Rick Davis « BartBlog

October 24, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Worms Turn On the Wormy Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: 2008 election, Big Media, Bill Ayers, CNN, David Shuster, Democrats, Euripides, GOP, GOP Hypocrisy, Jennifer Millerwise-Dyck, Karl Rove, Larry King, Lee Atwater, McCain, McPalin, Michael Moore, MSNBC, Neocons, Obama, Palin, Republican Party, Rick Davis, RS Janes, Steve Schmidt, Tattlesnake — 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?

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October 10, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Turn of the Screwed Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: 2008 election, Ayers, Biden, Bush, Debates, Democrats, economy, G. Gordon Liddy, Keating Five, McCain, McCainiacs, McPalin, Moose Hunting Mom, Obama, Palin, Republicans, Rezko, Rick Davis, RS Janes, Slurs, Smears, Tattlesnake, Troopergate, U.S. Council for World Freedom, Vicki Iseman, Worst Campaign Ever, Wright — RS Janes @ 6:19 pm

And Other Worms in the GOP Apple…

Obama just made two very smart moves:

1.) Buying a half-hour of TV primetime on the Wednesday before the election. If he plays it right, this will be like a presidential address ahead of the election, making any part of America that still has doubts comfortable with Obama in the Oval Office. Better yet, he won’t have Grandpa Crank or a moderator to step on his message, and McCain doesn’t have the cash to buy a half-hour of his own.

2.) Setting a trap for McCain by telling ABC’s Charlie Gibson “…[W]e’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days that he wasn’t willing to say it to my face. But I guess we’ve got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.” Biden also called McCain out for his Ayers-Rezko-Wright malarkey. This painted McCain into a corner: If in the Oct. 15th debate he doesn’t respond to the challenge and bring up the nasty personal attacks his campaign has been making, he risks appearing like a wimp to his own supporters; if he does, he looks like a petty jerk and takes the chance of Obama not only skillfully dispensing with the slurs, but also sticking it to McCain on the Keating Five, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, McCain’s campaign manager and lobbyist Rick Davis, Watergate crazy man G. Gordon Liddy, and McCain’s ties to the anti-Semitic and racist U.S. Council for World Freedom. Obama could rightfully point out that his casual connection to Ayers-Rezko-Wright never cost the taxpayers a dime; McCain’s association with the Keating Five and lobbyists Iseman and Davis, on the other hand, cost the public billions.

Surprise! Sarah Palin’s hired Munchkins up in Alaska just found her innocent in the Troopergate affair on Thursday, one day ahead of the release of the official report, ’cause that’s just the way we do business up here in the Great White North, buster.

Ya know, I betcha Palin’s whole ‘moose hunter and sport fisher’ thing is just a buncha staged photo-ops to enhance her Alaska political career and she never drank a six-pack in her life. (Gotta watch that figure, dere!) I’ve met women who hunt and fish and they don’t have long, beautifully-manicured fingernails of the type Sarah the Terror has had since her first beauty pageant. (In fact, it would be impossible to keep their nails like that and still do such things as ‘field dress a moose.’) This is like the Bush Boy putting on a Stetson hat and pretending to be a real Texas cowboy — the man is terrified of horses!

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September 25, 2008

The Tattlesnake – October and Other McCain Surprises Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: 2008 election, Al Gore, Bailout, Big Media, CBS, Dan Quayle, David Letterman, Debates, Deceit, Democrats, economy, Fannie Mae, Flip-Flops, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Will, Howard Dean, John McCain, Karl Rove, Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann, lies, New York Times, Nixon, Obama, October Surprise, Palin, Punditrocracy, Republicans, Rick Davis, RS Janes, Steve Schmidt, Tattlesnake — 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.

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September 11, 2008

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

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: ABC, Barack Obama, Big Media, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Conan O'Brien, George W. Bush, GOP, Jimmy Fallon, Joe Biden, John McCain, Karl Rove, MSNBC, Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, Rick Davis, Ron Burgundy, RS Janes, Sarah Palin, Stephen Colbert, Tattlesnake, Tom Brokaw — 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.

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September 9, 2008

The Tattlesnake – More GOP Goop: Deaf Con 3 Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: Barack Obama, Cindy McCain, Col. Kurtz, Dick Cheney, Feminists for Life, Frank Luntz, Fred Thompson, George W. Bush, GOP, Jesus, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Laura Bush, Minnesota, Mitt Romney, Republican National Convention, Rick Davis, RS Janes, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, St. Paul, Tattlesnake — RS Janes @ 5:46 pm

Random Notes Summing Up the End of Summer Bummer in St. Paul

“Fight with me! Fight with me!”
– John McCain in his acceptance speech at the GOP Con, Sept. 4, 2008, so desperate for combat he invited the audience to throw a punch at him.

The 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, was entertaining and credible if you happen to have that happy zealot’s mindset indistinguishable from serious brain damage, or you’re a member of the Inner Party with a large Memory Hole nearby and a strong stomach. Indeed, George Orwell could have written the script for this GOP Con and you could hear echoes of the boot-heel patriotism of Oceania ringing in its blaring signage and loudly repeated declarations – “Country First!” “Service!” “Character Counts!” “War Hero!” “Reformer!” “Maverick!” “USA!” “Surge Working!” “NO-bama!” — simple themes for simple minds marinated in the bottomless pit of Big Media Infotainment Newspeak and endless wars against shifting enemies, buttressed by increasingly irrational rationales.

Yet never was heard a discouraging word against the Bush Administration and the avaricious corporate-Republican values for which it stands that have promulgated and prolonged the various disasters sinking us on every front – instead, Frank Luntz’s cheesy framing word “Washington” was employed so that the top-of-the-ticket ‘reformers’ had something to ‘change’ other than the guiding precepts of their own party and Sarah Palin’s prominently-displayed infant son. The unasked question that hung over the convention like a cloud from Hurricane Gustav: ‘Yes, Washington is even more corrupt than usual and we are descending into utter catastrophe – and who is responsible for causing all of this misery?’ He That Must Be Obliged But Otherwise Go Unmentioned appeared on the Jumbotron screen early in the evening on the first day, his embarrassing video endorsing McCain stuck into those hours of the evening when, presumably, small-town America was still having dinner and would never see the Bush Boy and think of his Unmentionable PNAC Partner-in-Crime Dick Cheney, the True Author of our rampant economic and global woes.

McCain and Palin both exhibited signs of having an out-of-party experience as they berated the soulless suppurating boils and abscesses populating the Potomac Swamplands in the form of Big Money lobbyists and Special Interests that have brought the country so low, without ever hinting that most of them had an RNC elephant logo on their money clips and the rapacious Jesus of Mammon in their born-again hearts. For that matter, most of the larger fish work in McCain’s own campaign. But perhaps the most comically surreal moment of the three nights came when Mitt Romney, formerly McCain’s dedicated primary foe, erupted from the podium with this public hallucination to the cheers of the damned and deranged:

“We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals.”
– Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-2

That’s the essence of the snake-eating-its-tail message emerging from St. Paul to unite the party – let’s toss out big-government liberals Bush and Cheney and start anew.

We’re Not Out of Touch – We’re Republicans Without Issues!

“This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
– Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, quoted by the Washington Post’s The Fix blog.

To the party leaders and McCain’s campaign staff, ignorance is strength, and really the only strength McCain has left. If the public can be allayed by clever rhetoric, bamboozled by slick video bios, befuddled by down-is-up deceptions, or baffled by calculated bluster from determining the bitter truth about the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate for just two months, the GOP believes they can seize the White House for the third time in this new century.

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August 4, 2008

Quayle Again?

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: Bush, Dan Quayle, Humor, McCain, politics, Republicans, Rick Davis, RS Janes, satire, Vice President — RS Janes @ 6:23 pm

VP Reprise with McCain? Quayle Says He’s ‘Rested and Ready’

By Mo Larkey
Continental-Affiliated Press International
August 3, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS – At a press conference here today, former vice president Dan Quayle told reporters he’s “rested and ready” and prepared to “help Sen. McCain win the White House” in 2008.

The Indiana Republican, a former US senator and vice president in the administration of George H. W. Bush from 1988 to 1992, claimed that he had the “kind of wide-body life experiences” Mr. McCain needs in a vice president and would “be assetable” to the Republican candidate’s chances.

“I believe that I have been road-tested and trialed and I have found myself willing,” said Mr. Quayle, “and I could do for Sen. McCain what I did for President Bush’s father – put him over the top with the Republican Party baseline.”

“I’ve been there and done that,” continued the former vice president, “and I can do it all over again. I’m rested and ready and set to rip into this campaign like a tissue paper tiger.”

“Look at it this way,” Mr. Quayle summed up, “if we can deposit men on Mars, as we have been doing, we can get a Republican elected president this year, and I’m just the astronaut to help Sen. McCain win the White House.”

As he left the podium, Mr. Quayle mimicked dialing a phone and whispered, “Johnny, call me.”

Reached last night, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis had no comment on the former vice president’s offer.

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