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September 9, 2008

The Tattlesnake – More GOP Goop: Deaf Con 3 Edition

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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September 1, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Palin’s Failin’s, Luntz’s Futzes, and Other Random GOP Goop Edition

More On Sarah Palin: Nico Pitney over to the Huff Post reports that Alaska’s Gov. Hockey Mom appeared on a shock jock’s radio show in Anchorage and laughed her head off when her opponent in the Alaska State Senate, Lyda Green, was called a “bitch” by the show’s host. The slammer was that she also cackled when the idiot-with-a-microphone referred to Green, a cancer survivor, as “a cancer” twice and joked about her weight. An op-ed in The Anchorage Daily News called Palin’s giggling, “one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I’ve ever seen from a politician.” Classy lady, that Sarah.

– Yet More Palin: Whatever facts shake out regarding her firing of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner for allegedly failing to dismiss a state trooper who went through an acrimonious divorce from her sister in 2005, Palin, like most Republicans, doesn’t seem to see that there is a glacier-sized conflict of interest here: She should have encouraged an investigation into his conduct and then left it to her AG or other independent body to prosecute the case. For that matter, if the guy beat his ex-wife, was drunk on the job and abused his son, as Palin has claimed, why wasn’t he arrested? (Many of Palin’s complaints have been dismissed after further investigation.) That she didn’t recuse herself from the case entirely shows she has no respect for, or knowledge of, how the law works, and we’ve had enough of that in the Executive Branch in the past eight long years. (BTW, Palin originally recommended this guy for the trooper job when she was Mayor of Wasilla. Judgment?)

– Soon to Be Breaking News: Something nasty will rise to the top regarding Palin’s close connections to large energy corporations – she’s the only so-far unindicted major Republican in the state and, contrary to Old Man McCain’s guff, she didn’t get there by being a ‘reformer.’ (Her ‘reforms’ were mainly just dumping her political enemies.) In Alaska, if you’re a GOP politician, you make the deal with Energy Money to move into the Big Leagues. This will be enough to sink the USS Maverick once as for all, as his ‘judgment’ is revealed to stink on ice (not much of a pun intended).

– Flanders? Palin calls her good Christopublican, Iron Dog racer husband Todd the ‘First Dude.’ Isn’t that cute and endearing? Gee, at least she’ll bring dignity to the vice presidency.

– ALPO Update: The AP reports that both Bush and Cheney have now pulled out of the GOP-O-Rama in St. Paul entirely. Seems someone realized that being visually associated with the most loathed president and vice president in our history is maybe not the best thing for Republicans this year. Instead, the hapless Junior will be down in Texas ‘monitoring’ Hurricane Gustav (read ‘vacationing’); and Deadeye Dick is on a four-day jaunt to Europe, including a drop-by in Georgia (uh oh). Incidentally, McCain’s handlers have decided to curtail the Republican convention activities from four hours a day to two, purportedly due to deference for the possible victims of Gustav, but really it’s likely because they didn’t think they could dredge up much of an audience the Right’s Last Rites. This speaks volumes about what terrible shape the GOP is in; no wonder Rep. Tom Davis III (R-VA), in a rare flash of honesty, told CNN last May: “The Republican brand is in the trash can. If we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”

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