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.”

Succinctly

"The $700 bailout bill is being driven by fear not fact. This is too much money, in too short of time, going to too few people, while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings…Why aren't we considering any other alternatives other than giving $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect the investors? Why aren't we directly helping homeowners with their debt burdens? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Isn't time for fundamental change to our debt-based monetary system...?" Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Palinomics

Like Dan Quayle before her, the disaster that is Sarah Palin must be kept isolated, allowed only before well-managed crowds of the faithful and fed in tiny portions to the powderpuffs of television. They’re not even letting her fundraise. She must have special treatment in the one VP debate, where there will be no follow-up questions. In that context, she should by rights be squashed like a bug as a lightweight nutcase, but o, that would be disrespectful, wouldn’t it, for the greatest case of GOP affirmative action since hanging judge Clarence Thomas?

Bullshit Meter Breaks

From zero (“our economy is fundamentally sound”) to 90 (“Panic! Crisis! Disaster!”).

Virtual JFK

I’ve never been seduced by the Kennedys, for I came to political awareness much too late for that. The best thing to be said about JFK and RFK was that they could bend with the tide of history, as when the civil rights movement forced them to respond. People are always looking for leaders, but it is only when they make their leaders act that we get anything real done.

The documentary Virtual JFK suggests that President Kennedy would not have escalated military involvement in Vietnam. There were only “advisors” in-country at the time of his assassination; LBJ sent in combat troops; then, Nixon, whose election-year claim of a peace plan was bullshit, presided over the final years of slaughter. The movie’s thesis is based on earlier incidents in which JFK did not follow the recommendations of his war-mongering advisors during these crises: Bay of Pigs, Laos, Cuban Missile, Berlin Wall. That took some balls for a young, seemingly lightweight guy who’d only been a Senator briefly. (Of course, judging from all that shtupping, he had moy mucho cojones.)

In Oliver Stone’s hyperactive JFK, it’s argued that the military and LBJ team up to whack the President so that the war would go on. This doc is certainly more interesting than that nonsense. You can second-guess anything, of course, but I think a couple of things are missing in Virtual JFK, as well as in the 1000 days mythology in general. Kennedy was a hardcore Cold Warrior. He played up a non-existent “missile gap” with the dreaded Reds to win the 1960 election (of course, it was the dead of Cook Co. who won it for him), showing he knew the value of politicizing national security, and how important it was to undercut the GOP on that front. (Recall that the GOP had savaged the Democrats for “losing,” as they so presumptively said, China. Could JFK stand up to the charge of “losing” Vietnam during the 1964 election? As McPalin knows, we Americans like to “win” wars even if we don’t know what they’re about.) He, like every American President since FDR, has been a complete creature of the national security state, it’s assumptions, aims, and methods. He might not have believed in the heavy hand of the Pentagon, but he was right in there with the social scientist/cowboys like W.W. Rostow who, neocon-like, thought they could change the world with their ideas. The best and the brightest in their narrow ties, plus fortified hamlets and targeted assassinations, that was the ticket. Cf. his romance with Special Forces and counter-insurgency tactics, flipside of the Peace Corps.

In short, I don’t buy the film. I’m not sure why it’s even being sold except as a vanity project of the academic who’s the narrator and co-producer. The most interesting thing about it is seeing the vintage footage, especially the press conferences.

McPalin

Now that the "lipsticked wingnut" has been overshadowed by “it’s the casino economy, stupid,” I heard John McCain say, “We’re going to take care of the workers.” And I laughed all morning long...

He’s going to do it by filibustering minimum wage increases, make sure we have no universal health care, continue the non-enforcement of labor laws, further the busting of unions, and keep the nation’s money channeling upwards to the tiny top of the pyramid with his tax cuts. Just like he and his party have always done.

What a lying piece of shit.