I am So Incredbly There.

Minstrel Boy, you bring the popcorn. I'll bring the Atavan and scotch.

Big Trouble in Little America

Who would ever think that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would ever plunge 788 points in a single day, or by about 7% of the Dow, because Republicans didn't give George W. Bush, a man who is to economics what Typhoid Mary was for public health, what he wants.

Has it gotten to this point? If George W. Bush, the lamest of lame duck presidents, doesn't get his way yet again, investors flee to Treasury securities and gold futures?

By a vote of 228-205, the bailout bill failed to pass in the House of Representatives. The breakdown: 133 Republicans and only 95 Democrats voted Nay whereas 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans voted Aye.

Typically, the GOP proponents of the bill put the blame for its failure squarely where it belonged: On Nancy Pelosi's slender shoulders. Despite the fact that Pelosi has been aggressively pushing Bush's bailout plan with the industriousness of a pimp with ADHD. Because just recently she'd criticized Bush's economic agenda.

And we all know how much pull Pelosi has always had with the 133 Republicans who'd opposed the bill for various and sundry reasons such as abandonment of party ideology (that of smaller, less intrusive government) and even, say the suddenly-pious, because it doesn't do enough to bail out the homeowners who were victimized three and a half years ago when they passed the bankruptcy bill.

What's in a Name?

What a long, strange guilt trip it's been. And most of us are unaware that we're even on it.

Right wingers for better than a year have been conscientiously reminding us time and time again what Sen. Obama's middle name is.

However, given their dismal outreach program toward African American voters (with all due respect to Ken Mehlman), one deeply suspects that, in reality, the name they really want to pounce on is not his middle name but his surname.

President Barack Obama. Think about what shudders through the collective nervous system of white Appalachia, Deep South crackers and Caucasian Middle America when they repeat that name and conjunctive title.

President Obama.

The brand name we've been hearing repeatedly in the news since the 2004 Democratic convention is suddenly stripped of its faux mainstream familiarity. It's an unmistakably African, not African American name, one not buried under the unthreatening slave names Washington and Jefferson or comfortingly bleached through Anglicization.

It is unmistakably, unequivocally, unapologetically, even proudly African, specifically Kenyan. And those who insist on judging their fellow humans because of their X or Y chromosome, their skin pigmentation or lack thereof or what geographical borders within which we were hurtled into this world, all without our consent, will feel the need to come to grips with Obama's African roots.

Obama. It will make people think of spear chuckers, women with bare breasts sagging down to their navels and all the misleading pictures in the pages of National Geographic that we were raised to believe as gospel.

What will go through their minds on Election Day, when they're standing in the booth, committed and needing to vote for somebody? I'm thinking not of dependably racist Republicans but so-called Democratic voters, the "Undecideds", the independents who find McCain loathsome and laughable.

President Obama. Hm...

This is where guilt will tiptoe into the 11th hour of the race, the guilt that reminds us what we did to West Africans, we meaning white people collectively. We Dutch, we English, we Irish... We Americans. And sometimes guilt can drive us away from doing the right thing as often as driving us away from committing ancient sins.

We may think of slave ships carrying blacks from the Dark Continent, packed in the cargo hold like sardines. We'll atavistically remember chains, whips, thumbscrews, families torn apart on the auction block.

And, to paraphrase Robert Lowell in his landmark poem "For the Union Dead", it will stick like a fishbone in the nation's throat.

Top Ten Lessons I Learned This Month: Grand Theft Autocrat Edition

10) No foreign policy experience for a Vice President serving under a man well into his 70's, at a time of greater-than-usual geopolitical upheaval, still is preferable to one with decades of solid, productive foreign policy experience.

9) A $700 billion bailout of greedy, corrupt corporations in order to "fix" the economy isn't blackmail at all. Blackmail requires the victim to retain the ability to do or not do a specific action. This is grand larceny, plain and simple.

8) Saving multi-millionaires and billionaires and a brain-dead woman takes precedence over a city full of people who are drowning to death.

7) The Presidency is a job that doesn't require multitasking and in which you can just punch out at five and let Sarah Palin run the country for the other 16 hours.

6) "A Palin/McCain administration" would lead into the 21st century a bankrupt and disreputable country, by a man who's already challenging actuarial tables and a woman who thinks that witches are out to get her.


5) The only thing standing between us and a risky $700,000,000,000 that would gouge the American taxpayer to the tune of $5300 is the Republican Party.

4) Foreign policy experience can be absorbed by osmosis due to sheer geographical proximity. This week, I also learned to play concert piano because my next door neighbor owns one.

3) It's perfectly normal for two allies to shoot at eachother and for one to bomb the shit out of its country.

2) It's also perfectly normal to not care about yet keep valuable gifts that you choose not to declare and to blame your wife when you get indicted after a corruption probe.

1) Holy shit, Clay Aiken really is gay. Isn't it safe to believe anything, anymore?

Assclowns of the Week #70: Soulless Corporations and the Politicans Who Love Them Edition

It's nowhere near Christmas but the last six weeks of this marathon presidential campaign can lay a better claim to the phrase "silly season." Plus, if you're a heartless, soulless, faceless, avaricious corporation, every day can be Christmas as long as we have a Congress to rescue them from themselves.

Included in this edition is John McCain (6, 4, 2), who apparently thinks that Spain and Mexico share more than just a common language; Sunni hardliners (10) who put out a contract on Mickey Mouse; the Federal Reserve (1) for bringing us one step closer to nationalizing failing industries and Wall St. investors (7) for yo-yoing up the Dow Jones Average over 400 points based on a vague idea by, of all people, George W. Bush.

So let's take a stroll down the campaign trail of tears and review these assclowns and much, much more!

10) Sunni Muslim Clerics

Buy your Mickey Mouse memorabilia while you can because it's going to shoot up in value at the Disney store.

80 years after "Steamboat Willie", Mickey Mouse's silent film-era debut, Sheik Mohammed Munajjid, a Sunni cleric, launched a fatwa on the animated rodent. In Islamic culture, rats and mice are considered vermin and "the agents of Satan." OK, fair enough. But rather than calling for better health standards that can help curb whatever problem desert countries would have with rodents, this lathered penis in Saudi Arabia is calling for the killing of a fictional cartoon character.

I suppose the next thing we'll be seeing is the Saudi Mutaweenies, or religious police, grimly trolling their way through Disney Land, Disney World and Epcot Center in their long white gowns and ZZ Top beards, shooting anyone wearing a Mickey costume.

So, it took three generations for Saudi Arabia's cleric hardliners to finally get around to noticing the most famous cartoon character on the planet earth, one used as a symbol of one of the world's largest corporations.

Oh no, they're not out of touch, at all. Sunni clerics have their gnarled fingers right on the pulse of what's ailing the world.


Then again, this isn't the first time the world's most famous rodent or a facsimile thereof, has been singled out for one Muslim propaganda purpose or another. I guess some Muslims are more tolerant of vermin than others.

(Unfortunately, Farfour/Mickey didn't last long on Hamas childrens' TV, as this charming video documents.)

9) Judge Loretta Preska

"Thank you and on behalf of myself and the Federalist Society, I hope I've passed the audition."

Gee, I can't imagine why New York Judge Loretta A. Preska would choose to follow the lead of federal prosecutors who'd claimed that Susan Lindauer was mentally unfit to stand trial (and to defend her name and proclaim her innocence).

And I'm at a complete loss to fathom why Judge Preska would choose to ignore while making her ruling the independent and contrary psychological evaluations done on Lindauer. You know, the ones that future Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey thought were suspiciously and conspicuously absent from his court while being freely available on blogs.

Don't ask me why Judge Preska is contining to gag Susan Lindauer and shielding the Bush administration from the embarrassment Lindauer can still cause them. Except perhaps because Preska owes the Bush family a lot of favors.

8) Sarah Palin


Who does she think she is? Barack Obama?

New celebrity and political porn star Sarah Palin can't be accused of being unaware of her position in the McCain campaign. At a rally last Thursday, Sarah Palin referred to a "Palin/McCain administration." This marks the first time in my 49 year-long memory that the "B" side of a presidential campaign put their name at the top of the ticket.



While it may have been a mere slip of the tongue or an actual Freudian slip, this inversion of names once again underscores the pants-shitting possibility that this glassy-eyed, unblinking evangelical with the thousand yard stare could become our 45th, third youngest and most vastly inexperienced Commander in Chief in American history.

It brings back memories of the day Reagan was shot and Secretary of State Alexander Haig completely ignoring the Constitutional rules of succession by saying, "I'm in charge."

7) Wall Street Investors

First, the Dow lost 504 points. Then it rebounded 410 points on Bush's, Paulson's, and Bernanke's vague plan for a $700,000,000,000 corporate welfare state. Then it sank another 370 points when investors woke up and realized, Oh shit, Bush's plan was vague and amorphous, wasn't it? Buy, Buy, BUY oil and gold!!!!

So, another false surge and a line graph for the Dow Jones will give us a nice "W". Coincidence? Certainly but how apropos.

6) Senator John McCain

How scary is it that John McCain can be asked direct questions and give in response non sequitor answers time and time again?

Scary enough to give a pet rock cold sweats and the shits.

Last Thursday, John McCain was asked, in English, by a Spanish newspaper reporter if he would talk with Spain's President Zapatero. McCain time after time answered with tightly scripted references to Mexico and Latin America. Finally, when no mistake or confusion was possible, McCain still gave the same stock answer then had this to say:

"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."

In doing so, McCain drew a line in the sand between Us vs Them, "Them" presumably being nations that don't share our values and vision regarding American imperialism in the Middle East, extraordinary rendition, torture and have, instead, a weakness for making rebuffed diplomatic overtures.

You know, like Iran, for instance.

Here's a wonderful practical joke you can play on John McCain if you ever run into him before his campaign's orderlies can get him out of the sun:

Ask him where in Latin America the Madrid train bombings took place.

5) Congressional Democrats

When Republicans like John Boehner applaud the Democratic party for a bill, you know something wicked this way comes.

Democrats in the House, not surprisingly, are still on a Koolaid bender since they're planning on rescinding the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. What a nice bookend to accompany Bush's own rescinding of his father's executive ban.

Now, it's true that American oil production is at its lowest point since 1949. Yet, if the Executive and Legislative branches can plausibly believe that offshore drilling within the next decade will significantly lower gas prices today, then that's a clarion call for renewed R&D into cleaner, cheaper alternative energy.

And while I'm still on the subject, just because we're unofficially nationalizing home lenders and insurance companies, it doesn't mean our oil industry is going to be anytime soon. The oil drilled out of the ocean will belong to the companies who own the drilling rights. In other words, it'll belong not to the US but to the same avaricious tycoons who are squeezing us at the pumps today. All lifting both offshore drilling bans will do is further bloat the oil cartels, not give us relief.

But this Affirmative Action for oil companies on the part of the Executive and Legislative branches is entirely consistent with the corporation-compassionate government that idly stands by while people can no longer afford to heat the homes that are about to get foreclosed, anyway.

4) John McCain

When John McCain abandons the campaign trial to rush back to Washington to do his job for the first time since April 8th, you know Harry Reid's fucking up the Senate.

Last Wednesday, John McCain wanted to suspend the debates with Barack Obama (who'd initially rejected McCain's calls for Town Hall-style debates) so he could work on the economy that by his own admission isn't his strong suit.

Barack Obama's retort was priceless: "I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once."

Reid had called McCain to say, "it wouldn't help" for him to be back in Washington to work on the corporate stimulus bill. Got any better ideas, Harry?

3) LA State Rep. John LaBruzzo

With Republicans, it's impossible to tell where the lunacy ends and the true insanity begins.

This Wednesday, LA State Representative John LaBruzzo came up with a brilliant plan to fight poverty: Sterilize poor people so they make less of themselves. Apparently, poor people breed faster than rich people and, to a Republican, that's just inexcusable.

LaBruzzo actually publicly called for a plan to pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tied (or men to get a vascectomy, so as not to appear sexist). This, to LaBruzzo is a more viable alternative than, say, better education and job training so poor people don't, you know, remain poor. You have to admit, though, it's interesting moral gymnastics to simultaneously oppose paying for abortions while advocating shelling out taxpayer dollars for sterilization of the poor.

At the same time, he would also extend tax incentives for yuppies to encourage them to take back charge of the baby race.

LaBruzzo had this to say about his eugenics scheme: "I don't know if it's a viable option. Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we'll start a debate on it." Something tells me such a debate will be between himself while doctors and orderlies sadly look on shaking their heads.

And it wouldn't be the first time LaBruzzo has taken both sides of an issue.

2) John "The Regulator" McCain

Think Progress:

Soon after arriving in Congress, McCain flew on Keating’s corporate plane to vacations in the Bahamas. He “did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public.” By 1987, “McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.”
...

(L)ocal Ohio reporter Tom Beres finally forced McCain to comment on the Keating Five scandal in an interview yesterday...

BERES: Is there some relevance of that chapter, which I think you have acknowledged was maybe not your proudest moment?

MCCAIN: It was a very unhappy period in my life.

Indeed. It must've absolutely killed McCain to have accepted all that money from a future jailbird and having to go to bat for him by fighting against any regulation of the S&L industry when what McCain really wanted was what he's advocating now: Federal regulation of financial giants and getting the American taxpayer to foot the bill for said financial giants that have been even more generous to McCain's campaign than Keating ever was.

So, McCain's in a happier place now. Right?

1) The United States Government

It's good for you, comrades, the Bush administration's, the Federal Reserve's and Congress's plan to bail out corrupt, greedy, self-serving corporations.

Why, if we don't bail them out and socialize the home lenders and insurers, it could cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars!

Because, God knows, comrades, your financial health depends upon the financial health of these massive, heartless, soulless corporations. After all, look how well they cared for you, my little proles, when they were sleek and bloated and living high on the hog.

And let's not forget, comrades, that regulation only applies during bailouts and not during a time of unregulated record profits. And, while we're at it, let's make tax cuts permanent. And, uh, don't look too closely at the fine print, particularly Section 6.

So let's all pull together, comrades and victims of corporate greed and bait and switch tactics and bail out these two legged ticks. It'll only cost several hundred billions because that's what a smaller, less intrusive Republican government does.

Others who really need to get bailed out? Fuck 'em. They're darkie losers and looters, don't contribute much to our campaigns and they vote Democratic, anyway.

Too bad the FBI isn't as forgiving toward these four companies as the rest of our government. In fact, the FBI is investigating the business practices of the four financial giants standing in line to get bailed out: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros and AIG, bringing the number of corporations investigated by the FBI this year alone to 26.

Yep. Again.

Tonight, the Boston Red Sox did what many would think the impossible. Again.

Tonight, the Red Sox eliminated the New York Yankees, who are not going to the post season for the first time since the mid 90's, by beating Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians. Lee, coming into tonight's game with an astounding 22-2 record and seems a shoe-in for the AL Cy Young Award, hadn't lost since July 6th when he lost to Minnesota, which was also eliminated tonight from the Wild Card race.

Behind veteran Tim Wakefield, the Red Sox did all their damage against Lee in the fourth and fifth innings. Kevin Youkilis smashed a two run bomb over the famed Green Monster off Lee in the bottom of the 4th and the Red Sox added three more runs in the following inning.

Last night when interviewed by NESN broadcaster Heidi Watney, the almost invincible Lee said that out of all the lineups in the major leagues, the one he fears the most was the Red Sox, who'd lit up Lee several times in previous years.

The defending World Champion Red Sox will be going to the postseason for the fifth time in 6 years and for the fourth time in the five years that Terry Francona has been Boston's manager.

The Red Sox clinched their playoff berth in much the same fashion that they went to the World Series in 1967. Just as Boston shortstop Rico Petrocelli grabbed a pop fly to clinch the final out of the 1967 regular season by beating the Twins, Boston shortstop Alex Cora made an identical play to clinch Boston's trip to the playoffs. Tonight's clinching game was exactly 41 years to the day since Boston went to the 1967 World Series.

Of course, after that last play in 1967, the Red Sox wouldn't know that they were headed to the World Series until later when the Angels beat the Detroit Tigers in the back half of a scheduled double header. Then, as now, the Red Sox, White Sox and Twins were in the mix until the end of the season.

The Great Debate: McCain vs McCain

"At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy. And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington's failure." - John McCain, Green Bay, Wisconsin.

"Fannie cooked the books and Johnson made millions. Then Obama asked him to pick his VP and raise thousands for his campaign." - McCain ad, September 19.

"The lobbying firm of the man Republicans say John McCain has chosen to begin planning a presidential transition earned more than a quarter of a million dollars this year representing Freddie Mac, one of the companies McCain blames for the nation's financial crisis." - Bloomberg news service

Garfield Minus Garfield

From Number One son tonight came a recommendation to this site called Garfield Minus Garfield. It's a brilliant take on "the existential angst" of born loser John Arbuckle when he's seen without his acerbic cat.

To tell you the truth, it reminds me more of "McCain Minus Palin."

Life Imitating Cinema

Unfortunately, Rambo had already endorsed McCain.

Sydney Schanberg of The Nation wrote the article that I always knew was coming: How John McCain, the man who's trying to win the presidency from a bamboo cage, is actually the opposite of the public perception of him being a heroic figure of the Vietnam War.

Schanberg starts off his article thusly:

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain's military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

Eerily telling are these two paragraphs (emphasis mine):

Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington.

Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. They were adamant in refusing to deal with them separately. Finally, in a February 2, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid "without any political conditions." But he also attached to the letter a codicil that said the aid would be implemented by each party "in accordance with its own constitutional provisions." That meant Congress would have to approve the appropriation, and Nixon and Kissinger knew well that Congress was in no mood to do so. The North Vietnamese, whether or not they immediately understood the double-talk in the letter, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored - and it never was. Hanoi thus appears to have held back prisoners—just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. In that case, France paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home.

You read that right. John McCain is doing his level-headed best to suppress information on 1205 fellow POWs, thereby allowing the North Vietnamese government to continue using those men as hostages for war reparations (until those poor guys outlived their usefulness and were summarily executed). We're failing to this day where the hated French had succeeded over half a century ago, even though it meant paying ransom money to a Red Chinese puppet government.

(You think it's been lost on McCain, the irony that, had he not been among the 521 POWs who were released in good faith, he too would've been forgotten? My guess is abso-fucking-lutely.)

McCain isn't just promising to extend the Bush legacy: He's also promising to extend Nixon's own cynical legacy of dirty tricks, CREEP redux. Nixon and Kissinger knew damned good and well that their pledge of three and a quarter billion dollars didn't mean jack shit when a hostile Congress held the purse strings. After all, that same year Congress had cut off funds to the South Vietnamese government, the single biggest reason why our part in the war would end in two years.

And the press, as Schanberg points out, timorous at best at the prospect at questioning a war veteran with a hair trigger temper, is aiding and abetting a possible war criminal now running for the White House by refusing to question something that is obviously a matter of public record, the same press, I think it bears mentioning, that gave credence and leverage to the Swift Boat Veterans in their sliming campaign against John Kerry.

That's why, as a former Navy man myself and someone who still loves his country, I am getting more and more enraged seeing John McCain getting away with murder (or conspiracy to aid and abet kidnappers) and trading on his POW status while doing his damnedest to make us forget the others. Continuing to do so, and the MSM continuing to let McCain continue to do so, is a slap in the face of every relative of every POW-MIA (which McCain once called "dime store Rambos").

Col. Trautman was forced into retirement. Rambo turned Republican and supported the same guy who's a real-life counterpart to the ultimate mercenary in Rambo II. There's no Col. Trautman, there's no John Rambo. There's only John McCain and his cabal of co-conspirators. And even if there was a Rambo, McCain wouldn't even let him take the fucking pictures.

It's That Time of the Week Again

Yep, after a lengthy hiatus, it's back. For now, anyway.

So this weekend I'll be taking a short break from American Zen's rewrite to give you the political coverage that you've come to expect from JP- Rude, crude and immature but always funny.

Any suggestions? I still have about five or six spots open for #70 (McCain for his Spain comment, Sunni clerics, the Fed, etc, already made the grade). Only stories going back no later than last weekend, please.

Kill the Mouse

When assholes like Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan, who's the top banana of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judiciary Council, issue fatwas (or edicts) that are just death threats or jihads against Arab TV executives for showing "immoral" TV, it makes it harder and harder for an old lib'ral like me to retain religious tolerance.

Four days ago, Sheik Mohammed Munajjid called for Mickey Mouse to be killed. I shit you not. Yes, they're calling for a cartoon character to be executed. These are our allies in the war on terror, ladies and gentlemen, the same dick-twisters that are putting the screws to us at the pumps over our alliance with Israel.

And let's talk about terrorism for a minute: How is issuing death threats against TV execs for broadcasting "immoral" content on Arab TV supposed to do anything about curbing terrorism while issuing such fatwas like the one issued against Salmon Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini?

I've always known how hypocritical Arabs are, especially the bloated, unctious fucks in the royal family. Saudi Arabia is a country where the women can't even drive a car and are often made to wear burqas but their malls sell racy lingerie.

But when their uptight, out-of-touch clerics start openly calling for the execution of people, I can only conclude that these potential brain tumor patients never got out of the 11th century. After all, when you start calling for public executions, then you start sounding like certain Republicans and right wing evangelicals.

And, trust me, you don't wanna be compared to those animals, guys...

The Rain in Mexico Falls Mainly on the Plain

When the morally palsied try to be faith healers.

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

Yet it's all the same to John McCain. Today, during a Spanish newspaper interview, John McCain was asked in very specific terms if he'd meet with Spain's leader, President Zapatero. Even though the interview was conducted in English, the Spanish translation makes the English give and take sort of unintelligible. So McCain's answer, originally in English, is being translated into Spanish then back into English.

No problem, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and John Aravosis, who's a fluent Spanish speaker, is on the case and is giving us a pretty accurate transcript of McCain's bizarre (the most common word used to describe this interview) comments.

Anyway, the reporter asked McCain if he would meet with President Zapatero. McCain started rambling on about Mexico (???) and Latin America and shakily drawing a very vague line in the sand between us and our enemies.

The reporter kept asking him until there was no possible mistake: "Will you meet with the Spanish president if you get elected?"

Again, McCain says,

"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."

Alright. The real issue here is not whether or not John McCain thinks that Spain is in Latin America and not Europe. We know that, as with economics, he's not that swift when it comes to geography.

I think the real issue here is that McCain is adopting a harder line attitude than even the stiff pricks in the Bush/Cheney administration. True, President Zapatero, widely labeled a "socialist" like Hugo Chavez, created friction by making good on a campaign promise to get his people out of Iraq ASAP. However, he's stayed behind in Afghanistan and has proven to be a valued and steady ally in our so-called war on terror. The Bush administration has mellowed toward Zapatero's administration and for good reason.

McCain, with his "Us vs. Them" mentality, is threatening here to be even more of a hard line stiff prick than even those in the Bush administration. It could be that McCain refusing to say one way or the other whether or not he'd meet with Spain's president could've been what he perceived to be a clever political dodge by pretending to not know the difference between Spain and Mexico, in lumping in with other Latin American bad guys Europe's Zapatero.

It's the saber-rattling that worries me, the Us vs Them, "Bring 'em on!" mindset that's worked so disastrously for us over the last eight years, one coming from a guy who, during an election year, in full view of a nation wearied of war, is irresponsibly cockwanding at Russia and Iran.

Like Bush did with Iraq even during his own first presidential campaign.

Biden/Palin Debate

I'm actually looking forward more to the Biden/Palin vice presidential debate on October 2nd than I am the presidential debates.

Who's going to have drinking games?

"I Hate You, Mr. President. I Love You, Mr. President."

It's almost like one of those old-timey, redneck, Cry-in-Your-Pearl-Beer songs. You know the kind I mean. It sort of goes like Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart" only with about 100 extra verses thrown in.

And yet, despite the fact that their love, George W. Bush, for purely selfish and Messianic reasons, threw his entire party under the tracks of an MRAP, the Republican Party, in spite of its Protean pretensions, can't quite bring itself to either individually or collectively badmouth and trash-talk their spousal abusing, self-centered sociopath of a lover.

(Oh, sorry. Wrong dictatorial wifebeater.)

Even though said spousal abuser has been so brutally solipsistic that anybody even associated with him is likewise stigmatized. Sure, up to a point, they're legitimate victims, sort of, but we tend to look at them as enablers, as weak-kneed saps who flinch everytime George dekes them by smoothing his hair.

They should've, instead, stood up to such abuse and made their old flame accountable under the rule of law. They proved it could be done in the summer of '74. But old lessons are forgotten and old habits die hard.

That's why it's so endlessly amusing to see Republicans running for re-election repudiating the Bush Doctrine in all its blood-spattered glory, the overall doctrine of slash and burn while not actually naming their abuser because they have exactly one soft, conservatively compassionate spot in their igneous hearts and it belongs to dear Georgie in his gravy-spotted wife beater shirt, torn and bloody knuckles, still insisting he's relevant even though he has one foot out the door. That, plus George still has powerful friends who will always be on call to stick a body or two in their car trunks under cover of night.

Take Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, for instance.

In the campaign ad above, Sununu bills himself as a champion of civil liberties because he called for changes in the USA PATRIOT Act, specifically for the parts that restore our civil liberties.

OK, question: Which parts of the USA PATRIOT Act don't shred our civil liberties?

Well, golly gee, I sure am touched, John, but if memory serves me correctly, it was Russ Feingold and not you who alone opposed Bush's own Enabling Act, shredded civil liberties and all.

But note that at no time in this ad is Bush's name ever brought up, as if Alberto Gonzales just nominated himself, as if the USA PATRIOT Act was written by elves that magically appeared in the dead of night (which actually isn't too far from the truth).

Forget the fact that Sununu stood shoulder to shoulder with four other Republicans and some Democrats in debating the PATRIOT Act. In the end, as with every other Senator except for Feingold and one abstaining vote, Sununu voted for it, including the especially Orwellian/Kafkaesque Sections 215 and 218.

Back in 2004, Republicans swallowed, swallowed and swallowed and never thought to spit four years ago when they trotted out Fred Thompson to deliver a summertime Valentine to George W. Bush. This time around?



Indeed, how do you tell the story of a presidency, Fred? I don't know but the postscript is sure 180 degrees from the prologue, isn't it?

They want to bash him. You know it but while they're silently weeping with rage, their balled-up fists remain jammed in their pockets because, like Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain, they just can't quit that man no matter what, even though he's pretty much shit all over their job prospects, slathered that famously dysfunctional Bush spunk and even shook out the extra drops all over their faces just for good measure.

But this time around they think they're showing backbone because they're not so discretely spitting instead of swallowing. But a blow job is still a blow job no matter what you do.

Happy B Day, B.B.

Today B. B. King, possibly the world's greatest living guitarist, turns 83. So to help celebrate, here's a great collaboration between King and U2. Rock on, old man.

Failing Upwards

It seems the older, the more decrepit, the more delusional John McCain gets, the more and more desirable he gets. The addition to the ticket of a former Alaskan mayor of 7000, someone who promises to be George W. Bush in drag, should've been met with dismissive laughter and universal ridicule. Instead, it's energized his campaign and helped turn Sarah Palin into a self-fulfilling prophecy: An illusion, or delusion, of change.

Yet virtually every major national poll has McCain ahead of Obama by two or more percentage points. I cannot believe this is the result of a massive conspiracy on the part of America's top polling services in order to make the race more competitive than it actually is in order to artificially amp up TV ratings and air time advertising revenue.

However, it does seem odd that Democratic voter registration would be higher than Republican registration while the polls state that Obama is slowly losing his momentum and grip on the race.

One answer to this anomaly, of course, is that more registered Republican voters are being sampled than Democratic voters. Yet, while that wouldn't answer the question as to why these polls are so top-heavy with Republican voters, the bigger question is how this tactic would result in McCain not only establishing a lead but even widening that lead and grabbing ownership of Obama's change mantra that, until recently, he'd ridiculed.

This is a trend that we'd seen before Obama touched American soil after his, by all accounts, successful trip through Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.

While that, too, was being ridiculed by the McCain campaign (after ridiculing Sen. Obama for not visiting Iraq), that same campaign is proudly trumpeting Sarah Palin's single, brief trip to Afghanistan as a bullet point in her foreign policy resume.

And the press, the vast left wing conspiracy, was only too glad to resurrect what was once a routine and forgettable photo op with the Alaskan National Guard and to present it as something almost on a historical par with Gen. MacArthur visiting the Philippines.

Certainly, the MSM are complicit in the double standard coverage in looking at everything Obama's ever done or said, everything ever done or said by everyone that's he's ever passed on the street with an electron microscope while looking at both McCain and Palin as through a backwards telescope. They hardly even blinked an eye when McCain spit in CNN's face by canceling a Larry King Live interview because Campbell Brown had the nerve to ask a mild question, namely an example of Palin making an honest-to-God foreign policy decision. McCain's faux outrage was bluster masking what amounts to an inability to come up with such an example.

If they were doing their job, we wouldn't be hearing about how Palin's family is offlimits even after they thrust their five kids into the limelight, including the foul-mouthed hockey player who knocked up the Governor's daughter while proclaiming that he didn't want kids. Where was this respect for family privacy when the actual First Family just a decade ago was slid under that same electron microscope over what should've remained a private family matter?

However complicit as the press is, we as free thinking people, as Americans, may be dependent to a large extent on these media outlets but ought to still remain discriminating and independent-minded enough to be able to form our own conclusions. The media have as much as the government a lot of credibility at stake and credibility begins with being taken seriously and believed.

Over the last eight years, we've paid the price (over 4600 families paying the ultimate price) for unconditionally believing whatever the MSM tell us. It was the mainstream media that told us there were WMDs in Iraq. It was the mainstream media that showed us a ready-made poster of all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, complete with nation of origin, age and underwear size within hours of the attacks and that Mohammed Atta's passport allegedly used to meet with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was found blocks from Ground Zero in pristine condition and without a singe mark on it.

And it's the mainstream media that is telling us even now that the McCain campaign is offering an attractive alternative to a fresh, dynamic new force in Democratic politics who stands a real chance of actually bringing about change.

Yet the media have been complicit in letting John McCain use Obama's own popularity against him as if popularity is something that Obama can fraudulently produce by rubbing on a lamp and not, instead, conferred on him by caucus and primary voters who vaulted him over Hillary Clinton and every other Democrat running for President.

It's McCain who's fraudulently producing his own popularity out of nowhere and it's the media and we the people who are letting him get away with it. You don't believe me? Read any poll taken over the last week.

Putting Lipstick on a Pachyderm

By now, it ought to be obvious to all that Sarah Palin is nothing more or less than a political gold digger from the Klondike. It's like Anna Nicole Smith and her late 80-something year-old oil tycoon husband again, only of a much more massive magnitude. It ought to be obvious to all but isn't.

Instead, we're getting interviews conducted by ABC's Charles Gibson that seem to be following the lead not of the formerly feral interviews of Mike Wallace but fluff pieces on Entertainment Tonight whose very title should prohibit them from essaying political pieces. Last night's edition of ET (followed up by Part Two tonight) purported to show in 120 seconds "the real Sarah Palin."

Funny, but somehow they were unable to fit into their analog of the two minute hate her religious zealotry, attempts at book banning (including one written by a gay pastor), the petty firings, the cozy ties to lobbyists, a previous affection for pork barrel projects, her championing of disgraced lawmakers Ted Stevens and Don Young...

I guess there's only so much you can fit into 120 seconds so better to show nothing at all aside from the inside of her office. OK, you may say, it's only ET and ET phones home with nothing but celebrity glitz and other blathering. And you'd be right.

But the MSM, for the most part, is taking this laissez-faire, kid gloves approach to Palin while laughably trying to give the impression of bringing her half of the GOP ticket in-depth coverage.

Because to be critical of Palin is to be misogynistic, just as being critical to John "Incoming!" McCain is as subversively, seditiously unAmerican as an al Qaeda terrorist.

Yet, attacking a man for the color of his skin, his Muslim father, his Muslim middle name, his wearing African garb on a trip to Kenya, for being a community organizer aiding his fellow African Americans in Chicago's slums...

...well, all's fair in love, war and presidential campaigns. We'd be remiss in our responsibilities if we didn't faithfully pass on the conservatives' legitimate concerns about the Democrat.

If they can attack Michelle Obama, we can go after Palin's open-collared, gigolo-looking better half. We can go after her non-abstaining pregnant high school junior of a daughter. If they can attack Obama for what his former pastor said, then Palin's own Pentecostal church leader's comments, and her own, are fair game.

But Sarah Palin shouldn't be a sacred moose just because she has an X chromosome. Just because she wears a dress doesn't mean she's any less capable of the same evil that has characterized the present criminal enterprise in the White House, because the Devil has been seen wearing both red and blue dresses.



And it seems the more of Palin's ethical blackouts that come to light, the more arch and belligerent the McCain campaign gets, as if they're trying to hide with bluster their buyer's remorse for McCain settling on Palin like an elderly suitor who knows his time is running short without vetting her or meeting her more than once.

As far back as June of last year, when the Straight Talk Express was temporarily pushed to the wayside, wingnuts were setting up websites trying to draft Palin for Vice President (in conjunction, according to the comments section, with anyone but McCain).

It's just putting lipstick not on a pig but a pachyderm. And the idiots who are sick and tired of retributory firings, pork barrel spending, politicians getting into bed with lobbyists while ignoring the concerns of voters and holy crusades in the Middle East look at Palin and think that she'll take them in a bold new direction. Which is proof positive that Republican voters have got to be the stupidest carbon-based life forms on the planet earth.

Kiss Your Ass Goodbye

If you don't believe me, just listen to the enormous support Palin is receiving from Dr. Dobson, "End Time" author Tim La Haye, and others on the Christian right. Dobson once swore he would never vote for John McCain. He now calls McCain's choice of Palin "outstanding" and is promising his enthusiastic support. -- Steve Weissman, "A Gidget For God's Truth", Truthout

A secret agent of change. That's what Sarah Palin is. You just have to squint reeeeaaaaal hard to see it.

Finally, we're seeing the real rationale for John McCain's supposedly absurd and nonsensical choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. It wasn't just for the purposes of providing the GOP with eye candy or to obfuscate his own staggering lack of qualifications to be even in public service much less the Oval Office.

Apparently, without anyone, typically, paying attention, John McCain was slyly sucking up to the evangelical snake charmers of Crazy Base World on whom we thought he'd given up. Far from it.

McCain, during his increasingly rare lucid moments, is still savvy and canny enough between Depends changes and tapioca pudding feedings to know that he has a much better chance of winning this election if he obtains the support of kingmakers like James "Last of the Dogbeaters" Dobson. Look at the Steve Weissman article on Palin to which I'd linked above. Look at it and read this Truthout exclusive closely.

Weissman wonders out loud what Armageddon Palin has in mind. Well, look no further than her most recent statements about Russia, made, with hideous timing, on the 7th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

This, coming over three weeks after Russia had officially voted to recognize South Ossetia and the other breakaway Republics. In fact, Palin's chilling words to five star woolhead Charles Gibson on national television were, "We will not repeat a Cold War."

Some like it hot, I guess.

Change Idiots Can Believe in

Thank goodness someone's staying awake during this election, such as the guys at Bloomberg.

This is an article that pretty well summarizes the "ethical scrapes" in which Sarah Palin seems to have found herself in the Great White North.

Sleazy dealings with lobbyists, advocating wasteful earmarks, attempting to elevate an ethically-challenged police chief to a high position, persecuting people for petty, personal reasons.

Yeah, that's change we can believe in, alright. What Palin's done in Alaska is small potatoes compared to what BushCo has done on the Beltway but it's still the same mindset.

"It's Just a Joke..."

"It's just a funny parody, clever Photoshopping." Repeat as necessary.

Except no matter how many times you tell yourself that this is just a joke, that Sarah Palin isn't, in fact, eye candy that neither Obama nor Joe Biden can even hope to top, you have to admit at some point that, no, this is not a fucking joke that we can afford to chuckle over before hitting our inbox's "delete" key. The original caption that came with this picture was, "Even Obama can't top this."

No, people, this is not a sick joke or a (pardon the unintentional pun) drill because the very latest national polls show McCain either dead even with Barack Obama or actually leading him, trends that began before the convention even started.

And most of the credit seems to be going to, perhaps rightly, Sarah Palin, McCain's newest squeeze. Arianna Huffington nailed it when she called Palin a "Trojan Moose" whose sole function was to distract the national media and the nation through the very novelty of her nomination from John McCain's unfitness to lead this country.

Granted, Palin's pretty in a Klondike schoolmarm sex fantasy kinda way, the kind of woman whom we could expect to quickly shed her rimless glasses and prim, proper clothes hiding a sexy thong bikini in a Sam Kinison video. She does bring a kind of repressed, rustic charm to a campaign that couldn't seem to shake that Old Man smell and a hint of backwoods glamor to a man who day by day looks more and more like the pasty-headed Grandpa in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.

But Huffington's right. Palin's sole function is simultaneously distracting the media from focusing on how inept John McCain truly is while dodging that same media.

And if we fall for this, ladies and germs, it'll be the greatest installment in a trilogy of buttfucks courtesy of the GOP, starting with 2000 and continuing through 2004. It will be proof positive that America is the stupidest fucking nation in the galaxy, that perhaps Americans aren't so admirably suited to wield Democratic power, after all, that we honestly cannot be trusted to vote in an election with any more awareness than a narcoleptic sloth.

Because white women voters (think: Hillary's Vagisil vote), now seeing Palin are breathing a sigh of relief and saying, "Thank God! We don't have to vote for the nigger, after all."

Because we piss and moan that the last eight years have been pure poison for us, that, yes, we need to move in a new direction, to look forward to the future. Yet literally half the nation if not more thinks the future lies with a man who barely knows the Internet exists, still thinks that Czechoslovakia exists and probably thinks the USSR still exists.

The future, to these dead-enders, is a guy who thinks that corporate tax cuts are a great idea, that offshore drilling will be the panacea to all our energy problems, that cutting two trillion a year from a 3.1 trillion dollar budget is actually feasible while admitting that economics is not his strong suit (as is geopolitical theory, geography, mathematics and probably every known science).

After telling Bush and Cheney to not bother showing up, we won't be in St. Paul, they ducked the stigma of not being seen in the same state as them, reneged on their promise to receive the nomination on the Gulf Coast and had their dog and pony coronation, anyway.

It's truly pathetic watching McCain dodder on with that overly careful DT walk that comes with trying to separate himself from Bush/Cheney while not trying to alienate the dead-enders who are still loyal to them and without whose support McCain wouldn't have a slug's chance in a salt mine.

Enter Sarah Palin, a fresh blast of arctic air and the McCain campaign is saying in so many words, here's our candidate but don't look too closely at her. Write about her but don't try to talk to her. No, no, don't look too closely at McCain, either, you liberal elitists and how dare you question his and Palin's fitness to lead during the most important election of the year? What are you, a terrorist?? A misogynist?? Both?!?!

And as McCain shuffles his way to Ground Zero tomorrow to commemorate 9/11 with Barack Obama, it will not occur to many of us as he lays a wreath then makes a speech or whatever it is that Republicans do when they strain after that compassionate, common touch, that it's his predecessor's and his party's fault that 9/11 happened and that "the President's leadership" on 9/11 McCain had mentioned in his acceptance speech consisted of him sitting on a tiny chair for seven minutes, having already known about the first plane crashing into the first tower, before disappearing for the better part of the day while America burned in three places.

It's as if McCain's supporters think there's an alternate Republican Party that's actually offering alternate Republicans that are truly independent of the Bushworld that finished what al Qaeda had only started.

Sarah Palin: Pentecostal

Yes, that's Sarah Palin speaking.

This is the part where you're supposed to be pissing your pants. This is what John McCain wants to bring into the White House. And to think, the wingnuts were making a big fucking deal about Obama's Trinity Church and the Rev. Wright.

(Video courtesy Oilwellian)

KO, Tweety, Fired by MSNBC as Election Coverage Anchors

Seems that NBC has bowed to the Republican Party yet again. While Fox "News" continues to spew GOP talking points with complete impunity while its parent network Fox dispassionately looks on, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews of MSNBC have been demoted to analyst duties during the rest of the network's election coverage.

The exclusion of Olbermann, who recently condemned the RNC's 9/11 "tribute" (read: Fearmongering) during its convention in St. Paul, doesn't surprise me as much as Tweety's exclusion. Matthews, an old running buddy of Colin Powell, apparently is guilty by association after he and Olbermann had anchored the conventions.

NBC decided it had had enough with its upstart liberal offspring. The hostility between the network and the Republican Party reached an apex when Sarah Palin pissed and moaned about media bias and the sock puppets in the crowd yelled out "NBC! NBC!"

It's a relationship that's so antagonistic and toxic that the RNC even denied to the network that Sarah Palin was McCain's choice of a running mate.

It's obvious that the GOP fears Olbermann as much as it did Edward R. Murrow over 50 years ago. But it's hilarious that Matthews, who time and again allows Republicans to spew their lies unchalleneged on national TV, who fellated Tom DeLay over and over and once marveled at "the greatness" of John Boehner and would swoon at the thought of sniffing Fred Thompson's Aqua Velva, would get caught in the backlash.

Ah, Tweety, but the Republican Party is a harsh mistress. Or rather, a VD-riddled 5 buck-a-pop crack whore about to circle the drain who lashes out at those who still, against all earthly reason, love them.

Sunday Baby Blogging

Apparently, Gavin isn't as enthused as he ought to be about the Patriots' season opener.

And with Tom Brady injured and Matt Cassel at the helm, too...

It's All Good

It's becoming legion on the Internets and the Google that when John McCain accepted the GOP nomination in St. Paul, an odd backdrop appeared on the screen behind him. It was supposed to be Walter Reed Army Hospital. It was Walter Reed Middle School in California.

Considering how slipshod his campaign is, I'm surprised they didn't show a picture of Ralph Reed.

Hypocrisy Then, Hypocrisy Now, Hypocrisy Forever.

By Michael Flannigan

"John McCain doesn't run with the Washington crowd." - Alaskan Governor and McCain running mate Sarah Palin, on a man who indeed hasn't bothered to vote on a single bill since April.

St. Paul, MN --- John McCain's acceptance speech at the GOP convention last night was not just an exercise in hypocrisy but a full cardio workout replete with weight training, ab crunches and pilates.

As usual, one hardly knows where to begin. Luckily, Jim Kuhnhenn at the AP did begin with a fact check. It was a good start, something we've seen all too infrequently in the MSM regarding the McCain campaign and its rampant hypocrisy on steroids. But I say we can hit back even harder. A lot harder.

Let's revisit McCain's breathtaking charges of "corporate welfare" for the petroleum cartels. Kuhnhenn correctly says:

Yes, Obama voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry. But Obama has said he supported the legislation because it provided money for renewable energy. Obama did vote for an effort to strip the legislation of the oil and gas industry tax breaks. When that failed, he voted for the overall measure.

In fact, this is what McCain said:

"We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles."

Now, the very word "welfare", when distorted in a sneer, is sure to delight fulltime Republicans who are erstwhile conservatives that are all too eager to forget that McCain has been proposing a massive tax cut (.pdf file) for corporations like the kind he's pretending to have opposed three years ago (from 35% to 25%). They're also all too eager to forget that McCain's campaign got a fresh infusion of over $1,000,000 in cash from the same the same oil industry from the nanosecond he flipflopped on offshore drilling.

Just sneering the word "welfare" in itself was Republican dog whistling that's just as unmistakable as Ronald Reagan's in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980, all wrapped up in a faux populist message eaten up by a sea of semi-autonomous, carbon-based sock puppets.

In fact, the entire Republican party in its old home week that resurrected the political cadavers of Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and Fred Thompson, distanced themselves from the Bush/Cheney criminal enterprise just far enough to try to achieve a Democratic-style populist appeal.

"No welfare for the oil industry!"

"Energy conservation!"

"Holding the oil companies accountable in (snort) Alaska."

Sales of Depends in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area must've skyrocketed during the past week.

"I've fought corruption..."

Does fighting it from the inside count?

"I've fought to get million-dollar checks out of our elections."

However, McCain isn't as combative against slightly smaller checks that total more than a million dollars.

"I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes."

Obviously, McCain was pulling his punches when accepting 6 figure campaign donations from an Abramoff-run lobbying firm.

McCain is also a kinder, more forgiving kind of Republican, a guy who personally sent Ralph Reed to political Purgatory during his alleged investigation into Jack Abramoff only to appear just weeks ago at a fundraiser with none other than... Ralph Reed!

Equally false was the conciliatory facade of abandoning the tough guy language used throughout this bile fest toward Obama, as McCain wasted no time in underscoring with supreme chutzpah the Illinois senator's lack of experience in international matters.

It seems to me that Obama had met with more heads of state during his whirlwind trip to central Asia, the Middle East and Europe than McCain's Wasilla mayor and former sportscaster with the Viagra-teased hair has in her entire 44 years.

I'm sure you get the gist by now. McCain and Palin are setting themselves up as reformers, the ultimate outsiders who are bound and determined to restore honor and integrity to the White House.

Mmmm, mmm! I can't wait. I love the smell of reform in the morning!

The Daily Show: Hypocrisy Now!

And, rounding out Pottersville's trilogy of Republican hypocrisy is Jon Stewart's and the Daily Show's take on it.

Hello, Pot? This is the Kettle...

You can't deny that John McCain picked a broad that doesn't have a brass set. Let's take a look at Sarah Palin's latest swipe at Barack Obama.

Palin's puling, pissing and moaning about "the Obama/Biden Democrats" spreading lies about her and her family. She's taking Obama to task for voting "present" way back when he was an Illinois state senator, a voting and attendance record that somehow doesn't seem nearly as relevant as John McCain's own voting record of late that shows he hasn't cast a vote since last April.

This is coming, of course, from a typical Republican who's even now crawling away from the putrifying political corpses of Ted Stevens and Don Young now that they're circling the shitter. Palin is touting her opposition to Don Young's two bridges to nowhere but in reality she was for it back in in 2006. In fact, Ms. "Thanks But No Thanks" wrote in a questionnaire, "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

And while we're on the subject of earmarks, Palin once said, "Earmarks are not bad in themselves. In fact, they represent a legitimate exercise of Congress’ constitutional power to amend the budget proposed by the president."

Indeed. When one hears such flipflopping from Palin, one can at last understand what John McCain meant when he called her his "soulmate."

The Republican convention is a mutual handjob on a Biblical scale, liars getting raucous applause and Hosannas by other liars who are willing to change out their core principles as quickly as crab-infested underwear. Palin's speech last night proved what a lying douchebag she truly is, an "outsider" as she's being touted who nonetheless is quickly learning the ropes regarding Beltway Republican punches under the belt.

It's no coincidence that Palin's speech was wetting the delegates' seats with her pious stance against lobbyists, the same delegates who defended to the death convicted scumbags like Jack Abramoff, who grew sleek and bloated due to the largess of fellow scumbags who enabled them these past eight years.

The only glimmer of honesty that we got from Palin last night was when she took a swipe at Barack Obama for daring to be a community organizer back when, once again, he was an Illinois state senator. Apparently, you're not supposed to be instrumental in keeping heat in the homes of the poor, keeping the poor in their homes, keeping food in their stomachs or otherwise helping them when they're fatally failed by the very same principles that sociopaths like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and other Republicans champion. Whatever issues I have with Obama's continued moral cowardice and his own flip-flopping of late, back in the day when he was a community organizer, Obama represented the very best that America had to offer: Compassionate liberalism.

But in Crazy Base World that's bleeding heart liberalism. Which is, I guess, supposed to pass for a populist message among the psychological sideshow of the Republican delegation. However, I can think of ten million reasons why Palin should keep talking.

If you thought the 1992 Republican convention was mean-spirited, just wait until McCain accepts the nomination in his "town hall" setting (It's just a coincidence that this particular town is 100% Republican). The white streaks you'll see darting across your TV screen will be Republican ejaculate squirted by those who will do their damnedest to perpetuate the last eight years that they simultaneously think they're repudiating.