Bush Administration Worse Than we Thought

The Bush White House years were worse than we have thought because its aims were trite, puny and pathetic, not even remotely fueled by grand and majestic plans to protect the world. Fed as we are by books, movies and TV shows that depict evil cabals plotting the overthrow and final dissolution of the United States of America, it’s hard to believe—and we don’t want to believe it—that the boo-scare tactics of the Bush administration had nothing to do with real terrorist plots. But rather, its strategy to predict an impending “mushroom cloud” in our future had to do only with a) selling an unnecessary war in Iraq and b) defending its decision to sell the unnecessary war in Iraq. This morning, Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times, “The Banality of Bush White House Evil”, is as clear a summary of the reasons why the Bush administration lied and lied and lied as we are likely to get until the Justice Department investigates this “betrayal of American values”. And at the center of the betrayal was the need for the architects of the Iraq war to elicit “information” from Qaeda prisoners to support the argument that another (or many) attacks on the US was being planned. The hope was not that the truth would be uncovered through using torture. The hope was that the prisoners would concoct tales to get the torture to stop and that the Bush team could then use the ill-gotten info to sell their war in Iraq. It has been revealed that the so-called top man of Al Qaeda (Abu Zubaydah) who had been imprisoned was little more than a mentally ill flunky who knew nothing about the inner workings of Al Qaeda. However, Zubaydah was waterboarded 86 times in the hopes that he would finally make something up that the White House could use. And now Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) wants to revive McCarthyism by claiming there are “17 Socialists in Congress”. The United States populace has greeted Bachus’s outrage with a yawn and disinterested, “If true, so what?” What was the aim of the Bush administration when they fabricated their yarns and stories? Following is the “Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles”, as devised by William Kristol on June 3, 1997 and signed by Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz: “American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century. We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership. As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests? We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead. We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities. Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership. Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences: • we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future; • we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; • we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; • we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.” This is what it was all about. It didn’t work. It led to the failed war in Iraq, and the eventual collapse of the United States as a super power and the collapse of the US financially.

“It worked!” Former CIA Director Hayden Says

The tempest continues over the releasing of info that Qaeda prisoners were tortured during their interrogations. But the justification being used now by Bush administration officials who eagerly pushed for the use of harsh interrogation techniques is nearly unbelievable. They are claiming that it’s easy today to second-guess their decisions to use torture to get information, but if a bomb or bio-weapon had killed thousands of lives, “where would the moral compass point today?” Huh? Are they saying that the Bush administration’s fear of a terrorist attack made it okay to use tactics that the US had formerly prosecuted as war crimes after World War II? The Bush administration CIA Director Michael Hayden insisted about the CIA torture program, “It worked.” And he added, “I have said to all who will listen that the agency did none of this out of enthusiasm...it did it out of duty. It did it with the best legal advice it had.” Oh please! The Nazis feared the Jews. Their program to annihilate the people they feared also worked. Chaining children to a bed to keep them from being a nuisance works. Forcing women to have their tubes tied or to have hysterectomies to keep them from getting pregnant works. Castrating boys to keep their voices from changing works. Using children as a labor force works. Polygamy works. Blackmail works. Suicide works. But the statement that “It worked” cannot justify a criminal act. There is no justification for using torture under any circumstances. And officials in the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) program that trains soldiers in survival techniques, say torture actually is ineffective. It doesn’t work. It makes prisoners lie. It makes them concoct stories. It makes them psychotic. It makes them crazed. But it doesn’t make them divulge information. There does seem to be some untoward enthusiasms though, Michael Hayden’s claim notwithstanding. There seems to be a passion, an excitement, a titillation if you will, by these Bush administration supporters of torture that’s just a wee bit troubling, a tad disquieting. You don’t think they all belong to some kind of, um, club do you? Now there’s an investigation whose time may have come.

The Real Problem About the Torture Memos

The release of CIA memos about interrogation tactics used on two Qaeda operatives has occasioned a firestorm of protests from both Republicans and Democrats. But the real problem is the belief system of the Bush administration, as in: 1) The Bushmen believed and still believe that torture is good. 2) The Bushmen believed and still believe if they called torture by another name, it was not torture. 3) The Bushmen believed and still believe that lying is good. On any level of behavior that one can conceive of in a civilized society, the above items are not just bad. They are immoral and reprehensible. And defending the above immoral and wrong actions by saying they were necessary to the national security of the United States is absurd. If, as we are informed, the Qaeda operatives were subjected to the torture called “waterboarding” 266 times, it must have occurred to the perpetrators that it wasn’t working somewhere near the 10th time. And one can only assume the remaining 256 times were engaged in for fun. Now Dick Cheney says that releasing the CIA memos “endangers the country by disclosing national secrets”. Explain that to me, Dick of dicks. It was never a national secret that the US was engaging in waterboarding, among other detestable torture practices. It was never a national secret that the Bush administration had decided to inform the public that torture was not torture. It was never a national secret that saying torture wasn’t torture was a ridiculous form of “fallacious reasoning” (as the dictionary calls sophistry), and no one in the world believed it...including the far-right-religious-fanatic world that just barely inhabits the real world. Amazingly, stupid as most of the Bush administration lies were (thanks to Karl Rove’s fallacious reasoning), Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are still engaging in their sophistry to defend the torture used by the CIA, which they said wasn’t torture. Now they say admitting the untorture was torture makes us unsafe in our beds which were secure when they lied, but now because of truthtelling...not so much. Former president George Bush has not weighed-in on this issue as yet. One assumes he has not sobered up yet. And God only knows what may be revealed if he ever does get off the sauce and pills and if Laura is ever allowed to stop taking the meds that got her through those eight First Lady years. One assumes (yes, this one...ME) their combined doctors are waiting for the “forgetting” drug to be perfected before allowing the former first couple to detox.

CNN’s Michael Ware Takes a Look at Mexico

When the going was hairy in Iraq, CNN appointed foreign correspondent Michael Ware to cover the carnage and idiocy passing for foreign policy in the Bush administration. Michael Ware was not part of the officially okayed bunch of clowns the Bush administration “embedded” with the US troops and told what to say and how to say it. Ware never shied from letting it be known (which was often) when he thought the US generals were off base and doing our troops a disservice. Ware has an Australian accent, but he had lived in Baghdad since before the US invasion. He is now 40 years old and CNN has sent him to Mexico to have a look-see at the drug war. Last night, Michael Ware reported back to Wolf Blitzer in CNN’s Situation Room. Blitzer asked if the beefing up of the US border with Mexico would make a difference. Ware said, “Well, you certainly have to applaud any measure. But I have to say, from what I've seen so far in Mexico -- and I'm about to be spending a lot more time there -- this is a drop in the bucket, finger in the dike stuff. “I mean let's not forget what's driving this war. It's two things. One is the profit motive of the cartels. And beefing up the border even more hasn't stopped them so far. When they closed the routes through Florida and the Caribbean for the Colombian cartels, that's when the Mexican cartels took over and said we'll get it in. “I don't see that being stopped. We can disrupt it, make business more expensive, but it's not going to stop because they have the other coastline—the land border and they’ll never shut that tight. “Have you seen the drug subs? The guerrillas in Colombia actually built drug submarines that were able to skim just under the surface of the water, carrying as much as a ton of cocaine. And in the last couple of years, there's been increasing interceptions of those.” Ware estimates the drug cartels have 100,000 foot soldiers. These are well-armed troops with fully automatic weapons -- grenades and .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles. “Now, these are a military weapon that I've only ever seen in the hands of the Marines and the U.S. Army,” Ware said. Blitzer asked for a comparison between the troops in Iraq and the drug cartel troops in Mexico. Ware said, “ Well, I'm very shy of making comparisons between a holy war or a political insurgency in Iraq and a profit-motivated drug war in Mexico. “However, I have to say, when I was in Juarez, the city that's right on the border with El Paso, the front line town, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in the midst of an insurgency.” Blitzer asked about the Mexican military, if it doesn’t have the capability to deal with the drug cartels. Ware said, “Oh, Wolf -- Wolf, please. Please. Look, already the Mexican military has as many as 45,000 troops in the field, in their own country, fighting their own citizens. Now, this is a military trained like anyone else's military, to defend the sovereign territory of their country. And now they're being turned into super armed policemen, because you can't trust the local police. They're riddled with corruption. You can't...” Blitzer cut in saying, “But you're not really saying, are you, Michael, that you -- you think the United States should send in thousands of American troops onto sovereign Mexican soil to fight this war?” Ware answered, “Well, good -- heaven forbid that that should ever happen. But you either legalize these things and cut the demand or you're going to have to intervene. Now, what I'm looking to the White House and President Obama for is a third way. Now, that's what he's going to have to find -- some measure between those two things, because America is responsible for this war, Wolf. It's American demand for the illicit drugs that's fueling it. It's being fought on both sides with American weapons. And it's been neglected by the United States pretty much since 9/11.” Blitzer noted that secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be in Mexico later this week; the president is planning a trip next month; and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano is going to confab with the Calderon government soon. Blitzer said he assumes they’ll all come up with some sort of new strategy. Ware said Admiral Stavridis (head of Southern Command) went to Mexico a couple weeks ago after which he briefed President Obama. As Blitzer noted, the big sign that something big is brewing in Mexico is that CNN sent Michael Ware to cover it. And yes, of course, Ware is right on the money: The drug problem is totally due to American demand for illicit drugs.

The Pope Gets it Wrong Again

On his monthly gaffe run, Pope Benedict XVI made new headlines yesterday. Last month, His Eminence recommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson--or whatever it’s called when the Pope reinstates an excommunicated member of the Roman Catholic Church. Along with three other bishops, Pope John Paul had excommunicated Bishop Williamson in 1988. Their ordination hadn’t had papal approval. The leader of an ultraconservative group, the Society of St. Pius X, ordained the four, which was against the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This past January, in order to heal a schism in the church, Pope Benedict revoked the excommunication of the four Bishops. Not a month after being reinstated, Bishop Williamson said on Swedish television that the Nazi gas chambers had never existed and that no more than 300,000 people had died in the Holocaust. It didn’t sit well in the world that a German Pope had reinstated a Holocaust denier who was still in full vigor and proclaiming his anti-Semitic nonsense even into the 21st century. With the Vatican’s highly vaunted “moral authority” in question, the Vatican’s PR hype-machine revved up and scrambled to do damage control. The Pope repeatedly condemned Holocaust denial. To add to Pope Benedict’s humiliation, Williamson has never recanted his statement, he has simply said he’s sorry his remarks caused “harm and hurt”. He claims he’s a “nonhistorian” and that his perspective was formed “20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available.” Oh please! Twenty years ago was 1989. All available evidence supported the existence of the Holocaust in 1989. Time races forward. It is now a month after the Bishop Williamson debacle and the Pope has hit the news again. Yesterday Pope Benedict said from Yaounde, Cameroon, Africa: “You can’t resolve H.I.V./AIDS with the distribution of condoms, on the contrary, condoms increase the problem.” All known authorities on AIDS readily admit that condoms do not solve the AIDS issues. However, all known authorities on AIDS agree that the distribution of condoms is the one way that the spread of AIDS can be diminished to a large degree. The distribution of condoms does NOT increase the problem. The pope said, “a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.” A responsible and moral Pope would help fight many of the problems in the world. Sadly, we do not have a responsible and moral Pope. And that is unfortunate for the world, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church.

True, I Couldn’t Watch ALL of Cheney on CNN

I could stand only about half of John King’s interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday. But I have read the entire transcript of Cheney’s exercise in revising history (even in the face of John King’s pointed questions). And Cheney has his post-Bush-regime delivery down pat. He acts like he’s thought about his answers and he has a considered and reasonable air. He doesn’t go off on tangents or fuss, fume or rant. He doesn’t need to. The GOP has Rush Limbaugh. Cheney said, “Rush is a good friend. I love him. I think Rush is a good man.” Dick Cheney simply continued to tell lies about the past eight years. He appeared to assume that he, his sect and his devotees had been the only ones who witnessed history as it played out. The rest of us don’t matter. 1) King asked if the Bush administration left a mess for President Obama to clean up. Cheney said: “I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It's a global financial problem.” And by the way, all through the interview, Cheney deferred to George W. Bush, saying that Bush had made the decisions, some of which Cheney did not agree with. Okay, if that’s the way the GOP wants to play it, that’s the way it will be played. However, it would be interesting to know who actually was making the decisions that Cheney disagreed with because of this we may be sure, the decider was not the overmedicated, underachieving, out-of-the-loop, mumbling, babbling, incoherent George W. Bush 2) King asked: “Is the Obama administration going to be successful in restoring confidence in the markets?” Cheney said he “hoped the Obama administration would be successful". He added, “I noted when the markets were going down, they didn't want to talk about it.” I have no idea what Cheney meant by that. The Dems have always been willing and eager to talk about the markets beginning to plummet—it was during the Bush years. 3) King asked: “If you were in Rahm Emanuel’s place (Chief of Staff) would you tell Obama he’s trying to do too much too fast? Cheney said Obama’s situation is like the first Bush term. People are giving Obama a lot of advice to change his program and the Bush administration rejected the idea to change. “We did not allow the critics to diminish what we were trying to accomplish,” Cheney said. Um so...I guess we are to infer Cheney would not tell Obama he's moving too fast. It was kind of John King not to say that the Bush administration had been perfectly capable of diminishing their accomplishments themselves. 4) King asked why people should listen to Cheney now in view of the fact that unemployment numbers, poverty numbers and the budget deficit were at record levels during the Bush administration. Cheney said, “Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.” In addition, Cheney again equated the Iraq war to World War II, which it never has been on a par with. Cheney said, “We always said -- I always said that wartime scenario is cause for an exception in terms of spending. It was appropriate in World War II, certainly, and I think it's appropriate now.” Cheney probably didn’t mean that “now” to mean now. But that’s what he said. King asked Cheney, given that Cheney was an MBA, a Washington insider and a CEO, how come he and the people in the administration couldn’t see the financial meltdown coming? Were they all so caught up in the boom times that they couldn’t see the warning signs? Cheney said, “I think so. I don't recall, you know, sort of a general warning of concern until things started to turn -- turn south on us.” Oh my! He doesn’t recall. About the Iraq war, Cheney said, “we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do.” John King asked if Cheney would go so far as to say, “Mission Accomplished”? Cheney said he wouldn’t use that term, but only because it would trigger reactions the GOP doesn’t need. So. Yeah, Cheney is still defending invading Iraq, still saying it was the right thing to do and still saying the Bush administration kept Americans safe. He even said that Obama’s decision not to use torture would endanger America. Cheney was very clear that he believed Obama would not keep the USA safe. Here’s an interesting and telling note. Cheney claimed that the Bush administration had kept the US safe in myriad ways. He said there had been many, many, many planned attacks on the United States that Bush and Crew had intercepted, and most of these planned attacks had been kept secret. But he said one serious plan to attack the US was made public. This was, Cheney said, “the potential attack coming out of Heathrow, when they were going to have several American planes with terrorists on board, with liquid explosives, and they were going to blow those planes up over the United States. That attack was intercepted and stopped, partly because of the programs we had put in place.” To recap that incident in the here and now and to take it out of Cheney's fantasy realm: On August 10th, 2006, the British police arrested 25 suspects in a plot supposedly using liquid explosives to blow a plane up over the United States. Eventually, only 8 men (Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Oliver Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Mohammed Gulzar) were charged in connection with the plot. The trial began in England in April 2008. On September 8th 2008, after more than 50 hours of deliberations, the jury did not find any of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft. Why should we listen to Dick Cheney? There is absolutely no rational reason under the sun.

Two Incontrovertible Facts

1) Fact No. 1 No matter how much the Repubs bloviate and rant about the current Stimulus Package, they cannot erase the fact that the last eight years of Repub Rule has landed us in the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression. No matter how much the Repubs fume and fuss about spending, they cannot erase the fact that the spending of the Bush administration on an unnecessary war in Iraq set the stage for the mess the Obama administration has to clean up. Any over-the-top rhetoric from the Repubs about our children and grandchildren having to pay for measures taken by the Dems is exceedingly hard to stomach, since it’s the Repubs who have bankrupted the United States and ruined its reputation abroad. 2) Fact No. 2 The hideously corrupt rightwing organization called Blackwater, USA is composed of a bunch of mercenary thugs that was used by the Bush administration’s Defense Department to expand the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater, USA is headed by zealous religious fanatics who have illegally killed and marauded to the extent that they have been outlawed in Iraq. As of yesterday, Blackwater renamed its conglomerate of two dozen businesses “Xe” (pronounced Ex-Zee) in an attempt to shed its odious image. But it does not matter what the Blackwater groups call themselves. They will always be a zealous religious rightwing bunch of murderous, looting, pillaging fanatics.

Mr. Ratfucker Has Two Peeves

Mr. Ratfucker cannot understand Ratbang Diary’s policy of not responding to readers’ comments. In fact, Mr. Ratfucker believes responding is a blogger’s duty. And in that regard, he feels he must respond to a reader’s recent self-absorbed, egocentric diatribe. The reader took exception to Ratbang’s claim that Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair at the inauguration not because he had wrenched his back but because he “is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man." Ms Reader said, “I use wheels--is it because I am a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered young woman? Is this really what you think of wheelchair users, that we're evil? If you take out prejudice, what's wrong with using a wheelchair? Cheney is these things anyway. Let's not harm people with disabilities by perpetuating highly negative stereotypes. What if someone did the same with race?” Mr. Ratfucker feels it would be a grave injustice to take Ms Reader’s silly, illogical, self-aggrandizing and narrow position and apply it to anything. He believes it would be particularly specious to say that if any person thinks Justice Clarence Thomas is an ignorant, bigoted and perverse black man, it would follow that the person believes all blacks are ignorant, bigoted and perverse. That is a perfect example of a false, unsound, and misleading argument, just as Ms Reader’s assumptions are false, unsound and misleading. Trust me, Ms Reader; if the Ratbang Diary had wanted to say all wheelchair users are evil, Ratbang Diary would have said exactly that. But that was not said and it was not implied. What was said is that one man, Dick Cheney, is in a wheelchair because he is old, sick, enfeebled and bitter, among other things. He was not characterized as “evil”. Ms Reader concluded that all wheelchair users are evil. Mr. Ratfucker believes the disabled should be given every consideration and assistance society can offer. But allowing the disabled to spew nonsense and twisted logic just because they are disabled cannot be supported. As to Mr. Ratfucker’s second peeve: He finds the use of kindergarteners and pre-adolescent children to hawk everything from pharmaceuticals to hospitals and life insurance, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera on television is nauseating and manipulative and he would like to see it outlawed. A recent stomach-turning ad had a little girl simpering, “When my daddy had his heart attack....” Mr. Ratfucker would like to know what these children offer to the viewer that a cogent adult giving real information could not do, and to better advantage? Before a benighted, nauseating and manipulative mother posts a comment Mr. Ratfucker would like to state he does not believe all children and mothers are benighted, nauseating and manipulative. Although he will admit there is a better case for this assumption than that all wheelchair users are evil.

The Day We Waited Eight Years For

As Maureen Dowd noted this morning in her New York Times Op/ed piece, it was a Greek chorus moment yesterday when four million eyes watched a machine of the gods lift George W. Bush out of our lives and carry him off to oblivion. “Everyone, it seemed,” Dowd said, “was waving goodbye, with one or two hands, a wave that moved westward down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, and keeping their eyes fixed unwaveringly on that green bird...they wanted to make absolutely, positively certain that W. was gone.” Gone! Oh happy happy day!! In recapping Obama’s oath of office and inauguration speech, however, Dowd gave the former president too much credit when she said, “With W. looking on, and probably gradually realizing with irritation who Mr. Obama’s target was ...the newly minted president let him have it.” I doubt that GWB ever realized he was Obama’s target when Obama said, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals...those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake...false promises...and childish things." As a matter of fact, I doubt GWB understood Obama’s speech at all, since it was eloquent and composed of words of three or more syllables. And can we get one thing straight? Dick Cheney was not in a wheelchair because he had strained his back lifting heavy boxes the day before. Cheney hires people to do his heavy lifting--both the metaphorical kind and the real kind. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair because that is the way he has to get around. Cheney was in a wheelchair because he is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man. And his wheelchair was pushed to the sidelines with the greatest speed so that he didn’t have a chance to thumb his nose or flip the bird to his successor Joe Biden and the new Commander-in-Chief. That great day—1-20-09, Bush’s Last Day—has come and gone and the parties are over. And a new day of hope for the future has come. Now, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, it is up to us to be the change we want to see in the world.

GWB FINALLY SAYS GOODBYE!

Of all the endless farewell tours by performers that we have witnessed over the years, President George W. Bush took the longest time, or at least it seemed the longest time, to get gone. GWB’s final 15 minutes in the spotlight last night was eloquent and well written by his speechwriters and well rehearsed and delivered by the President. But it was almost entirely self-congratulatory delusional bullshit. “Above all,” the Prez said, “I thank the American people for the trust you have given me.” The cowed press may have given GWB leeway and latitude but the one thing the majority of Americans never gave the president was trust. “Tonight, I am filled with gratitude to Vice President Cheney and members of the administration,” he said. Certainly, that gratitude was well placed. Without Dick Cheney as the shadow president and the Bush administration to fill in for the monumentally mentally out-to-lunch and physically absent president, the United States would have had no commander-in-chief. “Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school,” Bush said. He added, “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Total wishful thinking. The US failed in Afghanistan and after George W. Bush followed the lead of his war-mongering minders and invaded Iraq for no good reason, our military, six years later, has failed in Iraq. “For eight years, we have also strived to expand opportunity and hope here at home,” Bush said. “Across our country, students are rising to meet higher standards in public schools. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled.” After eight years of George W. Bush in the White House, hope was nearly extinguished here at home. Public schools are faltering. Many schools have no books for students to buy rent or read. And senior citizens and the disabled are having to choose between buying necessary drugs and buying food. Amazingly, last night the president had the balls to say, “Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled.” Bush actually vetoed a bill to give veterans aid. He also had the balls to say, “America's air, water and lands are measurably cleaner.” The exact opposite is true because GWB and his born-again, troglodyte caveman philosophy doesn’t believe in global warming. “And,” Bush said, “the federal bench includes wise new members, like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.” It is true, they are new members, but they are far from wise as far as delivering true justice to all Americans is concerned. They are handpicked, conservative, elitist Republican jurists who value religious zealots and those who have money over the poor and minorities. “These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted,” the president said. Acted how? Acted when? Dear George, you caused the current financial crisis this country is going through. You never once acted to avoid any of the problems we are currently undergoing. “I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions,” Bush said. No, George, whenever you acted, it was from your center of delusion and madness. Your actions were always to aid a narcissistic self-absorbed fantasy. But in the main, you did not make tough decisions. All decisions were made for you and you rubber-stamped them if it seemed they would in some way ennoble your self-aggrandizing image. Finally, last night the President said, “With the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter, and never fail.” Actually, it is only because George W. Bush and the Bush administration are now leaving the political arena that this great nation has a prayer of not failing. Had they stayed in office longer, the United States of America would have crumpled under the weight of their dubious leadership and crimes and misdemeanors, and the USA would have become just a failed experiment called democracy.

QUOTE OF THE DAY!

I don’t see how I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be proud of what I see, if I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country—George W. Bush Even the New York Times opted for the above as its quote of the day. It’s true, George, you couldn’t go home to Texas, look in the mirror and be proud of what you see if you had listened to anyone ever during the last eight years. In fact, it would be impossible for any sane person to be proud of anything the entire Bush administration has done during the last eight years. Which begs the question, is Condoleezza Rice as crazy as George Bush? Yesterday, Rice—who is the worst and most sycophantic Secretary of State ever to have had that cabinet post in the history of the United States—said during an exit interview with the Washington Post that she defended every decision she made as George Bush’s SOS and that if Iraq eventually emerges as a democratic, multiethnic state that has friendly ties with the United States, ‘that will be more important than what anybody thought in 2002 or 2003.’” IF Iraq emerges as a multiethnic state? And if this big IF occurs, we’re looking at what year, and after what measures have been taken by whom to mend the catastrophe the Bush administration visited on the world by invading Iraq? WaPo further reported that Rice slapped the table for emphasis and claimed, “What is more important than current controversies is how the decisions will look 25 or 30 years from now, if you get very focused on whether someone thinks your policies are popular, you won't do the right thing.” Bush and Rice didn’t give a damn about whether they and their policies were popular or not and they still did absolutely the wrong thing at every juncture. Rice added: "That's not to say that it didn't come at great cost. I myself will be haunted by the lives that were lost. I will always think about the people I visited at Walter Reed or at Bethesda and wonder what their lives are like. I also know that nothing of value is won without sacrifice." So Rice feels that all of the Bush administration’s wrongheaded, stupid, self-serving, grandiose, despotic and arrogant decisions were valuable and worth the “great cost” and “sacrifice” made by the entire world. But she will be haunted. Well I would certainly hope so. Of one thing GWB and Condi may be sure, their monumentally egomanical exit interviews will be quoted in history books for the foreseeable future and the world will marvel that they did not go to jail for war crimes and misdemeanors, along with VP Dick Cheney, evil genius Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and the rest of the George W. Bush administration.

More Absurdities from The Plumber and Palin

The 21st century’s Everyman, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is, like almost every century’s common man icon, a bigot. The man that John McCain singled out as representing “us” is a religious zealot brand of bigot and he has been hired by the right-leaning US website Pajamas TV to go to Israel as a war correspondent and to report back to its conservative base. Wurzelbacher said he was going to let "Average Joes" share their stories. He said he would get the real story of what is happening. "Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe,” Mr. Everyman said. He then stepped back from his exalted position at the right of God and said, ”That's not saying he's going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance.” The real story, Sam, is that people on both sides of the Gaza strip are getting killed and horribly killed. The real story is that people in Israel and Palestine are just like you who also believe they’ve got the inside track on what God wants. The real story is that your being a Christian isn’t going to protect you from stupidity, bigotry or death any more than a Jew being a Jew or a Muslim being a Muslim will give him special powers and consideration and protect him from being a total and complete asshole. The real story is we know the real story. However, it would be good if God delivered the world from zealous Christians getting in the way in Israel and gumming up the works even more than the Jews and Muslims have done. Particularly zealous Christians like Sam Wurzelbacher who simply want to live in fame one minute longer while calling it “doing good”. And then we have Sarah Palin still out seeking celebrity and notoriety in the political spotlight. Now she’s making the rounds blaming everyone from Katie Couric to Caroline Kennedy for the fact that she was an ignorant embarrassment to the Republican Party during her unfortunate moment as a Vice President candidate. Palin said Katie Couric only asked her about what newspapers she read in order to make it seem as though she was ignorant. Although she still couldn’t name any papers she read. And Palin said Tina Fey made it sound as though her unmarried teenaged pregnant daughter and boyfriend were unmarried pregnant teenagers. She said the media had unfairly scrutinized her and had not done so with Caroline Kennedy because of her “class”. Well, I have to admit, Caroline Kennedy is classy in a way Palin would give an eye to be. But apparently, that’s not what Palin meant. Perhaps she doesn’t know what “scrutinize” means...because Kennedy has been scrutinized all her life like Sarah Palin can only dream of being scrutinized. That’s scrutinized, Sarah, not sanitized. Is there a chance Sam the Plumber and Sarah Palin could get married so as not to make two families irreparably arrogant, ignorant, socially inept, narrow minded and fanatic?

Notable Frank Rich Lines from Yesterday’s NYT

New York Times Op/Ed columnist Frank Rich said it all yesterday when he described George W. Bush as “smaller than life”. Noting that Americans like their failed presidents to be close to Shakespearean in their tragedy, Rich said, “Here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.” Rich cites the White House Website and its effort to inflate Bush’s woeful terms as president with something like adequacy: ”A booklet recounting ‘highlights’ of the administration’s ‘accomplishments and results’ (has) big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled ‘Did You Know?’ and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops...this document is the literary correlative to ‘Mission Accomplished.’” Rich goes on to say, “But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews. The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can’t. The crowning personality tic revealed by Bush’s final propaganda push is his bottomless capacity for self-pity. ‘I was a wartime president, and war is very exhausting,’ he told C-Span.” And to heal himself, Bush goes to military hospitals. Once again, it’s all about George W. Bush. As Rich points out, “incredibly enough, it’s his own healing he is concerned about, not that of the grievously wounded men and women he sent to war on false pretenses. It’s ‘the comforter in chief’ who ‘gets comforted,’ he explained (to Charles Gibson) by ‘the character of the American people.’ The American people are surely relieved to hear it. With this level of self-regard, it’s no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff,” Rich said. During the GWB tenure in the White House, we heard many times about the president’s belief in God, about how God guided him, about his faith. But as Frank Rich says, “This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him.”

Frank Rich is Upset at Obama’s Pick of Warren

It’s an honor to be chosen to deliver the invocation at a president’s inauguration. And this morning in his New York Times Op/Ed column, Frank Rich sees in Obama’s choice of The Reverend Rick Warren, a foreshadowing that Obama may have his own inclination to spend earned capital (as in, George W. Bush’s famous declaration that he had earned capital in his campaign and he intended to spend it). Rich is not sanguine about this omen and he is not sanguine about the Rev. Warren. Well, first, Frank, Barack Obama is going to hit some false notes since he is a mortal like the rest of us, so chill out, for God’s sake. It’s early in the game. And it’s true, The Rev. Warren is surely a lightning rod for everyone in the gay community who is looking to be offended. The man has been offensive to gays to a fare-thee-well. But second, I cannot think of a single person in the God-business that I personally would want to be God’s stand-in at Obama’s inauguration. All ordained persons are suspect. Maybe the Dalai Lama. The thing is, all God-biz guys have an agenda. And they are all going to be offensive if you just take the time to look under the hood. Any person who has decided to make a career out of explaining God to the rest of us is a bigot. Rich quotes gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson who said: “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table but we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.” Okay, now I’m offended. I would like to point out to all God-biz persons that the God we all pray to is One Unchanging Unknowable All-Knowing God. It’s the men and women of the cloth who have differing issues, agendas and talking points. And if Bishop Robinson thinks he knows God, he’s delusional as well as bigoted. But, that said, I also think that anyone standing before the world, and being watched by the world who asks that God bless this nation and the world is doing a good deed. And the moment that Reverend Warren invokes God’s blessing, we all should offer our own prayer and say AMEN!

Shawn Campbell’s Post on Twitter a Winner

Campbell said, “The White House has neither confirmed nor denied the President's plan for joining the Zappos Dodgeball team.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And apparently, the popular online shoe store really has one. The news from Baghdad just gets better and funnier. The New York Times reported this morning: “Calling someone the ‘son of a shoe’ is one of the worst insults in Iraq. But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war. In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes. A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage. In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, people calling for an immediate American withdrawal removed their footwear and placed the shoes and sandals at the end of long poles, waving them high in the air. And in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, people threw their shoes at a passing American convoy.” Later in the article, the NYT said, “In Syria, Mr. Zaidi’s picture was shown all day on state television, with Syrians calling in to share their admiration for his gesture and his bravery. In central Damascus, a huge banner hung over a street, reading, ‘Oh, heroic journalist, thank you so much for what you have done.' ‘It’s the talk of the city,’ said Ibrahim Mousawi, a Beirut journalist and political analyst affiliated with Hezbollah. ‘Everyone is proud of this man, and they’re saying he did it in our name.’” Well done, George. Finally, in the last days of his term as President of the United States, George W. Bush has unified the Middle East.

Will the Prez Get the Message in Iraq?

President Bush has said he doesn’t read newspapers. So he probably didn’t read Frank Rich’s scathing account in the New York Times yesterday of his eight years in office. But can he fail to get the message sent yesterday by an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at him? Bush’s trip to Baghdad was called “a valedictory visit” today in the NYT. As in, a fare-thee-well and god-bless excursion to the country he forced an unnecessary war on, a country which will equate his name with “failure” and “war monger” in future history books. But never mind those details, Bush went to Iraq to sanctify the recently-adopted security agreement between the United States and Iraq which includes a commitment to withdraw all American forces by the end of 2011. In his delusional state, Bush may have made his trip believing that finally he would be gifted with the flowers and candy that Dick Cheney predicted would greet the US invaders back in 2003. Instead, a shoe narrowly missed hitting him in the head. Of course the Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at Bush was wrestled to the ground and beaten until he cried for mercy. But not before shouting in Arabic with the first shoe, “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” And, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” with the second shoe. Will George W. Bush now get the message? No. Of course not. His insanity shields him from understanding the enormity of his culpability in the failed Iraq war or in America’s downward spiral. So, he made a joke about the shoes incident. He said, “All I can report is it is a size 10.” He then said, as the man’s screaming could be heard outside, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves.” And Bush went on to say that his war strategy known as “the surge” was “one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military.” In closing, President Bush said about the war, “There is still more work to be done, but with this security agreement, the courage of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi troops and the American troops and civilian personnel, it is decisively on its way to be won.” Perhaps after January 20th, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin will form a comedy duo to tour Iraq to bring glad tidings and laughter to all the grateful people in Iraq’s free society where they can draw attention to themselves.

Repubs Thumb Their Nose at Auto Makers

Let them eat cake Republican Senators said last night and voted down the auto bailout. And although the little guys in Detroit and the car company suppliers don’t deserve to suffer, it’s difficult to have sympathy for an industry that has shot itself in the foot the way the three big auto companies have done. The Big Three—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—can’t pay their suppliers again...it happens every year. Which means the suppliers, in effect, are forced to lend the big guys money to get through the crisis. But this time the banks are not willing to lend the suppliers money; hence the day of reckoning has arrived. One sits back and looks at this dilemma and wonders why The Big Three has chosen to pay their execs billions of dollars in salary, freebies and bonuses instead of paying their suppliers. And the answer is, because they wanted the money themselves and saw no reason why they should pay their bills when they could get away with not paying their bills. And that should surprise no one. Since that’s the way people with money operate. The little guy has always had to offer discounts to the rich to get them to pay up. And even so, the little guy inevitably has to wait 90 days or more to get his money. Of course an auto industry collapse would bite everyone in the ass. But still, it’s been a long time coming and it was inevitable. But as an aside, I must say that every time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stands up in the Senate and says anything, it irritates me. Yesterday, he said, “This is going to be a very, very bad Christmas for a lot of people as a result of what takes place here tonight.” Sentimental nonsense! The war in Iraq has made bad Christmases for the past five years. The Bush administration policies have made bad Christmases for the past eight years. Wall Street excesses and failures have made bad Christmases as long as one can remember. All US Presidents and every leader in the world have made bad Christmases. So don’t whine with that bad Christmas crap from the floor of the United States Senate, Harry, because you know what? Christmas has been officially recognized in America only since 1836 when Alabama made it a holiday. Oklahoma was the last state to recognize Christmas in 1907. And the first people to settle in these United States didn’t like the idea of celebrating Christ’s birth at all because it was “papist”. And another thing, Harry, you know as well as I do that a bailout for the auto industry in some form or another will be figured out by the US government within the next 30 days. That's just the way of things. And another ‘nother thing, it wouldn’t hurt a single Christian to cut back on Christmas buying and just go to church. That’s all I’m saying.

Feds Say JJ,Jr. is Blaggo’s Candidate 5

By me, it fits like a glove. The Feds say Jesse Jackson, Jr. is “ambitious”. There’s an understatement for you. I say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. There is not much that The Reverend JJ, Sr. has not been willing to do to throw himself into the limelight. In 1968, JJ, Sr. appeared on the Today Show wearing the blood-stained shirt he wore the day before when he claimed to have been with Martin Luther King when King was shot. There are those who dispute Jackson’s time line. Whether it’s true or not, his Today Show appearance is typical of JJ, Sr’s lifelong modus operandi. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a powerhouse in Chicago. But he’s not a strong contender politically in the state of Illinois. Evenso, JJ, Jr. is enough of a big noise in Chicago that when Barack Obama was thinking about running for the Illinois Senate, he went to JJ, Jr. and asked if he had eyes on the seat. Jackson said he did not, and he gave Obama his blessing. The New York Times reports this morning that Jackson changed his mind and now wants to claim Obama’s Senate seat. The NYT quoted Al Kindle, a South Side Chicago political consultant who said: “Jesse has wanted to be Obama’s heir apparent ever since Obama won the Senate seat.” Kindle helped Obama in the 2004 race. He added that since then, JJ, Jr. “has tried to reposition himself to appeal to a broader audience.” The NYT said, “Specifically, federal authorities said, Mr. Jackson is ‘Senate Candidate 5,’ associates of whom, the governor said in a wire-tapped conversation, were willing to raise money for Mr. Blagojevich in exchange for the seat.” Jesse Jackson, Jr. said “I did not initiate or authorize anyone at any time to promise anything to Governor Blagojevich on my behalf. I never sent a message or an emissary to the governor to make an offer, to plead my case or to propose a deal about a U.S. Senate seat, period.” That’s probably true. He wouldn’t have to be that overt. Everyone in Chicago knew JJ, Jr. wanted to replace Obama. It is also true that I am biased against The Reverend Jesse Jackson. I don’t like his methods or his manner and I am very ready to assume the worst about his son. The Blaggo tapes don’t look good for Jackson, Jr. The NYT said, “Of those alluded to, the affidavit’s implications seemed especially troubling for Mr. Jackson, or Senate Candidate Five. According to the document, Mr. Blagojevich told advisers last Thursday that he was giving Mr. Jackson “greater consideration” to replace Mr. Obama because Mr. Jackson would raise money for him, “upfront, maybe.” Yup, I believe it. By my observation, it’s the way the Jacksons do things.

Every Comic in the World Thanks You, Blaggo

Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich’s lawyer told reporters that the governor was "very surprised and certainly feels that he did not do anything wrong." Well, there you have it. That’s the main problem. Even after Blaggo was taped by federal agents saying, (re trying to sell Barack Obama’s Illinois senate seat to the highest bidder), “I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there”, no doubt the Gov truly thinks he did nothing wrong. Not unlike George W. Bush who believes his only wrongdoing over the past eight years may possibly be that he was unprepared for the war in Iraq, which he promoted, defended and started. Under state law, the Illinois governor has to name a replacement for Senator Obama who resigned his lllinois senate seat with two years remaining in his term. But as United States attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said (yeah, the guy who prosecuted Scooter Libby), “the (Blagojevich) conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.” Blaggo’s predecessor, Governor George Ryan was also indicted for corruption. Last month Blaggo said he believed President Bush should commute Ryan’s sentence of 6-1/2 years. “It would be a ‘fine decision’, Blaggo said. And lest we forget, Jack Ryan (no relation to George Ryan) had to quit his run against Obama four years ago because of a sex scandal. “I don’t believe there’s any cloud that hangs over me,” Blagojevich told reporters recently, “I think there’s nothing but sunshine hanging over me.” Right. And it surely is his kind of town, Chicago is. His kind of razzmatazz, and it has, all that jazz.

Shinseki Pick, A Thumb in Rumsfeld’s Eye

Obama’s choice of 38-year-career-Army man General (ret.) Eric K. Shinseki for Secretary of Veterans Affairs is perfect for a couple of reasons. First, the troops love him for telling the truth early on in the Iraq war. Shinseki said the invasion of Iraq would take several hundred thousand soldiers. Which estimate secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz pooh-poohed. But as the Iraq war descended into a no-win debacle, Shinseki was proved absolutely right. And, second, just as importantly, Shinseki was wounded in Viet Nam and knows the problems faced by returning vets and particularly wounded returning vets. As if Shinseki rising from the ashes of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney failure in Iraq were not enough of a lest-we-forget moment, we have this morning’s headline in the New York Times to remind us of the horrible decision by Bush and Co. to use mercenaries in Iraq: “Plea by Blackwater Guard Helps Indict Others”. The largest “security contractor” in Iraq (read, mercenary thugs), Blackwater, which was started by South Carolina far-right religious zealot, Erik Prince in 1997, and which contracted out as many soldiers-for-hire in Iraq as the volunteer army had in Iraq, has long been the subject of horror stories about its misuse of power. The worst of which was in 2007 and implicated six Blackwater guards. This morning, the NYT says: “In pleading guilty to manslaughter, the sixth security guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, described how he and the other guards used automatic rifles and grenade launchers to fire on cars, houses, a traffic officer and a girls’ school. In addition to those killed, there were at least 20 people wounded. The six guards were employed by Blackwater Worldwide, the largest security contractor in Iraq.” The Blackwater company has not been charged although it is no secret that Erik Prince and his protégé “Focus on the Family” religious zealot James Dobson believe that private Christian militias should rise up and take over the ungodly, unholy US government. However, this Blackwater black eye will no doubt slow down their planned religious war, particularly since Prince and Dobson no longer have a right-wing partisan zealot in the White House.

Op/Ed Writers Write—That’s Their Job

But even Frank Rich just turns the crank, at times. This morning’s New York Times Op/Ed column being one of those times. Back from a two-week vacation, Rich tells us that Obama’s economic team choices may fit David Halberstam’s original meaning of the title of his book, “The Best and Brightest”. Rich says Halberstam was being ironic with his description of the JFK team. They may have been bright but they surely weren’t the best. And they lead us into the Viet Nam war that “would destroy the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and inflict grave national wounds that only now are healing.” Then Rich points to Obama’s choice of Lawrence Summers as his top economic adviser and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and rips them apart for being bright, but hubristic, highhanded and worst of all, for being the protégés of President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who, according to Rich, is responsible for the “toxic mortgage-derivatives on Citigroup’s books” because he was asleep on the job. Rich says: “Washington’s cheerleading for our new New Frontier cabinet superstars has seldom been interrupted by tough questions about Summers’s Harvard career or Geithner’s record at the Fed.” Both of which, Rich claims, were less than wonderful and in Geithner’s case, possibly led to Lehman Brothers’ demise Okay. So? What’s it been, a week since Obama let the world know who his top job choices are? Washington has “seldom” asked tough questions? Is it possible there might still be time? Come on, Frank. I’m aware you had to churn something out for today’s column and I’m aware you probably had to write something negative about a couple of Obama’s choices lest you fall into the cheerleader camp. Still, your tag line gave you away when you wrote, “In the end Obama chose Paul Volcker as chairman of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. This was a presidential decision not only bright but wise.” Right. Rich actually thinks Geithner and Summers are decent enough choices. And as Rich himself pointed out earlier in his column, “Well, nobody’s perfect. Given that John McCain’s economic team was headlined by Carly Fiorina and Joe the Plumber, the country would be dodging a fiscal bullet even if Obama had picked Suze Orman.” Bottom line: Frank Rich earned his fee for the week and the rest is blah-blah-blah.

Mr. Ratfucker Wants to Have a Quiet Word

It’s been a long time since Mr. Ratfucker has found a need to speak out. So long, in fact, that some Ratbang readers may not even recognize the name. Mr. Ratfucker is happy to elucidate. Way back when the Ratbang Diary was called the Ratfuck Diary, a particularly dim numnut had a particularly irritating wild hair up her nose and called the Ratfuck blogger Mr. Ratfucker. In the instant, Mr. Ratfucker came into being. This morning, Mr. Ratfucker would like to note that he finds it most annoying when some readers comment on ancient Ratbang posts and then take the blogger to task for being behind the times. Mr. Ratfucker wonders if it has never occurred to these benighted readers of old posts to look at the date of the post before making a comment? And while he’s at it, Mr. Ratfucker would like to comment on the doubts of some persons that Hillary Clinton will take the Secretary of State appointment or that in fact she wants it, what nonsense! The name of a considered appointee is never leaked by a President Elect if that person has not said he/she will accept the appointment if named. It would not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Barack Obama had asked Mrs. Clinton to be his SOS the day after he won the candidacy, contingent on the outcome of the vetting of both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. It would further not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Mrs. Clinton had accepted immediately. Mr. Ratfucker thanks you for your time.

Blah, Blah, Blah

Now that the election is over and the pundits and op/ed writers are rummaging around for things to mull over and write about, their output has largely become tortured ruminations and boring blah-blah-blah. Tom Friedman is a classic example. From his halcyon days of being considered a dynamic force in the future of the middle east--his 2006 trip to Syria and subsequent columns on how to handle Syria, for example—through his spiraling down into ego-centered rants and nonsense, now today he is pontificating about Barack Obama possibly choosing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and telling us of his “worries” on that score. “Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?” Friedman asks. (Among other deadly failings, Friedman glories in his turns-of-phrase and stand-up comic one-liners.) Then he tells us that he, Tom Friedman, knows more than anyone about what a relationship between a Prez and a Secretary of State should be because he covered James Baker when Baker was GHW Bush’s SOS. The world must be aware, Friedman says, that an SOS speaks for the Prez. An SOS and Prez must be totally in each other’s back pocket, their world-view must be identical with nary a disagreement between them...ever. And Friedman, from his high perch as know-all-see-all sage relates his concerns. Journalists and talking heads must not be allowed to see “daylight” between the Prez and SOS or they will jump on the flaw and tear them to shreds. “When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.” Why not? one wonders. Who is Friedman to assume that the Baker-Bush model is the optimum form that must be followed? Who is Friedman to assume that two smart people cannot have different ideas and also arrive at a consensus that will indeed change things for the better? When will Tom Friedman realize he's become a has-been hack? Once again, Tom Friedman has fed 750 words into his laptop, emailed them to the NYT and gotten a check. And blah-blah-blah.

Fear Not, Politics Is Still A Gapers’ Delight

As Frank Rich points out this morning in his Sunday Morning New York Times Op/Ed piece: “Election junkies in acute withdrawal need suffer no longer.” The presidential race may be over but, ”The cockfight among the losers has only just begun. The conservative crackup may be ugly, but as entertainment, it’s two thumbs up!” The Repubs are blaming each other, the fact that Bush is an inept dolt, the clueless McCain campaign and the rampant greed of the GOP for their defeat. But Rich says the problem is more fundamental than that. “The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like ‘guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,’ he was the first to correctly call the election.” The Repubs have been in denial for decades. They think they can hoodwink voters into believing they are inclusive and pro-minority by talking about it rather than being pro-minority. Rich notes that, “a conservative Wall Street Journal editorialist asked whether “the G.O.P. doesn’t in fact have a perception problem, that it is no longer viewed as a big tent.” “A perception problem? Hello — how about a reality problem? The reason why they are promoting Palin and the recently elected Indian-American governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as the party’s ‘future’ is not just that they (Jindal and Palin) are hard-line social conservatives; they are also the only prominent Republican officeholders under 50 who are not white men.” To me, the most unsettling thing in the Frank Rich article was this Gallup poll finding: 45% of Americans want to see Sarah Palin have a national political future while only 52% do not. Almost half of the Americans who just witnessed Sarah Palin running for Vice President and saw her being stupid, ignorant, pandering, corrupt, silly, hate-spewing and a right-wing religious zealot into the bargain, say they would be pleased for her to have a future in Republican politics. And the worst of it is that although it’s nice to see the GOP in such moronic disarray, still, as the Frank Rich tagline says: “At a time of genuine national peril we actually do need an opposition party that is not brain-dead.”

So...How Many Days Now...70?

This is going to be difficult. One could not help shouting a Dan Ackroyd-ism at Sarah Palin on TV yesterday: Sarah, you ignorant slut! And Karen Hughes on CNN’s Situation Room...where’d she come from and what’s she been doing since her days as Bush’s counselor and holder of the world’s silliest title, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy? Talk about ignorant! She’s still defending George Bush but now she’s also mouthing gummy platitudes about how wonderful president-elect Barack Obama is in his blackness. (Oh please! tell me born-again-stupid Hughes is not going to manage Palin’s born-again-crass political career. Although it would be a boon for the comics.) And George Bush all over the news...unrepentant and unapologetic as ever, but acting like he had finally come to terms with his failures by saying maybe he does regret a couple things...the dead-or-alive thing, and the sailors who put up the “Mission Accomplished” sign which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. Ugh! Seventy more days of baboon-speak. And the Republicans acting like 8 years of the worst administration since Nero never happened, while preening and puffing themselves up. And even talking about how the Republicans now have to get back to the business of showing the world how to run a smaller, more restrictive government that will be advantageous to the rich. And Grandpa McCain on Leno being (I hear) cute and self-deprecating. I couldn’t watch it. Gack and gag! Nor, I’m almost positive, will I be able to watch the ignorant slut on Larry King tonight. After these walking-on-eggshells, sappy, 70 days of clueless folk saying mindless things are over, how long will the Obama honeymoon be? Someone on CNN said it would be very long. We’ll know the honeymoon is over when the pundits, politicians and comics lay aside the fact that Obama is black and start ripping him apart like every president that has gone before him.

I Like Judge Judy, But She Made a Bad Call

Larry King’s guest last night was Judith Sheindlin, the 66-year-old peoples court firebrand who was a family court judge in New York City, but on cable TV as "Judge Judy" is actually an arbiter not a judge. You either like Judge Judy or hate her. I like her. People who know Judith Sheindlin say that in real life, she is nothing like the persona she inhabits on her Judge Judy show. People say she is a nice older lady who is soft-spoken. Last night, appearing to have had yet another face lift (she surely rivals Larry King in that department), but looking very pretty in a bright green jacket and light green dress, Judge Judy talked about Barack Obama. She is a fan of Obama’s and said she thought his wife Michelle would be a "dynamite" First Lady. She also disagreed with people who said Mrs. Obama would put her well-known ambition on the shelf while her husband is President of the United States and would concentrate on being a mom and First Lady—as in, take a leaf from Laura Bush’s manual on how to be the wife of a President. Sheindlin, who has five children by two marriages said Michelle Obama need not choose between her own ambitions and being a dutiful First Lady. “She can do both,” Sheindlin said. True. And these days, few people will find fault with a First Lady who has her own agenda and power base. Then, having given her unqualified support to Barack and Michelle Obama, Judith Sheindlin went off her trolley. Larry King asked how she felt about Sarah Palin. Sheindlin said Palin is smart, she said Palin was blind-sided by the McCain team. Sheindlin said Palin was unduly maligned by the press. She said Palin is an accomplished person who was a good Mayor, a good Governor, a good mother and was thrown under the bus by everyone. Sheindlin said the potshots taken at Palin by the pundits, the press, the politicians, and by people in general were “disrespectful”. Oh please! That’s crap! As Judge Judy herself so often declares, “If it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t true.” Sarah Palin may be canny and a quick study, but she is not intelligent. And into the bargain, she is ignorant and woefully arrogant about her ignorance. Sheindlin feels Palin was taken advantage of like a lamb led to slaughter. And nothing could be farther from the truth. If there is anything admirable about Sarah Palin at all--and though I marvel at her hubris, I personally do not find it admirable--but if one can find self-absorption and hubris admirable, one has to admire the way Sarah Palin took advantage of the morons who tapped her to be John McCain’s running mate. From the moment she took the fateful phone call advising her she was being considered as a candidate for Vice President of the United States, Sarah Palin grabbed the opportunity and milked it for all it was worth. Not for her country-- had she been thinking of her country, she would have said “No thanks” to the McCain crew-- but for a shot at becoming the next American idol on some stage, any stage, somewhere, anywhere. It may be that Sheindlin is amused by the stupidity of the old pols who had totally wrongheaded ideas about women in general. It may be that Sheindlin is captivated by a ballbusting female who doesn’t give a rat’s behind (another Judge Judy locution) about playing by the rules, particularly rules invented by old men who want to go back to living in the 1950’s. But I suspect that Judith Sheindlin was giving voice to some knee-jerk reactions she’d had to Sarah Palin. I suspect Sheindlin had not done any research on Sarah Palin and was simply standing up for another mother of five who had decided women don’t have to stay in the kitchen. Had Judge Judy been faced with Sarah Palin in her court, she would have ripped her to shreds for being silly, dumb, a bad mother, egocentric, uncaring, manipulative and crass.

The Big Exhale

What a relief! And I just want to say to all those black Repubs who now are talking about what a great day it is that a black man has been elected president: SHUT UP and go hide in a hole! You should be ashamed of yourselves for backing the worst president we have ever had, and for wanting to continue the ignominy that the Republican Party had sunk into. To his credit, Barack Obama never ran for president as a black man. He ran as a proud American. And he has given all of us the enormous gift of being able to be proud of America again. If John McCain had not run as a wounded veteran, he would have had a much better campaign. McCain would not have won, of course, but his campaign would not have been the total embarrassing spectacle of bad taste that it was. As if the disastrous terms of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were not enough, John McCain added his campaign to the list of GOP mistakes and infamies. Bill Maher was on Larry King Wednesday night. He said we would never be rid of Sarah Palin. He said she would be around in 30 years when she is 74, either in politics or show biz. And that may be true. Sarah Palin is one of those freakish personalities who do not care what they have to say or do as long as they have an audience. Yesterday, she complained that she had wanted to deliver a concession speech Tuesday night and was not allowed to. Speechwriters had written two speeches for her, a victory speech and a loser’s speech. Campaign strategists wisely said No. John McCain needed no help to lose this election. He was going to lose. He was carrying on his back George Bush, the arrogance of the Republican Party, the Party’s eight years of failed policies, the Iraq war, his age, his infirmities, his temperament, his reputation as a loose cannon and his nasty wife. And then, as if to ensure that he not only lost the election but that he lost while people laughed at him, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I think most people, me included, would be content to let Sarah Palin go back to Alaska to live out her days in repentance and doing good works. But everyone knows that is not in the Palin DNA. That is why the Repubs are now letting the Sarah Palin story out of the box. They may not be able to pull her off the stage, but they can show how stupid she is. Comics already are saying they are going to miss George W. Bush. They are saying it’s going to be difficult to find stuff to satirize with Barack Obama. But they will always have Sarah Palin.

Palin’s Medical Records

Oh I do love this! Repub Vice President candidate Sarah Palin won’t, or at least hasn’t, as of this moment, released her medical records. We suspect it’s not her physical medical records she doesn’t want to reveal. We suspect it’s psychological records she wants to keep secret. We suspect she’s on no-nonsense psychiatric meds for her no-nonsense psychiatric problems. Which, of course, makes no matter either way to the election on November 4th. But it matters alot if Miss Know-nothing Moron expects to have a career in politics after this election. And the medical records will come out...you know they will. Oh goody! Something to look forward to after this coming Tuesday.

Duh!

The New York Times reports this morning: “A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.” No kidding! The Vice President of the United States has only two duties defined in the Constitution, 1) Taking over for the Prez if he becomes incapacitated, dies or is put in jail, and 2) Being President of the Senate. When asked what the Vice President does, Palin couldn’t come up with the answer. Even she knew it would be impolitic to say, “Wait for the President to die,” which, needless to say, is her concept of the job. “All told,” the NYT went on to report, “59 percent of voters surveyed said Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favor Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.” In addition to the voters deciding Palin is a know-nothing. self-aggrandizing fool (okay, those are my words), the NYT said that the fact McCain picked Palin, gave voters “much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.” Now that John McCain has inflated the persona of Sam the Unqualified Non-Plumber to the point that Sam/Joe is thinking about running for Congress, voters may also be worried that McCain would appoint him to the position of Secretary of State. Actually, if McCain had an internal monitor to oversee his impulses, which he doesn't, he too would be worried about his choices. Palin has decided to blow off the McCain advisers and go her own way saying what she wants, whenever she wants. And everyman Joe-the-Plumber (Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) stood up a McCain rally yesterday. And McCain's decision to go on Larry King to complain and whine was not a good choice either. They are being likened to the cranky old Muppets codgers, Statler and Waldorf.

Tell Me They Are Fucking Joking!

I was channel surfing last night, late. I am fairly sure it was on Jay Leno. But in any case, there was a bunch of very earnest, pundit-types sitting around a table with Leno, one of whom was David Gregory. And someone (need I say, a Republican male) made the totally deadpan assertion that the Repubs were considering the possibility they might lose the election on November 4th, to the point that they were talking about Sarah Palin as a candidate for President in 2012. I don’t remember if anyone guffawed because I hooted and drowned out the TV. But when I was able to breathe again, I heard this someone say that Sarah Palin was a totally believable candidate for president, that people loved her, that she knew about running governments, that the US of A was now ready to have a woman president and that in four years Sarah Palin could learn a lot. Is this idea really being floated? How insane is that! Considering that Hillary Clinton is alive and well. Although, now that I think of it, it does sound like a typical Repub plan. The first George W. Bush term as President was so horrible, the Repubs had to perpetrate fraud to make him president a second time. When the war in Iraq showed early-on that it was a bad idea and there was no way on God’s green earth that it could be won, the Repubs threw a few billion more dollars into it and killed a few more thousands of American soldiers to prove they hadn’t just been wrong, they had been really wrong. When John McCain saw that he was losing in the polls and needed a strong person to run with him as Vice President, he chose Sarah Palin, an aging ex-beauty-queen, who was despised in Alaska as both a Mayor and Governor and had nothing to recommend her except that the far-right Christian zealots thought she was dandy. And now that Sarah Palin is being credited with John McCain’s failing candidacy and people running his campaign are calling her a “diva” and saying she is the reason his polls went into the toilet, the Repubs are talking about running her for President in 2012. Yup...now it all makes sense. Repub credo: If it was horribly wrong, badly thought out, badly executed, a total and complete mistake, guaranteed to fail, insanely stupid, silly, and wrongheaded, then do it again to prove it wasn’t an accident the first time.

Grandpa in Shirt Sleeves

McCain campaigned in Cedar Falls, Iowa today. He stood before a small (compared to the 100,000 people cheering Obama in Denver, CO) enthusiastic crowd on a darkened stage. He was in shirtsleeves. The power had failed and the air conditioning wasn’t working. His campaign hoped people and the press wouldn’t see the power failure as a metaphor. But it is a metaphor. McCain looked like an old man with failing powers. He chafed at Obama’s obvious popularity and the fact he was drawing huge crowds. "He's measuring the drapes”, McCain said, chiding Obama for seeming overconfident. McCain said his own campaign is “doing fine”, even in the face of a Newsweek poll released yesterday showing Obama with a 13-point lead nationally. McCain said he’s going to increase the money spent in Iraq, he’s going to lower taxes, and he’s going to balance the budget. How? He didn’t say except he alluded to lowering the Capital Gains tax. Then he made a small, but telling slip. He said, “IF I win the election....” John McCain has always previously said, “When I win the election”. And Grandpa in shirtsleeves in Iowa on a dimly-lit stage with no air conditioning again brought up his war injuries. Today just happens to be the 41st anniversary of the day John McCain was shot down in Viet Nam. It reminded me of hearing white-haired World War I vets talking about World War I in 1954. I was a guide at the UN at the time. The United States had been involved in the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. We guides were told we couldn’t call it a “war”. We had to say “the Korean conflict”, if we said anything at all. And that was 36 years after WWI. I tried to be diplomatic with the grandpas in shirtsleeves, but those Vets seemed so old, WWI was so far in the past and their experiences so irrelevant in the face of the problems the world faced in 1954. Today, John McCain again suggested that the fact that he was injured in the Viet Nam War and spent 6 years in a POW camp prepared him to be President of the United States. How? He didn’t say. McCain lauded Sarah McCain. “I don’t defend her,” he said. “I praise her.” Sarah Palin is so upset with the McCain campaign that yesterday she said she’s going to “go rogue” and go out on the campaign trail and say exactly what she wants to say, and the hell with the McCain advisors. McCain said, “She is exactly what Washington needs.” How? He didn’t say.

Stopped Clock Department

In line with the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has weighed-in on Sarah Palin. Yesterday Chavez called Palin “a confused beauty queen” after she called him a dictator. “The poor thing,” Chavez said during a televised broadcast, “you just feel sorry for her.” Never one to tone down his rhetoric, Chavez then invoked Jesus Christ. "She's a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead. We need to say as Christ did: Forgive her, she knows not what she's saying." Still, one can’t say he’s wrong. Living in a Cave Department I am so annoyed at not knowing Saturday Night Live is also doing stints on Thursday nights for a few weeks that I’m putting out an aviso to other cave dwellers: SNL has brought back Will Ferrell who is on Thursday night as well as Saturday night.

McCain’s Jonah Ignored in WaPo Article

Today the Washington Post has a comprehensive analysis on the extent to which McCain is losing the election (“Polls Point to Struggle for McCain”). The opening teaser says, "Obama Leads in Battlegrounds, but GOP Nominee Plans to Keep Fighting". Referring to “the McCain team”, the article says, “The depth of their challenge was made plain yesterday by eight surveys produced by the Big Ten Battleground Poll. Obama not only leads in all eight Midwestern states by hefty margins but has improved his standing since the last time the group surveyed these states.” The article says, “the numbers are startling” and goes on to say, “Obama leads by 12 points in Ohio, 11 in Pennsylvania and 13 in Wisconsin. In Michigan, where McCain's campaign has pulled out, Obama's lead is 22 points. In Indiana, a strong red state, his lead is 10 points, larger than in other recent polls.” But a really startling thing is that John McCain's Jonah, Sarah Palin, is never mentioned in this article. It does note that Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden’s remark that “Obama would be tested internationally early in his presidency” would be a major negative talking point for McCain in the next 11 days. But the article stays a country mile from the subject of Sarah Palin. The WaPo analysis is even-handed enough to say, “There are certainly some polls that portray a different race. Some show Obama's margin in mid-single digits, and one poll this week showed Obama with a lead of a single point.” And it doesn’t shy away from quoting Peter Hart who opined about why McCain is losing the race. Hart helped conduct the NBC survey. He said, “after months of doubts, voters have reached a comfort level with Barack Obama...McCain faces significant doubts that he matches what Americans are looking for in terms of change or hope and optimism for the future." Still, no mention that McCain’s fortunes started to plummet after his disastrous choice of a smiling, unethical, ignorant, female character assassin for his running mate--a character assassin who is willing to lie and cheat her way to fame. No mention of the fact that when asked on Wednesday what a Vice President does, Palin didn’t have the foggiest notion and started rambling on that a VP shmoozes with Senators. My take is that men feel uncomfortable about ragging on Palin because she is McCain’s equivalent of a “female problem”. Sarah Palin is McCain’s “hot flash”, his change-of-life mood swing, she’s his “curse”, his “time of the month”. I think men think it’s unfair to come after Sarah Palin for all the real things that are wrong with her and McCain’s nomination of her, because she amounts to an unmentionable topic: Sarah Palin is John McCain’s hysteria made manifest. Sarah Palin is John McCain with female trouble and it’s scary as hell.

Turning A Rube Into a Babe: $150,000

And counting. There’s still two weeks to go before the election. And this sow’s ear is still no silk purse. The New York Times tells us this morning that, “Advisers to Ms. Palin said on Wednesday that the purchases — which totaled about $150,000 and were classified as “campaign accessories” — were made on the fly after Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate on Aug. 29 and needed new clothes to match climates across the 50 states. They emphasized, too, that Ms. Palin did not spend time on the shopping, and that other people made the decision to buy such an array of clothes.” This latest information about Sarah Palin, who not only desperately desires to be President of the United States but probably will be President if sick old John McCain wins the election, is making Repub strategists twist and turn like contortionists. And in addition, defending Sarah Palin is spending every day covering up moose turds with rose petals. So the Repub rejoinder to complaints about Palin’s expensive makeover is that Palin didn’t pick her clothes and other people shopped for her? Not making decisions is not a good thing, you gormless numnuts. So now the Repubs are getting their knickers in a knot when people say hockey moms and plumbers may not relate to the fact that this silly twit is spending more than average folks make in a year on babe attire. As Joy Behar said on “The View” yesterday, “I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks.” The Repub defense? “The issue was tainted with sexism, given that male politicians often spend thousands of dollars on suits.” Oh please! Male politicians often spend thousands of dollars of their own money on suits. THEIR OWN MONEY! The NYT reported that some Repub operatives were privately saying that being critical of the clothing purchases for Palin “would be like kicking a campaign while it was down”. Yo! It’s not “like”. It IS. For a Repub to criticize the clothing purchases IS kicking a campaign when it’s down. And the reason the McCain campaign is down is because John McCain chose Sarah Palin, you morons. Well I ask you, who started the nonsense about Sarah Palin being just an ordinary mom going to hockey games with her kids? Not the Dems that’s for sure. Who first brought up the idea of animals wearing lipstick? Not the Dems. Thanks to Repub speech-writers trying to write clever lines for Palin, it’s now impossible not to think of pigs wearing lipstick when we hear about Sarah Palin’s handlers dressing her in expensive clothes. Which, by the way, they had to pick out because she’s incapable of exercising good taste in any area. “If they hadn’t done this, ‘Saturday Night Live’ would be doing jokes where Governor Palin would be dressed in elk skin,” said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant not associated with the McCain campaign. Wow! I could never have come up with a more concise explanation of the problem with Sarah Palin: If someone didn’t dress her, move her into position and tell her what to say, Sarah Palin would be even worse than she is when people dress her, move her into position and tell her what to say. The Republicans keep opening doors on skeleton closets in the Palin house and lifting the lid off smelly Palin trashcans, then they whine when we rummage through the dirty linen and hand it back to them. And you know, sure as Alaskan pigs wear designer lipstick, there’s more dirty linen to come.

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.