White People Also Vote For Democrats

Living in Georgia, as I have to, one could get the opinion that all democrats are African American and all white people are Republicans. Today, our bozo senator, Saxby Chambliss, said, “You should vote because those other folks are voting…” Implying that other folks, by which he seemed to be insinuating African Americans, were voting, and not for him. Well, I have to say that even though I can’t be called an “other folk,” I am also voting for the Democrat. Mainly as payback for one of the ugliest senate races in modern times. At some point the Republicans decided their last hope was to turn the election into a black or white issue. Which would make sense in the United States of Black or White. But there’s no such thing. So that’s a loser of a strategy. These last two weeks, if things are actually the way they seem to be, we will all be able to look back on these last two weeks with an appreciation for the absurd. It has been a greatest hits of bad ideas and terrible instincts and stinky lies and slimy mistruths and underhanded deeds and uncharitable insinuations and a whole slew of retro -but not in a cool way – political tactics from the 1950’s. 

I can’t wait for this thing to be over. I can’t wait to go vote on Tuesday and stand in line for fourteen thousand hours because I live in a red state and the Republicans run the joint and their winning strategy is always based on as few votes counting as possible. I don’t think it will work this time though. I think people will wait it out. As long as it takes. To push the computer button that could so totally be fucked with. Because opportunities to avoid calamity are few and far between. Here’s to righting the ship. Here’s to throwing out the bums. And getting better ones.

Why Is The Race This Close?

It has never been a better time to be a democrat; which means it has never been a worse time to be a Republican. And yet John McCain and his colossally subnormal running mate are only 3 to 5 to 7 points behind. He should be 35 to 50 points behind. There is absolutely no reason for this to be remotely close. It’s beyond the realm of all logic. Sure, okay, Obama is black…but he’s the only candidate who doesn’t act like Yosemite Sam. McCain is a ball of rage and he has the scars to prove it. It’s just silly. His running mate should be an insult to the entire country. He should be censured for it, not running only a few points behind. McCain’s own campaign came out today and claimed that Sarah Palin is a “whack job” and also claimed “we can win.” And that’s just it: McCain has had terrible luck in this campaign, and yet he has still managed to blow every slim opportunity he had. He has proven time after time that he can’t even control his own campaign. And yet a large amount of people apparently still want this hotheaded lunatic in control of the nuclear arsenal. Crazy. 

VOTE!!!!!!!!

Why Do We Keep Doing The Same Stupid Shit Over And Over?

“It’s the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” 

 

That quote is about Vietnam. It came from General Omar Bradley in 1951. But it certainly holds true for Iraq. And that’s a problem. People with the best of intensions (and I’m being generous here) make the same ill-advised mistakes over and over and over again. Like the woman who marries a notorious philanderer and thinks that she alone holds the magic power to turn him. The Best And The Brightest got us into Vietnam. So it’s no real surprise that an extremely dumb President and a bunch of holy roller boneheads could do the same in Iraq. And now here we are. In another ill-conceived war, with absolutely no strategy or game plan – trying to kill the Iraqis into peace and democracy. LBJ lied us into Vietnam. Bush lied us into Iraq. The question is: why? 

This campaign has seen candidates tossing out the same dire warnings and threats that the left and right have been tossing out for decades. Is it because each new generation has to learn for themselves that they aren’t the most singularly brilliant people in the world? That they aren’t the first to try to spread peace at the tip of a spear? That they aren’t the first to try to change the way Washington works? Now the Republicans are warning us what could happen if there is a Democratic congress. What would happen, of course, is that things might actually get done. Just not the things the Republicans would want. And it might even work. For four or eight years. And then a new President will be sworn in. And if the American people are bored, they might pick the other party just for a change, and that party will work to undo the work of the last one. And so it goes. Tacking back and forth, getting essentially nowhere. 

We’re still talking about energy independence 44 years after we first made in an issue. We’re still talking about clean air and clean water. We’re still talking about education and infrastructure. And we’re watching our auto industry fall apart because they paid vast sums of money to politicians so they could avoid having to fix itself. From above we might look like a car on a busy highway, changing lanes but making little progress.

McCain Camp Finally Realizes Palin a “Whack Job”

Well, it only took them about two months more than it took the rest of the country, but a McCain aide today described Palin as being precisely the nutjob she seems. He used the word “whack job,” which is a great word. And now that it’s looking grim for McCain, keeping quiet doesn’t seem as important than it used to be. I expect to hear more details as time goes on as these two camps fight for survival by slinging mud on the other. My guess is McCain will take the high road and Palin will ambush him at every opportunity. It is rare that Presidential candidates botch such a crucial decision as who will be their Veep. Not since McGovern picked Eagleton in ‘72 have we seen such a celebrated dud. With her history of holding grudges and taking down her enemies, this break up will be prolonged and ugly. Both McCain and Palin have been barnstorming the country and spinning a web of lies and hoping for the best. Now that duplicitousness and dishonesty will be turned on one another. Meghan McCain really could write the right’s version of Fear and Loathing. Farce and Lunacy on the Campaign Trail ‘08. It is NOT over yet. Even if the right thinks it is. But it’s looking more and more like this thing will end in a landslide. Which actually makes sense for a change. Usually, the lousy candidate actually wins. 

I think McCain’s outdated tactics, labeling Obama a Socialist and a Communist, turned off the elderly voters who might have voted for him if he hadn’t started tossing out accusations left over from Nixon circa 1956. 

You will see McCain again, my friends. He will return again to the national stage like a Phoenix. He will be on Letterman explaining his latest “mistake” and take his lumps and return to the senate and vote against anything Obama puts forth for the next four to eight years. He will be a thorn in the side of one and all on both sides. He will make it his mission to piss off and annoy any and all. We will hear about Obama going back on his commitment to take public financing once a week until the end of time. And we will hear a lot more about and from his “whack job” running mate. 

But not yet. Right now he has to keep Arizona from turning blue…

The Election Is NOT Over!

I don’t care what the media says. I don’t care if the entire GOP goes out and endorses Obama. I don’t care if McCain endorses Obama. None of it matters if we don’t go out and pull the lever. And the more of us do, the better off we’ll be. Even if the polls are right, and there’s no reason to believe that, and Obama is up by double digits, it’s all for naught if half of us stay home assuming he’s going to win. We need to run up the score. We need to win in as many states as we can. It has to be incontrovertible. We can’t have the Republicans whining and complaining for eight years like they did with Clinton. If Obama wins by a large margin, they will be less able to make the argument that he won by default or bought the election or whatever cockamamie excuse they come up with. 

Don’t be fooled by all the talking heads who go into detail about all of McCain’s missteps. To listen to them you would think it was a done deal. But it’s not. Nothing matters but the vote!

If John McCain Has So Many Friends, How Come He’s Behind?

Is Barack Obama running John McCain’s campaign? That’s what it seems like. He almost always goes out and acts and says however Obama says he will. Obama calls him erratic, so he goes out and acts erratic and crazy and all over the place. But, nevertheless, it seems he has plenty of “friends” wherever he goes. But what I want to know is, how come he doesn’t know any of their names? Desperate and down in the polls, McCain has decided to court the media after all. Yesterday he was on Wolf Blitzer. I know he knows who Wolf Blitzer is. But he spent the entire show calling him “My friend.” He did the same thing with Brian Williams. As often as he’s hung out with the media, and as many times as he’s been on these shows, I find the fact that he didn’t refer to them by name as odd. I also thought  it was odd that he spoke to them one on one using the same inflections and same talking points as he does when he’s addressing an entire rally. You will know their names, my friend! You will know their names! Either John McCain is really tired or he’s lost his mind one.

Enough About Joe The Plumber!!

I don’t know if you’ve actually seen the interaction between Joe the Plumber and Barack Obama. The interaction that John McCain and the GOP have made legendary, mentioning it on the radio, on television, at rallies, and everywhere in between. But if you watch the entire exchange between Obama and Joe the Plumber, you would probably vote for Obama. In fact, I think Obama would be well served to turn the exchange into a campaign ad. It turns everything McCain is postulating on its head. Not only does Joe the Plumber claim to have been a plumber for fifteen years – which, we now know is fifteen years longer than he has been a plumber – but Obama rightfully points out that he would have made more money under his plan during the last eight years than he has under George Bush. It’s a fascinating encounter. And after watching it you have to wonder why John McCain chose to draw attention to it. 

John McCain seemed to outdo any candidate in history yesterday when, while interviewed by Brian Williams, he said he was not about to “redistribute the wealth!” He said everyone should be able to “keep all the money they earn!” Which means, apparently, that he is going to abolish all taxes. Because taxes are, and have always been, a redistribution of wealth. So if he’s against that, then he’s against taxes. And if he’s against taxes, then he’s against all government revenue. Which means no war. No military. No social security. No police. And no job for John McCain. Wow! He really is a Maverick!

If you see the interview, you will have to judge for yourself if there’s an odd “negative energy” between him and Sarah Palin, as has been reported. To me, he seemed like the same cranky old man who refused to look Obama in the eye. Maybe that’s just the way he is. Maybe he never makes eye contact with anyone. It did seem like he was massively uncomfortable with allowing Palin to speak at all. He appeared to be doing all he could to appear civil. My guess is, if he loses the election in a landslide, we will see a very ugly and very public divorce. Both are ambitious politicians who have careers to protect. And both are vindictive. So that will be an interesting meltdown to watch…

By the way, I could give two craps about how much money they’ve spent on Sarah Palin’s clothes. Sure she pretends to be a regular old hockey mom. But that doesn’t mean she could hit the stump wearing jeans and a hockey jersey. Appearance is important. So that’s a non-issue if you ask me. I have a bigger problem with the fact that she doesn’t know what the Vice President does and that she’s a complete bonehead.

Sarah Palin, Ladies and Gentlemen

This is from People magazine. It’s pure satire. But it’s real! 

(you can read it here: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20235099_1,00.html

 

Do you think you’re intellectual?
SP: Yessss. And you have to be up on not only current events, but you have to understand the foundation of the issues that you’re working on as a governor. I had to do the same thing as a mayor. So it is not just current events but it’s much more in-depth than that to understand how, in the case of me being governor, how did our state get to the position that we are in order for a decision to have to be made. You can’t just go on what is presented you. You have to know the background, you have to know the players involved before you make a policy call. So, um, it’s uh, it’s a good job, it’s a tough job and it’s a very, very serious job. And no. You don’t get to be a governor by being –
TP: – going with the wind.
SP: Yeah definitely. You don’t just go with the flow and take a political pulse on policy. You have to go with what the foundational knowledge is that you have on issues in front of you and you have to put the people you are serving, put them first. You put them before partisanship you put them before special interests. That’s how you make decisions as governor. 

 

She speaks in vast amazing busts of words – they fly out, a storm of them swirling around, attacking your inner ear, trying to trick you into irritability so you won’t notice they are absent of all substance. This actual People interview is just ridiculous. I wish John McCain had picked someone with – say – 5% validity as a Vice Presidential candidate. But he didn’t. And now we have this absurd interview. She doesn’t answer a single question. She seems to be stuck on transmit…

What The Hell Is Going On?!?

Obama is trouncing McCain in the polls. McCain is gaining rapidly. Obama has a 10 point nation-wide lead. Obama is now only up by one. It’s a dead heat! It’s over…what the hell is going on? You can find whatever answer you seek depending on where you go. Just go to the web-site or “news” source that caters to your views and you have nothing to worry about. Sarah Palin is either the worst Vice Presidential candidate in history or the future of the GOP. McCain is either running the dirtiest campaign in history or really needs to take the gloves off. It’s all a long way of saying that absolutely nobody has a clue what’s actually going on. Oh sure, they may wear coats and ties and have helmet haircuts and say things like “It is without a doubt apparent that, if you look back, and consider the implications and drill down and see what’s really going on…” but long-windedness(sic) doesn’t mean they know any more than us what’s going on. They just make a lot more money because we watch them so they can infuriate them.

–Sorry. I had to change the channel to a station that’s closer to my views…

It really is all fucking spin. On both sides. And Lou Dobbs is not in the middle. In the middle are a whole bunch of old or out of work people. They pick and choose and cherry pick the stories that fit in to their narrative. Fox takes it further by making the narrative up. “Let’s say he’s a dirty bomb maker! Maybe that will work!” It came out today that most McCain coverage is negative. This could be taken care of by not covering his rallies or interviewing him. That would reduce 80% of the negative coverage right there. 

The truth is…nonexistent. Don’t even try and find it. Just go vote. McCain both praised spreading the wealth around and hammered it in one paragraph on Brian Williams. If Sarah Palin does it, it’s great. If Barack Obama proposes a tax cut – which is only a good idea for rich people? – then it’s socialism. As crazy as this campaign has been, it shouldn’t be as close as the media makes it seem. If they’re right then we’re all doomed! If we’re wrong…

McCain Is An Opportunist. But A Lousy One.

John McCain often touts the fact that Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in America. Sarah Palin was – not anymore – the most popular governor because she taxed the oil companies windfall profits tax. Which she now accuses of being ’socialist.’ McCain says that a windfall profits tax is a terrible idea. He also thinks raising any taxes “on anybody” is irresponsible. Which is ironic, because he said just the opposite in 2000, when there was a budget surplus and no wars to fight. It’s hard to keep up with all the shenanigans going on. Sarah Palin claimed it was beyond naive for Obama to say he would attack in Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence about high-ranking Al Quaida suspects. Only a month ago she said the very same thing. They accuse Barack Obama of palling around with terrorists. Plural. Even though G. Gordon Liddy is a good friend of John McCain. They accuse Obama of voter fraud, the worst case of it in this country’s history, one that “endangers the very fabric of democracy.” Even though we haven’t voted yet. And fictional registered voters tend to not exist and therefore not vote. And even though John McCain’s campaign has hired a man who was once convicted of – yep – voter fraud. 

While John McCain and Sarah Palin might not know much about each other or agree on much of anything, they do have one trait in common: they are opportunists. They read the papers and watch the news and try to gauge what the public wants and then they go out and says what they think voters want to hear. Even if it contradicts their own views or what they have said mere days earlier. This is the kind of lousy political maneuvering you can get away with if you are buried in the senate with 99 other people. But when you’re out in front of the masses day after day, the positions and contradictory promises pile up one on top of the other in a giant heap. (Contrast that with Obama. While he has repositioned himself a little over the last two years, he has remained miraculously consistent.) In the end, it is this opportunistic streak that could be part of their undoing.

The Long Slow Demise Of The Greedheads

Things are looking good for Barack Obama. And that is just the problem. I’m not given to conspiracy theories (because I think they’re all real!) but I am having trouble believing what the polls are saying. It wouldn’t be the first time that the polls said one thing and the results said something else. Why, it was only four years ago that exit polls had John Kerry winning handily. And then he lost handily, completely outvoted in small towns where many people hadn’t voted since John Adams was running. We’ll never know to what extent the Republicans gamed the system. But, since they’re all power hungry crooks, they are capable of almost anything.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to get us to think Obama was so far ahead, his victory so assured, that there’s no reason for any of us to actually go and vote. They’re tricky, those Republicans!

All across the country, Republicans are fighting for their lives after driving our country into socialism and international scandal and corporate malfeasance and rampant out of control over the top dumbness. Those that aren’t getting bailed out are losing their shirts. And these people all vote. Throw in the fact that a lot of these Republicans are trying desperately to drum up support by alienating the masses and you have the ingredients for a very impressive turnaround in this country. 

It won’t happen if we don’t vote though. Even if we do vote, we have to stay on our toes though. With these electronic machines you never know what could happen. You can’t convince me that Bush won four years ago by the amount that he did. And you can’t convince me that there’s any serious support for John McCain, no matter what you read on the internet or see on television.

The problem is that they don’t make voting easy. Especially in urban cities which are largely democratic compared to rural areas, where people are misguided yet can vote with ease. All they have to do is go to the Moose Lodge or Elks Club or Rotary Club. City folks have to wait in line for hours and hours. And the youth of America doesn’t like to wait in line. That’s not democracy.

 

VOTE

McCain Begs Not To Be Tested

John McCain, campaigning yesterday, claimed that he didn’t need to be tested. That he had already been tested. He would just as soon not be re-tested, thank you very much. These comments stemmed from the latest McCain campaign party trick. Jumping on Biden’s rather far from risky comments that “in the next six months, the next President will be tested in an international crisis…” This is hardly news, of course. And, as predictions go, it’s fairly lame. In six months either John McCain or Barack Obama will be President. And we’re in the middle of an international crisis right now. In the last couple of months we’ve seen an energy crisis, two hurricanes, a financial crisis, the Georgia-Russia dust up, and ongoing bad news coming from two wars that we are not currently winning. There is a distinct possibility that these won’t be fixed or resolved by January 20th. Like I said, hardly news. But the McCain campaign is trying to make it into a game changer. It’s like saying if the Phillies win the World Series, the Rays will lose. Nobody could dispute that. Unless you’re John McCain and completely desperate.

In another desperate story, Cindy McCain is lashing out at the media for calling them out for their tactics. McCain has accused Obama, on some level, of the following during the last two weeks: a terrorist sympathizer, a socialist, a communist, a liar, a baby killer, and a radical. The media reported it. And that’s what Cindy McCain is having problems with. In 2000, you see, when McCain was the high-minded candidate, and the one getting dragged through the mud with spurious false allegations, the media defended them. But now that they are the ones running the dishonorable campaign, they are frustrated that they aren’t getting the same treatment from the media. Wah!

McCain Overachieving Enormously

Despite no coherent message, ridiculous allegations, unsavory tactics, flat out lies, flip flops, and a travesty of a running mate, John McCain is only really far behind in the polls. In any normal world, he would be forty to fifty points behind. Let it be known that his campaign style and his strategy, while not working now, will never work this well again. This is a technology era. We record things. And we can play them back at our leisure. If you are a cynical politician who changes stances based on the direction of the wind, you will be the star of youtube. And we will know your name! We will know your name my friends!

Ten Thousand Gather To Protest Obama Tax Cut

Colorado Springs – At a Sarah Palin rally here in Colorado Springs today, ten thousand people who don’t make more less than $250,000 rallied against the tax cut they would get from Obama. “Nobama!” they screamed as Palin talked about him being “a socialist!” “I don’t think we need to be toying around with something like that right now,” she added. The crowd booed thunderously. Socialism is bad, they screamed. “He wants to spread the wealth around!” Boo! They yelled…

The crowd might have just been light-headed. But they seemed not to understand that they were in fact booing the money Obama wants to give them. We’re fine! Don’t give us any money! The fact that redistributing wealth is something the government has done since its inception. A tax cut is a redistribution of wealth. Cutting taxes on people who make less than $250k isn’t socialism. Or, as a congressman from Florida declared today, a Communist. It’s putting more food on the table and having your money go further for people who have jobs and work. In all their unthinking joy, they were cheering on more misery for themselves. 

Here’s to hoping that they were going just for the show. That they were going to see the first Republican female Vice President candidate. Here’s to hoping they don’t actually believe what they are hearing. They can cheer all they want. At the end of the day, it would be nice to think when they pull the lever they will vote with their wallets in mind.

A Tale Of Two Palins

Depending on which web-site you read, Sarah Palin is either the charismatic new face of the Republican party or the reason McCain is sinking in the polls. New polls show that she has a lower likability rating than George Bush. And yet there are plenty in the GOP who think she should have been the one running for President. Could they both be true? I think so. I think it proves just how far from reality the GOP has drifted. They like what she stands for. They like the crowds she is gathering. They like her legs. And they seem not to care about anything else. They hate the mainstream media, perhaps, so much that they are convinced it is always wrong. They see that middle America loves her and they could care less whether she has a single brain cell in her head. 

It might not be sinking in yet, it might take a couple of years, but the GOP would do well to admit that Barack Obama wasn’t just a celebrity. The Democrats didn’t pluck him out of the ether a month ago. Snidely underestimating him could have been their biggest mistake. Their ego and natural sense of superiority caused them to see him in the most cynical and shallow light. So McCain went out and grabbed a hot governor from Alaska. Unfortunately, McCain took a lot of people’s advice – people who saw her in a similar light as they did Obama – who were attracted to her for simply tactical reasons. Or maybe they were horny. McCain’s natural disdain for Obama might have caused him to underestimate his opponent. Or he picked Palin in the midst of a temper tantrum because he couldn’t choose Joe Lieberman. And now he’s learning, probably on an hourly basis, just what a mistake it was. 

Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice-President. She is not likable. She turns people off in droves. She betrays a lack of education. She freely gives voice to a closed minded outlook when it comes to America as it is today. And she is an extremely polarizing figure. I’m not talking about the base, but independent voters and Democrats who were still pining for Hillary. That’s why even if she was experienced, she still was a lousy choice.

McCain’s best chance – which he probably knew instinctively – would have been to appeal to moderates and independents. Instead he catered to the base. And spent the rest of his time trying to find a balance between two entirely different group psyches. The base doesn’t like him because he’s not rabid enough. The independents don’t like him because he seems old and his running mate is a loon. 

The GOP has a choice to make. And it won’t be easy. They can either continue to cater to a shrinking group of intolerant and hyper-partisan “base” or they can pay a little attention to what is going on in the mainstream media from time to time – because, love it or hate it, sometimes they get it right! – for substance and sincerity.

Why Attack The Mainstream Media?

The GOP seems to think running against the media is a sound strategy. Running against the very people who could get your message out to – say – the mainstream. What is the mainstream? It’s us! It’s the majority of voters. The mainstream media is designed to convey information to the majority of the people in this country. But the GOP has decided to attack them and even ban them from their campaign at times. This does not seem like a sound strategy two weeks before the mainstream is going to go and decide who should be the new President. But hey, that’s their choice. There are times when I wonder at the wisdom of this. Palin went on SNL on Saturday night and poked fun at her own disdain for the media. By employing a strategy of shunning the media, they have in effect, run against their own legitimacy. Now, when I talk to independents they tell me they are voting Obama because they don’t know anything about Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is pointing fingers and throwing punches at a person who has been relentlessly scrutinized for two years and came out in one piece; meanwhile she is doing everything in her power to avoid telling us anything about herself. With Obama being a black man, the McCain campaign had a golden opportunity to win an election despite the near constant destruction their party and their administration has wrought around the world. It wouldn’t have taken much. Some transparency, some media courting, a couple of weeks of ugly scrutiny, and then all would be well. Instead they are running a campaign that could have been orchestrated by Putin himself. It’s so relentlessly dumb that it’s relentlessly fascinating. You don’t usually see this kind of farce in a competition with so much at stake. They have made so many strategic blunders, their entire campaign seems to be running on a platform of incompetence.

A Message From John McCain

My friends, it’s been a rough few months of campaigning. But, as you know, I have a plan on how to fix everything and my opponent doesn’t. He’s a decent family man, and, as I’ve said, you have no reason to fear him if he were elected President. We just have stark differences on how this country should be run. My friends, I think the country should be run one day at a time, depending on how I feel at the moment and what I feel like saying. For example, right now, if I were President, I would get on the old horn with Putin and tell him to look up because some bombs would be falling on his head. Yesterday, for some reason, maybe it’s the caffeine, I didn’t feel that way at all. Now, the media has been hounding me about my campaigning. But I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my supporters, who are real Americans. My friends, just who is Barack Obama? I think he’s a socialist terrorist who kills babies and has a radical leftist agenda. He says that I am erratic, but he’s wrong. I have, and will continue, to run an honest campaign filled to overflowing with integrity. You know, and I hate to talk about this, and yet I always seem to, I spent five and a half years in a torture cell. So I know how to fix the economy. I know how to get Bin Laden. I can balance the budget and bring us victory in Iraq! My opponent is an honorable man and he has a bright future, but he would absolutely destroy the country and fill it with Jewish Muslims and education reformers. My Vice President. What can I say about her? Her husband is one helluva tough guy. I like tough guys. Like Lee Marvin. Remember that guy? He was tough and so is Todd. And they have a bunch of kids, including one with floating kneecaps. Sarah Palin has really toned thighs because she runs a lot. And I admire that. And she knows about defense, because she shoots guns. My friends, you don’t need to worry that I might kick the bucket in office. It won’t happen, because when I’m President, I will be operating the country from the Straight Talk Express. I’ll park it on the White House front lawn, right next to Sarah’s oil well. You know, I know a lot about being the underdog. When I was in school, nobody expected me to do well. And I didn’t. Yet look where I am. I don’t know where I am, technically, at this particular moment, what with all the traveling I do, but I think you see what I mean. I just punched some guy who got into my personal space. Punched him right in the jaw, the fucking jerk. Unfortunately, he is now hovering over me and he doesn’t look happy. So I have to go. So remember. Vote for me. I have a plan. I can fix everything. You just have to trust me on that. Have faith, my friends.

Sarah Palin Is Outrageously Ignorant

Some of McCain’s surrogates, who all secretly despise the bastard for his occasional moral compass, have been suggesting he unleash Palin and let her interact with the media. It could be that the one good thing the campaign has done is keep her from doing just that. Today she was interviewed and let rip with this jaw dropper. When asked what it is the vice president actually did – something she herself didn’t know before she was chosen to run for it – she claimed that the vice president “is in charge of the senate.” This, of course, is patently false. The vice president may be called upon to break ties in the senate, but to say that the vice-president has any power in the senate – according to a little document called the Constitution – is simply not true. Granted, after we’ve seen a certain dick mucking up the works for eight years, a power hungry hayseed from Alaska who was basically clueless on almost ever subject known to man might get the impression that running roughshod over congress what the job of the vice president.

The more she opens her mouth, the worse she comes across.

Republicans Can’t Be This Dumb

There has been a lot of Republican dumbness out there. From Limbaugh’s racist ranting to Michele Bachmann’s attack on the liberal spin machine denying comments that the world can see coming out of her mouth on Hardball. And last night Fay Buchanan on CNN went so far as to declare Sarah Palin the future of the Republican Party. She has been dragging McCain down like a lead weight and the Republicans couldn’t be more thrilled with her. They’re talking about her being a Presidential nominee in 2012. And blaming John McCain for not bringing moderates and independents to the table. The GOP doesn’t seem to realize just how far to the right they have gone and plan to go, and how, like it or not, most of the country has no desire to go there with them. Making Sarah Palin the face of the GOP would all but guarantee their failure for years to come. And that’s fine with me if they’re going to be as ignorant and antagonizing as they’ve been for the last eight years. 

With polls coming out daily saying that the attacks on Obama’s character don’t work, the Republicans just want to attack more. It seems that’s all they have left. To be ugly and small-minded. If Rush Limbaugh is convinced the only reason people are voting for Obama is because of his race, then there is simply no hope for him or his party. This goes beyond race. This goes to a basic philosophy difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats think it helps if you are not an idiot, whereas Republicans promote only idiots. The smart ones are being hunted down and pushed out of the party. It defies all logic. And it’s a losing strategy that will only become a bigger losing strategy down the road. Racist intolerance is dying out, not mushrooming. Bipartisanship is in; hyper-partisanship is out. Transparency is in; secrecy and criminality is out. Diplomacy is in; torture is out. Fiscal conservatism is in; deficit spending is out. Supporting the troops is in; Supporting the troops with more than flag pins is more in. The sooner the GOP comes to grips with the way the world is today, the better.

Powell Endorsement Doesn’t Mean Anything

Colin Powell’s endorsement on Meet The Press won’t hurt the McCain campaign. McCain himself does most of the hurting to his own campaign. No, the people who watch Meet The Press long ago saw the McCain campaign for the farce it is. My guess is his endorsement might have helped some moderate Republicans and independent voters feel comfortable voting for someone with Obama’s experience. But those people weren’t going to vote for McCain anyway. It won’t have any appeal to McCain’s base: a rabid crew of scalawags and straight up bozos. If their comments on message boards are any indication, most of what Powell said probably flew right over their heads. Who are McCain’s supporters? They are mainly old ZZ Top fans and inebriated frat kids hoping to catch a glimpse of Sarah Palin’s legs. What do they care what a former Secretary of State has to say?

The Puppeteer Behind The Bumbler

A week ago I started to review Angler, the Dick Cheney book I’m currently reading. I’m up to page 300 now, but it’s been a slog. It’s not easy, reading about that guy. But if any of what I’m reading is even remotely true, then Dick Cheney deserves to be front and center as one of the architects of this current economic disaster. It was he who had the President’s ear. It was he who rammed through – and was the tie breaking vote! – on the tax cuts the administration pushed through right before the 2004 election. The very ones McCain claimed were irresponsible. The very ones he now supports and wants to make even bigger. It was Dick Cheney who liked to call up his good friend Alan Greenspan whenever he felt like tinkering with the interest rates of the Federal Reserve. And it was Dick Cheney who put forth the name of Donald Rumsfeld for Secretary of Quagmires. George Bush was the thick headed ideologue who put way too much trust in what Dick Cheney was doing in his name. George Bush was an absentee landlord, and Cheney and a fat bearded guy named David Addington took full advantage of it. Once a deficit hawk, Cheney became the leading proponent of deficit spending. His hands are not clean when it comes to our current recession and what could be a reckoning at the polls come November.

Rick Davis Hints At Playing Race Card

Was Rick Davis living under a rock when Jeremiah Wright was playing all over the airwaves 24/7 for an entire month? On a conservative talk show today, Rick Davis twisted John Lewis’ words beyond all recognition in an obvious and cynical attempt to drum up more division and racial tension.

Here is how he interpreted what John Lewis said: 

“…when Congressman Lewis calls John McCain and Sarah Palin and his entire group of supporters, fifty million people strong around this country, that we’re all racists and we should be compared to George Wallace and the kind of horrible segregation and evil and horrible politics that was played at that time, you know, that you’ve got to rethink all these things.”

 

Rick Davis and John McCain both know that John Lewis never accused fifty million John McCain supporters of being racist. He merely pointed out, probably as a favor to his friend John McCain, that the language he was hearing at some of Sarah Palin’s rallies was alarming and a path to a place we shouldn’t be going as a country in 2008. John Lewis, who has a metal plate in his head from violence we was subjected to during the Civil Rights Movement, was, as a witness to how bad things can get, warning people that he was seeing things that gave him pause and suggested McCain put the brakes on such rhetoric coming out of his campaign. Never mind the fact that Obama, during his third debate, distanced himself from the remarks. Never mind that John Lewis isn’t even a member of Obama’s campaign. Rick Davis is going on national radio, twisting another person’s words, and using it as an excuse to take the campaign, already in the gutter, deep into an ugliness they won’t be able to dig themselves out of and will probably not be forgiven for anytime soon. 

Here is what John Lewis said: 

“What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” Lewis said in a statement issued today for Politico’s Arena forum.  “Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.”

Lewis didn’t accuse McCain of imitating Wallace, but suggested there were similarities.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb,” Lewis noted.  “He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Obama released a statement claiming the remarks crossed a line. And they may have. John Lewis’ himself backed off the remarks and clarified the point he was trying to make. But I think you can agree that there is nothing in there that is insinuating that all of John McCain’s supporters are racists…

Obama Wins Endorsement of 115 Major Racist Newspapers

When it comes to newspaper endorsements, Obama is leading 115 – 38. Rush Limbaugh and McCain campaign saboteur Rick Davis scoffed at the notion that 115 newspapers would choose Obama over McCain, unless done so “for a clearly elitist and radical and socialist and anti-American racist far left reason. What do they know, anyway, those newspapers?”

This comes only a day after it was determined by Rush Limbaugh and – oddly – considering he wrote a scathing article about the selection of Sarah Palin and the erratic nature of John McCain in his campaign – George Will – that Colin Powell endorsed Obama for reasons of race. Which all goes a long way towards showing that the McCain campaign is almost comically desperate at this point. They are terrified. They know exactly how drunk on power they were when they held both houses of congress and the White House. So drunk on power that almost all of them were voted out of office. They are reaping the whirlwind and they don’t like it. In one quote I read yesterday, a Republican pundit spoke on television and declared that, in times of crisis, Americans really want “continuity in the White House. And change…”  That makes no sense, of course. But the media feels they need to have equal time, for the astute people who want to take the country in a different direction, and the party of bumbling snarky boneheads that currently call the shots. The contrast between pundits is almost striking. One side makes sense and the other side is simply enraged and petulant and hateful. The country has changed a lot under the George Bush/Dick Cheney dictatorship. The era of simply attacking your opponent with false charges might have worked in 2000 and 2004. But this is 2008. The tides have shifted. Change is in the air. And lying for the sake of lying simply no longer works.

Palin Thinks We’re All Stupid

Today, once again, she accused Barack Obama of “experimenting with Socialism.” This is a rich comment coming from a candidate of the party that just bought Wall Street and whose running mate announced a three hundred billion dollar proposal to buy up bad mortgages. It seems she hopes nobody knows what’s going on in the world around them. It is George Bush who came on television and asked us to become France. Not Obama. It was the careless rule the GOP and the Republicans have shown over  the last eight years. In the third debate, McCain – and not for the first time – appeared to endorse Obama when he said, “This country needs a change. Government has grown 40% over the last eight years…” Yes it has. Because of the Republicans and the GOP and their philosophy on how they see our role in the world! John McCain wanted to go into Iraq as early as 1998. John McCain does not have his hands clean on either the economy or the sad distraction in Iraq. As a result, deficits have shot through the roof, credit has dried up, and our occupation is being waged using borrowed money from China. I would add the Socialism comment to the long list of untruths and unfortunate gaffes this Alaskan has wielded in one Pro- America town after another.

Why Do Republicans Call Themselves Conservative?

As I understand it, a conservative would have a hard time rectifying a 5% annual growth of government. Yet that’s what we’ve seen the last 8 years. A conservative would have a hard time not paying off our debts. Yet we’ve seen our debt double under their watch. They held a majority in both the house and senate for all but the last two years. And during that time they have ballooned both the size of government and the deficit, as well as piss off almost the entirety of the globe. I personally think the Republicans should stop calling themselves conservatives. It’s not accurate. I think something like Recklesses or Nimrods would be far better. “I am, by nature, a reckless,” a Republican could say. It would be a breath of fresh honesty from a party that is giving off the air of moral decay.

Latest Obama Rumor Makes No Sense

It’s like something out of a Joseph Heller novel. The lengths people will go to not to vote for Obama are staggering. The latest one is just silly. This weekend, my mom, who lives in Florida, was canvassing for Obama. One man, driving by, screamed out his window, “I don’t bet black,” before driving off with screeching tires and maniacal laughter. That’s only to be expected. That’s what makes Florida so damn charming. But it was the answer of one registered democrat that rendered my mom speechless. “No way I’m voting for that Jew,” the man railed. Jew? Is this the latest charge? First they railed against his Christian pastor. Then they accused him of being Muslim. Now, with a straight face, he is being accused of being Jewish. Is Hindu next? I say so what? What if he is a Jewish Muslim Christian? It would be rather complicated, getting all those beliefs to work together, of course; but hey, that’s his business. If he wants to belong to three religions I don’t care. He’s not an idiot, that’s the main thing. And McCain and Palin have showed themselves to be the dopiest candidates for office in decades. The only thing keeping them in the race is the media, and their desire to turn it into an actual competition. If there were no media, Obama would probably be winning even more handily than he is. 

No doubt there will be other crazy rumors to circulate before all the levers are pulled. But this one was so absolutely absurd I had to share it.

What Happened To The War On Terror?

In the last seven years, we are supposedly waging a war on terror. Which, let’s face it, is still a vital and necessary war. But what is it? That’s what has stumped the Bush Administration. It stumped them so much that they decided not to even wage it. They chose to wage a war on a country with a lot of oil instead.

I think  a successful war on terror would tamp down on terrorist activity. It would prevent further acts of terror. It’s not the kind of war that would make for a star-studded Hollywood war movie ten years from now. There will be no ticker tape parades. There would, if it was done right, be nothing. It’s the absence of bad things that would be proof of success.

Right now we are desperately overmatched in Afghanistan, and we are pumping ten billion dollars a month into keeping Iraq from deteriorating into civil war. The reason we are losing there is because it is not part of the war on terror. If the world thought we were going after terrorists, the world would be in Iraq with us instead of cursing our name. The next President needs to get back to going after terrorists. This is something we would have plenty of help waging. It’s a good cause. It’s one people can understand. It’s a problem governments the world over have to deal with. Forcing democracy on people at the barrel of a gun is not a war on terror and it’s not good foreign policy. Democracy should not be part of our anti-terror efforts. For one thing Pakistan is now a democracy. As is Iran. We might disagree with them, but they do hold elections. And harbor terrorists.

We have lost our way. Which is why I don’t understand the current war on taxes. Taxes pay for the war that some still claim can be won in Iraq. On the one hand McCain and Palin go from rally to rally declaring they can “win” in Iraq. They also propose a reduction in taxes that would bankrupt the military and impede their ability to improve our lot in the Middle East. McCain is pushing for a cut in the capital gains tax. This is something that not even George Bush thought responsible when gearing up with his 2004 run, including a rash of new tax cuts for businesses. And that’s saying something.

You can’t wage war if you aren’t willing to pay for it. I personally don’t mind paying taxes if that money will be used to supply our troops with the tools they need to fight and the help they need when they’re done. Maybe the taxes should be renamed. The truth is the 1.4 trillion dollar tax cut plan that Dick Cheney rammed down our throats during a time of war were reprehensible and irresponsible. The old John McCain said so himself. It’s why Paul O’Neill resigned as treasury secretary. You have to pay for what you spend. It’s as simple as that. You can have a nation building occupation/anti-civil war effort in Iraq or you can wage war on terrorists in Afghanistan. Or you can have lower taxes. You can’t have it both ways.

America Is – Doggone it! – Anti-American

You might not know this if you live here, or if you live in any other country in the world, but there are vast swaths (sic?) of the United States that hate the United States and want to do it harm. I was born here and I have lived here my whole life, but it wasn’t until Sarah Palin mentioned it that it even crossed my mind. I’ve driven all over America and I’ve never seen an area that struck me as being repelled by itself. I don’t know where these places are that don’t like America…but apparently they exist!!! Places right here in America that hate being here! I don’t know how many states this encompasses, but I find this alarming. I know there are many people, throughout our history, that have had different opinions about how this country should govern itself, but that’s no big deal. That’s democracy. That’s to be expected…

Sarah Palin, in North Carolina, said she liked visiting places in the country that were “pro-American.” So do I. But I thought the entire country was in favor of itself. Now I know better. I hope it’s not where I live. I have enough problems with myself to have to worry about something like this.  

I was about to blow all this off. Because I’m easily distracted. But then I saw Michelle Bachmann declare Barack Obama to be “very Anti-American” and went on to suggest that congress be investigated to weed out the anti-Americans in there. She suggested this with a be-crazed smile and mad glowing eyes. She should probably start with herself. Such a suggestion is ridiculous and, perhaps not Anti-American, so much as Pro-stupidity. She represents the very part of the Republican party that has destroyed itself. Highly religious right wing subnormals have ravaged the GOP. They are represented by the likes of Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and now Sarah Palin. I have no resentment for them, for if it weren’t for them Obama wouldn’t be up right now. It was their advice to go entirely negative and focus on attacks that will cost them dearly on November 4th. If Obama wins by a landslide, it will be a referendum on intolerance an stupidity in government.

Joe The Plumber Finds Out How US Weekly Gets Their Pictures

John McCain tossed out the unvetted name of some guy he saw on Drudge Report. Joe The Plumber. A 1980’s advertising hack’s wet dream. A beautiful marketing ploy circa 1983. The man in the Hathaway Shirt made real. Only the man’s name wasn’t Joe and he wasn’t a plumber. He was a hypothetical question with a bald head. He was Kevin Costner’s character in Swing Vote. 

The guy asks a question. Someone records it. Someone reports it on Drudge Report. John McCain mentions it during the debate…twenty two more times than he has talked about the Middle Class. McCain rolled the dice and decided to make almost the entirety of the third debate -that wasn’t a personal attack- on some guy McCain read about on a blog.

He had to know what would happen. You can’t do something like that to someone you care anything about. If you include Sarah Palin, it was the second basic stranger McCain had sacrificed in his desire to claw his way into the White House.

So we got to see a man torn apart by the media. Normally, we just to this to celebrities. Like Barack Obama. Go through their garbage. Try to dig up some dirt in order to write stories and sell magazines and attract interest on news shows. To please us! There is a huge market of learning the most trivial things about another person’s life, so long as they are entertaining, and, hopefully, odd or highly dysfunctional in some way. 

Some guy asks a question and next thing you know, he’s got a flashlight shoved up his ass. He’s got all these things wrong with him. He owes back taxes. He wants to buy a plumbing company in the future. He asks a question that is only theoretical. He is, in other words, just like most of us. Full of shit. 

Some people say he must be a plant. Why else did he ask such an unusual question? I don’t think so. I think he might be getting the wrong information about Obama’s tax policy. (It’s not a surprise. I can’t wait until this thing is over.) He sees Obama in his neighborhood. He asks the guy a question. And learned how the media works. 

John McCain needed a gimmick and Joe the Plumber was the guy. The day after making Joe the Plumber the most famous name in political debate history, he then goes and defends “the smears” Obama has made against Joe the Plumber. (What smears those are, McCain doesn’t say. You really need to suspend your disbelief in order to be a John McCain supporter.) He drags the guy out into the spotlight and chastises Obama for doing it. He’s the guy who taps you on the shoulder and, even though you saw them do it, says it was someone else. The man has no shame. His entire campaign is a bunch of antiquated marketing ploys. Don’t believe me? On Saturday, Palin brought up, and I’m not making this up, Ed the Dairy Man…

An Unfortunate Infection In The Republican Party

A lot of conservatives that also have brains have been distancing themselves from the GOP. This is a turning point for the Republican party. They can continue to allow evangelicals to call the shots, and continue to put forth Joe Six Pack and Ed the Dairy Guy to run the loftiest institutions in the country as we sink ever more irretrievably into our own muck. Or the Republicans can pivot back to fiscal conservation, smaller government and pragmatic policy making. 

There is an intolerance and a hubris that has infected the party that says that they are absolutely right and everyone else is absolutely wrong; that the ends justify the means; that might makes right; and anyone who disagrees with them is either unpatriotic or un-American. This management style and way of thinking has hurt the constitution, hurt our system of checks and balances, and crippled government efficiency. Those conservatives who see this are immediately spurned and pilloried.

Should the moderates in the Republican party be banished, they would be welcome as democrats. Smart people, even if they have different beliefs, are always welcome. Eventually, and sadly, it looks like the future party make up will be between smart people and idiots. The GOP is going down ugly: it is looking more and more authoritarian and ugly by the day. It is running against everything we need right now. Instead of working to improve our education, they denigrate it; instead of winning the War on Terror, they prefer to beat up more Iraqis. Instead of working to fix our flailing economy, they seek to cut more taxes and add to the problem. 

They’re infected with crooks and idiots. They need to detox and clean out their system. And, as the races taking place around the country seem to attest, they will have the downtime to do this.

One Small (but huge!) McCain Promise Overlooked

Last night at the debate, right before McCain launched his prepared, “I’m not George Bush. If you wanted to run against George Bush you should have run four years ago,” line, he said this. “Yes. Of course.” The question was: Can You Promise To Pay Down The Deficit – (That Darn 10 Trillion Dollars!) – By The End Of Your First Term? 

My first problem with this response is the simple fact that it’s impossible. You can’t lower taxes and pay down the deficit at the same time. 

My second problem is how off-handedly and casually he made the promise before launching into his rehearsed line. “Yeah, I can cure cancer, but let’s go get some chicken wings!”

My third problem is, if this was true – which it isn’t – why in holy hell didn’t he elaborate how? That would have won him the Presidency right there! The man who can lower taxes for everyone and pay down a ten trillion dollar deficit while bailing out everything on earth and fighting two wars in the Middle East certainly gets my vote. I don’t care how old the person is or how corrupted they are or who their running mate is. They could fuck goats day and night if they could actually do such a thing. 

My guess is he will never elaborate on that little promise. My guess is the guy is bonkers. But let’s call the old bastard’s bluff. Let’s demand he lay out how he would do it.

Who’s with me?

The Media Sucks Donkey Balls

The whole system is flawed. There are very few truly objective journalists anymore. There is no center anymore. Sure. There’s that Lou Dobbs guy. But he’s not really independent. He’s just an angry guy with fake hair and bad teeth. He hates both sides and the middle and everything else. So count him out. Now if you watch cable news, all of them have the same basic format:

 

“To get to the truth we have two people. One a democrat and one a republican. Both are extremely angry and will yell at one another, dodge the questions, and spout off their talking points. We won’t cover any new ground and you won’t leave with anything but a headache. Okay. Start your spinning…”

The people the media gets on are usually paid by one side or another – usually one of each – to talk a blue streak without actually saying anything. Savvy people, who are looking for some semblance of truth will be left hanging. Perhaps that’s why there are so many “undecided” voters out there. They’re so put off by the tone from both sides, along with the pundits and the so-called anchors or journalists or commentators or analysts or experts or whatever they call themselves, that they end up not liking anybody. Just one more mess the next President will have to fix…

Where Is McCain’s Lapel Pin?

He hasn’t been wearing it on the trail. And he hasn’t worn it in the last two debates. Hmmm. Could he be a hypocrite?

Murtha Tells Controversial Truth And Has To Back Away From It

Why is it when politicians tell an uncomfortable truth, such as when Murtha that there are parts of rural Pennsylvania that is racist, they get attacked for it. How could you tell the truth like that? people scream. So then the politician has to apologize. You can’t say anything that hurts anybody’s feelings if you’re a politician without having to back away from it. Whatever one side says, the other side attacks them until they back away from it. It’s stupid. There has been much talk in the media that Barack Obama is having trouble with rural white voters. In one poll, 33% admitted that race would be a factor in who they vote for. At a Sarah Palin rally, in – guess what – rural Pennsylvania, a man put an Obama sticker on a monkey and paraded it around, calling it his “little Hussein.” Which, I think, most people would agree, is the opposite of not racist.

The truth is the truth even if its ugly.

This Is No Time For Complacency!

It seems like Obama is on cruise control right now. But there is absolutely no reason to relax. Just looking at John McCain’s ugly performance last night, it should come as no surprise – no matter what he may claim – that the Republicans are going to go more than ugly in the final weeks. They are desperate cornered rats. John McCain goes on television last night, brings up William Ayers, then immediately says he doesn’t care about “some washed up terrorist” then, the very next day starts a negative campaign with Robocalls where robotic voices say that Obama is in close cahoots with William Ayers, a domestic terrorist who killed Americans. These criminals will stop at nothing to keep their lofty perch on top of their ill-gained nest egg of corporate skimming and scamming.

Even if none of this noise makes much of a dent, even if it makes people turn further away from McCain, even if every Republican goes on television and publicly endorses Obama, every single one of us still has to go in there and pull the lever. Whether we stand in snow, rain, or long through the night, we simply have to see this thing through. There will be a barrage of hate slung our way – like angry chimps at the zoo, they will throw and spit all kinds of bile at us right up to November 4th. 

We must vote!

Colin Powell’s Upcoming Endorsement.

 On November 5th, it has been decided, Colin Powell will announce for all the world to hear just who it is he has decided to vote for. “On this day you will no my choice for President,” he said, speaking at a podium in his living room.

John McCain Is Without Grace

What is it with this guy? How can the media even pretend that he did anything other than seethe and act like a drama queen? They acted as if he performed “very strongly” and “might have gotten himself back into this thing…” And they said it with a straight face. At the end though, tellingly, after two debates – one in which he refused to shake hands and one in which he referred to Barack Obama as “That One,” – McCain still couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge Obama by name. If his skin is that thin and he can harbor a grudge right up on the surface, how can he possibly work across the aisle in a bipartisan way? He can’t. 

And another thing…when the topic of race came up last night, McCain skirted the topic and chose to use the moment to complain about a comment by John Lewis, interpreting the comments and twisting their meaning and coming to a conclusion nobody who actually heard or read the comments could. Lewis merely said that the bile and rage and hate that has been showing up more and more at the rallies of Sarah Palin reminded him, a survivor of the civil rights movement of that ugly period of our history. John Lewis was not in any way comparing John McCain to George Wallace. He was in no way comparing McCain’s supporters – and here McCain chose to describe all of his supporters as war veterans, thus insinuating that John Lewis was calling his war veterans racist bombers – to the acts that took place when George Wallace ran for President. If you didn’t read the comments, which John Lewis has since explained in more detail, and merely believed what John McCain was saying, you would think that John Lewis was calling all of McCain’s supporters racist terrorists. It is such a twisting of the truth that I no longer feel that the tone of this campaign can be traced to Karl Rove or any of that slimy ilk, but the dark soul of John McCain himself. He showed his true colors. He took an opportunity to take the high road and publicly took a dump on it. I think the real John McCain is a 72 year old spoiled brat who feels entitled to a Presidency he is no more capable of taking on than Homer Simpson’s dad. 

He had that prepared line about not being George Bush, which the media latched onto as proof that he ‘came out swinging,’ but the truth is this: no, he is not George Bush. George Bush is looking like the Rock of Gibralter compared to this guy. George Bush is a bully and a man out of his depth and was clearly not up to the task of the last 8 years; John McCain is older, less stable, and even less up to the task before him. His belief systems are the same as the GOP. The only reason he took on his own party was because they hurt his feelings by backing Bush over him in 2000. His voting record is that of a man who flips a coin at random. It changes on the hour. 

I hear from the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden that John McCain is a good man. But I haven’t seen anything to make that case. If he were a good man, he wouldn’t have run the campaign he did and he wouldn’t be trailing in the polls. If he did have the judgment required to be President, he wouldn’t have picked a racist power abuser after a fifteen minute meeting for his Vice President. 

The very fact that John McCain is as close as he is in the polls – which isn’t all that close – should be a shocking wake up call to a country that prides itself and brands itself as being the world’s great melting pot and bastion of freedom. I am ashamed of what we have done to the world and our own country in the last 8 years. I don’t want to have to be ashamed of what we do in the next 4. I don’t mind paying a little more money to help clean up after ourselves. If you break it you buy it. Well, we broke it and now we have to fix it.

Let’s get this ugliness over with and move on.

John McCain Wants To Be President; Barack Obama Is One

Unfortunately for John McCain, he had to go and debate a person who is already a President. Calm, Steady, Smart, Gracious, Poised, Disciplined, and Unflappable. You simply can’t compete with that. You look at Obama and you see a President. You look at McCain and you see a cranky old man.

Last night was a barrage of difficult subjects and character attacks. Obama answered the questions with deep knowledge and parried the attacks in an almost overly gracious way. McCain acted as if he were the aggrieved party and Obama was the attacker. Obama chose to ignore the obvious and not pick apart the many falsehoods McCain tossed his way and rather focus on explaining his positions on a number of subjects. McCain was trying so hard to get Obama sidetracked that he sidetracked himself. He kept trying to push Obama’s buttons only to discover that there didn’t seem to be any. In the beginning I felt that Obama was too cool. When the topic of race came up he answered the question like a professor. Then, as time went on, Obama woke up and rose to the moment, and McCain flailed away and wilted. The abortion debate is when Obama took his opponent, calmly and methodically, to pieces. It was the moment that McCain gulped for air and looked at his opponent as if he’d just punched him in the solar plexus. It proved that, like the economy, domestic issues are also not McCain’s strong suit. And, since Obama more than held his own on foreign policy, it begs the question as to just what McCain’s strong suit is, aside from being cranky, making faces, blinking, sighing and tossing off lies.

Whenever McCain is asked a really tough question, he immediately answers it with no elaboration at all before changing the subject to a personal attack.

Q: “You’ve promised to cut taxes across the board and pay down the deficit by the end of your first term. With a financial crisis and two wars to fight, is balancing the deficit even possible?”

A: “Yes, of course. I can do that. I know how to do that. But listen, my opponent once bought a movie projector for a science museum…”

Q: “But how…”

A: “And can I just say this? As a man who has served his country for a lifetime, I am offended that anyone can accuse me of anything at all that is remotely bad, no matter how true it is…”

Another thing McCain likes to do is get outraged by something nobody ever even said.

Q: “You have come under scrutiny for some rather angry comments coming from some of your rallies and in your ads. Is there anything you’d like to say about that?”

A: “Sure. I will not tolerate, nor will I stand for, nor, for that matter, will I put up with, anyone to accuse my supporters of being anything but good hard working patriotic Americans. It is outrageous and offensive. To compare them to bombers…”

He takes a little criticism, that some people at Sarah Palin’s rallies have said things that went over the line, and pushes back against a criticism that was never made. I don’t know if this is a tactic or his or if his brain actively manipulates reality and twists it into something much larger, but it makes him sound incoherent and out of balance with reality.

John McCain thinks we need a steady hand at the tiller. Perhaps John McCain, when he looks at Obama, also sees a President. Maybe that’s why he won’t do it.

John McCain Needs Therapy; Barack Obama needs a Red Bull

McCain wouldn’t debate Obama, so Obama held a town hall while McCain punched Obama in the kidneys and kicked him in the balls and stomped on his foot and all the while Obama calmly looked at us as if to say, “Who is this crazy old guy? Where did John McCain go?” as he held the old bulldog demon off. He said punch me if you want, but I’m here to talk to the people who matter. Obama was unflappable and utterly charitable to a fault. He could have attacked Sarah Palin but did not. McCain said so many objectional things in such a rapid fire fashion it was mesmerizing. Here was a guy who did precisely the wrong thing. He lied and attacked and said the same junk he says every day. He played himself right into Obama’s hands, showing a temperament that would disqualify him from family dinner, much less running the country. The man was exploding inside! He’s a seething mass of a petty brat. The reason he’s such an asshole was he didn’t get his way!

It could all come down to Joe the Plumber’s taxes. But I doubt it. It was a bad gimmick that Obama felt he had to hokily take up. Never mind that Joe the Plumber is related to Charles Keating, one of McCain’s old running mates…

These pundits are nuts, of course. On both sides. You watch the thing and then you hear these dummies talk and they have no idea what the reality is. John McCain went down in a blaze of dishonorable attacks that were long ago debunked. He was Jake Lamotta. Now. An aged demented old boxer who should have retired long ago. He was out on his feet, sucking air, after the first half hour; the only reason he didn’t go down is Obama was charitable enough not to knock him down. He parried and held his own as McCain repeatedly worked to defeat himself. 

After the debate, McCain’s guy – that pinched face lobbyist for Freddie Mac – is on having to tell us what McCain would have said if he hadn’t had a temper tantrum. This guy talks just like McCain and Palin! They are masters at the long preface to the question they have no intent of answering.

I don’t know if McCain planned to go on the attack, but once he did, he was toast. He couldn’t let it go and he seemed petulant and vindictive and about as far from Presidential as an old man can get. If this was planned, it was a terrible strategy. It was the exact opposite of the right thing to do and while it made for riveting television – wow! look at that cranky old man! – it thoroughly demolished any chance of him competing in this race for the Presidency.

Prediction – Third Debate Numbers Will Be Low

From my sources, who did not ask to be anonymous because they don’t know they are my sources, it would appear that this third debate will not be a game changer. Because I don’t know anyone who will be watching it. They’ve already decided. Nothing either side could say tonight will change their minds. Which is good, because neither candidate is likely to say anything interesting anyway. My guess is they will stick to their talking points and spin the questions to what they want to say. Which means no game changer. Both candidates have been basically excellent at being boring. Sure, McCain makes his disdain and inability to make eye contact known, but that’s neither here nor there. Ayers could come up, which would only be a game changer in the sense that independent voters who are desperate to figure out who will do a better job to help them during this Republican created disaster movie called the United States would collectively hurl their televisions out the window in disgust. The base won’t see the campaign, of course. They don’t own television sets because they hate the mainstream media. And they like burning books instead of reading them. And they’re going to vote for the white guy anyway. And his hottie running mate. Basically, here’s how the voting will break down.

A) People who want the economy to improve and want to get out of Iraq and want to improve our standing in the world and want steady leadership and thoughtful debate. (lots of people)

OR

B) People who think Barack Obama has a funny name and think Deliverance is hilarious and like the fact that their house is made by Dodge. (not that many people)

 

Eventually I will stop writing about this. But it will take time. This has been the most bizarre and ridiculous campaign in modern political history. There have been more mistakes and poor decisions and impulsive attacks and wastes of money in the McCain campaign than you would think possible. If he led the country the way he has led his campaign, we’d be screwed. Er, more screwed.

Obama has everyone pursuing the same goal with focus and dedication and solid strategy. They stick to their talking points and they are consistent. If he led the country the way he has led his campaign we would get exactly what we need desperately right now.

 

You know who should moderate a debate? Jesse Ventura. That guy asks a question and you don’t answer it you get body slammed. I say this because if things continue the way they are, the cable news is in for a massive let down. They seem hell bent on keeping the race as close as possible. Whenever one candidate falls behind they attack the other one until they can catch up, then giddily explore what is going on using big maps. But, alas, it seems the party is over for them…not that there will be an absence of anything to cover. There’s plenty of things! Wildfires. The stock market. And that pesky ten billion a dollar non war in Iraq along with a spiraling crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The race may be coming to an end but when it comes to crazy anxiety producing news, they’ll have plenty of material to work with.

How Will McCain Go Out?

Conservatives want him to go down hard. They want him to wreck all semblance of a political career on a last-second gambit guaranteed to fail. They want him to attack Obama on Ayers and Wright, a rerun of the failed strategy that took down Hillary Clinton, and ignore the whole economy thing. In other words, they are preaching that he be both small-minded and vindictive while doing nothing to assuage people’s feelings about him on the economy. By attacking Obama and ignoring the economy, he will lose. By not attacking Obama and ignoring the economy, he will lose. The only way he can win is a combination of a colossal Obama stumble and a presentation of a blueprint to get us out of our current economic mess. Which, I’m thinking, doesn’t currently exist. It’s looking more and more like he will lose either way. For McCain, the choice is between allowing the honorable John McCain to come out for one last scrum or going down in flames as a man who wrecked his reputation and all he stood for in a chase for a political goal. The choice is his.

Dissecting a Whopper: John McCains Latest Statement Explored

Yesterday, when pressed about recent alarming comments, where racial epithets were spoken, along with cries of “terrorist” and “traitor” and “kill him”  at McCain rallies, John McCain responded with something that doesn’t make any sense. He said, “Frankly, I’ve seen and heard the same things at Obama rallies too.”

Hmmm.

What does he mean by this? Is he implying that someone at an Obama rally accused McCain of being an Arab? Surely that would have made news. We would have certainly seen that on the news. Maybe what he means is that he has literally heard these things said about him at Obama rallies. That he has personally gone and heard these things said about him. Does he sneak into Obama rallies with a peace sign and an Obama shirt? One can’t imagine such a thing. One thing you can say about John McCain, with his distinctive body language and incorrigible temper, is the guy can’t pass himself off as anyone but John McCain. So that isn’t what he meant. Maybe he is claiming that he has heard people shouting “traitor” and “terrorist” at Obama rallies. But, if that were the case, the chances are we would also be hearing about the guy who yelled “traitor” right before having his head blown off by the Secret Service. Or else being ripped limb from limp by peaceful people hoping for a better future. There is no way to interpret what McCain said that makes any sense at all. It is absurd no matter how you dissect it. My guess is, McCain, when cornered, can’t help but blurt out whatever comes into his head with no thought at all to believability or sense. Next thing you know he’ll be accusing Obama of being racist. I can’t wait until the movie of this election comes out!

Palin’s Latest Claim Over The Top Absurd

What Obama once called The Silly Season in politics long ago passed us by. Now we’re into The Completely Over The Top And Not Remotely Credible Season. Take Palin’s promise yesterday to pay down the budget deficit – which is currently somewhere around a record ten trillion dollars – by the end of the first term of a Palin/McCain administration. Combine that with the promise of “victory” in the “war” in Iraq; along with the war in Afghanistan and the possible war she casually tossed out with Russia, along with McCain’s promise to “cut taxes across the board” along with 350 billion dollars to buy up bad mortgages, along with his latest desire to cut the capital gains tax, and you have the making of the biggest whopper of the campaign. 

It’s clear that the current administration is dreadful at math. Yet it took them 8 years to balloon the deficit to where it stands today. The idea that you can make up that ground in only four years – during a recession! – while at the same time lowering government revenue is the very definition of impossible. No wonder the GOP is trying really hard to change the subject again…

Speaking of the GOP…talk about a group of people who don’t seem to get it. With McCain’s numbers falling faster than a man without a parachute glued to an elephant and shoved out of an airplane, and polls linking such a fall to the tenor of the McCain campaign’s recent attacks on Obama in the face of the biggest economic crisis since the great depression, what do they want to do? More attacks! Of course! They’re begging him to bring up Jeremiah Wright. They have been sabotaging his campaign for months now and are miffed that he might not listen to them. It’s listening to them that got him into this mess. It’s listening to them that got him Sarah Palin. It’s listening to them that has seen the recent upsurge of bigotry and racial rage at McCain rallies. It’s listening to them that got McCain to fire the moderates on his staff and hire right wing fascist hate mongering goons. It’s listening to them that has seen John Lewis warning McCain about the outcomes of not nipping this new hateful tenor of Palin’s rallies in the bud. Had McCain distanced himself from the crooks who got Bush into the White House, and America on the very brink of disaster, then we might not be talking about what a failed disjointed gimmicky campaign he has run to date. We might, instead, be talking about the next President. 

If McCain goes on television and attacks Obama on charges that have long been debunked, instead of the current economic crisis, he is the world’s biggest fool. I mean, the world’s second biggest fool. Pay down the deficit in four years. Come on!

No More Dicks In The White House

Sometimes I buy things just to punish myself. And this is what I did when I bought a new book about Dick Cheney called Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. Because naming the book Dickhead would have been too controversial. I’m only on page 73, but I can already claim unequivocally that it’s always bad when people named Dick are in the White House. He has held the strings of power, along with his cronies Rumsfeld and David Addington, during what many – like me! – consider to be the worst President in our history. As I write this Republicans are dropping in the polls all across the nation. This bailout and nationalization of banks combined with skyrocketing unemployment, Republicans are battling for their political lives. At this rate, Republicans will lose a ton of seats in three weeks. (One day George Bush’s gut will go on display in the Smithsonian and an aging population will line up just to look at it in awe; for surely there has never been a more destructive gut in history.)

The man who rose through the ranks as the black sheep son of a somewhat timid one term President named George Herbert Walker Bush has managed take the helm and steer the country into one rocky cliff after another. Torture. Debt. Socialism. Hyperpartisanship. War. Lies. Secrecy. Plunder. He’s done it all: a one-man greatest hits of failure. The man who worked tirelessly to assure that he could do so was Dick Cheney. After helping to steal the election, nominating himself for vice-president, chairing the Presidential transition team, he immediately let everyone know that the administration had no plans to follow through on any of the campaign’s promises of working in a bipartisan way. Despite the narrowest of victories – if you consider losing victory – and a divided congress, Dick Cheney, at the first post administration mixer, immediately took a crap in the punch bowl. It was in the beginning, just as it has continued to be to this day, his way or the highway. They got their way on every horrible and irresponsible decision they made. Unilateral war. Trillion dollar tax cuts. Outing any who got in his way…why did I buy this book! The guy is a complete crook! He should be pilloried in the Washington Monument mall so we can all toss tomatoes at him!

Voter Fraud? What About Voter Suppression?

It is well known that the youth vote, which tends to vote in an overwhelmingly thoughtful and selfless way compared to older voters, favors the democrats. So it isn’t exactly shocking that most voting places are in no way prepared to handle the overwhelming number of students expected to vote this year. In some places those who have registered to vote have been told they could lose their ability to be considered an independent of their parents and could lose financial aid. This isn’t true, but who cares? Right? The goal is to scare people from voting. And make it excruciating to do so. In California it never took me longer than five minutes to vote. And why should it? California is going to go democratic no matter what. No, the places that are the most excruciating to vote are the battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida. To vote there you have to be willing to stand in line for hours on end long into the night. And a lot of brave and patient people do. But not the kids. They take one look at a six mile long line and turn around and go home. That’s why it’s important to realize just how crooked and duplicitous this current administration is. Racists have no problem voting. They merely check their sheet at the door and go pull the lever. Students and minorities and those who have the power to right the ship have to stand in line and listen to false terrifying voting rules that make voting sound as appetizing as shoving a snapping turtle down your pants. 

So vote now if you can! Many states let you vote early. If you know who you’re voting for, go ahead and do it already. Save yourself having to deal with thugs and incompetents. My guess is this year will be particularly ugly. The GOP is already crying foul. Which means they are planning something repugnant. It’s on page 32 of the GOP master play book of criminality. Accuse your opponent of what you are about to do.

So vote now! Go!

2008 Political Season Uncovers Ugly Truth

This political season has been one of the most dramatic on record. There’s been hurricanes, an energy crisis, an economic crisis, flooding, wildfires, the first black nominee, the first female republican vice presidential nominee, an old coot, and screaming maniacs from every corner of the country. It has unearthed an enormous amount of emotion that Americans are taking and turning towards time consuming projects that are both complicated and totally useless. Instead of going out and getting a job or working on the job you actually have, millions of people are making up jokey videos and karaoke tributes in an effort to get themselves a little notoriety. It is this mind-set, what I like to call the Reality TV effect, this desire to be famous, this collective narcissistic love of narcissism, that has brought us to the very brink of disaster. Why go to law school or medical school when one can become a millionaire by going on television and eating a plate of cow brains in a bikini? Why write the great American novel that nobody will ever read when you can go online and send the world a picture of your cooter? Why go door to door drumming up votes for the candidate of your choice when you can go and design cute doggy t-shirts bearing their likeness? Why start a small business that will create jobs when you can go on The Real World and have sex with a donkey? Why become an investigative journalist and seek to wrong injustice when you can make millions of dollars on Fox News screaming incoherently? Why travel the world and experience new cultures when you can spend your time remaking Howard the Duck frame by frame using small poodles? Instead of creating things that will last or exporting things that create money we’re making things to send to our cyber buddies on second life. We’ve become subservient to our own cheese ball culture and we don’t even know it. Our highest selling magazines are Us Weekly and InTouch magazine, a cavalcade of pictures of hungover celebrities drinking coffee and trying to surf. We place on a pedestal people who are most noteworthy for being dysfunctional. We talk in a patois of ‘like’s’ and ‘you knows’ and ‘whatever’s and OMG and WTF and don’t even bother with what used to be known as English. It used to be that those who didn’t know history were doomed to repeat it. Now we’re rapidly moving towards a time where people will cease to remember history even exists. People are mangled in horrible grocery store accidents because their carts crash into one another while they text on their iphones about Lindsay Lohan’s clit piercing. As a result, we are not just facing an economic crisis. We’re facing an education crisis, a culture crisis, a class crisis, a debt crisis, a consumer crisis, an energy crisis, and a crisis of depth and substance. As the only superpower, we are lagging behind most of the world in all the things we used to lead the world in. The good news in all this bad news is we’ve just got slapped upside the head. Maybe that will knock some sense into us before its too late. 

Buy canned soup!

There Is No Way McCain Can Win*

* Unless Barack Obama screws up spectacularly. But, while he may be from Chicago, he’s not the Cubs. McCain can go into the third debate and wipe the floor with Obama, but it won’t matter because there’s still an intolerant giant weight named Sarah Palin weighing him down, drawing him down to the depths where his base resides. Obama could choose ALF for a running mate and win. John McCain is going to have plenty of time to look back and try to figure out just what the hell he was thinking when he took a torch to the one thing he had going for him. It’s hard to think of how he could have picked anyone worse. Maybe they all said no, but he made one whopper of a miserable choice. Much will come of this. There will be books and HBO movies with semi-famous actors replaying this and talking it over for some time to come. It’s a fascinating look into the mind of the man who could have been coasting to victory had he only run a campaign similar to the tone he has strived to strike his whole life. I keep hammering away at this, because it seems so incredibly stupid. 

It’s even dumber now that Palin has been found guilty of abusing her power as governor of Alaska. Abusing power is how we find our country in the miserable shape it is in today. Ironically, an attempt by the McCain campaign to thwart the so-called “troopergate” could make things worse. Sarah Palin, through a lawyer, opened up an ethics investigation on herself, through a commission who is appointed by her. But they didn’t do what the McCain campaign had hoped. Instead of rolling over and clearing her of any wrong-doing, they hired a famously aggressive democrat to head an investigation into other possible ethics violations. So an attempt to sweep things under the rug could turn out to burn down the entire house. 

The only thing we know about Sarah Palin, other than that she is mean spirited, intellectually hamstrung, a pathological liar, is that she is incapable of coming clean. She is forever running from questions and avoiding the press and leaping into vans and hopping on planes, going from one teleprompter to the next and stopping only to say that she has “nothing to hide.” Her nose is in a constant state of expansion. 

She asks us to ask ourselves just who Barack Obama is – but Barack Obama is an open book compared to Sarah Palin. The only things we do know about her are terrifying. We know she’s vindictive. We know she’s shallow minded. We know she’s – let’s just say it – incredibly stupid. We know that she is incapable of speech that isn’t written by some shadowy angry Don Rickles guy somewhere. We know she abused her power in office and lied about it. We know she lied about approving a bridge to nowhere. We know she appeals to rage-fueled glue sniffing snuff snorters that embrace intolerance and nice legs. We know she has a voice that can fell birds from the sky. We know she energizes the base in such a way that everyone who comes near them wants to flee in terror.

And we know John McCain cries himself to sleep just thinking about what might have been and what will never be.

John McCain has Obama right where he wants him…

way way way ahead.

Sarah Palin Preemptively Claims Election Results Flawed

Fading fast in the polls, the new McCain gambit is to complain that the election results are flawed. Never mind that the election has yet to take place. Despite not yet losing they are already accusing the other side of cheating. But, this, too, shouldn’t register much of a reaction. At this point, they are transparently desperate. And they seem to forget it was George Bush – a Republican – who stole an election in 2000; and it was the GOP, in 2004, who helped to fund electronic voting machines that in one Ohio town, calculated that George Bush received sixty thousand more votes than there were people. 

This thing is over. They should forfeit. All they are doing at this point is soiling the air with rotten innuendo and playing to a growing ever ugly by the minute base of subnormal hillbillies.

Another Day Another McCain

Well, this being Monday, John McCain came out with a new strategy and tone. Last week he was a hate monger and socialist. Before that he was the Maverick. Before that he was the anti-earmark guy. Before that he was the reformer. Before that he was the lying ads guy. Before that he was the change guy. Before that he was the guy who loved the media and referred to them as his “base.” Never has a candidate worked so hard to make himself look exactly what his opponent was claiming about him. If John McCain is anything, “erratic” is certainly one of them. He lurches from subject to subject like Nick Nolte on six tabs of Xanax, reversing himself, stepping all over his official positions and contradicting those who are supposedly running his campaign. My guess is they’re right about what he is supposed to think, only McCain, like a true maverick, changes his positions depending on where the sun is in the sky, how many cups of coffee he’s had, or what the change he jangles in his pocket says to him. 

His opponent is the polar opposite. Barack Obama’s message hasn’t changed hardly at all. He just says the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over in a mechanical fashion. Sure it’s boring. But it’s reliable and steady. And you know where he stands. And that is his great gift. He has steadily marched forward with great discipline. Unruffled. Unflappable. As his opponents, one after another, have struggled desperately and frantically to keep up. They talk about leadership and readiness. He shows it and exhibits it. 

The GOP strategists are similar to Barack Obama. They are very good at getting their message out. Unfortunately it’s the same stuff they say about every Democratic candidate that has run against them since 1988. They claim Barack Obama is the most liberal senator in Washington. Which they also said about John Kerry. And Hillary Clinton. And John Edwards. And Ted Kennedy. How they all can hold the same title is beyond me. They hammer away at how democrats will raise taxes. Despite all evidence to the contrary; well, except for really rich guys. And then, it’s not that he’ll raise it so much as he’ll let the irresponsible Bush tax cuts lapse. They attack on patriotism and make up the facts to back it up. They’re in a rut. And those recycled messages simply aren’t gaining traction this time around. McCain knows they need new ideas. But it seems neither he nor his party are prepared or willing or able to come up with any.

The Economy Is Totally Nuts

It went up like a supersonic jet on redbull today. Almost a thousand points. The greatest one point gain in one day. A positive record in what had been an almost daily record of woe. After a weekend in which leaders around the world got together and agreed to help fix the mess we’ve created, those who like to buy stocks did so in a furious frenzy. Not that we can all go out and buy stupid crap just yet. As we know, the dow is a live wire you don’t want to get close to. A part of me wonders just who exactly is buying all that stock. Could be it’s the people who made tons of money manipulating the market that got us into this mess. There are, after all, a lot of rich villains out there. And they’ve got the money and a stock market teetering on collapse. If you watch television you’ll hear one person claiming now is the perfect time to buy and not ten minutes later that you would be a fool if you don’t immediately run to the bank and pull all your money out and stuff it in your mattress. So I’m going to do both. I’m buying mattresses. If there is a great depression coming, mattresses will be hard to come by. So that’s my plan. What’s yours?

The John McCain Who Could Have Won

“He’s a decent family man — citizen — that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

John McCain said this at one of his recent rallies, correcting an old lady with crazy hair who accused Barack Obama of being an Arab. And, in a nutshell, that statement is what his campaign should have been about. Although I don’t think being an Arab and being a decent, family man are necessarily mutually exclusive. However, that quote did hold the high road promise he once declared his campaign would take. Instead of character assassination and sowing fear, he should have been outlining the differences between an Obama and a McCain administration. Unfortunately, since he has run such a negative campaign, he has created so much distortion and distraction and theatre that his policies and issues have been lost in the chaos. He has been back on his heels for most of the campaign, mainly due to the ineptitude of his advisors and staff. 

Maybe he doesn’t have anything but gimmicks left to him. If that’s the case, then he’s going to lose. If he continues to try and appeal to “the base” he will lose. Because I firmly believe, in 2008, our country has fewer backwater asswad hayseeds than it did forty years ago. It’s a losing strategy. These people probably don’t know how to pull the lever anyway. I wonder if John McCain, if he’s honest to himself, ever looks out at the crowds he’s drawing and thinks Holy Crap! Who Are These Nutjobs! 

Since John McCain has such a flair for the dramatic, I think he should publicly fire his manager, drop Palin from the ticket, add Tom Ridge, and apologize for his erratic behavior and the tenor of his campaign. He’s got nothing to lose. Except all those cornfucker wackos he never should have worked to appeal to in the first place. It’s something to think about.

“General Petraeus Just Doesn’t Get It”

John McCain didn’t say those exact words. Not about Petraeus anyway. He can’t. He has a man crush on Petraeus. As well he should, for helping to calm the ethnic tensions in Baghdad and keep our occupation from spiraling completely out of control. No, McCain said those words about Barack Obama for saying he would sit down with our enemies without preconditions. Obama never said he would sit down at the Presidential level right away, and he never said he would sit down without a game plan first. McCain shook his head and claimed that Obama just doesn’t get it. Palin, naively it turns out, said it was “beyond naive.” Which is an expression McCain uses quite frequently, and like a trained parrot, she has obviously picked up on. 

Now, it seems, General Petraeus has gone and said the same thing. “You have to talk to your enemies,” he told The Heritage Foundation. He went on to say, “The British know this well. They’ve sat down with thugs throughout their history. Including us, I believe.” A very well made point. The same point Obama has been trying to make, only Petraeus did it better. Obama would be well served to quote the General should McCain bring it up again. “Are you saying you disagree with General Petraeus, the man you claim to put your faith in? Because we are both saying the same thing. If I’m beyond naive, and he’s beyond naive, then maybe being beyond naive is what we need right now…” Or something like that…

Toying With Voter Rage Dangerous For All Of Us

There is a lot of uncertainty and rage in this country right now. The economy is in ruin. And tax payers have been stuck with the bill while the people who put us in this situation have safely hidden their booty overseas. In the last month we have turned into the United States of France. And it’s pissing a lot of people off. The McCain/Palin hate mongers are trying to use this to their advantage. They are accusing Barack Obama of being a terrorist (something McCain knows not to be true) and are also blaming the entire global economic meltdown at his feet. Combine that with their insistence on him “not being like them” and using his middle name like a weapon and you have a very combustible and ugly mix. 

They aren’t wrong though. Barack Obama is NOT like them. And that’s why most people will be voting for him. He’s not a dick or an intolerant anti-competence redneck from a meth producing backwater in a state that has more Caribou than people. He’s a decent person, running a mostly positive campaign, only fighting back to avoid being punished for not fighting back. More importantly though, he can navigate his way on and off a stage without getting lost. He can look people in the eye, walk and chew gum at the same time, make references to friends and political colleagues who haven’t been dead twenty years, and he has yet to announce a plan to invade Upper Volta. 

John McCain is running the kind of scorched earth/ race baiting/ hate inciting campaign that flies in the face of everything he wants us to believe about him. He accused Obama of being too far on the left of the aisle to shake hands with anyone on the right. But right now he’s the only candidate in the same world with everyone else. John McCain is just to the right of David Duke and John Rocker at the moment. Should he manage to frighten enough people with his smears and lies to weasel his way into office, he will face the most hostile congress any President ever has. Which could be the reason members of his own party – the ones who don’t think it’s prudent to mock Obama because he actually knows how to pronounce things correctly – are backing away from McCain. He has lost the endorsement of the governor of Mississippi. A state well versed on the results that instilling and fueling hate can bring about.

Why the media feels they need to even cover the McCain campaign at this point is beyond me. They have ceased to be a legitimate political presence, no matter how strident and bellicose their lies have become. Sarah Palin is the most farcical illegitimate hayseed candidate to ever make a major ticket. She is plotting and dreaming of John McCain’s tragic death as we speak. 

Last week a man was shot three times for wearing an Obama t-shirt. As the election gets closer, and should the GOP continue to use proven and false charges to try and brand Obama a terrorist or traitor, we can expect more tragic episodes of violence. McCain, Schmidt, Palin, et al would all be rightfully culpable. McCain is a hothead and dangerously ambitious and needs to be committed and tranquilized. And the sooner the better if you ask me. Sarah Palin needs to be air dropped on that island in Alaska she is always going on and on about so she can look out and keep an eye on Russia for the rest of her days. Steve Schmidt should have his own show on Fox, which he hosts live from federal prison, locked up like a diseased rat and beaten daily.

Republicans Voting For Obama?

You betcha. But not because they know John McCain is a deranged old coot. They know that, of course. But they also know that whoever gets the White House will have to be the bearer of four years of bad news thanks to George The Terrible and that Dick who lives underground and spends his time shredding the Constitution. I know many Republicans who are voting for Obama for strategic reasons. Some of them also feel that McCain would muck things up even more. The Republicans are retreating, so they can reorganize and lick their wounds and hide their loot. I also think they know they’ll lose anyway so they might as well distance themselves from what they see as a loser ticket.

Can George Bush Please Stop Trying To Be The President?

It’s just not working. Every time that bumbling fool gets in front of the camera to “calm” the people down, he has the exact opposite effect. Whatever response the President is seeking, he generates the exact opposite. He has lost all credibility. He is the lamest duck ever. He has turned the country into France in the last month and turned all of our dearly beloved principles upside down. Why should we care what that guy has to say anyway? He needs to stay inside and shred documents. The last thing we need is some deer in head lights bozo President preaching anything at this point. If he tells me everything is fine one more time, I’m going to buy a shotgun and cans of soup.

The Current Republican Party Is Toast

The two party system is toast. The Republican brand will resurrect itself. At its core it’s still a viable platform. Unfortunately the current philosophy: attract dumb people, program them with lies, encourage hate and divisiveness, get them in office, rob country blind, is simply no longer going to work. There are plenty of people who would love to vote for the ideal of smaller government, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility. But when the party of smaller government spends eight years bankrupting the country and enlarging the government by 40% and alienating everything in sight, it’s time to start over. The Republicans have quite simply lost their way. They’ve been working on for awhile, ever since they focused on attracting a base of inward looking cultural backwads. The Republicans need to let go of their repugnance for competence and be willing to embrace such aspirational thinking as hope and inclusiveness. The younger generation is not quite as turned on by rage and violence and hate as this current GOP seems to be. Spewing anger is simply not attractive. If Republicans can learn to diminish fear rather than encouraging and stoking it, they will do much better. Based on the utter mess the Bush Administration will leave in its wake, it’s a good bet whoever wins this election will have to be the bearer of bad news for quite some time. Republicans know this. They know they can recover. But they have a choice as to how they want to go about it. Do they want to rebuild themselves from the broken and spiritually dead remains of the people that caused so much global antagonism and chaos? Or do they want to resurrect themselves in a more positive 21st century light? There are many people out there who are so disgusted with the way things are currently that they simply can’t bring themselves to vote. Maybe they could brand themselves as the party of honesty. They could skip telling people the impossible things they think people want to hear – I can fix this problem and still cut taxes! – or they can say, you know what? All of my plans are ruined. I am going to have to raise taxes. We are going to have to pay down this debt. All the things you want will have to wait because our system is in tatters. Our armed forces are stretched too thin, and underfunded, and they need our help. It may not be what you want to hear, but it’s the sad, honest truth. I think if a party or politician came out and did that, we would be ready for it. The problem with our current politics is that the problems are many times more numerous than we think any politician can handle. So we have to choose between two parties we know are lying to us. Just tossing it out there, because right now you Republicans are an ugly pile of pus on our country’s name.

What Might Have Been

What if John McCain had taken a different path? Suppose he had chosen a different strategist than the muckrakers who dragged him through the mud eight years ago? What if he had run a truthful campaign and stayed on the high road and Americans had a choice between two good candidates with different views and voters could choose based upon what they heard of substance? What if John McCain had picked a vice-presidential candidate for a running mate? We’ll never know the answer, because John McCain chose none of those things. Instead he morphed into Huey Long and chose to attack Barack Obama’s race and exotic upbringing. Instead he chose to take his good name and piss on it. Instead he chose to embrace the very things he used to oppose. McCain’s biggest problem is that – for someone with such a big ego, who knows how to “fix” everything (at least that is what he says. He never explains how, though.) -he doesn’t believe in himself. Instead he believes what other people to tell him. And they have given him bad advice every step of the way. He could still win this thing, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time cynicism and greed and fear triumphed over hope. But it’s looking less and less like that’s going to happen. And for that John McCain has only himself to blame.

A Question For Cindy McCain

If Barack Obama sends a cold chill down your spine (and, let’s be honest, it’s probably just a symptom of withdrawal) when he voted against voting for funding for troops in Iraq. If he did. Then what happens when you’re around John McCain, who voted against funding the troops 20 times? And voted against the G.I. bill? And voted against mental health care for troops returning from the Occupation lines in Iraq? You must have to surround yourself with heat pads and fire just to keep from dying of the chill.

Look At How Far We’ve Come

In 1998 John McCain first began his campaign to go to war with Iraq. After the events of 9/11, it wasn’t just George Bush who saw America’s thirst for revenge as an opportunity to go after old enemies. McCain was right there with him, cheerleading all the way. 

It’s 2008. Bin Laden is alive and well somewhere that isn’t and never was Iraq. Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, is alive and well. Karzai, President of Afghanistan, is considering negotiating with him. Afghanistan has an unsustainable amount of troops to deal with the spiraling situation there. Iraq is sustainable only as long as troops are living in neighborhoods keeping an eye on everyone and paying vast sums of money to the Sons of Iraq not to shoot at us or at each other. 

In short, we’ve made things worse, not better. But, at least we’ve killed thousands of people and suffered thousands of casualties and spent 700 billions of dollars in the process! 

There is a lot of talk out of the McCain camp about “victory” and “winning” in Iraq. The same sort of talk we’ve been hearing from George Bush for the last five years. But what does that mean? We don’t know. And neither do they. And neither do the troops. It’s an empty statement. Right now they are probably looking around for a brutal dictator who can hold the country together and keep Iran in check. If we were running in place we’d be further along than we are now. It’s sad. It’s ugly. It’s the sad ugly truth.

Bailout Aftermath

It was an immediate crisis that needed to go through congress as fast as possible. Which we did, exposing the hypocrisy and corruption of congress in the process. The result, if we even notice it, we have now been told, won’t be either seen or felt for at least fourteen months. If at all.

Why such a rush? Why was the Bush administration so panicked to get something done that won’t even be noticed for more than a year? 

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

And how about this little tidbit? AIG, the company too big to fail, that got an 85 billion dollar bailout, spent some of that money on spa treatments at posh hotels. And guess what? Today they asked for more money. Wonder what they’ll spend that on? You don’t have to be a genius to know that you don’t spend tax payer money on seaweed exfoliation wraps for your fat greedy bloated bellies. I hope they all get hangnails and come down with botoxulism.

Good Thing McCain Didn’t Get His Town Halls

It’s obvious why Obama never agreed to McCain’s suggestion that the two meet in a highly controlled atmosphere filled with a highly vetted group of people to read their “questions” off of cue cards handed out before the debate. Not only is it a snooze fest; it is contrived beyond all get out. It wasn’t because – as perhaps McCain wanted people to believe – that Obama was running scared. It’s probably because Obama knew he had a lot of work to do and that didn’t involve boring people to death. I firmly believe that if Obama had debated McCain in town halls around the country, we would have learned much earlier just how cranky and out of touch and out of his depth McCain apparently is. It was also a rope a dope. Because on McCain’s favored turf, Obama beat him decisively. My favorite part is when McCain accused Obama of not understanding foreign policy. After the first debate, it was a pretty good bet he would repeat himself again. He repeated himself twice just during last night’s debate (“I’d cross the aisle just like Reagan and Tip O’Neill…) Obama was ready. “You’re right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we went to war with a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on our country…” Then he hit McCain with his infamous “Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” song. McCain was clearly surprised. It could be he doesn’t quite understand how technology works. That things aren’t immediately forgotten just because he forgets them. He stumbles and then lied and said it was a joke he told to a veteran friend of his. It was really said at a public rally. And, while he loves the word “friend,” to say that those several hundred supporters were all his one veteran friend seems, well, impossible. That’s what McCain does though. When he’s cornered, he starts making stuff up until he can squirm away. Unfortunately, the world is a different place now. You can’t lie and get away with it. Cameras record. Papers print. And the Internet keeps track of it all. Go on Youtube and you will easily find all manner of recorded sound bites of McCain contradicting himself on every subject a politician can possibly be asked about. The more we see of McCain the less we like. Obama gave him a gift by turning down those town halls.

U.S. Admits To Killing 33 Afghan Civilians

This came today. I don’t know if Sarah Palin has read it or not. But, if I were her, I would go to a rally and demand that they all be disqualified from running for President.

McCain’s New Strategy: Appeal To The Blind

McCain’s camp is now trying to paint Barack Obama as a risky choice for President. This argument might work better if the other choice wasn’t a Republican named John McCain. It might work if we weren’t in the middle of a global economic meltdown accidentally orchestrated by the man who John McCain chose to be his economic advisor. It might work if John McCain didn’t still insist, despite every piece of evidence known to man, that we are winning the war in Iraq. It might hold water if he didn’t laugh like a maniac at the idea of going to war with Russia. It might work if Americans didn’t have the ability to remember what a person says. Unfortunately, those facts simply don’t work in his favor. Which means the risky choice is not Barack Obama, but John McCain.

McCain Endorses Obama In Second Debate

For the second time in a week, John McCain endorsed Obama. In the second debate John McCain said that Americans want “a cool hand on the tiller.” Between the two candidates I don’t think there is any doubt that Barack Obama is the one with the cool hand. It’s certainly not Senator Hothead. McCain needs to watch what he says. Because it contradicts what everyone knows and thinks about him. I don’t think his own family would describe him as a Cool Hand. Not only is John McCain out of touch; he’s out of his freaking mind.

Is John McCain A Coward?

I’m starting to think so. After seeing the false attacks he relishes so much in on the trail, it’s surprising that when he’s actually face to face with Obama, he’s afraid to so much as even look at him. Now some have said that it’s because he clearly hates Obama. But maybe that’s not it. Maybe he’s just scared. He can say all manner of nasty things behind Obama’s back, yet when faced with him, he ignores him and instead addresses himself to “my friends.” Last night he referred to a man as “my friends.” Even though there was only one person and it was someone he’d never met in his life. There’s another possibility. It’s one I’ve heard from people who used to admire McCain and they can’t help but come to his defense. They’re contention he can’t make eye contact because he can’t bring himself to look at a man who he knows to be nothing like what he is calling him on the trail. That he is ashamed of the campaign he’s running. I feel sorry for these people because they’ve been hoodwinked. The man is a politician and a lousy one, it turns out. To think that anybody but him can control what comes out of his mouth is, while a nice sentiment, simply not true. 

I don’t know if John McCain is a coward or not. But I’d have a lot more respect for the man if he would look his opponent in the eye and repeat the false attacks he tosses to the crowds on the trail. Then we might have a real debate.

McCain’s Biggest Problem

In the first debate, McCain lost points for not looking Obama in the eye. And railing against earmarks. But in the second debate, McCain’s biggest weakness was made manifest. The guy is quite simply a complete asshole. There is not one ounce of likability in the man. It’s highly possible that there never has been. We only know what Mark Salter has been paid to write about him. And the more he says and the more we read and the more we see of the man with our own eyes, perhaps those books belong in the fiction section. The last three days have been the worst days George Wallace er John McCain has suffered. Race baiting might have worked forty years ago; but this is 2008. And the economy is a mess. The GOP base has been relegated to only a smattering of highly intolerant subnormals. That’s all McCain has left. Independents are flocking away from him. They may admire his personal history; they might like his tax policies if they are extremely rich; but they probably will have a problem with pulling the lever for hatred. They don’t like the personal attacks. In watching CNN last night, it was clear that whenever McCain got irritable and cranky, the lines went down. Perhaps even a bigger problem is he is no longer credible. Even when he lied and said things most people would like to hear, the squiggly lines remained low. And if people don’t believe you, you’ve got a problem. Presidents have to go on television and speak to the American people. Here it is four weeks before the election and John McCain doesn’t have the personal integrity needed for Americans to believe in him. When he says he will win the war in Iraq, we know he’s lying; when he says he always tell the truth, we know he’s lying. 

None of this really matters though. Because most people I have talked to, Democrat and Republican, thought McCain came across as a classless jerk. He referred to Obama, now infamously, as “that one.” He left right after the debate and refused to be cordial to Barack and Michelle Obama after the debate. Could it be because his only remaining fans wouldn’t tolerate him if he was nice to a black man? Has he truly sunk so low? I think it’s clear that he has. The jerk.

I’m Bitter. Are you?

It was not all that long ago, during the primaries, when Barack Obama made his unfortunate comment that voters in rural areas are bitter and don’t believe politicians, and so they vote for issues other than the economy, and “cling to guns and religion.” Well, guess freaking what? That is exactly what’s going on. I don’t know about you, but after last week’s economic meltdown, and the 700 billion dollar bailout, and job losses mounting, and failing infrastructure, and an auto industry that hasn’t evolved in thirty years, and shitty airlines, and empty foreclosed houses as far as the eye can see, I am precisely bitter. In battleground states that tend to be white and blue collar, what are they asking Obama and Biden? They want to know if Obama will take their guns away (he won’t); they want to know if he’s a secret radical Muslim (also no), even as they criticize his pastor (who is Christian). I still see this comment dredged up on comment boards all the time, and I have to wonder why. It’s not that bad a comment. And it just so happens to be true. I don’t know anyone who isn’t extremely bitter about where the Republicans have taken this country. Even though he had plenty of flaws and a fondness for fat chicks, Bill Clinton handed over a country in pretty decent shape. There was a surplus, for example. A word we probably won’t be using for the next six thousand years. No wars. We were the world’s only superpower. We had more jobs. And most people were doing a lot better than they are right now. So let’s leave that comment alone. It’s completely irrelevant. Then again, maybe that’s why Republicans keep bringing it up…

Newsflash: The U.S. Is Killing Civilians in Afghanistan

Call the truth treason if you want, but that has happened all too often. And for the very reasons Obama mentioned in the quote that has just been mangled by the McCain Junta and his ever more annoying pit bull. Obama was explaining the need for more troops in Afghanistan, and how Iraq took valuable resources from the region. All true. Facts. Verified. Look it up. We’ve killed huge numbers of civilians over the last six years in Afghanistan. Not on purpose. But it has nevertheless happened. The result is terrorism has never been such the growth industry it is today. Jihad is more popular than Starbucks thanks to us.

Let’s look at it another way: a group of fringe religious nut jobs from the United States go and blow something up. Next thing you know bombs are falling from the sky, in cities all over the country; tanks are moving through Times Square, our arms are taken away (That’s right Southerners! Your arms!) and if you make a stink about it you are disappeared into detainee centers and left to rot. Would that make you happy or angry at your new occupiers? Would you want to help them or hurt them?

Just putting it out there. Put that in your moose pipe and smoke it!

You Don’t Have To Cover What Should Best Be Ignored

Yesterday, on every channel, it seemed the media was outraged that the economy was doing a nose dive and they were covering Sarah Palin accusing Senator Barack Obama of being a terrorist. “Why is this relevant?” Chris Matthews demanded, forgetting that it isn’t. “Why are we talking about this?” he asked, forgetting that it’s only news if it gets picked up. Nobody ever said it was mandatory to cover something so clearly a farce. It seems the media is afraid to tell us what we can see with our own eyes. They seem to feel they have to go out of their way to cover Sarah Palin as if she were a legitimate choice for Vice President. All in the name of parity. Because the McCain campaign has got them all scared. The truth is the reason Sarah Palin has taken such a drumming from the media is because everything we know about her – which is very little – has been proven false. And what we’ve seen from her so far is downright ludicrous. It only makes sense that she would get more articles in the paper. We all know Joe Biden. He’s been on the news for thirty years. We’ve seen Barack Obama and John McCain for more than a year now, as they’ve slogged through the primaries. We watched Hillary Clinton do everything in her power to bring down Obama. They’ve paid their dues. Now it’s Sarah Palin’s turn. It’s time for her to speak to the press without protection or a teleprompter. She’s easily the most reclusive and dim candidate for vice-president in the history of the entire planet. She thinks Afghanistan is a neighboring country. She doesn’t know what magazines she reads. She’s a journalistic wet dream: a clueless, yet highly ambitious, young woman filled with unreasonable and irrational intolerance. I admit it. I’m extremely biased. I think the woman is a complete idiot and I don’t care who knows it. She’s a female Ron Burgundy. She’ll read anything you put on the teleprompter. And anyone who says otherwise is putting the country, possibly, into the hands of someone less capable than ALF. The media should do what the media has always done when someone who isn’t worthy of our attention speaks. They should ignore her. So what if the McCain campaign complains? The last I saw, she had set an entire audience of south Florida moonshiners and meth heads on the media, who they threatened with “thunder sticks” Not a very threatening threat, to be sure; but a threat still. The journalists weren’t even allowed to talk to her supporters, in case one of them said something embarrassing. You know you’re in trouble when you’re afraid to let the people who go out of their way to listen to you explain what it is about you they are taken in by. 

None of it is real. That’s my guess. I watch the rallies on television and then I talk to my Republican friends, and the difference in enthusiasm is impressive. Far from being energized, they are embarrassed; they just want to go home and lick their wounds and resuscitate their party. I feel bad for them. They voted for a goddamned idiot and stuck him in the White House, only to watch him start two wars, run up a colossal debt for the next generation to look at and be depressed by. Oh yeah. He also introduced socialism on American soil.

Watching the television, you would think Republicans were jumping with joy for their candidates. I think they paid all those people to be in the audience. They gave them t-shirts and thunder sticks and promised to have them back at the institution in time for their evening meds; and in turn they promised to shriek and yell and threaten to assassinate the democratic nominee. Nothing is too misleading and crooked for the Republican Party not to try. They are terrified of losing. Because, if they do, the world will learn, without a doubt, that they ran the country in a way that is criminal. They won’t go to jail; they’re too lawyered up for that; they’ve made a lot of people a lot of money. I think the reason this administration and the one that wants to be the next administration is so secretive is because they know, and have always known, that what they were and are doing is outside the law of rational people. The writing is on the wall. They are going down ugly. And they’re trying to drag all of us with them.

The Gloves Are Coming Off

This is the McCain campaigns newest talking point. They are threatening to do what they have already done. They never even had gloves on; nevertheless they now vow to take them off. They seem to exist in a universe where people are just like John McCain and have no memory about what happened only the day before.

Which brings me to my newest John McCain theory. I now think that maybe McCain honestly doesn’t know what he says from one day to the next. It’s possible. Ronald Reagan (no fan of John McCain’s by the way) started losing his marbles just in time for his second term in office. When he was only a year older than Senator McGloves Off is now. He certainly acts clueless. He claims one thing…then does something else. He repeats his talking points more than once in short amounts of time. He gets facts and dates and conversations and well known realities wrong all the time. He is the character Dana Carvey played in Clean Slate. Every day is a brand new clean slate in which he begins anew, as if all that has gone before is of no consequence. How else can you explain his behavior. He says he will run a respectful campaign, then does the opposite. He tells his campaign Jeremiah Wright is off limits. Then has his Pit Bull/race baiter bring it up. He lives in a place where every day is opposite day. Where you can pivot on all that’s come before and it’s okay. The only logical reason for this – desperation only explains so much – is that he’s become a demented old man who believes whatever his handlers tell him when he gets up in the morning. Good thing he has a complete psycho dingbat backing him up! We can all relax knowing he has that going for him!

“If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.”

So lose already. What’s stopping you? You know, there’s no rule against calling it a day and giving up. “You know what America? We are so completely fucked in this campaign we’re just going to quit.” If McCain got up on stage for tonight’s debate (a townhall! woohoo!) and announced these words; then, maybe, after a few years and lots of showers, people could forgive him for trying to destroy the global economy in order to win an election. But he won’t do that. It’s not in his nature to give up just because the entire country and world knows he has no integrity or honor or empathy for human life. Nope. He’s going to drag us all down into the mud with him. The man knows drama. He knows how to put on a good show. Even if it is a travesty.

Palin Ebullient At Coming In Second

By any measure, Sarah Palin finished a distant second to Joe Biden in the Presidential debate. She never answered a single question. She never got specific. And her answers were so counfoundingly circuitous and repetitive, filled with keywords and platitudes and sheer nonsense that the moderator and Joe Biden and everyone at home had no idea what she was talking about. Yet she beat expectations by not pissing her pants or declaring Florida to be part of Europe. Most of all, she survived.

Since then Palin has been acting like someone who has been given a stay of execution. She is overjoyed to have survived, and if you didn’t know better – despite what some spin doctors try to get people to believe – you would think she had actually won. It sort of reminds me of playing baseball in high school. Every time I bat, I was happy not to get hit by the ball. The fact that I struck out incessantly didn’t mean anything. Not for me anyway. Because my goal was to survive. Palin is re-energized and taking to the campaign trail with a renewed energy that comes from beating her own expectations. I’m sure she knows she’s not up to the task of running this country at this precarious time. She’s just happy she didn’t flunk. Of course that doesn’t mean we have to be. 

Sarah Palin is a very polarizing presence. The media hates her. Women hate her. Aging male conservatives think she’s hot. The idea that she might be elected into office and actually be in charge of anything at all strikes terror in many people’s hearts. The conservative elite are embarrassed by her. The liberal elite are terrified of her. And the world is waiting to see if we are going to elect a member of the cast of Hee Haw onto the world stage. Just how dumb are we? That is the question of the day, and the answer doesn’t look good.

It’s been a bad week for the old United States. We’ve deregulated the entire globe into a recession. We’ve got two precarious and untenable wars. Our moral standing is at rock bottom. And our leaders are looking at each other not knowing what to do. Scary times indeed. The last thing we need is to become too timid to admit that we see the farce that our current politics have become. We need to stand up and tell our leaders that, hey, I don’t care how you spin it, that woman is crazy! We all see it. We just need to say it. Mediocrity will not get us out of this mess. Only organized and sustained focus will.

When Did Being Openly Racist Become Okay?

I wonder if John McCain will look at his selection of Sarah Palin as the undoing of his image and his integrity and all the things his ghostwriter claims he cares about. I wonder if he thinks that her recent racist rallies are over the top, ugly, dangerous, and uncalled for. I wonder if he will ghostwrite a book and apologize once again for going off the rails. I wonder if anyone will give two shits.

If he had one iota of integrity he would have stuck by his claim of running a respectful campaign. But he must have thought or been convinced that such a thing would bring about failure. We’ll never know. Because his campaign has lost its way. It’s going uglier than you would think would be tolerable in this day and age. Sarah Palin came right out and accused, in frankly racial terms, that Barack Obama is not one of us; that he’s different; that he’s not like those other guys on the dollar bills. She’s doing the very thing the McCain campaign once claimed to be outraged by.

It is the year 2008. It is not right to hold race rallies while running for President. It is not right to inspire hate. It is the last thing we need.

Out Of Ideas, Republicans Turning Up The Hate

With the economy dropping like an airplane being piloted by John McCain, he and his campaign are doing all they can to distract voters from the reality they have already grasped. Which is this: McCain and his racist running mate have no answers for our economy. The one thing voters care most about right now John McCain has found himself on the wrong side of. Instead, trying to change the discourse, Palin and McCain are turning up the hate rhetoric. Perhaps, their handlers must think, if they can somehow create a string of riots around the country then the media and the voters and the world will be forced to drop reality – namely that McCain is a lying old coot who is being held hostage by intolerant and fanatical right wing subnormals who will do anything to stay in power and further wreck the country into their misbegotten image. The contrasts between the two campaigns could not be more apparent. At Obama’s campaign you hear about hope and change and how to fix the economy. The crowd is festive and friendly. At a McCain or a Palin rally, you get anger and rage and hate, with words like “kill him!” screamed out against Obama and not corrected. With falling poll numbers and a campaign in ruin, McCain seems hell-bent on going down in history as running one of the most irresponsible and ugly campaigns in the history of America. It is not a responsible campaign; it is a dangerous campaign, with violence around the edges. 

The McCain campaign admits they want to change the subject from the economy. Which is like saying they want to throw in the towel. Because nobody cares about anything but the economy right now. We don’t care about the Keating 5. We don’t care about aerial wolf hunting or Alaska secession or William Ayers. We care about getting out of this mess. The fact that McCain and Palin don’t should be all you need to go push the lever for the other guy in three weeks.

McCain has become a hate monger and a complete jerk, devoid of honor. The very fact that I used to hold him in any esteem at all makes me sick. Sarah Palin is clearly a bigot. They should shut up, pack up their tents, and go away.

I Feel Sorry For McCain

The rails have come off. McCain is finished. No matter what crazy schemes he has up his sleeve, he is not going to turn the tide away from the economy. Other shit might happen, like we could learn that the Iraq War is not on the way to victory, but rather at a shaky impasse; but the entire globe is in a financial tailspin and, at the end of the day, people care about their wallets. One of the main reasons for this market going into this meltdown is Phil Gramm, the very man who McCain chose to come up with his economic plan. As people are losing their pensions and 401(k)’s, they don’t really want to vote in the guy who helped create this mess. The Democrats aren’t completely innocent, of course; but the paper trail can be traced to McCain; there’s nothing he can say or do about the economy that doesn’t make him look bad. He’s basically toast. His only chance is to drag the process into the mud so badly that the populace decides that neither one of them should be President and everyone stays home. He never had a chance of staying on the Straight Talk Express and winning. When he was one of 100 senators, he could say one thing and do something else and get away with it. If he railed against Bush, the man who dragged him through the mud in 2000, Republicans didn’t care, because on the things they care about, like war and tax cuts for the extremely rich, he voted right along with them. And when he did go out on a limb, he didn’t really. He picked his issues very carefully. Like Campaign Finance Reform. It passed overwhelmingly. Because it wasn’t – at that time – controversial at all. And, in fact, it turned out to benefit Republicans. McCain never was a Maverick. Unfortunately for McCain, now the entire world knows it. 

I don’t really feel sorry for McCain, of course. But I do think he would have been better off if he’d picked someone who actually knew something about something for a running mate. Instead he sold himself out to the greedheads and crooks of the right, and ruined his false brand in the process. Should a miracle occur, and McCain/Palin rig the process in such a way that they do get in there, it won’t take long for Palin to drive McCain into a murderous rage. He might be erratic; he might be old and out of it; but the man knows he picked a lemon.

McNasty getting McNastier

Has anyone else noticed that John McCain is saying exactly the same thing that Obama is, only doing it a week later? After McCain went on an orgy of false and misleading ads, Obama went out and called McCain a liar. Now McCain is doing the same thing. The only difference is McCain was lying and Obama was not. Now he is accusing Obama of going around making up false ads about him. Now he is asking Who Is The Real Barack Obama? Basically, he is taking all of the questions people have about McCain and trying to use them on Obama. Which is just plain desperate and silly and obvious.  He is now campaigning as if he is a complete unknown; as if we don’t all know that his Maverick brand and love of honor are all a bunch of hooey.

It wasn’t that long ago that McCain was outraged when a Republican group in North Carolina was using Reverend Wright to attack Obama. And, low and behold, now that he’s dropping like a rock in the polls, and for good reason, he is using his pit bull to go after Obama. And she’s using Reverend Wright, of course. A month ago the McCain campaign pretended to be outraged that Obama claimed they would paint Obama as not being like them. Yesterday Sarah Palin said those very words. He is not like me. He is not like you.  

McCain doesn’t seem to realize that he has gone against the very things that drew people to him. He didn’t win the Republican primary by being a right wing nutjob. He won because he was seen as a moderate, and thus, not like Bush. Then he went and hired Bush’s entire goon squad and more or less ruined his chances of winning. It was Schmidt, Karl Rove’s protege, who foisted Sarah Palin on the McCain campaign. Which is sort of like asking Superman to fight crime with Kryptonite. The theory was that he needed to appeal to the Republican base. While that may be true, what they didn’t realize is that the Republican base, made up of evangelicals and low information voters, is too closed off from the rest of the world and they have lost track of just how extreme they come across. Sarah Palin comes from Alaska, in a highly evangelical area of that state. To others like her she is a breath of fresh air. To the rest of the world she comes across as the same incurious right wing wacko that has been mountain biking around a ranch in Crawford, Texas, into the ground. 

This is not a culture war election. The world is on a precipice right now. And we need an administration that doesn’t need to look that word up.

Sarah Palin Is A Nutjob

All day yesterday I was worried that Sarah Palin was going to come out on stage and do great. That she was fooling all of us and pulling a rope-a-dope. So I was more than happy to see her spouting out entire swarms of words filled with keywords and again and also and you betcha and gosh darn and no substance at all that hasn’t already been proved false. I am somewhat surprised that the “liberal elite” has been so kind to her. Perhaps it’s because the liberal media is owned by corporate Republicans, but they are all smoking crack if they thought this thing was a tie. The only reason she wasn’t completely rendered speechless is because she was able to look down at her notecards. Had there been a follow up question or had she not had the use of notecards, she would have been the same dingbat that has been all over the media in the last week. 

 

I think it might be because people were expecting her to be so awful that the very fact that she didn’t crap her pants is considered a win for her. But the actual substance of what she had to say is so divorced from reality as to almost be illegal. She wants to expand the power of the Vice President? We’re the least polluting country in the world? She lowered taxes every year she was the mayor of Wasilla? She is an energy expert? The surge will work in Afghanistan? We can “win” in Iraq? She supports rights for gays? There’s plenty of oil for everyone in Alaska? Nucular? There is not one thing – one thing! – that would change in the McCain/Palin plan due to this one trillion dollar rescue plan Americans just ate? That’s an outrageous and irresponsible and unbelievable statement. The woman is nuts. And whoever wrote her talking points is nuts. Joe Biden knew what he was saying, connected to people, treated her respectfully, and didn’t bother correcting her on all of her many mistakes, like not knowing the name of the general in Afghanistan or what he had said yesterday regarding using a “surge” tactic in Afghanistan. He knew John McCain’s record better than she did, or, one must guess, John McCain himself. I’m outraged that the media is so cowed that they can’t just come out and admit that the woman is a farce and that McCain has insulted the American people by choosing her.

Holding Tax Payers Hostage

This bailout/rescue plan is nobody’s idea of a good time. Nevertheless it seems necessary. What started as a 700 billion dollar price tag has since ballooned up a couple hundred billion more. In other words, because a small selection of extremely thin skinned crooks in the House of Representatives refused to vote the bill through, they have gone and, overnight, cost the tax payers two hundred billion more dollars. Every member of the House who voted ‘nay’ the first time and votes ‘aye’ tomorrow should be fired. Of course the senators who seemed to lap up the attention last night, giving long-winded speeches about how proud they were to represent the country in a moment of crisis should also be forcibly removed. It’s one thing to work hard to come up with a bipartisan solution to an economic crisis; yet another to appear to enjoy it. However, my rage is centered squarely on three junior republicans in the house of representatives, who refused to vote to help the country because they were afraid of offending ‘the coffin of Ronald Reagan.’ Actually, the exact quote is even more ridiculous. ‘It would be like…putting another coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.” Which, of course, makes no sense. But if you looked at the person who spoke it, a representative named Issa, who seemed to take pride in his ability to make a huge mess of things, you wouldn’t wonder how someone could be so dumb. Because the guy looks dumb. You can just look at him and understand why he’s so misguided. Along with a Texan named Jeb and some redhead from Florida, they have added two hundred billion dollars in tax cuts to this bloated bailout bill. For a party that calls itself conservative, this is an enormous amount of money. Especially since it currently doesn’t even exist. This is straight out of the Republican strategic playbook: destroy country; get dragged kicking and screaming from power; relax while the opposition party deals with your mess; blame mess on opposition party; return to power to wreak havoc all over again. You have to hand it to these guys though: they seem almost proud of their accomplishment. They lost 1.2 trillion dollars in tax payer pensions and IRA’s and 401(k)’s and college tuitions in moments. Add two hundred billion dollars to that and you have 1.5 trillion dollars because of the reckless ideology of four suit-wearing jackasses with incomprehensible haircuts and thick southern drawls. Now there’s the much needed tax cut on wooden arrows for child archers! No doubt they will want to add a few more “sweeteners” to the package now themselves. And then they will expect us to rejoice should they actually pass the thing. It started out as a terrible 3 page plan. Then it became a better 100 page plan. Now it’s a worse 400 page plan. And growing.

TO THE YOUTH OF AMERICA, VOTE

Every four years, political pundits go on television and ask each other why the youth vote didn’t come through. It happens every time. When it comes  to protesting and wearing buttons and making youtube pleas and knocking on doors and donating and drumming up support, they are without peer. When it comes to actually pulling the lever for their candidate, however, they fail miserably time and time again. 

 

As a former politically active college student I know about not voting when I should have. So I’m here to plea that you don’t make my mistakes. I don’t care what the poll numbers say. I don’t care how lopsided it looks. I don’t care if Tom Brokaw is on television declaring your candidate the winner. Go And Vote! Because that’s what the other side is going to do. The polls say your candidate is up by 45 points. Oh, you think, why bother standing in line and voting? Clearly my guy is going to win. Wrong. My roommate in 1992 didn’t vote for George Bush because he was certainly going to win. He lived in Texas and, besides, Rush Limbaugh said it would be a landslide. I voted. He didn’t. My guy won. In 2004 it looked to everyone with a full set of teeth that John Kerry would win. We were in the middle of a failing Iraq war and our budget was out of control. Kerry signs were in yards as far as the eye could see. He was leading among young people overwhelmingly. They didn’t vote. And he lost by a country mile. 

 

I don’t care who you are voting for or which side you are on. (I totally do, but not for this post) Go and vote. Vote early. Go now if you know who you want to win. Avoid the lines. Go and push the button or poke the chad or pull the lever or mail it in. Just do it. As we saw in 2000, votes can be very close and even swiped right out from under your feet by the Supreme Court. SO GO VOTE!

McCain Campaign Vows To Go Negative

After months of negative campaigning and non-stop attack ads directed at Presidential rival Barack Obama, John McCain’s campaign, dealing with dwindling poll numbers, have vowed that it’s now time to go negative. “Unfortunately, it’s time to abandon the high road and get in the mud,” the campaign declared. The campaign so far has run a campaign exceptional for precisely how negative it has been. And yet, despite this, McCain’s people believe they can go lower. If it’s broken, why fix it seems to be the mentality McCain is now employing. If something is clearly not working, they feel, might as well keep doing it. It seems to be the only option left for a man who is famous for going off the rails and losing sight of the very integrity he holds so dear. So that he can write a book and apologize. His new book, HOW I SHAMELESSLY THREW MY INTEGRITY OUT THE WINDOW, is already written and do out in time for Christmas.

All This Talk Of Replacing Sarah Palin Is Hooey

It’s not going to happen. McCain knows he has no choice but to keep her. As recently as yesterday he defended her. The last person to oust a Veep was McGovern, who got his ass handed to him by a little known criminal named Richard Nixon. But what I would advise, if John McCain truly does put Country First is forfeit. He should go on television and apologize for recklessly picking a complete bozo for vice-president. ‘My Friends, I have made a terrible mistake. And so I have decided to step down.’ Because McCain isn’t qualified himself to be President. And we all know it, even if the bigots and religious nut jobs won’t admit it. He was a hero forty five years ago. But now he is a confused old man. It’s time for him to step down.

What Palin’s Bizarre Supreme Court Answer Says About Her Beliefs.

Much was made about Sarah Palin’s response to what other Supreme Court cases she didn’t approve of other than Roe v. Wade. Personally, I didn’t find her answer to be nearly as bad as the circulating rumors made it out to be. She didn’t lapse into complete silence, for one thing. She filled the air with words. But one sentence let me know that her time as Alaska governor has given her a less than happy view with the Supreme Court. She repeated over and over again that there were “probably many” cases that she felt should be “judged at the state level” all the while not being able to mention any. It could be that she was running scared, trying so hard not to make any mistakes that she was unable to think of anything at all. As an Alaskan, she clearly feels that the “outside” government, as in the Federal government, holds too much power over states. As governor of Alaska she has fought to have Polar Bears removed from the endangered species list. If this, as she would like to see, being the governor of Alaska, were up to her state, they would be removed from the list so that she could open up the ANWR to oil drilling. Thereby assuring ourselves of continuing to rely on oil from countries who will in turn spend the money we give them to arm people against us. 

So while she flailed about in naming any Supreme Court decisions, she nevertheless managed to betray her distain for the Supreme Court as a judicial body. If she were in charge, she might very well up and try to disband the thing.

Republican’s knew about Ifill’s book all along

It is no secret that McCain’s campaign is made up of scheming crooks. Manipulative liars of all disciplines. It’s also no secret that they know Palin is a terrible liability. They have done their utmost to hide her away any time she isn’t reading off a teleprompter. So we are supposed to believe McCain and his campaign when they announce outrage that the moderator of tonight’s debate is writing a book about race and politics? As if they have just learned this? Come on! They have the collective integrity of a demonic troll. Their entire campaign has amounted to nothing but false outrage, gimmicks, lies and cheap shots. Yesterday I was a little worried when these guttersnipe right wing spin doctors went on television and downplayed Ifill’s selection. Whenever they don’t complain about something, it’s a good idea to look around you and make sure your wallet is still in your pocket. Obviously, when the details of this debate were being drawn up, a debate in which the McCain campaign fought tooth and nail to eliminate any back and forth between the two candidates, knowing it could do them no good at all, they were probably overjoyed to okay Ifill to be the moderator. That way, if Palin trips all over herself and flails about like a fish in a frying pan, searching for keywords in a sea of gibberish, the McCain campaign can cry foul and claim moderator bias. Of course, the Democrats should have seen this coming. To low info voters, who probably won’t even watch the debate, the details will sound like a conspiracy. Yesterday McCain claimed it wasn’t a big deal. Today he claims it is. Now that it’s too late to do anything about it. Wonder if he’ll try to suspend her debate? Anything is possible with McCain. Nothing is beyond his crooked ways. We’ll just have to see what happens…

The Problem With Low Info Voters.

The problem is, of course, that they seem to be morons. They both claim to not have enough information about the candidates while refusing to try and receive new information about the candidates. For some of us in more populated areas of the country, the idea that you could not know anything about these two candidates seems downright loony. For those I will remind you that Hee Haw was a very popular show for many years. So was Walker: Texas Ranger. The truth is that these people seem to stubbornly oppose learning anything about the candidates so that they can complain about not knowing anything about them. “I just don’t know about either one of them.” One will say, bypassing the Time magazine with John McCain and Barack Obama on the cover in favor of the latest issue of Juggs. Perhaps that’s why we are exposed to the ridiculous sight of John McCain on the Rachel Ray show. Perhaps it’s time they show up on Wheel of Fortune or Bassmasters. There are vast swaths of the country where Country music is the only music and moonshine is served with dinner and you have to wash your hands before diving into your boiled Muskrat. It’s a sad state of affairs. If you get lost in the middle of nowhere and ask for directions, you will be surprised to learn that you know your way around the place than the very people who live there. “I ain’t never gone past this yere mailbox in my whole dang life. No Sirree.” It is these people who the candidates are courting. Not themselves of course. That would be dangerous. These people are extremely paranoid. Their self imposed isolation has played with their brains to such an extent that they see everyone and everything as a threat. Their homes are often booby trapped and filled with exotic wildlife. In their backyards, where the meth is made, is where they hold the unfortunate UPS man who delivers to their address by accident. 

 

I think these people should just not vote at all. What’s the point in voting if you don’t want to learn anything about who you’re voting for? It’s the right of every American to vote. It’s a right that very few people on this planet have. And it’s a sad fact that only about 40% of us actually choose to even do it. If you do choose to vote, then you should certainly go to the trouble of figuring out who that person actually is.

Shut Up About Ronald Reagan Already

We’ve seen this same film over and over and over again. It’s nothing new. A scandalized President drives the country into the mud and somehow is given the benefit of the doubt. Nixon was voted back into office depite an unpopular war and a little scandal called Watergate. George Bush was voted into office despite a little thing called the Iran-Contra Affair. Illegal wars and outrageous economic policies are nothing new for the Republicans, who run on a platform that favors only the top .000001% of the population, yet somehow gets the majority of the population to go along with them, much to their detriment. 

 

—”Reagan’s children must be proud of him. With AIDS and acid rain, there is not much left in the way of life and love and possibilities for these shortchanged children of the ’80’s. In addition to a huge and terminally crippling national debt, and a shocking realization that your country has slipped to the status of a second-rate power, and that five American dollars will barely buy a cup of coffee in Tokyo, these poor buggers are being flogged every day of their lives with the knowledge that sex is death and rain kills fish and any politician they see on TV is a liar and a fool.”

 

This quote comes from the late Hunter S. Thompson. It was written in June 22, 1987, after seven punishing years of Republican rule, of which they would have five more. (Only when there’s true desperation do we turn the country over to the boring Democratic Party, with their fiscal responsibility and – for politicians anyway- general decency). It’s a reminder of a couple of things. One, that Republicans are miserable when they hold the reins of power. And two, we can dig ourselves out of this mess. We’ve done it before and we can do it again. And hopefully this time we can hold on to the good things and not let these bunglers near anything involving money or weapons ever again. I believe this is possible. Because nobody should ever have to sit through this movie again.

Vote For The White Half.

It can no longer be ignored that race is playing a part in this race. When it comes to the issues that matter to most people in this country, Obama comes out way ahead. On the economy. On Iraq. On taxes. On health care. On who cares the most about regular people. On everything but the color of his skin. And because of this, the polls are closer than they have any right to be. 

 

They never say this, of course. They’ll say they don’t know him or can’t relate to him or don’t trust him or aren’t sure about him or claim he’s a Muslim or he doesn’t share their values or he will raise their taxes or any other thing they can think of. Because they don’t have the courage to come right out with the sad truth: they don’t want to vote for him because he’s black. 

 

It’s sad and pathetic and ignorant. But there you go. So, for any of you reading this, of which there are none, because you’re mind is already made up and you are probably going out of your way to avoid learning the error of your ways, I suggest this: Vote For The White Half, you bigoted fools. And vote for your wallet. Vote for your future. Vote for the smart guy with the smart running mate. Vote for sound judgment. If you’re ashamed to admit that you don’t want to vote for him because he’s black, I say vote for him and be ashamed that you did. That would make it better for all of us. Even you.

Could It Be John McCain’s Own Campaign Wants Him To Lose?

It is no surprise that John McCain panics in a crisis. He hops about and flips and flops and speaks out of both sides of his mouth and contradicts himself at every opportunity. He has absolutely horrible instincts on just about everything. But his mistakes can’t be all his fault, can they? It probably wasn’t his fault his campaign released an ad declaring him the winner of the Presidential debate before he even agreed to take part in it. Someone had to suggest he pick a woman he had only met once – and a real dingbat at that – to be his running mate and sabotage the very thing he supposedly had going for him. His campaign derided celebrity in favor of experience; then he himself chose celebrity over experience. He seems happy with his choice because of the crowds she has brought to his events and often points to the (now no longer true) fact that she is America’s most popular governor. This is no longer the case now that she has up and left her state to a bunch of McCain campaign goons to run, but no matter. Besides, what about The Terminator? That guy is famous all over the world!

 

As confusing and erratic as McCain has been over the last three weeks, the last two days he seems to have upped the ante of ridiculousness even more. First, he holds a press conference in which he immediately blames Obama and the Democratic party for the failure of the bailout, before announcing that it not the time to cast blame. Meanwhile, his campaign is running an ad criticizing Obama for supporting the successful bailout bill. Nevermind the fact that McCain supported it; nevermind the fact that it didn’t pass; and never mind that they also ran an ad that has McCain taking credit for the passing of the bill. They simultaneously attack Obama for both killing the bill and forcing it through, all the while claiming that it is time to put politics aside. Meanwhile McCain is watching the news to find out what Obama is saying and then goes out and says the same thing. Obama announces he wants the FDIC to raise the insured limit on accounts from $100,000 to $250,000. Then what does McCain do but run out and say the exact same thing. At the very least he couldn’t have proposed a different number. The media is allowing McCain to cheat off of Obama’s test.

Then McCain goes on Katie Couric to accuse the media – in this case a voter in a cheesesteak restaurant – of “gotcha!” politics. It looked like he was there to protect her from the evil media. It looked like he was her grandfather. It looked like a bad viagra commercial. The woman has only given two interviews, both of which she has failed miserably. The interview with Charlie Gibson was a cake walk compared to the myriad of traps she has fallen into with Katie Couric. Most recently, she couldn’t name a single magazine or newspaper or information source from which she goes to for news. Not one. And, when pressed, with this ridiculously hard question, she grew defensive and declared that Alaska wasn’t “like some foreign country.” Never mind that foreign countries have newspapers and magazines. Never mind that the internet is everywhere…it’s only a matter of time before we learn she thinks the world is flat.

 

Sarah Palin is too easy a target though. Today the McCain campaign is outraged to discover that the woman who will be moderating the vice-presidential debate has just written a favorable book about Obama. Even though it was known well in advance that she had written such a book. Which all adds up to making you wonder if even his own campaign wants Senator Hothead to go down. Or if they plan to accuse her of bias after Palin flails about disastrously and mucks things up. Speaking of mucking things up, here’s to hoping Biden stays silent and allows Palin to go down on her own.