BartBlog

November 23, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Senate’s Teddy Bear Picnic and Other Maddening Madness Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 2:01 pm

“I don’t have a rearview mirror. I look only forward. And I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me.”
– Disgraced and defeated Sen. Ted Stevens (R-VECO), on the Senate floor, Nov. 20, 2008. (Perhaps he can bribe it to go away.)

Even in politics, a business known for honking weirdoes and depraved lowlifes, outgoing Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is Weird with a strut and horns and as crooked as a pig’s tail. Yet there were his Senate colleagues standing and applauding the convicted-on-seven-counts-of-corruption felon last Thursday, proving, I guess, that there is some honor among thieves — or, at least, praise. No wonder the Senate Ethics Office is a toothless farce – what do you have to do to engender the disrespect of these ‘public servants’? (Oh, right, tell the truth.) Utah’s ‘Mr. Republican’ Orrin Hatch, another blazing nutball with a hard nougat center of Petrified Kook, publicly ejaculated without shame that Ted was “one of the greatest men I ever met,” while his colleague from the Planet Strange, Sen. Jim Bunning, GOP marital aid of the KY-Jelly state, spread it on less grammatically: “If only you knew the Ted Stevens like I knew.” Democrat-turned-Wolfman Norm Coleman, verging on a well-deserved term limitation up in Minnesota, bayed to Ted’s moon-that-don’t-shine, “Those of us who know him also see the love that’s in his heart, reflected in love of country, love of family…” unnatural love of sheep. Even I-da-ho Spud Stud Larry Craig felt moved to knock three times on Stevens’ pipe with his own spit polish, so to speak.

Jebas, what if Uncle Ted had shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die? Would the Senate just rise as one to elect him King – or maybe Pope?

It’s too bad that AG Michael Mukasey collapsed suddenly during a speech Thursday night, but what the Big Media didn’t remark on was who Mukasey was speechifying to – the frickin’ Federalist Society, home base for the Unitary Executive malarkey that the departing Little King has used to justify dodging the Constitution. Sure, BushCo is on its way out the door, but you might think that the BM would be a little discomfited at the idea that the Attorney General, dressed up in a tux, was addressing a meeting of a group that basically believes in an American monarchy, much like democracy-distrusting icon Alexander Hamilton, who once encouraged George Washington to declare himself King of the United States. [Take a gander at FedSoc’s founders and current members: Ed ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ Meese, Robert ‘Nixonite’ Bork, Ted ‘Florida Recount’ Olson, John ‘Bob’s Dad’ Roberts, Tony ‘Bush v. Gore’ Scalia and Sam ‘The Sham’ Alito.) For a rough political equivalent, imagine the hew and cry if Obama’s new AG Eric Holder passed out while speaking to the Socialist Worker’s Party — think the venue would go unnoticed by the still-unjailed Press Gang at Newsweek and Time?

She Stoops to (be) Flounder: Remember those stories about a young Danny Quayle seeing the Robert Redford film, “The Candidate” and thinking it was a primer for a career in politics? Now it seems the Alaska Hockey Momster has aimed even lower; she’s apparently using Tim Robbins’ satirical flick, “Bob Roberts” as a roadmap for political success. For more cinematic inspiration to further Sarah’s future in government service, may ‘oui’ suggest “Amazon Women on the Moon,” “Idiocracy,” “The Aristocrats,” “Weird Science,” “Ernest Goes to Jail,” and “Linda Lovelace for President”?

And finally, the Vatican has forgiven John Lennon – imagine that? (Hint: it has to do with something he said in 1966.) I wonder if they’ve caught up with the news that he was murdered in 1980? (Lennon’s lucky; it took the Pope about 400 years to forgive Galileo for finding out the earth is round and circles the sun.)

(Quotes re Stevens from “We Salute You, Ted Stevens!” by Benjamin Sarlin, The Daily Beast, Nov. 20, 2008.)

November 18, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Big Media Hillary Silly Season in Full Swing Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:39 am

Secretary of State Clinton? Much A Doo-Doo About Nothing

If it hasn’t been foreclosed on yet, don’t bet the family ranch that Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State, nor even have a cabinet post in the Obama Administration.

With the long, slow political-junkie orgasm of the presidential campaign fading in the rearview mirror, the ‘Pundints’ now have little to talk about; certainly they don’t find the baffling Bush Boy’s latest incoherence on the economy – “I continue to support the neocon free market policies that caused this horrible financial meltdown!” – worth examining – to do so might remind the audience of how much the Big Media Cognoscenti had to do with leading the lemmings off the cliff; the Palin Reality TV show – “Who Wants to Be a President!” also has its limits – how long before even avid dupes of Little Debbie Shortcake begin wondering why she hauls that baby around to every public appearance and detect that her political ideas are mostly an ungrammatical noun, an opportunistic verb, ‘Nothing’s my fault,’ ‘You betcha!’ and ‘God’s gonna show me the door’?

Even the three undetermined US Senate races don’t hold the BM Short Attention Span long – the vituperation back and forth is good for a brief goose, but those complicated state voting laws! The crashing economy was respectable breathless stand-up fodder for a while – “Melanie Blandstick, reporting from Wall Street, Ground Zero of our money crisis!” – but the pampered Lads and Lasses of the Golden Corporate Microphone are not employed for their intimate knowledge of the financial markets, nor much else, and there are only so many interviews you can do with ill-kempt and boring hustlers from the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, still pushing Milt Friedman’s Cap’n Capitalist Crunch cereal after the product has poisoned the country, and who’s Ayn Rand anyhow – wasn’t she the wife in “Father Knows Best”? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iran? Whoa, dude, you’re bumming my trip!

So, of course, with little they consider ‘real news’ going on, they retreat into their favorite past time – endless speculation based on sketchy evidence, as shouted through a megaphone in the Grand Canyon to insure every Big Media Mouthpiece is regurgitating the same dull incantations.

The latest prime example of this is NBC’s Andrea “Mrs. Greenspan” Mitchell floating an anonymously-sourced story last week that Obama would offer the position of Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, when the only thing that has thus far been confirmed was that Hillary flew to Chicago for a meeting with the President-Elect. For days since, the Punditrocracy has been foaming at the mouth, leaving no entrails unturned in their white-hot desire to tiresomely discuss to death the possibility of Hillary as the top national diplomat.

Using the same superior detective skills that in the past led them to deduce that the 2008 election would be about national security; that Republicans just loved Rudy Giuliani, that McCain would inevitably pick either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as his running mate; that Obama had to choose Hillary Clinton as his Veep or lose the election; that American women would mindlessly flock to the GOP after Sarah Palin’s unveiling; that Obama would have a tough time attracting working class voters in Rust Belt states; and that the Dem presidential ticket would, maybe, possibly, eke out a tiny victory in the Electoral College in a very tight race because, after all, this was basically a conservative nation – in spite of this dismal record of comic prognostication, they forge ahead, this time with the latest vapid gasper of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Lost in most of their circuitous gossip is any sort of common-sense analysis: Why would Hillary give up her powerful senate seat, and an excellent chance to be Senate Majority Leader, to serve as a peripatetic foreign service factotum in Obama’s government? The appointment would also proscribe her from criticizing him should things go sour, thereby tainting her bid for the 2012 nomination. Quick, name the last five Secretaries of State before Condi and look at what has happened to them. I think it’s fair to say the energetic Sen. Clinton doesn’t desire to live out her days lounging in academia, playing golf, or filling space on the board of some think tank or corporation, publishing occasional knotted-brow op-ed pieces in The New York Times.

(more…)

November 15, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Miller Shills for the Wasilla Chinchilla on Billo and Other Atrocities Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:39 am

Plus a Weird Election 2008 Factoid and a Plea to the GOP

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
– H.L. Mencken

Gov. Snowjob said on Larry King Nov. 12th that there is nothing wrong with “calling people out” on their past associations, defending her lame McCarthyite attempts to link Obama to Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. She added that she expected she would be called out on hers as well. Good. Let’s see, she’s openly palled around with and supported for reelection convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens, corrupt ex-Governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski, and she’s married to a former member of the Alaska Independence Party, a group that despises and wants to secede from the United States. Imagine if Obama had strongly supported two crooks and his wife once belonged to an organization that hated America? C’mon, Big Media, time to apply some fairness here, and Sarah asked for it.

Speaking of Sarah the Terror: Miller and Palin, Sittin’ in a Tree:

“Listen, she’s a great dame. People are fascinated by her because the left hate her. I think the left hate her — mostly women on the left hate her, because to me, from outside in, it appears that she has a great sex life. All right? I think she has non-neurotic sex with that Todd Palin guy. I think most of the women on the Upper East Side, their husbands haven’t been aroused since Mailer signed copy [sic] of The Executioner’s Song at Rizzoli’s back in the early ’70s.
“So they look at her, and they hate her. I think that snowmobile looks like mechanized foreplay to me, and that’s why people are fascinated by it.”
– Dennis Miller on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Fox News, Nov. 12, 2008.

I remember when Dennis had a functioning frontal lobe and was even occasionally clever, but years of drinking, drugs, chickenhawk fear, raging ego and his wiseguy notion that he’d just jump on the money train of what he thought would be generations of Republican rule softened his gray matter to the point where he’s defending a vacuous Alaska opportunist he once would have gleefully impaled with humor. BTW, I wonder what ‘non-neurotic sex’ is — the Moose Mama ‘Missionary Position’ (that would be a ‘rear mount’) or the opposite of whatever you call it when Miller picks up his paycheck these days?

My sympathies to the frustrated Mrs. Miller, if she’s still around – married to a goofball who thinks snowmobiles equate with foreplay can’t be a pleasant existence.

It’s was so bad even Billo took note of what had surfaced in his ‘No Spin Zone’ punchbowl:

(more…)

November 9, 2008

The Tattlesnake – More Zippity-Doo-Dah From the Fading Right Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:41 am

In the anguished ‘why we lost’ analyses in the days to come from the Fox News-Karl Rove-Bill Kristol neocons and their compadres in the Big Media, still discombobulated over Obama’s landslide victory in what they think is a ‘center-right’ conservative nation – the ‘liberal socialist’ Obama of November 3rd even magically transforming into a ‘fiscal conservative’ 24 hours later to preserve this incredible myth — you’ll read much about how the economic meltdown in late September killed McCain’s chances after he had pulled even or ahead in the polls. Horse pucky. McCain and Palin’s sour performance in the debates, the GOP’s over-the-top negative ads, a miserably run campaign, Palin’s exposure as an ignorant nitwit, plus the general public disgust with the Bush Republican Party had as much to do with his loss as the financial crisis. Also underestimated are Obama’s superior organization, discipline, massive GOTV efforts in most of the fifty states, and that the country, already centrist-liberal except in name, has been trending more to the left for many years.

McCain got an expected uptick in the poll numbers following the Republican Convention, which is commonplace after any major party convention, but he was receding even before the banks and markets hit bottom in late September. In fact, except for McCain’s brief post-convention bounce, the individual poll margins had remained consistent since summer with Obama in the lead, as this chart shows:

CNN 6/26-6/29: Obama 50%, McCain 45%
CNN 7/27-7/29: Obama 51%, McCain 44%

CBS 7/7/-7/14: Obama 45%, McCain 39%
CBS 7/31-8/5: Obama 45%, McCain 39%

Ipsos 6/5-6/11: Obama 50%, McCain 43%
Ipsos 7/31-8/4: Obama 48%, McCain 42%

Time 6/19-6/25: Obama 47%, McCain 43%
Time 7/31-8/4: Obama 46%, McCain 41%

Pew 6/18-6/29: Obama 48%, McCain 40%
Pew 7/23-7/27: Obama 47%, McCain 42%

NBC/Wall Street Journal 6/6-6/9: Obama 47%, McCain 41%
NBC/Wall Street Journal 7/18-7/21: Obama 47%, McCain 41%

(Hat tip to Rich Gallagher of Fishkill, NY, who compiled and posted these numbers at Altercation, Aug. 8, 2008.)

Obama-Biden popular vote percentage: 52.3%

McCain-Palin popular vote percentage: 46.2%

Obama-Biden electoral vote total: 365

McCain-Palin electoral vote total: 173

(Final numbers from FiveThirtyEight.com.)

November 2, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Obama’s Not Black Anymore Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:21 am

In my informal surveys of John and Jane Q. Public-Sixpack over the years (and usually conducted near a six-pack), I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon – the more well-known and admired a black person is, the less black they become in the mind of the average honky mo-fo.

Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, et al – their skin color faded to neutral as their popularity with whites increased. Oprah Winfrey’s audience is comprised mainly of white women – do they think of her as black? No, she’s just ‘Oprah,’ girlfriend. Caucasian-Americans have embraced Michael Jordan, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, and scores of black sports stars as one of their own without regard to skin shade – what white sports nut wouldn’t rather hang out with Jordan than some mediocre ofay B-Ball player? And the Super Bowl a couple of years ago between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts was played by teams with black head coaches. No big whup.

In the music world, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, James Brown, B.B. King, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix and others have all transcended race and now have more white fans than black. The pop music of every generation since the beginning of the 20th century, true American music – blues, jazz, soul, rock, and even much of country – all originated with black musicians in the South. Generations of white children have been conceived to the colorless ballads of Barry White, Lionel Ritchie and Isaac Hayes.

Let me put it this way, Barack Obama has been part of the national public consciousness for about two years now and he’s generally perceived by white America as an affable, intelligent, calm, non-threatening man, and he’s world famous, so his color has become immaterial.

(more…)

October 24, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Worms Turn On the Wormy Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:59 am

Plus: Palin Prop Blames the Hired Help, the Rove-Rezko Connection, and the GOP Fear of Michael Moore

Well, you know it’s really hit the fan when all McCain can do is babble on vacuously about Joe the Plumber while Sarah the Terror veers off the reservation with an eye to her own future political career and the Backstage Crew, Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis’ crack squad of Rove-inspired GOP intelligentsia who have managed to mount one of the worst and most negative political campaigns in modern history, are eviscerating each other anonymously in the pages of The New York Times magazine. The End is Near, but not in Palin’s ecumenical concept of that notion, as the Solons of Scat have realized they simply can’t chisel and cheat enough and in a sufficient number of states to overwhelm the Obama juggernaut. With a dozen days to go and the Dem ahead by as much as 10 points in rock-ribbed Republican Indiana, the game is up. Expect resumes to be sailing out of McCain’s HQ any day now, if they haven’t been already. Meantime, The Tattler will stick to his earlier prediction: If Indiana goes to Obama, the rest of the Rust Belt Midwest, from Iowa to PA, will follow and it will be an early night and a landslide of over 300 electoral votes for BHO.

The barely mentioned saving grace this time around is that Rove’s nasty tactics aren’t working for McPalin, just as they didn’t work in 2006, nor in the subsequent special Congressional elections in GOP districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, all won by Dems.

Thankfully, we are seeing the final death of this horrific negative-campaign monster — created by Nixon’s dirty tricksters, perfected by Lee Atwater, and adopted with a few new kinks by Rove — played out in the Palin-McCain fiasco, a proof of that Euripides quote: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Is there any doubt that what is destroying McPalin at this point is their own insanity?

When asked by David Shuster on MSNBC, Oct. 23, 2008, to explain ‘non-elitist’ regular-gal Sarah Palin’s expensive taste in clothes and accessories, ‘Republican Strategist’ Jennifer Millerwise-Dyck fell back on the time-tested and threadbare GOP excuse – blame the underlings. She basically said that Caribou-Slayer Mom was too busy herding her kids and mucking-up campaign appearances to do her own shopping, so it was all the fault of her clueless staff forcing her to wear those pricey duds from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman-Marcus. Yes, Sarah really wanted to go to ‘Tar-Zhey’ but her damn staff fouled up! Do you laugh at the ludicrous flop-sweat desperation or moan at the pathetic lack of imagination? The Palin-McCain crack-up is like watching a limbo contest – how low will they go?

(more…)

October 22, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Lipstick on a Pygmalion Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:58 pm

Plus a Ray of Light on McCain’s Silly Phillie Charge and Other Diversions

“If your actions speak louder than words, you’re not yelling loud enough.”
– Stephen Colbert, October 20, 2008.

What’s up with God’s Own Hockey Mom, that plain small-town Wasilla girl we’ve all grown to know and love, dropping $150,000 bucks of RNC cash on clothes and jewelry from such snooty elitist shops as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman-Marcus? Say it ain’t so, Joe – has Alaska’s neo-secessionist pitbull become a pampered poodle, corrupted by her trip to the lower 48? (Perhaps it was associating with all those liberal socialists on Saturday Night Live is what did it, the same way as Obama meeting Bill Ayers turned him into a 1960s domestic terrorist by osmosis.) Jeepers, next we’ll find out she doesn’t know what the Vice President’s job is, according to the Constitution.

Speaking of Mrs. Bent Mooseburger, why isn’t the following a bigger story among the Big Media bobbleheadery? McCain’s Bullwinkle-Killer spent Alaska taxpayer money to drag the whole fam damily along with her to various events, paying out $21,000 for daughters Piper, Willow and Bristol to travel and hotel in luxury at the public’s expense. Worse, she lied when she claimed that the kid’s were invited to these events and, worst of all, altered the expense accounts after the fact. Alaska law is clear: Gov. Palin’s expense account is to be used only for official state business, period. This used to be the kind of Enormous No-No that got state executives and those playing executives on TV fired, yet the BM has hardly peeped about it. C’mon, Beemers, step up to the plate here.

Speaking of stepping up to the plate (in the head), Cap’n McCrash is indulging in yet another head-scratcher by using Obama’s innocuous political hat-tip to both World Series contenders, The Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays, as some kind of example of BHO’s horrible hypocrisy. This is interesting since the Ol’ Straight-Talker himself, appearing on Pittsburgh TV station KDKA last July, recited his usual anecdote about telling his North Vietnamese captors way-back-when that some of the officers in his squadron were the starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers, but for purposes of political pandering, changed the Packers to the defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers, even though the story was in his friggin’ book!

“When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”
– John McCain on KDKA-TV, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 2008.

“Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron.”
– John McCain, from his book, “Faith of My Fathers” (1999).

“Imagine if Al Gore or John Kerry had changed the facts of a story they told forever in order to appeal to whatever swing state they were speaking in? … Also, the famous Steelers defensive line that McCain was trying to refer to (Mean Joe, L.C. etc.) didn’t become famous until after McCain was out of Vietnam.”
– Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro, MSNBC First Read, July 11, 2008.

Keep digging, Johnny!

(more…)

October 20, 2008

The Tattlesnake – All Up in the News Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:27 am

What if the Big Media told the truth, part 2,964?

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Let’s go to NBC’s Chuck Todd at a McCain rally in Bent Fork, South Carolina. Chuck, I see Gov. Palin just finished speaking; what was the crowd reaction?”

CHUCK TODD: “Well, Brian, once again Sarah Palin has stirred up the crazy white-trash rabble into a lather of raw hatred against liberals, Democrats and, particularly, Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama. She’s managed to attract every drooling yokel, theocratic imbecile and racist thug on the GOP wingnut fringe here and stoked the flames of bigotry to the point where news organizations can’t even send African-Americans to cover her rallies anymore out of fear they might be attacked by her supporters.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Whoa, that’s quite an indictment, Chuck. It looks like Sen. McCain is about to speak; let’s listen in.”

CHUCK TODD: “Don’t bother, Brian. Most of the crowd is leaving as they always do after they’re done gawking at Palin, and McCain never says anything worth hearing – just the same attack-the-opponent, no-new-taxes mumbo-jumbo and embarrassing distortions of the truth he usually spouts. You’d be better off reading the label on a Viagra bottle or sticking needles in your eyes as listening to one of this old crank’s speeches – they’re that tedious and boring.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Well, thanks for that report, Chuck. Now let’s go to Andrea Mitchell with the Obama campaign in Indianapolis, Indiana, where the Democratic Party candidate is about to give a major speech on the economy. Andrea, I understand you’re the filthy rich wife of Alan Greenspan, one of the principal architects of our current financial disaster?”

ANDREA MITCHELL: “That I am, Brian.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Then just how in hell are you going to do an unbiased report on this major Obama speech on economic policy?”

ANDREA MITCHELL: “Brian, I am what you might call a ‘tripartite schizophrenic’ – one part member in good standing of the wealthy elite, one part wife of a powerful neoconservative whose policies ruined our economy, and one part hard-nosed journalist. Don’t worry, I’ll have on my hard-nosed journalist’s cap for this speech.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Why don’t you just recuse yourself from covering Obama altogether?”

ANDREA MITCHELL: “Oh, Brian, you poor idiot – Republicans never recuse themselves in any conflict of interest, don’t you know that? I guess you weren’t paying attention during that Supreme Court ruling that put Bush in office in 2000.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Uh, we’ll be back after these messages.”

October 3, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Biden-Palin a Snoozer Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:09 pm

Ho-Hum Debate: The much-ballyhooed Biden-Palin exchange of stump speeches disguised as a debate came off as a fairly bland affair. No big gaffes, no sizzling language, nothing but the same-old Talking Points we’ve all heard before. Full Disclosure: I only watched the last half of the ‘debate’ last night — the rest I recorded – and I checked the endless replays of the ‘highlights’ today. Just two thoughts:

1.) I never noticed before how truly phony is Sarah Palin. Up to last night, I regarded her as just a naïf out of her element, a high school player accidentally sent up to the Big Show. Not now; what I saw in the debate was a calculating hick, a two-faced Lonesome Rhodes “Face in the Crowd” type, who, I wouldn’t be surprised, probably muttered something like “That oughta hold those dumb bastards” when she was safely off stage. It was all there: The cornball “Gosh, golly, gee” patois, the overcooked Church-Lady-Meets-Lily-Tomlin’s-phone-operator voice, the cutesy winks, the camera mugging, the self-satisfied smile. It makes her even more dangerous than she was before; Junior with a craftier brain.

2.) In their post-debate commentary, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, the Politico’s Roger Simon and the Other Usual Media Miscreants once again strained credulity by attempting to speak for the Working Class out there in the Fly-Over Country of the Midwest. These guys inhabit offices in New York and Washington – besides the building doorman or the valet who parks their luxury car, how many actual members of the hourly-wage Drone Culture do they really know? In their omniscient view of the Biden-Palin encounter, Palin was likable and sharp and those downtrodden Soccer-Hockey Moms out there counting quarters to do the laundry were sure to swallow her guff whole-hog and rally to the GOP. Victory for Palin! Then Todd started running through the poll numbers from independent voters showing they thought Biden won – he didn’t really have an explanation for why Mr. and Mrs. Joe Six-Pack didn’t buy the adorable Palin’s pandering guff as predicted; it was just one of those, shrug, anomalies. Hint to Chuck and Company: I live out in that part of America you think you know so well; I can’t find anyone – not a single person — who likes Palin, even after her cynical performance last night.

Rating: Pretty flaccid on both sides and nothing memorable happened. Biden won it on points by a hair, mainly because he, ya know, actually knew things; Palin was all empty Talking Points and gushy BS; she didn’t do McCain’s campaign any good.

September 30, 2008

The Tattlesnake – McCain Failin’ ’08 Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:17 am

Or, The Rake and Raquel Drop Down the Well

You Can’t Make This Up: Sarah Palin blows the two interviews she has with CBS’ Katie Couric, so she comes back for a rematch bringing her Grandpa John to help out. In-frigging-credible. Palin already looks lame, so you make her appear even lamer by sticking McCain in there for another sit-down with Katie? Whose idea was it to put that on the air? Is Grandpa going to go onstage and hold her hand during Thursday’s debate with Biden, too?

McCain also invoked what was perhaps one of the dumber ripostes in a campaign festooned with them when he accused an average voter, asking a question of Palin about attacking terrorist camps in Pakistan, of playing the ‘Gotcha’ game. So now asking St. Sarah about anything to which she gives the wrong answer is playing ‘Gotcha’? Should be an interesting debate Thursday – “Uh, that question you just asked me about borrowing money from China is a ‘Gotcha’ question and I don’t answer ‘Gotcha’ questions, sir.”

Latest Big Media Euphemisms for McCain’s Lies and Flip-Flops, collected over the past couple of weeks from various sources: “His position has evolved,” “He’s finding a new mechanism to present his case,” “He’s altering his message,” “He’s appealing to the Republican base,” “He’s responding to change by changing,” “He’s proving his maverick streak,” “He’s reforming his position on the issue,” “He’s looking for the right message here,” “He’s fine tuning his message to the base.”

(more…)

September 29, 2008

The Tattlesnake – McCain’s Bonfire of the Inanities Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:52 pm

The ‘Stop Making Sense’ Campaign Just Did

“Never mistake motion for action.”
– Ernest Hemingway

In one of the topsy-turvy, fun-house-mirror aspects of this election, the hypothetically conservative Palin-McCain bid for the White House is being run as the most post-rational, incoherent, chaotic, image-driven, short attention span, non-factual, theatrical, emotional, ‘truthiness’-spewing political campaign in our history, worthy of the amorphous meanderings of a liberal French deconstructionist or a parody of reactionary outrage by Stephen Colbert.

Sure, we know that the Bush neocons like to create their own reality and let the rest of us catch up but, eventually, as has happened to King Junior, reality does come thundering down — as it has in Iraq, in Katrina, in our economy — where it can’t be ignored anymore, but the wildly lurching Palin-McCain extravaganza has decided to tempt fate and test the limits of the public gag reflex one more time by resurrecting every sordid, dishonest battering of reason and civility that Atwater and Rove have ever dreamed up.

Like the TV show “Seinfeld,” it is really a campaign about nothing: McCain’s economic policies – cut taxes and wait for a miracle – are a sour joke that we are feeling the punch line to as BushCo asks for a $700 billion bailout for trying the same thing; McCain’s phony Surge – which was really mostly just bribing the warlords to keep quiet — has worked successfully to keep our combat forces tied down in Iraq with no end in sight; his health care proposals will actually cost middle-class families more money for health insurance, and on and on it goes. Slip the rug out from under the rubes and call it real conservatism while you soften the fall of your rich cronies with golden parachutes – McCain should more accurately use the campaign slogan, ‘Country Club First.’

That McCain, a man who once campaigned against the interference of religion in secular politics, signed on as his Veep pick a born-again Christian zealot who knows more about the Rapture than she does the world she lives in and wears her narrow-minded ignorance and screwball religious beliefs as a badge of pride, to cynically solidify his hold on what remains of the Republican base says more about the current corrupt state of his character than five years in a POW camp in North Vietnam thirty-five years ago.

So, this is the shell game McCain and Palin are running: It’s not about what he or she would do as president or vice president – that’s archaic thinking — but rather the two-word message and the photo-op – McCain putting ‘Country First’ by suspending his campaign, yet still airing ads and keeping his campaign offices open, and jetting to Washington to appear for the cameras as if he’s already president, supposedly to deal with our economic crisis that he helped create and still doesn’t fully understand. That he just sat on his hands with no real authority is a reality trumped by the man-in-motion image – or so his Rove-trained advisors hope. There’s Palin, now appearing in several interviews and displaying her keen memory for brief neocon clichés and homey aphorisms provided by her handlers, but little grasp of what she’s babbling about, culminating in the low spot of her performance thus far, appearing in frothy TV talk-show spots with Hamid Karzai, Bush’s installed president of Afghanistan; a bulbous and lethargic Henry Kissinger, and a bemused President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, wondering if this insipid woman will help him get more foreign aid if he cooperates. She discussed babies with Karzai, emitted vacuous platitudes with Uribe, and flattered Kissinger’s obese ego in his blubbery senility. (Perhaps, for a fleeting moment, he thought he was dating Jill St. John again.) She increased her knowledge not one iota, but she ‘knows’ world leaders – see we have pictures!

(more…)

September 25, 2008

The Tattlesnake – October and Other McCain Surprises Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:13 am

Or, St. John and His Cowardly Lyin’

“Presidents have to deal with more than one thing at a time.”
– Barack Obama, Sept. 23, 2008, as quoted by Business Week.

All politicians lie to some degree; it’s a gloomy fact of national politics in America, and the higher the office sought, the more likely and frequent the infractions of the truth.

Some self-servingly shade reality intermittently, others cross their fingers behind their backs and deliver the quasi-whopper occasionally, and then there are the full-out Nixonian scoundrels who’ll tell a lie at the drop of a hat in the ring.

John McCain, in his conduct since becoming the Republican nominee, has crossed the Nixon threshold of deceit, most recently by calling David Letterman at the last minute and telling him he couldn’t appear on his show September 24th because he had to urgently drop everything and fly to Washington to delve into the bailout crisis.

McCain’s prevarication to Letterman blew up in his face when the talk show host discovered McCain was still in New York City for many hours after that phone call; indeed, McCain was being interviewed by CBS’ Katie Couric not far from the theater where Letterman tapes his show and could easily have stopped in and kept his commitment to Letterman. As Dave said sarcastically, showing a live feed of McCain talking to Couric, “Need a ride to the airport, Senator?”

This is self-destructive blowback of the first order: Letterman reaches tens of millions of viewers across the land, many of them the politically semi-literate that McCain is trying to reach with his over-simplified messages of ‘maverick reformer,’ ‘reliable leader’ and comfortable ‘regular guy,’ and Letterman spent most of the show last night, including his notorious Top Ten list, savaging McCain for his absence, his suspension of his campaign, and asking the pointedly mocking question of why Palin couldn’t simply step in and take McCain’s place. He even had McCain’s harshest Big Media critic Keith Olbermann on to further pound the stake into the Republican candidate. Presidential campaigns in America are really won or lost in the comedy sketches of the late night TV hosts and viewers form their opinions of the candidates’ characters based on the kinds of jokes disseminated – by that measure, millions of late night TV viewers now know that McCain is a bald-faced liar; a treacherous old codpiece willing to deceive their trusted TV friend Dave. Hmmm, what else might he lie about as president? Not only was this a nuclear one-night hit, but McCain has now made a foe of David Letterman, an enmity that will carry on until the election – it could very well make the difference in November.

Something else that will make a difference, and also presents McCain as a perpetual dispenser of falsehoods and humbug, is his bizarre abandonment of his former friends in the Big Media and Punditrocracy. McCain’s campaign has lately made it a badge of honor to snub and treat with contempt the very same ‘Guys and Gals on the Bus’ who protectively guarded and excused McCain for his gaffes and deceptions in the past. Once heralded for his access to the media, now only pre-tested loyalists are invited to speak with the coddled candidate on his campaign jet, and the rest are shuttled off like cattle to stand behind a shield of sour-faced campaign staff. The turning of opinion amongst the press corps is growing obvious.

(more…)

September 23, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Flying Under the Cuckoo’s Nest Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:32 pm

“In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail — not the tail that wags the dog.”
– Lewis Carroll

“Welcome to the conservative’s worst nightmare: The law of unintended consequences. Why? Nobody wants to admit it, folks, but the conservatives’ grand ideology is backfiring, actually turning the world’s greatest capitalistic democracy into the world’s newest socialist economy.”
– Paul B. Ferrell, “11 reasons America’s a new socialist economy,” MarketWatch, July 22, 2008.

“The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.”
– Clive Crook, “Only Luck Can Save America’s Economy,” Financial Times, Aug. 3, 2008.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke are a couple of dimwitted chuckleheads who shouldn’t be in any position of authority related to solving this current GOP-generated economic catastrophe. Either Paulson and Bernanke didn’t see it coming, in which case they were asleep at the switch; or they did see it coming, and did nothing to stop it. Either way, they are useless at effecting a solution; both should be handed their walking papers. Good replacements might be Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research as Treasury Secretary – he appreciated the danger of the approaching tsunami years ago – and Princeton economist Paul Krugman for the Fed. NY Times columnist Krugman also had to brains to read the signs indicating that the bridge is out up ahead and we were entering the Twilight Zone financially long before most of the various Up with People-Eaters ‘experts’ on The Street realized we were cruising to sure doom. Paulson and Bernanke should exit quickly with their heads held in shame, lucky they haven’t been forced to walk the plank for their egregious ignorance and incompetence. Oh, and the Bush Boy? Keep making speeches about the economy you still don’t understand, Junior, and reminding voters why they don’t need another neoconservative Republican in the White House next year.

The current economic meltdown, which some of us left-wing nuts like Mike Whitney and yours truly have been predicting for years, is the direct result of neoconservative policies, starting with Ronald Reagan. When Reagan said government is the problem, he apparently forgot that the government of the United States is of, by and for the people, so he was actually saying that ‘we the people’ are the problem. And so we are – if not for our demands that rapacious corporations and the greedy wealthy obey the laws, pay us and treat us fairly, and otherwise conduct themselves with some modicum of decency, the Corprocracy could have a field day, in the same way the Mafia could prosper wildly if there weren’t any ‘regulations’ governing their activities. For the last 25 years, the neoconservative Republicans, and especially John McCain, have successfully done all that they could to deregulate banks, business and the markets and it has culminated in the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, as even one of the ardent handmaidens of the collapse, flank-coverer Alan Greenspan, recently confessed. This is also a failure of F.A. von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Paul Wolfowitz, Grover Norquist and every other neoconservative jackass who has come down the pike banging the drum for the delusion of trickle-down wealth, the deception of free international trade, the hallucination of cheap privatized government services, and the myth of self-regulating markets.

(more…)

September 20, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Joan of Snark Jumps the Shark Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:35 am

Serial-Liar Mom Palin Tanks Along with the Economy

“The trouble you brew today, you will drink tomorrow.”
– From “Samson and Delilah,” a 1949 film.

There was much early September hand-wringing and angst amongst Obama supporters that, after a strong finish at the Democratic convention in Denver, he was allowing the Palin-McCain ticket — for that’s what it truly is now as the aging Republican’s candidacy is overwhelmed by the media incandescence of Gov. Horse-Hockey Mom — put him on the defensive, dropping his inspirational charisma in favor of dull ‘wonky talk’ on the issues and curling into a timid Kerryesque ball, fighting off scurrilous and specious charges, while fecklessly laughing at or ignoring ludicrous accusations such as that he voted to teach Sex Ed to kindergarten tots. All of this is the standard GOP endgame of the past twenty-some years – wildly slander with Big Lies while the Dem refuses to ‘go negative’ – that results in another humiliating Dem defeat in November.(Bill Clinton, of course, being the notable exception.)

But that was last week. Now Palin is in free-fall, exposed as a pathologically prevaricating, power-abusing, crony-hiring GOP cipher, ignorant on foreign policy and most everything else, and pit bull-tenacious only at regurgitating her prepared Talking Points, kowtowing to the interests of large energy corporations, and using her office to conduct vendettas on those who contradict or are perceived as disloyal to her. In short, she’s Junior in a beehive, albeit more articulate and better at reciting her Bushian bumper-sticker slogans.

Meantime, Sarah’s more boring co-pilot McCain is himself treading sewer water, hauled up in buckets from the same sea of Republican red ink that swallowed do-nothing big business Republicans in 1932; he’s even taken to quoting Herbert Hoover’s peculiar dictum that the economy is fundamentally strong, while banks fail, wages fall, prices rise, and Americans are losing their jobs and homes. Well, what should one expect from a man who thinks shady corporate lobbyist Phil Gramm is the second coming of John Maynard Keynes?

(more…)

September 17, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Pondering Political Ponderables Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:00 pm

– If McCain and Palin are such maverick reformers, why haven’t they quit the corrupt Republican Party?

– Why doesn’t Obama, Biden or the Big Media ever mention that McCain’s tax cuts are going to directly benefit John and Cindy McCain, worth over $100 million? Meanwhile, under Obama’s tax increase for those making over $250,000 per year, the Obama’s would be paying more in taxes, since they’re worth about $4 mil. Who is really putting country first here ahead of their personal interest?

– Is McPalin actually trying to say that we are going to cure our current economic crisis by continuing to do the same things that caused it? Listen to them closely; yes, they are, only they are going to appoint a panel to study it.

– If the McCain-Palin ticket has so energized the Republican base, how come there are so many glum faces among the party hacks assembled behind them at campaign stops?

– Who do the McCain handlers think this ‘deference and respect’ for Palin nonsense is playing to – ‘dissed’ working-class women who shop at Walmart? Think again – it reminds them of their hated country-club bosses. Uh, not to be disrespectful of the Ice Princess Moose-Killer or anything, but they are making her sound like a tinhorn Queen Victoria. Was this the best Frank Luntz could come up with to cover her alarming ignorance?

– Speaking of the Thrilla From Wasilla, she’s fading in popularity now that the public has gotten a good look at her — why doesn’t McCain replace her with Tina Fey? She’s funnier and more talented than the original, and most Republicans would never know the difference, as long as Tina didn’t slip up and tell the truth.

– Who’s dumber: ‘First Dude’ Todd “How’d You Get Pregnant Again So Quick?” Palin or McCain ‘advisor’ Carly “I Nearly Destroyed HP and They Paid Me $20 Million to Go Away!” Fiorina?

– Laughable: Following yesterday’s Wall Street meltdown, some Republican half-wit on one of the cable news channels that isn’t Fox said, without irony, “There’s a danger here we might slip into a recession.”

– Laughable Deux: Did I hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson just praise Bush’s economic programs today? Yes, I did. And did he really tell us all to “remain calm”? Yes, calm in the Kevin Bacon at the end of ‘Animal House’ sense, right before he was flattened into the sidewalk.

– Laughable III: If Sarah Palin’s husband Todd is Alaska’s ‘First Dude’ does that mean we can call her the ‘First Chick’? (Or would that be the ‘First Dudette’?)

– Laughable the Fourth: Is it true Sarah Palin’s kids actually hate hockey?

– Laughable de Cinco: The Obama camp should start referring to McCain as ‘Republican John Sidney McCain the Third’ and Palin as ‘Republican Gov. Vinnie Barbarino.’ Of course, Sen. John Blutarsky and Gov. Hockey Rink to Nowhere are possibilities as well.

– Finally, Obama in Elko, Nevada, Sept. 17th, and I wrote this down fast so every word may not be verbatim: “McCain says he’s going after the old boys network in Washington … the thing is, the old boys network in Washington is called a McCain campaign staff meeting.” Ha, ha, keep punching, Barack, they’re on the ropes and McCain’s no Ali.

September 11, 2008

The Tattlesnake – H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks Mom and Other Randomized Media Bleat Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:56 pm

Bush Two in a Pantsuit
or, Summer and Smoke and Mirrors

“…[T]he media is failing to apply the same standard to John McCain [and Sarah Palin] that they did to Al Gore in 2000.”
– DDay, “Why The Media Game Is Rigged,” Digby’s Hullabaloo, Sept. 9, 2008.

– It’s becoming pretty obvious that McCain’s Veep pick, Sarah Palin, regardless of the GOP blustering over her ‘smarts,’ is actually just the Bush Boy in a Beehive, a crackpot-religion dingbat from the Great White North with a predisposition to pathological deceit, close ties to big energy corporations, a willingness to use taxpayer money to help herself and her family, disregard for the law, and a slave of Talking Points with a lack of curiosity about, or grasp of, the world around her. While she may not mangle the English language as much as the Installed One, she hews to the same repetition of bumper-sticker slogans and shows her deep ignorance whenever she goes off-script. (Just look at her recent confusion when she tried to ad lib regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – she didn’t know they were already private companies with investors.) Since the GOP Convention, she’s been repeating the same speech provided her by – voila! – a Bush speechwriter! (Change you can believe in – if you’re an idiot.) Of course McCain’s Rovian handlers want to keep Gov. Gaffe-O-Matic from even the nearly-toothless jaws of the American Big Media – imagine the reaction if Independent Voters and others with any scrap of rationality remaining get the hint she’s another bumbling blank slate like the current Dunce Cap in the Oval Office – Disaster! — and there just aren’t enough Christopublican Whack-Jobs and Small-Town Dead-Enders to shoehorn Grandpa and the Beauty Queen into office.

Sure she’s going to have a sit-down with ABC’s Charlie “Capital Gains Tax” Gibson soon, but no doubt she’ll have the questions in advance and there will be a teleprompter off-camera to help her through the answers. Besides, ditzoid Gibson is an in-the-tank Republican fawner – he won’t be tossing any hardball faster than asking her to name her five children in order of birth and how the whirlwind of celebrity has affected her family. Perhaps there will even be a touching video tribute to the joys of snowmobiling featuring hubby Todd and the score from Rocky. Daughter Bristol could then host a fashion show of maternity clothes for high school girls, and Sarah could have her ‘fired’ cook talk Gibson through a diaper change of baby Trig. Political junkies be forewarned: Look out for a tiny flesh-colored earpiece in place during the Biden debate with Steve Schmidt or some other Spawn of the Country Club Jesus feeding her the responses.

– Laugh of the Week: The McCainiacs claiming they won’t make Lady Vain available for open questioning by the BM because US reporters won’t act with the proper ‘respect and deference’ for Alaska’s Beauty Queen Runner-Up. Ha, ha, this is absurd even for Rick Davis – since when did an American politician morph into British royalty? Let’s put on our Rove Smear Cap for a moment: If the Obama camp refused to let Biden be interviewed for the same reason, you just know Karl’s Korps would be endlessly repeating the line: “If he can’t stand up to the media, how’s he going to stand up to Putin?”

– It’s also becoming pretty obvious that we should be calling this the Palin-McCain ticket, as the hapless former Navy Flyboy isn’t the one bringing out the curious crowds on the campaign trail. The wretched McCain just stands there behind her, a blob of aged empty-eyed flesh — occasionally appearing appalled at how low he has sunk, but mostly fidgeting, gaping in senility, and working at maintaining a semblance of a genuine smile. The level of audience interest palpably drops into single-digits when he steps up to speak. It must be galling to McSame that after all these years his fevered presidential aspirations are in the hands of an irritatingly perky nitwit from Alaska and Bush’s Rove-clones who destroyed his presidential campaign in 2000. Wife Cindy must be getting an earful of vicious bile in private.

(more…)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress