missile Crisis, says he. He was there, he said proudly. He sat in an airplane and waited for orders. He was 26 years old. 45 Year old John F. Kennedy was 27 years younger than McCain is today and had never faced anything like that in his life.

Of course the possibility of any superpower attempting to set up missile bases on our borders without being detected, is one of the least likely things the next president will have to face. The experience John McCain had in the military has nothing to do with the kind of situation the younger than Obama JFK managed to pull off without a shot being fired. The virtues that guided Kennedy had little to do with piloting a PT Boat or sitting in a cockpit or even the bombing of cities McCain was involved in several years afterward. Indeed, John McCain never had a leadership position that involved strategic or tactical decision making. In fact relative to all such things, he was never there.

Was a shooting war avoided because JFK had the kind of wild, uncontrollable temper McCain is noted for? No it wasn't. Did Kennedy employ the bluster, the whining, begging pleading and wheedling we see in McCain day after day? Calm, steady nerves and even perhaps luck played a bigger part and that's something McCain doesn't have and Barak Obama has. Who wouldn't rather play poker with twitching, grimacing, mumbling and blinking McCain than with the ice man?

But McCain is losing. We can see him sweat and we can hear him beg and plead and whine to us "his friends" about how a younger, vastly smarter and more unflappable man will invite a "test" from a Soviet Union that for John McCain will always be the enemy. For him, the answers to the questions of today will always be found in the ever less relevant struggles between the gigantic military forces of the 1960's. Those were the days before a global economy and before all kinds of things John never troubled himself to learn about. Not only was he never there, his "there" doesn't even exist any more.

Insane McCain

If you've ever been to a turkey farm, you will have seen how one lone animal will begin gobbling and the rest will follow suit until the whole flock begins to sound like the American news media commenting on an election.

"Spread the wealth" seems to be the latest gobble ever since John McCain, in his desperation, attempted to conflate the Obama tax policy, which hardly differs from what we've had since the beginning of income taxes in America, with socialism. It's not much more of an idiotic redefinition than is typical of the 2008 campaign rhetoric which has it that a hundred year occupation of a foreign country is a "victory" and accomplishing the goal of regime change and democracy is "surrender." Indeed the trickle down theory is little more than a scenario in which people the government helps to get rich then redistribute a small part of it by spending.

In St. Charles Missouri this weekend, John McCain attempted to show the show me state that lifting some of the burden from the struggling classes is Socialism. Senator Martinez from Florida compared Obama's tax plan to that of Fidel Castro and the chorus of boos from their gobbling audiences is not directed at the dishonest and sometimes demented charges or the turkeys who make them, but at anyone outside the circle of the tribe by virtue of sanity, education, honesty or intelligence: particularly intelligence. The is no idea too stupid, too false, to demented that the tribe will not dance around the fire and scream "kill him!"

It there any charge quite as incredible as insisting that presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan must have been socialists who wanted to redistribute the wealth by not giving the kind of tax breaks to the top 5% that George Bush did and that John McCain wants to continue and extend? We have never had a bigger and bigger spending government than we have now and McCain has no plan to change that that could pass a second grade arithmetic teacher's scrutiny. He has hot button topics like earmarks, and socialism and spreading the wealth, but the rest is only "trust me my friends."

"Our opponent's plan is just more big government, and John and I think that that is the problem, not the solution," said the gobbler in the glasses "Instead of taking your hard-earned money and spreading your wealth, we want to spread opportunity so people like you and Joe the plumber can create new wealth."

Of course it's not more big government by any measure. It's a return to the time before George Bush's borrow, bloat and spend policies.

What's the Palin plan? Give it to the rich and let it trickle down. Gobble, gobble, gobble. What's the plan? borrow and spend and put the burden of all that debt on people like you and me and Joe the plumber and our children and grandchildren, and how do we sell it? We lie about palling around with terrorists, we call Obama an elitist Arab Muslim Terrorist, who conspires with Vietnam War protesters, who is a Chicago Machine politician with no experience, whose house was paid for by gangsters, who reads books by terrorists and whose education was paid for by Pakistani Fundamentalists and who isn't even an American. Did I mention that he's black?

At this point and regardless of who wins, I'm ashamed to be part of this. If Obama wins, the country has been so damaged already and will be filled with a large minority who think he's the devil, the future is so dim my old eyes can't see anything but gloom.

Down the drain

Maybe we shouldn't have been wasting our time last night, listening to McCain and Obama accusing each other of being big spenders when we should have gone straight to the one expert who seems to agree with John's tax proposal. I don't mean some PhD economist or tax law expert or even a CPA; I'm talking of course, about Joe the Plumber, the fellow whose concerns about Obama's tax proposal has made him one of the most well known men -- and certainly the best known plumber on the planet at the moment. If that notoriety alone doesn't translate into financial success for Joe, it will be only because he'd rather not be in a higher tax bracket.

According to Joe Wurtzelberger, a progressive tax structure is Robin Hood socialism and John McCain seems to agree. I particularly liked his oily sneer when he repeated his "spread the wealth around" formula, but I wonder how that meshes with the spreading around of wealth inherent in supply side economics. It's only the direction of the trickle that differs after all, not the redistribution.

Of course Joe seems to have misunderstand what the differences are, and who can blame him? Like all of us he's been bombarded with ugly stereotypes of tax and spend liberals all his life and to be fair, it's complicated, but Joe is wrong. If he buys a business that grosses more than $250,000, he will not be propelled into a higher tax bracket by that fact alone. Surely Joe understands the difference between gross and net and knows about all the expenses and other deductions available. It's very unlikely that the business would net that much and therefore be subject to a tax increase of any kind. It's not very nice of his "Buddy" John not to have explained that to his "best buddy."

For one thing Obama's plan offers additional benefits like a tax credit for new employees and the elimination of Capital Gains for small businesses. Even if the business is wildly successful, and with all this notoriety, it may well be, the increase would be 3%. He would be better off in Obama's America than he would have been in Ronald Reagan's or John McCain's.

Very much to Mr. Wurtzelbacher's credit, he's not endorsing anyone yet. After all, his future and my future depend on a lot more than a 3% potential tax hike that's very unlikely to affect him. A new and deep recession may make it all moot if McCain's leadership is not much better than George Bush's.

All in all, the scenario is not what Joe fears it would be, it is not what John McCain misrepresents it to be and it's very very far from anything one could honestly describe as "spreading the wealth around" even if it's said without the squint and sneer and rubbing of hands. But then we're talking about John McCain's claims about his tax policy and not about honesty, and to quote another plumber and funny guy I used to know - that shit don't flush.

McCain and the other Hussein

A commenter yesterday mentioned that he'd like to see Obama go for McCain's jugular. I cautiously disagreed because the polls all seem to show that McCain is suffering a backlash for the irresponsible rabble rousing attack ads he and his "sorcerer's apprentice" are known for. "Responsible" is in fact what most voters look for in a president and particularly after 8 years of the buck stopping under the White House rug. But, perhaps I should reconsider.

Of course many voters know about McCain's associations and perhaps one affair with lobbyists; lobbyists for Wall Street entities like Freddie Mac, the Military junta in Burma and the odd African dictator. They've seen how he denies this in the face of proof. I have to confess I would like to see his makeup begin to run with sweat if Obama were to bring up William Timmons, the professional Washington lobbyist he's named to head his transition team. Timmons, says Murray Waas at the Huffington Post, lobbied on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

If McCain does intend, as he indicated yesterday, to bring the straw man of the aging ex war protester William Ayers to the pyre to be burned once again, he will have a hard time confining the flames. I hope I might be forgiven a gloating moment or two if he has to argue that Saddam wasn't really such a bad guy as he's been telling us, or risk being caught not only "palling around" with a paid agent for Saddam Hussein but employing him in a position of high trust.

Days of rage

John McCain may bring up Bill Ayers in Wednesday's "debate." Oh goody. Despite a token mention or two given by him to the alligator pit, admitting that Obama isn't quite the avenging sword of Allah, he still hopes to keep his head above water by demonizing the man's acquaintances. It's a bit like grasping at bricks when you're drowning and many people see it just that way. The country is fed up with the slime, even if they won't quite admit that it's their own side doing it.

Needless to say, or perhaps it's not at all needless, Bill Ayers is not and was not a "terrorist" as that word has been transformed by 21st century events. When he blew up the infamous Haymarket Square statue in Chicago in 1969, the memory of police riots, beatings, arrests and vicious assaults on innocent Chicagoans and attendees of the Democratic convention were still fresh. The meaning of that act was not to terrorize or demoralize Americans, it was to "Bring the war home" because so far the marches and protests of millions of Americans, a majority of whom wanted the war to end, had not only been ignored, but brutally suppressed. Their bombings were designed to not produce casualties, but to call attention to the killing of millions of people in Southeast Asia.

The Haymarket statue commemorated the death of some policemen 1886 when an unidentified anarchists bomb was exploded as the cops were "dispersing" a legally assembled crowd of union supporters with violence. It did not commemorate the other citizens who were killed that day. Eight men who had been speaking at the rally were tried for murder and most were executed although there was no link between them and the bomb. The statue was seen and is seen today as extremely offensive symbol of repression and arrogant injustice by many people, myself included. Nobody was hurt in the 2969 explosion, many were hurt by the Chicago police in 1968.

The weathermen were not attacking America, they were attacking a tradition of brutality, injustice and illegal behavior by a government still persisting in such things after more than 80 years; a government still impervious to democratic reform. It's fundamentally wrong to equate such acts as were seen by many of us as acts of patriotism and bravery although misguided and dangerous, with the acts of foreign fundamentalists looking to kill, to destroy our economy and out influence in the world. There is a word for using a word like terrorist to make a false equivalence between two things, but whyuse it when "lying" tells the story better?

Bill Ayers, an aging college professor was selected as Chicago's citizen of the year in 1996. He has come to know a lot of people in Chicago politics. He's an advocate of educational reform. That Obama has had interests in common, has supported charities in common and has taught at the same major university along with other good men and women hardly constitutes approval of pyrotechnics or should be defined as "palling aorund with terrorists." Such malicious, simple-minded and malignantly dishonest claims as the McCain team has resorted to are sufficient unto themselves as disqualification from not only Presidential character, but from common decency.

I hope he tries it again. I hope the voters turn on him.

They prosecute liars, don't they?

I checked my e-mail this morning as I sat down to write about the slander du jour from the Straight Talk people. I had read about it at Snopes.com yesterday and there it was, already stinking up my inbox.

It's a picture of Barak Obama holding a copy of Fareed Zakaria's latest best seller The Post American World. For fans of Zakaria, amongst whom I count myself, it isn't necessary to mention that he is not a Muslim extremist, or an extremist of any kind. He was an initial supporter of Georg Bush's War. He's a moderate by most people's standard, he's the editor of Newsweek International and has been the editor of Foreign Affairs. He hosts a weekly program on CNN every Sunday and has a regular column in Newsweek. He's an American Citizen of Indian descent.

The viral slimebucket now circulating tells us that the book is about "A Muslim's view of a defeated America" and that Obama is the "most liberal nominee to run for President in American History. Neither statement of course, is true.

will anything stop this treasonous, anti-American and indecent attempt to portray Barak Obama as an Islamic radical? Will it take an armed insurrection, mass executions and deportations? Perhaps not. Perhaps all it will take is the resounding defeat at the polls these miserable bastards deserve.

What do you do if you get one of these? Don't just delete it with a sigh - forward it back and tell the senders they are participating in a crime, aiding an illegal takeover of the United States by deceit - use "reply all" to embarrass the sender in from of his friends. Do your part; it's your country under attack.

Do we really know who Obama is? Pretty much. Do we really know who McCain and Palin are? Absolutely: liars, slanderers and libelers by proxy and inciters to riot with no evidence of integrity or conscience by only a burning rage to win, win, win control of our country.

Reading the riot act

The riot act - although I've had it read to me many times in a metaphorical sense, I really don't know if Sarah Palin can be prosecuted for inciting people to riot when she stands there and smiles as someone in her audience calls for the Murder of Barak Obama after listening to her call him a terrorist. I do know that the cornered animal metaphor seems more of a literal thing now that the Republicans are facing the prospect that the revolution may soon be over. The mad blood is stirring all over moron America.

I've only heard of a few examples of threatened violence, but I can't get through 10 minutes without hearing accusations that Obama is a Terrorist and that Chriss Dodd and the socialist, commieliberal Democrats are solely responsible for the credit crisis. The animals are angry and they are angry at the targets they are given by the Republican lie campaign. "Joe sixpack" as Sarah likes to call her supporters, really doesn't know who the players are - or doesn't want to know the guilty parties if he's a Republican.

He never heard of Bill Ayers and the group that tried unsuccessfully to stop our last fraudulent war using violence back when Obama was a little kid. He has no idea that the Annenberg Foundation, founded by a right wing Republican is about funding the arts and improving schools, not about Islamic Jihad or about running Obama for president. He would poke his eyes out before reading a list of nefarious characters nearly every candidate including McCain has been linked to. Basically, the issue which in the last couple of days has become the central argument - or perhaps the central distraction is a distorted fabrication of no importance. This disgusting insanity, worthy of the most disgusting dictators and tyrants of history, is effective enough that I fear Obama's life is in danger. I know our country is in danger.

Whether or not anyone would contemplate an assassination if they hadn't listened to Palin's hate session, it certainly doesn't speak well for a prospective leader to stand by and smile while it happens rather than take a stand for decency and the law. Then again, what do you expect from someone who idolizes a man who had an innocent woman shot at and run out of town for being a witch? It doesn't speak well for the "uniter" image the bitter and angry old McCain wants to project. That he didn't comment, that he hasn't given us a glimpse of leadership during this financial catastrophe, no calm voice, no steady hand on the helm, but only snarling, whining and petulant accusations, speaks very poorly for him and his character. That he won't admit that the policies that got us here have been the main mission of the Republicans for decades and won't admit his part in it; that he won't admonish Palin for raising a lynch mob are more damning than his empty promises of "I know how to fix it."

If there is any consolation in the collapse of America, it has to be that it will take these evil trolls down with it; bloody hands and forked tongues and all.

That one

I can't count the times that I used to ask teachers questions that were answered by "go look it up!" Of course that required fussing around in a library, sometimes for hours I had better uses for, but today we have it easy. We have the internet. Where is the excuse for accepting anything some politician says when he's trashing another politician? What is the excuse for spreading unexamined lies? Of course the excuse is that we don't want to hear things that disturb our opinions; but in a democracy, that's a dereliction of duty, that's desertion.

Why else would the John and Sarah show still be flinging the shit at Obama like two monkeys in the zoo? They know they can say anything and enough people will believe it. They know all about Goebbels and the big lie, the oft repeated lie. It's all too easy in the 21st century to find out that the turd about Obama voting for tax increases 94 times is a willful deception. But they're still flinging "that one."

Did McCain sponsor a bill for Fanny Mae reform? Hell no, but he's still slinging "that one." He's still blaming Obama for the deregulation and lack of oversight that are the core of Republican philosophy.

Did McCain, as Obama told us, really intervene on behalf of campaign contributor and convicted felon Charles Keating who cost us all over three billion dollars? Hell yes, he did! Why does he insist he didn't? Why is he still telling that one?

And why is McDesperate still telling us that that one "says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." when anyone can check and find out that one is not true?

And why does Jivin' John still promote his Insurance tax credit for health care as a better deal when Obama says someone might have to spend twice the benefit just to break even? Obama is right, says CNN, so why is McCain still telling us that one?

McTricky is still out there telling us Obama would have health care taken over by the feds. It's not hard to establish that that one isn't true either. The American people won't like that? McCain likes it of course - at least for himself.

And then there's the biggie: Slimy Sarah is telling people right now that Obama is palling around with terrorists. That, being an accusation of high treason, should have been carefully checked out and perhaps she did in her own barely literate way but of course it's a lie. It's the kind of lie that gives us a window into the empty, vicious soul she claims is saved.

I could go on and on: the claims that Obama's campaign is being financed by Pakistani Muslims, that he is a Muslim, that he wasn't born in the US, that his biography tells us he's a Muslim. Things the dumbest of us could see through if they had the will. It's endless, it's relentless, it's vicious. It's a cesspool of lies.

McCain's jackals are telling us that Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the family is an Iranian who advises them on conducting Jihad in the US. She isn't. She's an American born of American parents of European origin in Shiraz where her father was running a charity hospital for children. That one is a lie of criminal proportions. That one is slander. That one is pure malicious evil.

And what does McCain's trophy wife say about her husband running the dirtiest campaign in a century? She accuses Obama. Lies are clean, the truth is dirty and I'm starting to wish I could really believe in a hell for such loathsome creeps to fall into.

I won't go on. I don't have the stomach for any more of this most egregious campaign of lies in American history. When I listen to Palin, giggling in front of her barking dogs; when I hear John weedling and whining about how he can do this and that - I need to take a shower. I need to forget I belong in this country where such things go unchallenged, where people don't bother to take time to look it up, to check, to do their duty as a citizen - just because it's so much fun to be a laughing idiot, a chuckling bigot, a damned liar and a Republican.

A criminal and the friend of criminals

While we're being entertained by the fabulous fictions of Sarah Palin, perhaps it's time to look at the lumps under the McCain carpet. They are big enough to trip over.

Sarah isn't old enough or aware enough to remember, ( or possibly not honest enough) but I am. It's time to bring up the Keating 5 scandal. It's time to see what part John S. McCain III took in screwing the American people out of 3.4 billion by covering up criminal activities and accepting money for his part in the fraud. It's time to recognize that he did it for money and power, that he has always played an important part in the look the other way deregulation that has resulted in the biggest financial debacle in my lifetime.

This is real, this is important, this is crucial. No he wasn't exonerated ane no he hasn't changed his politics. Instead he hires Bud "Swift Boat" Day as a slime source. He has his minions circulate e-mail hoaxes about al Qaeda paying for Obama's education, about his chief adviser being an Iranian, about his campaign being financed by the Chinese, the Pakistanis and other bogeymen dear to the imaginations of the bigots and idiots who support him. He persists in spreading through his proxies, the myth that Obama is a Muslim.

You can't argue an idiot into being smart, but we can and must make people remember the John McCain version 1.1 -- the version before the painted up cardboard McCain of today.

Watch this 13 minute mini-documentary: Keating Economics. Tell your friends not to vote for crooks and liars. Learn how John McCain is the problem, not the solution.

Gettin' all mavericky on ya

Tina Fey said it as a spoof, but obviously the real Sarah Palin really isn't afraid to "get mavericky" either. I'm defining mavericky as dishonest.

She spent the weekend misquoting the New York Times (to a chorus of boos from the mavericky mob) to claim that one of Obama's "earliest supporters" was Bill Ayers, part of the Weather Underground back in the 60's. Prescient of Ayers to know that an 8 year old boy living thousands of miles away was going to run for President almost 40 years later, isn't it. Then she went after Madeline Albright (to another chorus of boos,) again misrepresenting a quote she read, or claims she read on a Starbucks coffee cup.

Of course to an audience of yapping dogs, this kind of thing is like a ripe rawhide chew toy. There's no telling what it will look like after they get hold of it, but to the remaining few of us, it looks like lies: damned lies. That Palin is a damned liar with no conscience, no remorse and so single minded of purpose and ambition that she will say anything at all is quite obvious, but her recklessness may have brought attention to some earlier affiliations of the maverick in chief, John Sidney McCain.

Take for instance his having sat on the board of the US Council for World Freedom a group cited for it's racist, extremist and anti-Semitic views. He may come to rue it. In fact, John's real history bears little resemblance to the cardboard maverick being displayed as a candidate. Many of those who were POW's with him don't see him as any kind of hero and the idea that he was cured of being a boozing womanizer by imprisonment holds as much water as a sieve. In fact McCain is a man who got to be senator by a road other than excellence. He sold out and sold out again and the receipts are still around to be examined.