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