Sun sets

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it.... the fifth conservative paper in town, The New York Sun, has set. Sayonara, kids! I only just got the word, so I obviously won't be missing you. Subsidized by fat cats, it made a play by icing itself with well-written cultural chitchat, but the stale cake under the sugar was avowedly Israel-first. May it presage the Likudniks’ loss of influence here in the U.S. and the end of their jones for permanent war in the Middle East.

Gopmob

The lunatic fringe is on the loose. And McBush is going to need every single one of them at the polls. They are his only hope. They, along with the usual voter suppression, and all the sub rosa appeals to fear, racism, and resentment. It’s going to be an ugly month. The “silent majority,” as Nixon called them, of cretins, crackers, & paranoiacs. Palin is feeding them the red meat of lies they need to grovel at their master’s feet. Gun-toting, Bible-misunderstanding, plastic-fetus-doll-clutching. Pallid as zombies and just as dead. Hollow-eyed religious psychos. Gaunt or fat, a people of surprising ugliness, for their debasement and depravity is written all over them. An incipiently fascist mob, there to be exploited. And the Republicans, who’ve based a generation of power on them, are only too eager to do so.

Das Capital

Adam Smith on another of the myths of the free-market, where profits are privatized and loses are socialized. (Don’t like it? Remember who owns the government.)

“When workers combine, masters ... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen.”

Predictable

Unsurprisingly, the House has passed the emergency the-sky-is-falling $700B Wall Street Speculators Conservation Bill. Actually, it’s going to cost much more than that because of all the sweeteners and bribes they put in to buy the bad little representatives who didn’t obey their mommy and daddy the first time on Monday. Chalk another one up for the ruling (bipartisan) Business Party.

Hey

What if all those people, good solid citizens, I’m guessing, who do these innumerable charity runs for this and that disease instead ran downtown and occupied their Senator’s and Representative’s office? And demanded some serious funding for public health, for medical research, for a simple system of national health for all Americans? And demanded some reasonable health priorities instead of the Pentagon's death priorities? And demanded that we as a nation put people above corporations? Sign me up for that run, kids!

McCain/Palin 08

John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin tells you everything you need to know about the man’s willingness to be President, as well as his readiness. The choice was short-sighted, cynical, and incompetent. For someone whose major overt claim to the office is his experience, military background, and appeal to national security, it was a disaster. He wants to put her a heartbeat (an old weak heartbeat) away from the Presidency. But of course, he’s a Republican, and his Party has been captured by the American Taliban, apocalyptic fundamentalist know-nothings who claim to be Christian, and he was desperate for their vote. The “Maverick” needs a new trademark.

And Palin herself tells you everything you need to know about contemporary American politics. She’s sold as a product summarized in little blurbs and jingles like “pitbull in lipstick,” and “hockey mom” that change like soap commercials over time. The contempt of her handlers for American democracy knows no bounds. Not that there isn’t any substance behind the marketing façade. It’s just that it’s so ugly, as grotesque as that which gets revealed when a rock is overturned. A creationist, she’s a tool of the oil industry. She’s a book banner. She’s vindictive and ready to go outside the law just like Cheney and Bush. She’s as fine a daughter of the American Taliban as the GOP’s turn to fundamentalism has produced. She proudly touts her daughter’s “choice” about her pregnancy while wishing to deny the rest of American women any choice at all in such matters.

Flame out

An excellent analysis of the "pity party" stirring in the media over the awful things that are being done to poor Sarah Palin, the erstwhile pitbull who is now revealed as a deer in the headlights. Cry me a fucking river says the author, Rebecca Traister...“When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don't feel bad for you.”