Epiphany: Everyone Knows Palin Is Bad News

A conversation with my daughter made me realize a true fact. The media has a stake in making the public think that Sarah Palin is a reasonable choice for Vice President of the United States. And the Rightwingnut faction of the Republican Party has a stake in making the public think Palin is okay. But the world knows Palin must not be allowed anywhere near the office of Vice President. The media folks need to keep their jobs and fueling controversy is one way to do it. The Wingnut faction wants the Repubs to stay in office no matter if their choices and policies drive the United States into a deep hole of financial ruin and morally corrupt government. However, the voters know exactly who Sarah Palin is. And the voters know she is unwholesome, unsavory, unethical, unstable and unelectable. Sarah Palin’s modus operandi as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and as Governor of Alaska has been fully accessible to everyone who wants to find out what she is like since John McCain announced she would be his running mate. If the McCain folks didn’t fully vet her, it’s because they were afraid to find out the nastiness that the rest of us now know. But of course they did fully vet her and they didn’t care. The other night Ari Fleischer (former Bush press secretary) said to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that he thinks Sarah Palin is a fine pick for Vice President. And CNN's Bill Bennett seems apt to choke on his words every time he acts as a Palin cheerleader, but he does it anyway. He says she’ll do fine. Why these men are lying through their teeth, is something I cannot hope to fathom, but lying they are. Perhaps there is even more grotty info about both of them that could be released to the public. But they are lying about Palin and the voters know they are lying. The information about Sarah Palin is available to all of us, and most of us who have a computer have accessed all the information we can find. And what the citizens of the United States have found out is that Sarah Palin is a liar, a cheat, a political blackmailer, a bully, a do-nothing, know-nothing hack, a born-again fool, a religious zealot and a nincompoop. Sarah Palin will never go to jail for any of the above and she’s proud to boast that she’s done nothing illegal. However her slate of accomplishments are all on the negative side of the ethical ledger. I have read them all. The voters have read them all. Only the media and the Right Wingnuts are persisting in claiming that Sarah Palin is qualified to run for Vice President. And only the media and the Right Wingnuts are claiming that Sarah Palin is even a responsible human being or, come to that, a good mother. Everything you and I know about Sarah Palin, the Republican Party knows and it simply does not give a damn. And the media, the pundits, the analyzers, and the talk show hosts just want to keep on serving up something to watch.

“Mayberry Machiavellis

Thank you, Frank Rich, for reminding us of a great epithet. In his New York Times Op/Ed column this morning (“He Just Can’t Quit W”) Frank Rich quotes John Dilulio, chief of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives who said about the Bush administration in 2003, “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.” And there you have in a nutshell, the best description of Sarah Palin—a tiny-town, small-time, petty Machiavelli. Palin’s turn on Saturday Night Live last night was a revelation: If she can’t be President, then she’ll audition for a berth on TV. But staying in the spotlight after her current politicking phase has run its course is the important thing. And like the 16th century statesman Nicolo Machiavelli who mapped out a cynical guide to power, Sarah Palin will do her small-beer best to remain on TV—whatever it takes. Rich says that the “rampant cronyism, nonexistent long-term planning and abrupt, partisan policy improvisations that fed the calamities of Iraq, Katrina and the economic meltdown...have not only entangled him (McCain) in a welter of conflicts of interest, but they’ve furthered cynical political stunts like the elevation of Sarah Palin. At least Bush and Rove didn’t try to put an unqualified hack like, say, Alberto Gonzales half a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Tina Fey, who had retired from Saturday Night Live and began a new career as writer/actor on the acclaimed “30 Rock” sit-com, said on David Letterman Friday night that her impersonation of Sarah Palin on SNL would end up like Vaughan Meader's as John F. Kennedy Remember Vaughn Meader? In 1962 he made a career out of his satirization and perfect-pitch impersonation of JFK on an album called “The First Family”. When Kennedy was assassinated, Meader’s livelihood and vocation ended. At least Tina Fey has a life other than mimicking Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is not so lucky. Sarah Palin is stuck with Sarah Palin.

Sam the Non-Plumber

Well, doggonit! Don’t that beat all!!! Samuel Wurzelbacher doesn’t go by “Joe” and he doesn’t have a plumber’s license even though he takes on plumbing jobs, he owes back taxes, and into the bargain, the plumber’s union has backed Obama. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! There you go again, McCain. Another bad decision. You pick people up, give them mythic backgrounds and then we find out they not only are tainted, but they stink to high heaven. Today, the New York Times tells the real story on Sam the Non-Plumber (“Real Deal on ‘Joe the Plumber’ Reveals New Slant”). “The premise of his complaint to Mr. Obama about taxes may also be flawed, according to tax analysts,” the NYT said. “Contrary to what Mr. Wurzelbacher asserted and Mr. McCain echoed, neither his personal taxes nor those of the business where he works are likely to rise if Mr. Obama’s tax plan were to go into effect, they said.” I think it was Bill Maher who said that all Obama had to do to win the election was to sit back and wait for McCain’s next bad decision. Speaking of Maher, last night was a great night for comic turns. Maher was on Larry King, and as usual had great comments while we watched McCain and Obama do their stand-up bits at the dinner honoring Al Smith. And they both were fairly funny. Then CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Gang dissected McCain and Obama, then Jon Stewart on The Daily Show dissected McCain and Obama, then Dave Letterman let John McCain be John McCain who did his Grandpa is Cute act. But as far as politics are concerned, the best part was finding out on Anderson Cooper’s show that Joe the Plumber is a fiction like Sarah the Guv, and John the Prez. None of the three can be trusted to tell the truth about what they had for breakfast. All three will allow any Rovian handler to manipulate them every which way but honest. And each of the three will sell out their grandmother if it would give them five minutes airtime on TV. Speaking of which, Sarah-the-so-called-Governor will be on Saturday Night Live this Saturday. I think she’s going to pretend she’s Tina Fey pretending she’s Sarah Palin pretending she’s Tina Fey.

Temperament and Making Decisions

The latest New York Times/CBS poll has found that John McCain’s recent angry tone and personal attacks on Barack Obama have backfired and tarnished McCain. The particulars quoted in the New York Times article (“Poll Says McCain Hurts His Bid by Using Attacks”) are predictable: Voters said their opinions of Obama had grown more favorable and that their opinion of McCain had worsened; the biggest reason cited for thinking less of McCain were his attacks on Obama and his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate; 52 percent of those polled said they held a favorable view of the Democratic Party while 37 percent said they held a favorable view of the Republican Party. However, one of the most interesting queries and responses was that 7 in 10 voters said Obama has the right kind of temperament and personality to be president and about half said the same of McCain. Temperament is a very important factor in a politician’s ability to make reasoned decisions. John McCain has made either the wrong decision or an impetuous decision at every stage of his campaign. The fact that 72-year-old McCain wants to appear vital and ballsy may have something to do with his wrongheaded choices. But the biggest factor is that John McCain doesn’t reason things out. He has a short fuse. When faced with a moment when he has to make a decision, he goes with his gut-feeling and immediately responds. That is not a good thing. And it is most particularly not a good thing when one assumes John McCain has been put on medications that are supposed to even-out his loose-cannon problem. Why do I say that? Because this is 2008 and doctors prescribe mood-controllers all the time. Because this is 2008 and one of the big criticisms of Senator John McCain is that everyone knows he flies off the handle. Because this is 2008 and McCain is 72 years old and on god-only-knows how many medications and regulating his moods is just one of many things his doctors have to regulate. Barack Obama’s temperament is a very important factor. He is even-tempered and he is young. Even-tempered and young beats old and explosive any day of the week.

Palin No Longer a Draw

This morning’s lede paragraph in a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank (“An Unwitting Assist From the Hockey Mom”) written in Philadelphia says, “They were the quintessential Hillary supporters waiting for their heroine at the hall in northeast Philly: virtually all white, mostly women, and mostly old. Of the minority who weren't Jewish, most were Catholic. In the local state Senate district, primary voters went for Clinton over Obama by 3 to 1.” But now those Hillary supporters are Obama supporters and it’s mainly because of their antipathy to Sarah Palin. Whether Jewish or Catholic, these women had the same reaction to Palin: “God forbid!” As Gail Silverberg was quoted saying, "Hockey moms and lipstick on a pig and six-packs? I don't want that stuff." The article went on to say, “The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the same thing. Fully 81 percent of Democrats and like-minded independents who favored Clinton said they now back Obama. If Obama gets the 90 percent of Democrats who tell the pollsters they support him, he will do better than any other Democratic candidate in nearly 40 years.” McCain will be on the Letterman show on Thursday but Letterman is still doing his anti-McCain shtick. Last night among other clips unfavorable to Palin, Letterman showed a clip of Palin dropping the ceremonial first puck at a Philadelphia Flyers game and he made particular mention of the boos in the background. (However, anyone familiar with Philadelphia hockey fans would have to say they were uncharacteristically well behaved toward Palin. Even though they were anti-McCain/Palin and were pissed at being turned into a campaign stop, they simply booed. As one fan said, “we didn’t throw batteries or beer at her”.) Letterman’s guest last night, Sarah Silverman, told Dave he should “ask The Supernanny” about something and he said, “We couldn’t get the Supernanny.” Apparently McCain is keeping her off the show Thursday. The definition for “geek” has changed considerably since I was a kid. Now it means nerd or someone obsessed with his computer. It used to mean freak or fool. And often it referred to a wild man in a carnival act who bit off the heads of chickens and bats and ate bugs. Will McCain and Palin get the bounce they are looking for from their vaudeville turns on television shows like Letterman and Saturday Night Live? Will morphing into geeks deliver the goods for them? I say NO! And I say NO because Americans are sick of fools and freaks in the White House.

Latest WaPo-ABC News Poll

This morning, an article in the Washington Post (“Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall”) reports that according to the WaPo/ABC poll “Nearly two-thirds of voters, 64 percent, now view Obama favorably, up six percentage points from early September" and that "about a third of voters have a better opinion of the senator from Illinois because of his debate performances...by contrast, more than a quarter said they think worse of McCain as a result of the debates...McCain's overall rating has also dipped seven points, to 52 percent, over the past month.” The WaPo article goes on to say that the poll shows: “With just over three weeks until Election Day, the two presidential nominees appear to be on opposite trajectories, with Sen. Barack Obama gaining momentum and Sen. John McCain stalled or losing ground on a range of issues and personal traits.” Vice President nominee Sarah Palin was not mentioned in the poll findings. In his op/ed column in the New York Times this morning, the King of Smarm, William Kristol, said that McCain should fire his campaign: “It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign...he has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed...he may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.” But then Kristol backs out of his gloomy prediction and says there really is nothing wrong with McCain and Palin, that they are dandy candidates: “The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters...the American people have by no means turned decisively against them.” Kristol also said the nasty attacks against Obama have been legitimate, but they should be dropped because people don’t like them. Oh Bill...you are so oily, sleazy, dishonest, double-dealing and foul. Are you for or against McCain/Palin? Are you trying to help them or deal the final coup de grâce? Now that McCain has decided to go on the Letterman show this coming Thursday, one wonders if he will bring Palin along as he had previously offered to do. Whether McCain brings Palin along or keeps her muzzled and on a short leash back in the McCain campaign doghouse, we assume it will be the wrong decision.

Today’s Headlines

Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers Polls Starting to Show Palin is Dragging McCain Down Obama Has a Seven-point Lead in Latest Poll

William Kristol in Palin-land

It’s so difficult for me to read William Kristol. Lord knows, I can’t look at his complacent, arrogant, self-satisfied face. But this morning, I soldiered on and read his entire op/ed column (“The Wright Stuff”) in the New York Times. He relates the gist of a conversation he had with Sarah Palin yesterday. In his lede paragraph Kristol says: “I spoke on the phone Sunday with Sarah Palin, who was in Long Beach, Calif., preparing to take off on her next campaign trip. It was the first time I’d talked with her since I met her in far more relaxed circumstances in Alaska over a year ago. But even though she’s presumably now under some strain and stress, she seemed, as far as I could tell, confident and upbeat.” He followed up with Palin on a remark she made a week ago that her son Track who was deployed to Iraq recently had been in touch with his girlfriend but not his mother. Kristol asked if Track had called. Not surprisingly, we find out that Track had called--the day of the debate, no less. Wouldn’t you love to have heard the conversation between Track and Palin’s minders who obviously gave orders to this soldier and told him in no uncertain terms to call his mother who had decided to become president, or else. “It was like a burden lifted when I heard his voice,” Palin told Kristol. Kristol goes on to repeat the conversation. “Palin said that she told him (Track) that she had a debate that night. ‘And he says, “Yeah, I heard, Mom,” and he says, “Have you been studying?” And I said, “Yeah, I have,” and he goes, “O.K., well I’ll be praying.” I’m like — total role reversal here, that’s what I’ve been telling him for 19 years.’” And Kristol goes, “That was Palin the hockey mom — or rather the military mom.” Really? Sounded like the Dysfunctional Mom talking to the Son Who Ran Away, to me. Kristol said he pointed out to Palin that if Obama’s past with the former bomber Bill Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright? Kristol says Palin didn’t hesitate (or blink, I assume). She said, “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.” Finally, Kristol asked Palin if she had any advice for John McCain? And of course she did: “I’m going to tell him the same thing he told me,” she said. “I talked to him just a few minutes before I walked out there on stage. And he just said: ‘Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun.’ And Senator McCain can do the same…Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ” And Kristol goes: “Hockey Mom knows best.” This whole column was satire, right Bill? I mean, you know how vapid and self-absorbed she sounds. You’re not honestly proposing that this absurd person is a reasonable choice for President. (And let us be clear, that is the office she is running for.) Are you? You are? Well, okay. I have a proposal no less fantastic but a tad more reasonable. How about Tina Fey for Vice President? Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin is more believable than Sarah Palin’s. And Tina Fey is a real professional, not a wannabe star, failed mom, mental case catastrophe.

WHAT WILL PALIN DO TO BE PRESIDENT?

Have you thought about that? From the moment Sarah Palin was tapped for McCain’s Vice President, Sarah Palin has thought of nothing but becoming President of the United States. A bit of fantasizing is in all of our lives. I have been known to write an Oscar-acceptance speech in my head. But Sarah Palin has decided she WILL be Prez. McCain’s shaky health is one factor. However Palin is so hopeful that McCain will pull out of the race for president before the election in November that she has already started to undermine him by countering his decisions with ideas of her own. He shouldn’t have pulled out of Michigan, she says. She wants to go to Michigan and save it for the Repubs. This morning in his Op/Ed column in the New York Times (“Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain”), Frank Rich says: “There’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.” Rich goes on to say, “Charlie Gibson asked whether she thought she was ‘experienced enough’ and ‘ready’ when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t ‘hesitate’ and didn’t ‘even blink’ — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty. In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose ‘George Bush Sr.’ Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents ‘who have gone on to the presidency’... Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern ‘if the worst happened’ and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a ‘maverick’ she’d go her own way.” It is so easy to forget that people like George Bush and Sarah Palin--narcissists—do not have the same responses that people without that severe mental defect have. They feel no empathy or sympathy. They can approximate the response they see in others but they cannot feel it themselves. They are good actors and copiers. But they have no heart in their heart-of-hearts. Rich said this morning, “But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a 'consummate maverick' again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being 'raped and murdered.' If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.” Frank Rich wonders how long it will be before Palin pleads with McCain to get out of the way (her way) and pull out of the race. But were I in McCain’s shoes, I would immediately hire a food taster and monitor all my meds very carefully. Sarah Palin is capable of anything because she feels nothing. As Rich said in his tag line: “Palin, we can be certain, wouldn’t even blink.”

I Don't Know Where To Start

Which is what Joe Biden said at one point Wednesday night during his debate with Sara Palin when she spewed out words signifying nothing. Me too. Where does one start re this Sarah Palin impersonation One of Palin's locutions that will be repeated endlessly is, “Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?” This is after, as Dave Letterman pointed out last night, Palin's minders had told her to set up the above point in her "Our Gal Sunday" script by saying, upon greeting Biden, "May I call you Joe?" Bob Herbert noted in his New York Times Op/Ed piece this morning. "Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years. We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality." What we're witnessing now is another "Wag the Dog" segment in Republican leadership. A completely phony person has been created out of the rags and bones of a narcissistic opportunist named Sarah Palin. And why not? They've done it before. Following the pattern of the character in Budd Shulberg's "A Face in the Crowd" (which was Will Rogers out of the psyche of "the old redhead" Arthur Godfrey), the Repub makeover-mavens fashioned man-from-Connecticut George W. Bush into an east-coast politician's idea of a Texan. Now they're working on an east-coast politician's idea of a 1950's midwestern farmwife (complete with phony folksy dialogue) who's been isolated in Alaska but is plucky and cutesy with a dollop of Unsinkable Molly Brown thrown in. One can only comment. One cannot analyze or speak in rational terms of what the McCain crew and the RNC and the Republican Party thinks it's doing, because it is so bizarre. Someone had a daydream about a salt-of-the-earth mother of five who wanted to be a movie star and decided to go into politics instead, and out has popped Sarah Palin. By the way, speaking of commenting. What was that little baby of Palin's doing at the debate? That was uncalled for as far as the kid's well-being is concerned, and I will bet you he was tranquillized. Or did the RNC Make-Your-Dream-Come-True Production crew rent a baby or use an animatronic lifelike kidlet instead?

Oh! And Another Thing

Here’s what’s wrong with women in politics. I just heard something on the radio and could not let this pass. The commentator on KYW 1060 said that in tonight’s debate Joe Biden was going to have to be very careful not to appear to be “unchilvalrous” toward Sarah Palin. Why? Everything Sarah Palin has done in her life she has done with brass balls and disrespect for anyone but herself. She has pushed herself forward like a bull charging a matador. But when the going gets tough in her personal life and in her professional life Sarah Palin suddenly pulls the gender card. If Sarah Palin were the only woman in politics who does this, one could say it’s a fluke and a glitch. But all women in politics and/or their minders do this. Women from iron maidens of virtue like Phyllis Schafly and Liddy Dole up and down the distaff side of politics pull this crap about being deserving of special respect for being a woman. When in every aspect of their life they are as mean, vicious, bloodthirsty, corrupt and violent as any man would dare to be. “Oh heavens above,” they cry, “don’t you say that awful four-letter word around me, for I am a delicate flower of honored womanhood and I will cut your balls off and snatch you bald-headed.” I am sick of it. If a woman wants to be a construction worker, a politician, or a contract killer for the mob, I say go ahead and god bless. But when a woman puts herself in the world to compete in the world and is demanding parity with men in the world, then cut the bullshit about being deserving of respect solely for being a woman. We are all deserving of respect for being human beings and no more and no less than each other. But we are deserving of respect no more for being a woman than being a man, and no more for being a man than being a woman. I see myself as an equal-respect person. I have no respect whatsoever for George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, John McCain or Sarah Palin.

Bill Maher’s Best Line Last Night on TDS

Bill Maher said on The Daily Show last night, “Even stupid people are starting to realize that Sarah Palin is stupid.” Although I would say that Palin has enough brains to keep from being stupid, her ego is fed by pandering to stupidity. Ergo, she sounds and acts totally brainless. Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin will face off tomorrow night at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Will Palin's cramming for the debate work? It will until she’s thrown a curveball where she has to reason out a response to a question. Memorizing answers to a catechism is not difficult. But adding A to B to arrive at C is something else again. Well, we’ll see. Tomorrow I’m off to God’s country (Brooklyn) for a week. Talk to you when I get back.

Waiting for McCain to Go Off? Maybe He Did

The McCain-as-loose-cannon theory has caused many campaign watchers to wait patiently for the moment when candidate John McCain would get so angry that he’d lose his cool in front of TV cameras. A moment highly anticipated because it would be immortalized on You-Tube and replayed forever. But it may be that we witnessed a McCain loose-cannon moment last Wednesday and we didn’t recognize it. Our Republican leaders are so heavily medicated, who would know? Although, last week “Newsweek” made an interesting observation when it wrote that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had become President George W. Bush’s surrogate since Bush has abdicated all pretense of leadership. Newsweek noted Paulson is a teetotaler. If Newsweek was using a code to let us know our Prez is drinking again, the magazine would merely have joined a long list of bloggers and commenters who are asserting the same thing. It’s not that Bush is heavily tranked that makes him seem out of it. It’s that he’s drunk. But back to McCain. As Frank Rich said in his op/ed column in the New York Times yesterday (“McCain’s Suspension Bridge to Nowhere”): “The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis. I’ll leave any physiological explanations to gerontologists — if they can get hold of his complete medical records — and any armchair psychoanalysis to the sundry McCain press acolytes who have sorrowfully tried to rationalize his erratic behavior this year.” So, it would seem that John McCain’s minders are as convinced as the rest of us that he’s going to explode at some point and he’s been heavily medicated. But whatever medications John McCain is on can’t keep the man from forever and consistently acting in what he believes is his own best interest. Unfortunately for McCain, he’s 72 years old. He doesn’t realize you can no longer make high-road sounding claims for yourself while doing the opposite. He claimed he was immediately going to suspend his campaign in order to go to Washington to fix the financial crisis. But he didn’t suspend his campaign. None of his campaign sites ceased operation for even a nano-second. And he didn’t rush to Washington. He was filmed going on talk shows in New York to advance his campaign. He said he would not debate Senator Barack Obama last Friday night because his expertise was needed to save the US from ruin. But he did debate Obama. Many sources in Washington were quoted saying McCain not only did nothing to help the financial crisis, he actually obstructed the proceedings and his presence in Washington was not requested by the Repubs, it was dreaded. It looks like the loose cannon fired off a load and it dropped at his feet, dead. And now the latest news from within the McCain camp is that McCain is sorry he picked Palin for a running mate and Palin is sorry she accepted. One thing you can bet on. Palin will talk. Palin will spill her beans. Palin will write a book(s). Palin will unburden herself and betray everyone she knows. Oh happy day!

Ploys, Tactics, Strategies, Game Plans, One-Ups

All candidates use all of the above when running for office. But where McCain and Palin (and Bush before them) are concerned, that’s all there is. Had George W. Bush been truthful when asked how he would accomplish his plan (any plan), he would have said, “By cheating.” Or he would have said, “I haven’t the foggiest notion.” And like George W. Bush, what McCain and Palin do have is Karl Rove and his ploys, tactics, strategies, game plans and one-upmanship. It has now become clear to even such a Republican cheerleader as David Brooks that John McCain hasn't the foggiest notion about anything. After using considerable ink this morning to bloviate about McCain of yore and back in the day, David Brooks finally says in his New York Times Op/Ed column (“Thinking About John McCain”): “...What disappoints me about the McCain campaign is it has no central argument. I had hoped that he would create a grand narrative explaining how the United States is fundamentally unprepared for the 21st century and how McCain’s worldview is different. McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. Without a groundbreaking argument about why he is different, he’s had to rely on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat. He has no frame to organize his response when financial and other crises pop up.” Exactly when John McCain became a lying, cheating bag of wind is unclear, but it was probably coincidental with the Iraq war. That’s when John McCain became a self-aggrandizing old man fantasizing about his days of glory. And it is that self-aggrandizing old man who suspended his campaign to rush to Washington on Wednesday—if rush is the word that can be used about his various celebrity talk-show stops en route—in order to show Congress how to fix the financial crisis bailout debacle. What McCain envisioned he could or would do, is anyone’s guess. But that is not important to McCain. As even David Brooks has to admit, McCain has no plans or proposals, he only has tactical gimmicks. And if it is now obvious to one and all that John McCain is a pin-prick away from deflating in front of our eyes, it is also clear to reality show aficionados that John McCain and Sarah Palin have both become their own worst nightmare—a political joke and laugh-line for comics. Their final gimmick, I have no doubt, will be to blame Barack Obama and television for their becoming the clowns in a three-ring-circus.

Is Anyone Buying McCain’s Load of Baloney?

Yesterday afternoon at 3:30, an aviso went out from the New York Times that Senator John McCain would “temporarily suspend his presidential campaign on Thursday to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis and the bailout package pending before Congress” and that “Mr. McCain is asking Senator Barack Obama's campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to postpone the debate scheduled for Friday night." Only later did we find out that it had been Obama who called McCain to request that they make a joint appeal for bipartisanship on the bailout package. In a very low-key interview from Florida on CNN’s Situation Room, Obama explained that he had been surprised by McCain’s announcement he wanted to suspend his campaign only ten minutes after Obama had called McCain. Obama said he saw no reason why their campaigns and the debate should not go on as planned. For one thing, Obama wryly noted, presidents should be able to handle more than one thing at a time. No one can fault McCain for grabbing at straws to rationalize taking a break from a campaign that is not going well. The latest Washington Post/ABC poll yesterday showed that Obama had jumped ahead significantly due to the financial crisis debacle. And McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin had not come off well in her Katie Couric interview. In addition, Palin’s being shielded from any interaction with the press had backfired. The press, not unreasonably, feels anyone claiming to be ready to be president of the United States should be available to the press to answer questions about how she would handle issues that might arise. So it’s understandable that John McCain would love to get out of the circumstances he has put himself in, if only temporarily. But the straw McCain chose to seize does not make sense. He says he wants to return to Washington to “focus on the financial crisis”. By doing what? He’s a candidate for President. The only thing he could do is politicize the bailout vote. And that is the last thing this financial debacle needs. It has been suggested that all Obama has to do to win this election is sit back and wait for John McCain’s next boneheaded decision. McCain’s Dumbass Idea Number One Picking Sarah Palin as running mate. McCain’s Dumbass Idea Number Two Abdicating his campaign and debate by claiming he needs to be in Washington to honcho the bailout vote. McCain’s Dumbass Idea Number Three Wait for it...it’s inevitable.

“The Turd-Icing on the Bush-Term Cake”

Perfect! Last night The Daily Show’s host, Jon Stewart, came up with a strikingly accurate description of the meltdown of the US financial system. He called it “the turd-icing on the Bush-term cake”. Using less graphic language but no less damning rhetoric, Senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) told The Associated Press that the crisis was “entirely foreseeable and preventable, not an act of God”. And not only that, Senator Dodd and Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) agreed that the solution that the Bush Administration’s Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sent to Congress is “unacceptable”. This morning, the New York Times quoted Senator Dodd saying the Treasury proposal is “stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail.” At the same time, the NYT reported: “One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain's campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years." And on Tuesday the AP reported: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe of four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion government bailout plan...two unnamed law enforcement officials said the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was said to be under investigation as well.” In addition, the AP said, “In the past two weeks, the government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the country's two biggest mortgage companies, with a bailout plan that could require the Treasury Department to put up as much as $100 billion for each of them over time if needed to keep them afloat as mortgage losses mount. Last week, the Federal Reserve provided an emergency $85 billion loan to AIG, which teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Lehman Brothers was forced to file for bankruptcy after attempts to engineer a private rescue fell apart. All the companies were laid low from bad bets on complex mortgage-related securities.” The people who want to keep these clowns in office cannot be reasoned with. They are beyond all hope. I do believe there are enough of the rest of us to save the United States of America from extinction, however.

Repub Ploy: Name a GOP Sin, Call It a Dem Sin

Here’s how it works: Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild was a rabid supporter of Hillary Clinton. She raised mountains of money for Hillary’s presidential campaign. Lady Lynn and her hubby Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild (of THE banking Rothschilds in England) split their time between New York and a country estate in Britain. But now Lady Lynn has decided to back John McCain’s run for president. She says the reason is because her life “is not a bad life” and she wants everyone in the US to have one just like it. (Read, she's afraid the unworthy Dems will make her life unliveable or illegal.) Yesterday, the fabulously wealthy socialite told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Situation Room: "I have a wonderful life. I want John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House so other people can have that wonderful life.” When Blitzer asked if the Dems were giving her grief, Lady de Rothschild drew herself up and in a fit of pique told Blitzer, "I'm getting it all the time, particularly from the likes of you, the liberal elite," she quipped. "You're the elite, not me." There. See how it’s done? When McCain flip-flops on his stance on issues, he claims it’s the Dems who flip-flop on issues. When Sarah Palin disrespects laws, ethics and displays the socialization of a four-year-old child, she claims she is being disrespected and that she is simply a high-minded Christian lady trying to make her way in a tough world. When Wolf Blitzer asked Lady Lynn if, in fact, the life she leads doesn’t make her elite, Sean Hannity over at Fox blasted Blitzer for being disrespectful. He said Blitzer should be ashamed. Lady Lynn told Blitzer the reason she does not like Barack Obama is because "he's an elitist."

Sarah Palin’s Run for President

In his New York Times Op/Ed article this morning (“The Palin –Whatsisname Ticket”), Frank Rich relates that Wall Street Journal writer Thomas Frank had identified for us the unnamed writer Sarah Palin quoted in her acceptance speech last week when she aligned herself with President Harry Truman. Palin said a writer had said about Truman, “we grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” That writer was Westbrook Pegler, powerful fanatic Republican, rabid McCarthyite and Hearst columnist. For those of us who can remember the full nastiness, vitriol, loathing and contempt that Pegler felt for all Democrats. all Jews, all immigrants and everyone in the world (Including Harry Truman) except Republicans, it’s a perfect choice for Palin’s writers to have picked Pegler to honor and quote. As Rich said, Palin knew no more about Pegler than she knew about “Bush’s doctrine”, which question had flummoxed her last Friday when Charles Gibson asked if she agreed with it. But Palin felt so akin to the Pegler words that she added, "it's small-town Americans who run our factories, fight our wars and are always proud of their country." Subtext: the rest of us are scum. But the core of Rich’s article is that Palin’s handlers and Palin herself are no longer interested in her as Vice President to John McCain’s President. It has now been fully realized by the Repubs that McCain is a weak, forgetful old man who cannot draw flies. (Without Palin at his side, McCain could not attract even a small crowd at the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia on Friday.) The unspoken change in the Republican platform (and the change that dare not be spoken) is: Palin for President because the Repubs know McCain will become addled and confused or die in office. Or, addled, confused and die in office. Now no longer is Palin not allowed out on her own, speaking her own mind and promoting the Republican platform of fear. Now McCain cannot be allowed out without Palin because Palin is the crowd-pleaser. Will this freak-show work? If you mean will Palin be able to draw crowds....yes, of course. Will she attract the voters necessary for a Repub win? I doubt it. Starting in 1937 and running until 1959, there was a popular soap opera on CBS radio at 12:45 noon. Every day the announcer said, "Once again, we present Our Gal Sunday, the story of an orphan girl named Sunday from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado, who in young womanhood married England's richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope. The story that asks the question: Can this girl from the little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?" Will Our Gal Palin from a little mining town in Alaska find happiness as the ventriloquist’s dummy for the world’s richest men in the world? Nah!

Palin “Ready” But At Sea Over “Bush Doctrine”

Sarah Palin is a quick study. Narcissists tend to be able to quickly assimilate information. And oh yes, we have another Republican narcissist on our hands (as in, a person who demonstrates a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.) Palin was shipped back to Alaska by her handlers for an intensive cram course in statesmanship. It is yet to be decided by the Repubs whether her interview at the hands of ABC’s Charles Gibson yesterday will be a one-off or whether it will be the first of many. The New York Times this morning said Palin was at times “visibly nervous”, and at other times appeared “to hew so closely to prepared answers that she used the exact same phrases repeatedly, Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of ‘anticipatory self-defense.’” Quickly assimilating information is necessary for narcissists because they need to be able to seem to be acting like everyone else in the culture even though they have no understanding of human responses like compassion and altruism. The NYT said, “There were no obvious gaffes during the grilling by Mr. Gibson”. Not true. There was the gaffe by the Repub strategists for letting the weaknesses of their rookie be seen and studied. And that couldn’t be helped. They had to, of course. Palin said, unequivocally and confidently that she is “Ready!” And so her first mistake has been made: Sarah Palin believes she’s ready to be President. Palin’s sights are not on being Vice President. She believes she is ready TODAY to be President of the United States. Remember the one about the little kid in a sailor suit who says to his dad, “Look at me Daddy, I’m an Admiral.” And his daddy says, “Son, by you, you’re an Admiral, and by me you’re an Admiral, but by an Admiral, you’re no Admiral.” The stage is now set for Sarah Palin’s fall.

Palin Is the Perfect Repub Candidate...She Lies

VP nominee Sarah Palin said that Alaska’s 1700-mile pipeline would deliver natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska to the lower 48 states and would be the largest private-sector infrastructure project on the continent. During Palin’s high-decibel (as in shrill) campaign speech Palin said, “And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.” However, the New York Times revealed this morning: “Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success. The pipeline exists only on paper.” Under the most optimistic circumstances, dirt is not expected to be turned for years, the NYT said. “TransCanada’s plan calls for it to file an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by the end of 2011, and to have the pipeline operational by late 2018. The company is not obligated to proceed with the project even if it clears all the financial and regulatory hurdles. “In assessing the state of the project, Mr. Galvin, the state revenue commissioner, avoided the characterization that Ms. Palin employed in her convention speech. A number of important decisions remain in the relationship between the state and TransCanada, he said, including whether the state will ultimately endorse the company’s application to the federal government.” In other words, pie in the sky. Like the Palin e-bay story: "That luxury jet that came with the office... I put it on eBay!" Palin said. The jet may have been put on eBay, but it never sold. And the creative idea was not Palin’s. Alaska Officials had been putting big-ticket items on eBay since 2003, three years before Palin became governor. "The eBay thing didn't work out very well," Dan Spencer, director of administrative services for the Department of Public Safety (the individual charged with trying to get rid of the plane) told the Anchorage Daily News in April 2007. "I am [tired of dealing with it]," he added. "I don't know about anyone else." But poor old doddering John McCain bought the eBay tale and repeated it until he was finally told it was a fiction. Nonetheless, Palin was repeating it endlessly through last week. The jet and eBay may not have been a good fit, but Sarah Palin and the Republican Party are a marriage made in heaven. At least until they start lying to each other.

How Can I Still Be Shocked at George W. Bush?

It’s amazing. Although I have been saying for the last 8 years that GWB is crazy as a loon, delusional, narcissistic and a dangerous Christian right zealot, I was alarmed and stunned while watching the Washington Post’s Editor Bob Woodward on “60 Minutes” last night as he divulged more inside info on President Bush. Woodward’s new book, “War Within” goes on sale today. Woodward conducted more than 150 interviews for this new book, two of which were with George W. Bush. Woodward said on “60 Minutes”: 1) Bush questioned whether our troops in Iraq were really fighting. He knew they were dying but was not sure they were fighting hard enough. 2) ALL the generals Bush queried about the war in Iraq agreed that the surge was not working and that we were losing the war. Bush then found a general who agreed with him—David Petraeus. 3) Bush lied in all his television appearances when he said the war was being won when he knew the US was losing the war in Iraq. 4) Even Dick Cheney told Bush the war was going badly and the US should start withdrawing. Bush insisted the war could be won. 6) To this day, George W. Bush cannot understand why the people of Iraq are not grateful to the United States for “liberating” them. 7) For years, the US has been spying on everything Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Hassan al-Maliki says and does. Maliki may or may not know this. (As was noted last night, he knows now.) 8) The US has a secret weapon it’s been using to target and kill insurgent leaders. If the surge has been working, that is the reason why. It has nothing to do with escalating the size of our troop deployment in Iraq. Woodward said he could not divulge what the weapon is but it is as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were. 9) When asked what George W. Bush would say to the new occupants in the White House, the prez said, “Do not fail in Iraq.” Yes, of course, the current president of the United States is unbalanced, delusional and fighting a holy war in Iraq. But what of the people in the Republican administration who have used the madness of GWB to prolong an unnecessary war for their own corrupt ends, like munitions contracts and war profits? There are high-level Republicans who could have stopped these war crimes and they did not do so. Now it’s up to the rest of us to end this madness the only way we can. By voting. There is only one sane choice: Barack Obama.

Palin Uses Repub Convention to Defend Herself

Last night, the world found out John McCain’s running mate is very good at delivering a speech she didn’t write. Fortunately for Palin, the Republican ticket and the Republican Party, Palin didn’t have to talk about McCain’s vision for the United States, or inform the world of her foreign policy experience, both of which would be normal topics for a Vice President candidate at a National convention. John McCain has a clear vision of himself as a brave former naval aviator who spent six years in a POW prison in Viet Nam. And he has a vision of himself as a forceful maverick Senator. But he has no vision for the United States other than the course laid out by the Bush administration for the past eight years. And, of course, his running mate, Sarah Palin, has no foreign policy experience. So luck was on Palin’s side that she could stand before the world and counter, point by point, the claims of inexperience, ineptitude and questionable behavior that have been raised against her, and not betray how naive, inept and callow she would be as Vice President. Palin was good last night. She energized the totally white Republican Convention in St. Paul. And god knows, the sleepwalking, tired, old John McCain needed a shot of energy. The only problem for the Repub ticket is that between the end of the Republican convention and election day on November 4, voters are going to take a sober look at who the Repubs went to bed with: An old man who has mental and physical health problems and a housewife who has more problems in her home than she can handle. Loyal Republican Rudy Giuliani, who had to withdraw from his 2000 bid for the US Senate because of prostrate cancer and because his personal life was filled with scandal, said that no one would dare say that a man should withdraw from a political career because he needed to take care of his five children, one of whom has Down Syndrome, which has been said of Sarah Palin. That is true, Rudy, because for better or worse, the care giving in a family, traditionally has fallen to the women in a family. And that has not materially changed. Look around, who is ministering to elderly parents, children with problems and sickness in the family? It is mostly mothers, grandmothers and aunts. Sarah Palin said the difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom is lipstick and she was wildly cheered. Think about it. That is not funny. It may be true about Sarah Palin. She may be like a pit bull—mean, snarling, vicious, unthinking and unrelenting—but that is not a good thing. And there are thousands of real soccer-moms who are feeling rightfully offended.

Remember the Movie, “The Candidate”?

There is a scene in "The Candidate" where campaign manager Peter Boyle tells candidate Robert Redford the point of his candidacy: “You lose,” which comes as a surprise to Redford. What if.... What if the whole point of the insane choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate is that she not only insure McCain’s loss, but that her foibles, family problems and lack of experience take the spotlight away from the Republican failures of the last eight years. And why would the Republican Party do this? Because it would rather see a Democrat president than John McCain. And what if the Republican Party is sick to death of the religious right and its demands? That’s a stretch, I know. But unless the entire Republican Party has gone as bonkers as George W. Bush, what other reasonable explanation is there, except that the Repubs have orchestrated this entire catastrophe? The Palin soap opera is fascinating I have to admit. It keeps providing bizarre entertainment day after day. And until Democrat VP candidate Joe Biden debates Palin on October 2nd, the Perils of Palin will be the best and strangest reality show on TV. If the Republican Party is convinced McCain is going to lose, nay, if it wants McCain to lose and if it wants McCain to take the religious right faction down into the bargain, how better to do it than to make McCain, Palin and the religious right a laughing stock? I’m not sure why I want to find logic in this Republican Party debacle. Maybe they all really are crazy as loons.

William Kristol Explains It All To You

It will come as no surprise when I say I am no fan of William Kristol. As a matter of fact, the sentence I use as a guide for the longest headline that will fit a Ratbang post is: William Kristol Is a Smug Devious Sack of Crap! That smug devious sack of crap is the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard. He personally wrote a manifesto in 1997 (Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles) giving the rationale for the United States invading and laying waste to any country with resources that the US desires, or that espouses politics different from those of the US. He is also a columnist for the New York Times. A Kristol op/ed piece, tantalizingly titled “A Star is Born?”, appears in today’s NYT. And who is this maybe/maybe-not star? Oh no! It isn’t! Oh yes it is Sarah Palin. About John McCain choosing Palin as his running mate, Kristol says: “But what was McCain’s alternative? To go quietly down to defeat, accepting a role as a bit player in The Barack Obama Story? McCain had to shake up the race, and once he was persuaded not to pick Joe Lieberman, which would have been one kind of gamble, he went all in with Sarah Palin.” Kristol then cites comments of detractors about Palin’s inexperience. He notes that Obama can’t in good conscience get exercised over anyone else’s inexperience. And Kristol snidely quotes Joe Klein that Palin has never appeared on “Meet the Press”. Then Kristol gets down to the meat and potatoes of his thesis: “Facing an electorate that wants change, McCain has given himself a fighting chance to win the election.” And, “if Palin exceeds expectations, and her selection ends up looking both bold and wise, McCain could win.” He quotes Noemie Emery who wrote, "(This) wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.” Kristol says, “But of course McCain needs Palin to do well to prove he’s a shrewd and prescient gambler...I spent an afternoon with Palin a little over a year ago in Juneau, and have followed her career pretty closely ever since. I think she can pull it off. I’m not the only one. The day after the V.P. announcement, I spoke with an old friend, James Muller, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He said that Palin ‘has been underestimated over and over again. She took on the party and state establishments here in Alaska, and left them reeling. She’s a very good campaigner, a quick study and a fighter.’” Can she face down the Democrats, Joe Biden and the national media over the next couple of months? Kristol asks. “John McCain is betting she can. Perhaps, as he pondered his vice-presidential selection, he recalled the advice of Margaret Thatcher: ‘In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.’” Well, there you have it. The whole ball of wax. No matter how much rhetoric is expended on Sarah Palin between now and November 4th, William Kristol, in his snotty sack of crap way has laid out all the plusses that are to be had re the Sarah Palin choice: She is a woman and she has impressed people in Alaska. And, you will note, Kristol never comes out and says Palin is a brilliant choice. He merely suggests that if Palin can pull an elephant out of a very small hat, she might be good for the McCain campaign. In a nutshell: Sara Palin is a woman. She has five children, the youngest of whom has Down Syndrome. She has two years experience as governor of Alaska, she lost her bid for Lieutenant Governor in 2002, before she was against the “Bridge to Nowhere” she was for it, and people in Alaska like her. Oh...and Doris Kearns Goodwin and David Gregory said on “Meet the Press” yesterday that Palin is an interesting and likeable woman...but she should be nowhere near the Presidency.

Repubs Think Women Are Stupid

In addition to the fact that John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin is the most cynical mockery of the tradition that a presidential candidate picks his running mate, McCain’s choice is a clear indication that the Republican Party assumes all women are silly twits and stupid. The Republican Party has declared that the women who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign are going to run like mesmerized rats behind pied piper Palin and cheerfully, nay, giddily vote for John McCain simply to have a woman as Vice President. Presumably, the thinking behind this preposterous idea is, as Samantha Bee said on The Daily Show on Friday night: since all women have boobs and a vagina, all women have so much in common with Palin. The missing detail in this Republican strategy is that all the women who were committed to Hillary Clinton’s campaign also have a functioning, well-exercised, well-organized BRAIN. And having a functioning brain militates against voting for McCain in the first place. But having a working brain certainly makes it unlikely that one would vote for McCain in order to have an inexperienced self-described soccer-mom from Alaska at the helm if an unwell and aged McCain drops dead during his presidency. When asked what Palin’s qualifications are, Republican flacks and sycophants say she is a mother of five, has already been mayor of a town and governor of a state and therefore she is fully qualified to be president of the United States, should that occasion arise. Given the last eight years of having a narcissistic, bumbling, braindead, alcoholic, drug-loving, low-achieving, delusional Republican as our president, it is not surprising that the Republican Party would have no qualms about putting forward Sarah Palin as Vice President. Even though the town she was Mayor of, Wasilla—a suburb of Anchorage—has only 9000 people, and the state she governs has a population the size of Milwaukee. But it’s the cynicism of the choice of Sarah Palin that is so disturbing. The youngest of her five children has Down Syndrome. Ralph Reed remarked about Palin’s having an impaired baby rather than having an abortion, “it is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community." Reed is that paragon of corrupt sleaze from the born-again faction who is implicated in the ongoing Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. John McCain met Sarah Palin once. McCain was 72 this past Friday and has been treated for many bouts of melanoma and has health problems. Even so, he decided that Sarah Palin, who is inexperienced and knows nothing about Washington, DC politics or foreign policy, would be a dandy running mate because she is a woman and because she decided against having an abortion. Up until last Friday I was bored with the campaign hype and nonsense from both sides of the aisle and particularly from the TV pundits and mavens. That has changed. I am looking forward to a debate or maybe a series of debates between Obama’s running mate, Senator Joe Biden, who knows more about Washington politics and foreign policy than anyone in Washington, and Ms Know-nothing Palin who has only five years of politics under her belt and those years have been spent in Alaska. Oh, by the way, the Alaska state legislature this week voted to hire an independent investigator to see whether Ms. Palin abused her office by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper. Heh! Heh-heh-heh!!!!! The circus has definitely come to town.

Want To Help Obama?

Tell everyone to read Frank Rich in the New York Times today. First, I will say, without fear of being wrong because I know it’s true: The Mainstream Media is interested only in selling its product. And as an editor of mine used to tell me 24 years ago, “You’ve got to add some conflict to your reports. Conflict sells.” And there you have it. I do not believe for a minute that McCain is neck and neck with Obama. And he certainly is not ahead of Obama. But the IDEA that the race may be close, the IDEA that McCain can win is being fueled by the Mainstream Media because otherwise this election season is BORING-BORING-BORING. That said, let me quote a few facts about McCain from the Rich article. This is by way of helping any of you who like to have FACTS to show to those who might benightedly consider voting for John McCain. As Rich says, the public does NOT know John McCain. Because the public is as forgetful as the Senator from Arizona himself is forgetful: Rich says, “What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence peddlers. With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.” Rich goes on to say: “McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras. McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.” Rich writes: “Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.” Further on, Rich quotes Josh Marshall’s “Talking Points Memo”, saying: “Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail ‘McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.’ Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.” So, read Frank Rich today and arm yourself with facts about the very senior and very forgetful, lying, unprincipled, even corrupt loose cannon Senator John McCain, who will do anything and say anything and kiss the ass of any Republican to further his campaign for the presidency.

Well, Yes, It’s Been Awhile Since I’ve Posted..

BUT... this is too lovely to ignore. The New York Times just sent out an aviso that Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), “the longest serving US Republican senator ever” was indicted today on seven counts of making false statements after a year-long investigation. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Basically, I am soooooo sick of news reports about Obama and McCain that I can barely stand to read a newspaper or watch TV. But this little tidbit has me giddy with good humor. The NYT says Stevens’s troubles “stem from his ties to an oil executive whose company won millions of dollars in federal contracts with the help of Mr. Stevens, whose home in Alaska was almost doubled in size in the renovation project.” And the NYT goes on to say, “The indictment will surely reverberate through the November elections. Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year. Mark Begich, a popular Democratic mayor of Anchorage, hopes to supplant him.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My feeling of bonhomie and goodwill to men will, I feel sure, extend even into the Yankees game tonight with Baltimore, no matter what.

Is There Any Doubt?

Number 1, that the war in Iraq was entered into and engaged in because the Bush administration and the Republican Party were interested in controlling Iraq (and eventually, the Middle East’s) oil. Number 2, that John McCain is a dupe and a puppet of the Bush administration. Re Number 1: I give you the New York Times article this morning: “Committee Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal”. The lede paragraph states: “Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.” The article goes on to say: “The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.” The investigation into the improprieties (a nice word where “Bush administration criminal activities” might better be used) of this oil deal is being handled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, D-CA. The NYT says: “A State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.” According to the NYT, the State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety. However, a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Mr. Waxman states that the documents his committee had collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” The committee obtained letters in which Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which Hunt was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan. Until a law regarding Iraq oil is signed and sealed by all parties—Iraq, Kurdistan, the US—any deal between the parties re oil is totally illegal and unethical. But nevermind! The NYT wrote: “The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract (with Kurdistan) on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips (a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil), 'I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government...I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,' the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, 'This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt'." Regarding Item No. 2 that John McCain is a dupe and puppet of the Bush administration, please note that McCain has once again shaken up his presidential campaign. This time he has elevated Steve Schmidt to be in charge of day-to-day campaign operations. This move downsizes the responsibilities of McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis. Please note that Steve Schmidt was a close associate of Karl Rove during Rove’s heyday in the Bush administration. Also please note that Nicolle Wallace, communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign (and in his White House), has joined McCain’s campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week. And another cohort of Rove’s operation and former Fox News producer and director of presidential advance in the Bush White House, Greg Jenkins, was hired by Steve Schmidt last week. No doubts whatsoever.

Now Here’s a GREAT Suggestion....

The tag line in Frank Rich’s New York Times OpEd column this morning is terrific. Rich chapter-and-verses how stupid Repub candidate John McCain’s stance on the war in Iraq is and has been. Rich doesn’t particularly support Obama’s position on the war either though, mainly because there can be no positive outcome in Iraq no matter what is put forth. But Rich has this proposal: “Not that the Obama policy is foolproof either. As everyone knows, there are no good options in Iraq. Our best hope for a bipartisan resolution of this disaster may be for a President Obama to appoint Mr. McCain as a special envoy to Baghdad, where he can stay for as long as he needs to administer our withdrawal or 100 years, whichever comes first.” McCain being sent to Iraq to serve America in his last years sounds like a splendid and marvelously fitting idea. What’s not to like?

“There Was Suspicion “...I Guess So!

The New York Times reports this morning, “Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.” The NYT went on to say: “Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.” As the NYT understatedly stated, “There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.” Of course the following cockroach claim was made by the Bush administration: “the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.” The NYT reported that a spokesman for The Iraqi Oil Ministry said, “the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.” The NYT further explained: “The Iraqi Oil Ministry said “the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts, and because these companies had the needed technology.It said the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts, and because these companies had the needed technology.” So...how soon do you reckon the price for crude will go back down to $40 a barrel from the present $140 per barrel? Right! Or, as the NYT says, “The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry. They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.” There is still the problem of the civil war and the insurgents caused by the Republican invasion of Iraq which was entered into in order to secure these exact contracts. But at current oil prices the oil companies are more than willing to deal with war, death and privation. Five years later and 4101 American soldier deaths and the Republicans got what they came for. Lovely!

I Know, I Know...

I haven’t posted in ages. I was in God’s Country aka Brooklyn for a week and some other stuff was going on. Howsomever....I just want to say that Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times today is brilliant!!!!!! That’s it. BRILLIANT!!!!!

McCain’s Big, Bigger, BIGGEST LIE

Yesterday, the McCain camp released 1,172 pages of McCain’s medical records. That is to say, as the New York Times put it, “a tightly controlled pool of about 20 reporters was shown into a conference room at the CopperWynd Resort near the Mayo Clinic. The reporters were permitted three hours to review and take notes on the 1,173 pages of Mr. McCain’s medical documents, spanning 2000 to 2008, but they were not permitted to remove the documents from the room or photocopy them.” And all the doctors dutifully reported that McCain is in great health, mentally and physically, that he may once have had malignant melanoma but he’s all better now; that, relatively speaking, he’s on few drugs (none for mental problems); that he would make an awesome and healthy prez at age 72. Joy Tomme would like to respond, “BULLSHIT!” to that bullshit. If the tag line to the NYT article is any indication of the truth of the medical report, then the medical report is a mendacious cover-up perpetrated by a bunch of cover-up liars. NYT tag line: "As a prisoner of war, Mr. McCain told doctors, he had tried to commit suicide twice. But by 1977, he said he had 'all but forgotten the traumas of captivity.'" My God! Who is he kidding? Ask guys who weren’t subjected to torture in POW camps, but simply fought the war in Viet Nam. Ask guys who didn’t try to commit suicide twice, but came home with war wounds. Have they, could they all but forget the traumas? And, if it’s remotely possible that McCain did forget, then that’s worse. Even in the medical reports that have now been kind–of-sort-of released, McCain’s mental state is glossed over. I would like to see psychiatric evaluations by psychiatrists who are not government/and or military flacks. I would like to know what meds he’s taking for mental health. Of course, we are no more likely to know those facts than we are going to know about McCain’s wife’s finances in exquisite detail. Let me quote a couple of paragraphs from the back page story (“Ferguson”) in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine section. The article is by Michael Norman who teaches journalism at New York University. Norman tells about a Marine, Ferguson, who Norman knew for only one minute in Viet Nam before Ferguson fell on top of him dead. First paragraph: “A colleague dropped by on a recent day to tell me that it was the third anniversary of her son’s coming home from Iraq. That stopped me. It’s been 40 years since I stepped off the battlefield and I’m not home yet. I can still feel the muck of rice paddies pulling on my boots, still hear the jungle hiss and snap in the dark. Even after the night dreams and day drifts have stopped and the loud noises no longer startle, you still press your chin against your shoulder and look back.” Last paragraph: “So I took Ferguson home with me. Who else was going to remember him? Who else among us “knew” him and could carry his good name, his reputation, the memory of him as a marine? Remembering was part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another.” McCain’s big lie is that he doesn’t remember the horrors of Viet Nam, his bigger lie is that the torture and horrors of Viet Nam have not had a lasting and irreparable ill effect on him. And his biggest lie is that he is physically and mentally fit to be president of the United States. John McCain is not mentally or physically fit to be president, nor can he be expected to be. McCain should not have been allowed to run for president. But the worst of it is that these guys believe the citizens of the United States think it's commendable for a man to fight a war, be imprisoned by torturers and have no effects from it. (And they are willing to lie to push that agenda.) IT IS NOT COMMENDABLE. And it is not possible.

The Issue Is Color

The headline in the NYT today reads: “Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama” Two women having brunch in Boynton Beach were quoted in the article. Both are 83 years old. Ms Weitz said, “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel. “They’re going to vote for McCain,” she said. Ms Grossman didn’t disagree that Florida Jews would not vote for Obama. But her reasoning was different from Ms. Weitz. “They’ll pick on the minister thing, they’ll pick on the wife, but the major issue is color,” she said. Ms Grossman will probably vote for Obama she said. But she is keeping her mouth shut about that. I heard a woman here in Philadelphia say she couldn’t vote for a man whose name was so close to Osama. The color element in this election is sticky. We’ll never know how many people boasted they had no problem voting for a black man when they had no intention of voting for a black man. But it sounded good at the time. How many people will carry their racism to the extent that they will vote for McCain rather than vote black? Probably not a huge percentage. The NYT says Jews account for 5 percent of the vote in Florida. And, as Ms Weitz and Ms Grossman can attest, not all Florida Jews will vote for McCain. Besides, it is difficult to come up with plausible reasons to vote for McCain that would adequately cover up innate racism. Also, antipathy regarding color has more resonance with senior citizens than it does with young voters. But color is a factor in this election and it may represent an obstacle for Obama in the next four years. If Obama is the Democrat Party’s candidate and wins, how many in Congress will oppose his policies because he’s black? We don’t know. The interesting thing is that most white people do not know the extent of their racism. It can’t be reasoned away with logic, but it’s there, in the background, underneath, nearly forgotten and hidden. And like a successful nose job, you can forget what it looked like until a reminder rises up from the past. If ever there was a moment to GET OVER IT, it is now. In our world today, color is irrelevant.

John McCain is Certifiable

McCain has been told to distance himself from the Prez because Bush is the worst and most unpopular President ever to have been foisted on the American public. And also because Bush is insane. One way the insane McCain is distancing himself from the insane Prez is by setting a date when the US will be out of Iraq, which Crazy George would never do. Yesterday, Crazy John said that the war in Iraq will have been won (WON! As in VICTORY IS OURS!) by 2013. Not only that, in what has been called “a mystical speech” McCain said that by 2013 Osama bin Laden will be dead or captured, al-Qaeda will have been defeated, Iraq will be functioning on its own, Afghanistan will be shut of the Taliban, and Americans will have the choice of simply paying a flat tax or using form 1040. I have a few prophesies of my own. By 2013, John McCain will be 77 and will be incapacitated by his physical maladies or dead from cancer. In any case, he will have been committed to a loony bin for the hopelessly insane. Nothing will have changed in Iraq, and if our troops are still in Iraq they will still be being killed for no good reason, Afghanistan will still be in the drug trade from which the US will be profiting, as it is now and nothing will have changed. The IRS will be doing business about the same way it is doing business today. Bin Laden will be dead from his physical maladies and he never was captured. The US will be coming up on the second term of a Democratic president under a Democratic administration who will be doing its level best to undo the disasters and criminal acts the Republicans visited on the United States from 2000 through 2008. Oh. And George W. Bush will be drinking and using drugs openly and on a monumental scale. The Bush family and the Secret Service will try to keep him out of sight and will be mostly successful except when he occasionally escapes and causes a ruckus.

The Out-of-Touch News Industry

It used to be “If it Bleeds, It Leads”. The new formula is: If We Dread It, We Spread It. The Sean Bell verdict was all over the news last week when an NYC judge acquitted the cops who pumped 50 bullets into Bell who was black. The news guys predicted riots in the streets. But a report to me from Harlem Saturday night said all was serene. On the day George W. Bush announced he was going to invade Iraq, the news guys said there would be rioting at ground zero between protesters and war-mongers. I was at ground zero that day. There was nothing. But nothing. No protesters, no war-mongers. NOTHING! And no one in NYC was even talking about the war. The news guys have been hyping the candidacies for the election next November in the same way. Perhaps it’s actually wishful thinking. Perhaps the news guys wish to hell they had something juicy to write about. But what’s happening at the grassroots level of politics and our lives is definitely not juicy. And it’s not sexy. And no matter how much the media amps it up, it is not going to be juicy or sexy. Folks are going to go to the polls in November and they are going to vote. That’s it. And racism, feminism, black power, white power and born-again Jesus power aren't going to have very much to do with the outcome. Folks hate the George W. Bush administration. Folks hate the war in Iraq. Folks want relative peace and equality in their lives. Folks want ministers to bug out of politics. Folks want the US government to comport itself with intelligence and rationality. That’s it. And by August, at the latest, most folks will have ceased watching the pundits, analysts and news idiots on television, because whatever it is they are reporting, whatever it is they are yammering about, whatever it is they have decided is panic-worthy has very little to do with what is going on in people’s lives. And it has very little to do with how folks think and feel. I am somewhat ahead of that schedule. As of yesterday, I have sworn off the Sunday morning talk shows and anything on CNN except Michael Ware. May they all live and be well, but they will have to do it without me.

The Bush Stink is on the Candidates

There is little doubt that the last eight years of Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove will go down in history as one of the worst (if not the worst) presidential administration in the history of the United States. Bragging rights to successes for this executive branch are few and difficult to find. But now that its fowl are coming home to roost, and now that it’s floundering, and now that the men behind the Great George’s curtain are in full view and mostly naked, it’s beginning to be evident that fallout from the Bush administration’s modus operandi is leaking into everything. An article in this morning’s New York Times (“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”) about how the Pentagon co-opted its military analysts, quotes Fox analyst Robert S. Bevelacqua saying, “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you’.” And it worked. the Pentagon and Karl Rove & Co. were able to stick their hands up news organizations backs, up TV studios, up Congressmen, up generals’ backs, up the Bush Cabinet, up the CIA, up the FBI, up the Justice Department and they spoke for everyone. The results were and are horrendous, and yet...getting those results is mighty tempting. And that is exactly what Hillary, Obama and McCain’s strategists are doing. All strategists for all the candidates are sticking their hands up the candidates’ backs and moving their mouths for them. And it has become a horror show. We no longer hear what the candidates think or want to say. We hear what their strategists and polls and focus groups think the candidates should think and want to say. If there is an honest, heartfelt thought arising in any candidates mind, it will not be heard. Some strategist will think a thought and that will be heard because the strategist is dead certain he/she knows what the nation needs to hear and what will get votes. Yes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove & Co. can be blamed for the woeful state the United States is in. But one unintended result that is rippling through our lives is that good people are using Bush administration tactics because they were successful. And it’s heartbreaking to watch. It’s now way beyond candidates getting botoxed and having work done, being coifed and looking fit and smiling and laughing and joking and making one-liners and wearing attractive clothes and pretty ties. Now it's remembering talking points and most particularly, trying not to let the strategist's hand show.

The Pope’s Hubristic Twaddle

What balls! Before Joseph Cardinal Aloysius Ratzinger became Pope exactly three years ago, he was called Pope John Paul II’s “Enforcer”. And if he learned anything as one of Hitler’s Nazi Youths (oh yes, I know he says he was forced into it), he learned that freedom of choice is a bad thing and that people’s freedom must be curtailed or they will start thinking for themselves and making personal decisions. Which is why he was called John Paul’s Enforcer. As Ratzinger’s biographer, John L. Allen has said, “Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesial totalitarianism. In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes. “ As the keeper of the Roman Catholic Church’s arrogant, mythical and patently silly dogma and hype that it alone is the one true religion, Ratzinger was and is unbending, dictatorial and mean as a snake. But yesterday, this nasty piece of work pontificated before the General Assembly at the United Nations: “The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security,” Pope Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger Benedict XVI wouldn’t understand human rights if it bit him in the ass. Barack Obama and his preacher-friend Reverend Jeremiah Wright have gotten in so much hot water over Wright’s fiery prose from the pulpit. And yet, who is calling the lying, oppressive, bigoted, greedy, Prada-wearing sinners in the Vatican to account? NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Catholic churches are being closed down all over the US. There aren’t enough priests. And the nuns have finally gotten wise that they were performing free cleaning, washing and ironing for these cigar-smoking, good wine and spirits drinking guys who were too holy to wash their own underwear, so nuns have called a halt on their menial services. The Catholic Church is falling apart from the inside. But the CEO’s and CPA’s and MDivs and Cardinals and THE POPE in the Vatican are still living high. And they would no more think of divesting themselves of one ounce of gold or one gem, or one piece of art, or one foot of real estate than they would think of scrubbing their own floors or servicing their own computers. There is no moral difference whatsoever between the Vatican and a company like Exxon. Both organizations lie and screw the little guy. I will say, the Pope’s hats are more fanciful than those worn by moguls in mega-corporations, but that’s the sole dissimilarity.

NYT’s Rich: Petraeus/Crocker Show is Dead

And the reason it’s dead is because Americans are so sick of the Repubs’ war in Iraq that they don’t even want to hear about it. Today, the New York Times Sunday Op/Ed Columnist Frank Rich said (“The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook”) that even if John McCain becomes president, the US will have a new policy as soon as next January, including serious troop withdrawals in Iraq and serious talks with Iraq’s pals in Iran. The part about the possibility that McCain might become Prez is a horror I can’t even remotely entertain, but Rich is right about everything else. Iraq has come to mean guilt and shame to Americans. As a nation, we want out. In addition to wanting to have done with a war that most Americans feel should never have happened, the US can’t sustain the war and also have even a semblance of readiness to engage in other threats that may arise. As Rich says, “No war can be fought indefinitely if the public has irrevocably turned against it.” And this public has turned against it. The Senior US Commander in Iraq David Petraeus and American ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker looked ridiculous and sounded like robots repeating nonsense phrases and meaningless sophistry at the Congressional hearings last week. Rich said, “The best General Petraeus could muster was a bit of bloodless Beltway-speak — ‘national interests’ — followed by another halfhearted attempt to overstate Iraq’s centrality to the war on Al Qaeda and a future war on Iran. He couldn’t even argue that we’re on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people. That would require him to acknowledge that roughly five million of those people, 60 percent of them children, are now refugees receiving scant help from either our government or Nuri al-Maliki’s. That’s nearly a fifth of the Iraqi population — the equivalent of 60 million Americans — and another source of our shame. “The prevailing verdict on the Petraeus-Crocker show is that it accomplished little beyond certifying President Bush’s intention to kick the can to January 2009 so that the helicopters will vacate the Green Zone on the next president’s watch. That’s true, but by week’s end, I became more convinced than ever that in January we’ll have a new policy that includes serious withdrawals and serious conversations with Mr. Maliki’s pals in Iran, even if John McCain becomes president.” And both Colin Powell and the army’s vice chief of staff General Richard Cody said the current troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be continued. Even a Republican prez will find he can’t sustain vetoes, Rich said, “after the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in November.” And that’s pretty much where it’s at. Or as Rich put it, “Unable to even look at the fiasco anymore, the nation is now just waiting for someone to administer the last rites.”

President Petraeus, Chairman of Lunacy Bush

Yesterday our Chief Lunatic said that Acting President of the United States and Senior US Commander in Iraq David Petraeus could “have all the time he needs” before reducing US troops in Iraq. The Lunatic spoke at the White House to a small group including VP Dick Cheney, the secretaries of State and Defense and representatives of veterans’ organizations. Bush defended the lives lost and the money spent on his unnecessary war in Iraq. He said that his “surge” last year had averted potential defeat and that withdrawing troops would be catastrophic to American interests. All of which, of course, only an insane man and his insane cohorts could claim. American forces have been defeated in Iraq. And the entire Iraq operation from beginning to now (there is no end in sight) has been catastrophic to all American interests except Vice President Dick Cheney’s companies that profit from war and the consequences of war. Bush said that Al Qaeda and Iran are the biggest threats facing the United States. He said, “If we fail there, Al Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions, and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies,” he said. “Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq, and our failure would embolden its radical leaders and fuel their ambitions to dominate the region.” The US has already failed in wiping out Al Qaeda and will continue to fail. And wiping out Iran is the success Bush and Cheney envision, which, of course has failed and will fail. All of the failures feared by George W. Bush have already happened. The only way he can keep from acknowledging that his worst fears have come to pass is to keep stating that they will come to pass unless the war in Iraq goes on for the next 100 years. Six more months. And then voters have to decide whether they want John McCain to prolong this madness or if they want it to stop.

The Madness of John McCain (and Others)

The guy that President George W. Bush turned the Iraq war over to when he abdicated all responsibility for his unnecessary and illegal attack on Iraq, General David Petraeus, is in Washington, DC for two days of hearings before Congress. The hearings started yesterday. Petraeus acknowledged before the Senate, “We haven’t turned any corners. We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.” He said any new withdrawals of American troops should be delayed until the fall. As in, after the election. And yet, according to the New York Times this morning, Senator and candidate for president John McCain (R-AZ) said at that same hearing: “We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.” Presumably McCain was talking about the war in Iraq. Although he could have been talking about some war game he’s got going in his addled brain. Who knows? The Prez steered clear of the hearings, but will make a speech tomorrow regarding his Iraq policy for the coming months, However, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said in frustration, “A year ago, the president argued that we wouldn’t begin to withdraw troops from Iraq, because there was too much violence...now the president argues we can’t begin to withdraw troops, because violence is down.” The April 14, 2008 issue of The New Yorker reported that when General Richard A. Cody appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, he said, in essence, Iraq and Afghanistan have so weakened our defenses that we’d be up the creek if we need our army to protect us. “Today’s army is out of balance,” he said. And he went on to say, “The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.” We can’t defend ourselves, the nation is bankrupt, the President lives in an alternate reality of delusion, his clone and Republican candidate for president John McCain not only loves war, but he lives in permanent nostalgia for war mode and he is also seriously demented. Last Sunday, Frank Rich said in his New York Times Op/Ed column that the Dem candidates for president Senators Obama and Clinton are doing John McCain a disservice by constantly saying McCain “is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.” Rich reported that McCain actually said in the New Hampshire town-hall meeting that he “could imagine a 100-year-long American role in Iraq like our long-terms presence in South Korea and Japan”. Fair enough. But when reviewing what people say and have said, it is also necessary to review the mind-set of that person. And John McCain’s unsettled mind is obsessed with war. The other day he said he hates war. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! John McCain would sink into a morass of elder depression without a war on which to feed his Vietnam POW neuroses. Today, General Petraeus and American ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker will take their Iraq war song-and-dance to the House of Representatives. I have two memories of these two men. Alas, they are my only memories of these two men. One is of Petraeus handing out bags of money from the backs of trucks to any and all comers in Iraq, friend and foe alike, as bribes. The other is of the pretentious little putz Crocker holding piss-elegant soirees in the safety of his mansion in the Green Zone in Baghdad as a way of coercing visiting Congresspersons into prolonging the Iraq war and ponying-up more money for the Republican’s ridiculous war. McCain, Petraeus and Crocker—what embarrassing specimens they are.

You’re Not Alone

Headline in the New York Times this morning: “81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track” The NYT reported: “In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed ‘things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,’ up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. “Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.” And a news aviso from the NYT at 8:50 this morning said: “U.S. Economy Shed 80,000 Jobs in March. U.S. employers cut payrolls for a third month in a row in the biggest monthly job decline in five years, government data showed.” So, who are in the 19% who think everything is just ducky? For certain, the folks in the White House who haven’t already jumped ship would be in that group. And the folks who are stumping for delusional loose-cannon John McCain to continue the Republican track record of the last 7 years would be in that elite number. And the born-again warmongers who think God has it in for everyone but born-again warmongers would be part of that crew. The NYT went on to say: “A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.” What’s it all mean? Well, our nation is in really bad shape. And the world knows we’re in bad shape, which makes us vulnerable to economic, and security disasters, of course. And the world and compilers of facts that become the tomes of history know that the whole nasty shebang is due to the Bush administration. But more than that, it means that everyone in Congress is going to have a very tough time getting re-elected and that is good. Throw the bastards out is a healthy national attitude. Of course, the real culprit in the downfall of the nation is the entire Republican Party. But the Democrats in Congress who let the Repubs get away with it for 7 years cannot be ignored. So what about the three who are now candidates for president? They were part of the out-of-control Congress that brought the US to grief. That’s true. But this democracy thing is a work-in-progress and very imperfect. However, it’s the system we’ve got. And the system we’ve got needs a lot of improvement.