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September 4, 2008

YOS Presents: Slightly Revised, Very Appalling, Palin Quotes from the Grand Old P on U.S. Convention

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 10:15 am

VP Wannabe Gov. Appalling Palin…

“(When it comes to the oil crisis…) …we need to lay more pipe, and as my daughter proves, we know how to lay pipe!”

(Scribe Post-It Note: the first part of this was oddly edited out of the official version of the text: but she did say it. Guess they thought there might be a problem with her mentioning the “lay pipe” phrase. But it was there. Scribe has REALLY good ears and KNOWS what he hears.)

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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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August 30, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Beauty and the Beast, GOP-Style Edition

Or, A McMania Named Desire

“Wonder if he’s going to have her go compete in the ‘Miss Buffalo Chip’ contest?”
– Comment by jfredmuggs at Common Dreams, Aug. 29, 2008.

It was highly entertaining to watch the Pundit Crews on cable news work themselves into a case of the vapors Friday morning, frantically trying to figure out which human sacrifice McCainiac would condemn as his Veep. Some of the Big Media Brains went agog for Tim Pawlenty; others assured the viewers Mitt Romney would probably emerge as The Choice, even while admitting that the hulking shadow of Tom Ridge continued to lurk in the wings. By later in the AM, Pawlenty and Romney were pushed overboard, leaving Ridge or – could it be? — the ‘maverick’ pick of McCain toady Joe Lieberman, still standing.

Yep, even Your Intrepid Tattler thought it would likely be Ridge carrying Johnny Mac’s coat, but that was because, like the Punditocracy, I gave credit to the Old Gluehorse for a residue of sanity, not recognizing McCain is no longer functioning in that psychological state – he’s been driven stone crazy by his own blind ambition to be president, and perhaps a touch of incipient senility. (After all, this is a man who has publicly contradicted himself twice in one day, embraces those who viciously slander him, occasionally goes blank on simple questions, and now opposes most everything he stood for in 2000.)

Seen in that light, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin makes perfect sense. You can imagine the sludgy gears of cynicism turning in McDuffer’s head, or, more likely, one of his Rove-trained staff: “We aren’t exciting the GOP base or doing that well among independents, and that damned Obama just cleaned our clock last night in a speech where he looked like the second coming of JFK – we’ve got to dominate the next news cycle so the Talking Heads don’t have time to praise him, and pick off those millions of Hillary voters we’re convinced will vote for us. What to do, what to do? Hey, how about that gal from Alaska? She’s a good-looker — might sucker in the young studs — and women are so dumb they’ll vote for any female over a young black guy and an old white fart – uh, you know what I mean – any day of the week. Ha, ha, we’ll call her a ‘feminist’ just to confuse ‘em! Plus she’s got that whole conservative family values stuff going on – Jesus, FIVE kids and she’s only 44! — so that can’t hurt. She’s tight with Big Oil, too, another plus, and she’ll do what she’s told, just like Alberto and Harriet. Get that Sarah what’s-her-name up in Alaska on the horn!”

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August 29, 2008

The Tattlesnake – If Obama Keeps This Up, It’s All Over But the Shouting Edition

Dem Convention Closer Fulfills Part of King’s Dream of 45 Years Ago

“Our government should work for us, not against us.” […]
“If John McCain wants have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to be commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.”

– Barack Obama at Invesco Stadium, Aug. 28, 2008.

Regardless of the Usual Big Media Wretches sniffing around for some kind of disunity story, both Bill and Hillary Clinton graciously and unreservedly endorsed Barack Obama with resounding speeches, bringing the Denver convention to its feet. Others like John Kerry, Bill Richardson and Iraq War vet Rep. Patrick Murphy also gave good speeches, but you’d have to watch C-Span to catch them in their entirety since MSNBC and, especially, CNN, preferred to air the rumblings of their own teams of feeble prognosticators and analysts to the words from the podium.

But all of that was the set-up to Thursday night, when Obama appeared before an audience of over 70,000 at Invesco Stadium to formally accept the Democratic nomination for president. The heat was on, and some in the Eternally Damned Pundit Class predicted Obama would blow it with a high-minded ‘professorial’ diatribe that condescended to the average voter as it bored them silly. They were wrong.

Obama laid into a stem-winder, jazzing up the crowd as he proved he’s going to fight McCain by returning fire on some of the Republican’s recent attacks and leaving Cap’n McCain’s Swift Boat dead in the water. Celebrity status? Damn right – the jealous GOP would kill for that kind of popularity. Grecian columns? You’ve got to be kidding. A Nuremberg rally redux hallucination? Peggy Noonan needs to lay off the sauce. Squirrel-bait Jerry Corsi’s crackpot work of fiction? Get a net.

All of the rightie tripe and snipe faded back to the dark pit from whence it came as Obama spelled out point-by-point where he was going to take the country, refuted every McCain negative ad, and then went after Sen. Maverick’s flip-flopping hide. In the clutch, Obama brought his A-game and rolled over the opposition like a Straight-Talk cement mixer.

(Incidentally, in all fairness to John McCain, he did air an ad yesterday cordially congratulating Obama on his historic nomination, although his campaign also attacked Obama on the same day, even after McCain said in his congratulatory ad, “Tomorrow we’ll be back at it, but tonight, senator, job well done.” What is it with this guy?)

Barring any unforeseen and unlikely total meltdown, we just heard the next president of the United States speaking at Invesco Stadium last night.

How can I say that with two months to go until the election? Let’s look at some factoids mixed with obvious observations:

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August 28, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Desultory Dem Convention Notes, D-Day Plus 3 Edition

And Some Free Advice for the Obama Camp (Oh Boy!)

“We don’t need four more years of the last eight years.”
– Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Dem convention in Denver, Aug. 26, 2008.

I confess I haven’t watched every minute of the Denver convention, but I saw most of the major events, and here are a few brief notes:

Where’s the Outrage? In their speeches, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and even four-years-late-and-a-dollar-short John Kerry (why didn’t he talk like this in 2004?) all admirably piled it on McCain and Bush nice and thick, and came thisclose to the threshold of outrage, but then inexplicably backed off. Did some Peter Hart focus group tell the Dems that independent voters don’t like to see anger and outrage? Bury that guff with your souvenir can of New Coke and the reams of polling data that claim voters dislike negative ads – maybe they do, but they work. One of the consistent complaints I’ve been hearing from the Great Unpolled on the Ground since 2000 is that the Dems don’t seem to really believe in anything because they don’t show emotion and get mad occasionally. (Check Kerry’s reaction to the Swift Boat smears during the last election for a perfect example of what I mean — he should have been livid and roaring in anger at their lies; instead, he went senatorial-serious and ‘disappointed.’ It wasn’t the charges themselves but Kerry’s tepid reaction that some vets have told me caused them to question his suitability for the presidency.) Republicans routinely contort themselves into a lather over all sorts of petty political effluvia such as prayer in schools, yet Dems can’t muster up some good old-fashioned outraged indignation against the party that, in eight years, has gotten thousands of Americans killed or sentenced to a life missing body parts in a war that was based on lies? That let Americans die in the flooded streets of New Orleans and still hasn’t provided adequate help to the survivors? That has failed to competently run any department of the government? That has ignored our Constitution? That has presided over the worst economy since the Great Depression? That has transferred our tax dollars into payoffs to corrupt and sleazy corporations via ‘cost-plus’ contracts? That refuses to do anything about rising gas prices? I could go on, but you get my drift. Isn’t any of this worth some real, live, Old Testament, pound the podium, call ‘em outside, ‘WTF is wrong with these Republicans’ outrage? This is not to say that anyone has to actually foam at the mouth, but how about some convincing anger tinting those condemnations of Bush, Cheney and McCain? I know this isn’t Obama’s style – although I hope he goes ‘Full Denzel’ on McDuffer in the debates — but I expected a little more of Biden. Perhaps that’s coming. It better be, or it’s going to be a long election night with a bad ending.

Missing in Action – any mention that if The Surge has worked in Iraq, then we have won and should be able to leave immediately. Why not apply this logic to McCain’s demands that Obama admit The Surge worked?

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August 27, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Small Wagers of Sin Edition

I’d bet that …

… At least once during the GOP convention, and likely more often than that, the theme from Rocky will be played to bring a speaker on stage, probably Scooter Libby or Alberto Gonzales.

… Also during the Republican convention, some Big Media dunce – I’m looking at you, Charlie Gibson – will ask Joe Lieberman for a ‘Democrat’s perspective on the GOP convention.’

… Even if Obama delivers the equivalent of the Gettysburg Address on Thursday at Invesco Field, the Punditocracy will determine it wasn’t enough to unify the Democratic Party.

… No one in the Official Washington Press Gaggle will raise an eyebrow over McCain sending his wife Cindy to Georgia to inspect the human suffering there. (Of course, if Obama tried this, there would be a locust-like screeching that it smacks of outrageous presumption.)

… By the end of the week, Michelle Obama’s speech Monday at the Dem convention will be adjudged by the Solons of Pundit Planet as a failure, since it fell short of convincing every Democratic and Independent woman in the Known Universe to vote for Obama.

… Keith Olbermann will finally throttle the life out of MSNBC convention co-host Chris Matthews for the good of his audience and the country, right in the middle of the Hardball host’s braying spittle-flecked recollection of his imaginary tough- teen years on the mean streets of Philadelphia. A jury of his peers will not only acquit KO, but also award him a medal for service in the public interest beyond the call of duty.

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August 24, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Toss It in the Potpourri and Heat with Steam Edition

Prediction: The next big McCain exploding-cigar-of-elitism flap: We now know the Jes’-Plain-Folks McCain’s spent $273,000 last year alone on household employees — what used to be called, in a less euphemistic age, ‘servants’ – but what isn’t mentioned is the hot-n-heavy rumor that they hired some, uh oh, undocumented workers amongst the various butlers, maids and nannies and, double uh oh, didn’t pay SS or taxes on the illegal imports. (Those without their papers have likely been canned and shipped back by now.) Gee, Senator, what’s your position on immigration again?

Quotable Corner:

“That’s right. The McCains pay $270,000 per year for butlers and maids–that’s $50,000 more than the median value of an American home.”
– Nitpicker, Aug. 21, 2008.

“If you had made last year as much money as John McCain spent on household help alone $273,000 — you’d be richer than 95% of American families.”
– Mark Kleiman

“When John Edwards was running for president, and the media were obsessing about his wealth, they linked his fortune to his policy positions. Surely John McCain — who can’t remember how many houses he owns, ‘jokes’ that you aren’t rich unless you make $5 million a year, and supports tax policies that would save him and his wife, Cindy, nearly $400,000 a year — should be held to the same standard?”
– Jamison Foser, Media Matters, Aug. 22, 2008.

And don’t forget to read the ‘Priceless’ McCain ad by davefromqueens on The Daily Kos.

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August 23, 2008

MSNBC Says It’s Biden

MSNBC reported early Saturday morning that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has picked Sen. Joseph Biden, 65, to be his vice presidential running mate. There is an Obama rally planned in Springfield, Illinois, this afternoon to officially announce Biden’s addition to the Dem ticket.

Predictably, the half-crazed wingnuts aboard the sinking USS McCain and their allies, the 101st Keyboard Commandos, will be sharpening their pitchforks ready to stick it to the Delaware Senator and erstwhile presidential candidate in any spot that looks tender. Here are the soft places they’ll likely poke with glee:

1. Biden was once called the Senator from DuPont, and for good reason. Joe has been very chummy with the chemical giant, as well as other large corporations from his state, which has no corporate tax. These slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — considering they’re from the wholly-corporatized Republican Party — will be shamelessly slung at Biden for being too close to evil Big Bidness, probably via a strenuous Internet email campaign and multiple postings on some of the more frothing hoof-and-mouth neocon websites like Hind-Acher’s Powerline blog and Freeper Republic.

2. Joe will be endlessly drubbed for appropriating without attribution British Labour Party PM candidate Neil Kinnock’s “born the son of a coal miner, first in the family to attend college” bio that derailed Biden’s presidential run in 1988. That this might have been an innocent mistake won’t cut any mustard with the ravening wolves of the right — “Plagiarist!” “Liar!” will be sprinkled like salt on potato chips all over the right-wing Media Vomitorium, with Michelle Malkin no doubt inferring in a screechy nut-pile smackdown that perhaps Biden really is a liberal Brit, and therefore a foreigner not to be trusted. Next Sean Hannity will demand that Pennsylvania-born Biden produce his birth certificate and, when produced, will ignore it. I can see the Fox News splash now: “Is Joe Biden Really an American Citizen – How Can We Be Sure?”

3. Obama will take a hit for naming Biden since Joe has been in the US Senate for over 30 years, longer than John Sidney McBush III. “Some change you can believe in,” the Tighty-Righties will sneer without embarrassment while in the next paragraph they praise their sealed-in-amber candidate, trying to drag the country back to the Age of the Cold War and a victory in Vietnam – I mean, Iraq.

Also, look for McCainiac ads quoting Biden during the 2008 Dem primary debates wherein he called Obama too inexperienced to be president, and for his ‘yea’ vote on the Iraq invasion. I hope the Obama campaign has some quick short answers ready for these slaps up the side of the head.

Biden’s Good Points:

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August 22, 2008

The Tattlesnake – McCain’s Latest Shameful Four-Play Edition

Double-Deuces This Month — And August Isn’t Over Yet…

1. McCain’s Threadbare Surge Suit, Part Deux: The most recent misinformational sludge oozing its way through the Big Media pipeline is John McCain’s continued insistence that Bush’s build-up of US troops in Baghdad, AKA ‘The Surge,’ worked to quell most of the violence over there. This is more bizarre McCain piffle that any decent journalist could demolish in a few hours of research on the Inner-tubes. The increase in US troop strength focused on Baghdad, not the al-Anbar province and the rest of Iraq. For most of the country, and in neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital city itself, it was millions of dollars in baksheesh bribery to Iraqi warlords, courtesy of the flat-broke American taxpayer, and a tacit agreement among the warring Iraqi factions to keep a low profile for a while, to perhaps lull the Americans into finally leaving, that has resulted in a lessening in violence, much more so than any enhanced US military presence. Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, estimated to be 50 to 100,000 strong, are temporarily dormant, and the tribes of Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province, formerly our most dedicated enemies, have taken US bribes to pursue Al-Qaeda, whom they hate a tad more than the American military. Both factions, however, will not be quelled indefinitely. Now, even the marionettes in the al-Maliki government are asking us to get out within 16 months, per Obama’s withdrawal plan. Since the Iraqis follow the election news in the US very closely and clearly favor an Obama victory in November, here’s an October Surprise for the Republicans – if it appears a month before the election that McCain is likely to win, look for an upsurge in violence in Iraq on such a scale as to make McCain’s fevered “The surge is working!” chant as repugnant and risible as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.

2. This is Leadership? There was McCain all over the airwaves last week, delivering a speech per day on the Russia-Georgia dust-up that Putin ungraciously ended with a truce, denying wannabe CinC John-Boy the ability to play the “Russians are coming!” panic card he so obviously salivated over like Flounder in Animal House: “Oh, boy, is this great!” Naturally our leash-trained Punditrocracy and their fellow carnival performers in the BM barked on command to spotlight McCain’s fear-inducing drivel, most of which sounded like it was lifted straight out of some Red Scare pamphlet from the McCarthy Era. For days, I heard all about McCain’s ‘leadership’ for informing us the Russian Bear was back with teeth and claws; of his daily intimate phone chats with Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili; and about how totally awesome it was that he dispatched Tweedle-Dum Joe Lieberman and Tweedle-Dumber Lindsey Graham to illegally conduct US foreign policy overseas without portfolio. Had the vacationing Obama done any of this, he would, of course, have been grimly called to account by the BM for being too presumptuous – the nerve of the guy, pretending to be president when he hasn’t been elected — particularly if he’d attempted, as the arrogant McCain did, to speak for the American people. But one question left unasked in the midst of media praise for the GOP Golden Child — a seasoned military leader who’s never commanded anything that didn’t end in disaster, and a master at foreign affairs who advocated the idiotic Iraq invasion and has supported nearly every Bush catastrophe since – was this: What did all of McCain’s speechifying and posing and dispatching of minions actually accomplish? As far as I can tell, it’s somewhere between zip and zilch. If this is an example of his ‘leadership’ in a crisis, it may be time for the nation to collectively take the gas pipe, should McCain wheedle his way into the presidency.

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August 21, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Rachel in TV Lady Clothes Edition

Wit and Intelligence Increasingly Crawling Its Way Onto the Cable TV News Schedule as Maddow Nails Down Her Own MSNBC Hour

As mentioned by Your Tattlesnake months ago, Rachel Maddow has finally sealed a deal with MSNBC, getting everything she wanted – choice of guests, choice of topics, no ‘funny’ comedian co-host, and the coveted spot following the cable news network’s most successful entry, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Her as-yet-untitled show debuts on Sept. 8, 2008 at 9:00pmET, just in time to dissect the presidential election with Maddow’s arched-eyebrow irony, unpretentious delivery and solid grasp of the issues. Rachel’s naturally attractive TV presence, fetching both men and women viewers, should put her in good shape to make a serious run at CNN’s Larry King Live and that unwatchable bag of flaming dog poop hosted by Sean Hannity over at Fox. (Sorry, Colmes.) Word is The Verdict with Dan Abrams will move to the slot following Rachel’s show and that NBC execs are seeking a political comic in the mold of Bill Maher to fill out the late-night hour at eleven ET, with VH1′s Paul F. Tompkins and The Daily Show’s John Oliver said to be leading the list of candidates. All four shows would then be rebroadcast starting at midnight, mercifully ending the present low-rated ‘doc bloc’ programming. MSNBC will also cause regressive heads to spontaneously combust as the network embraces the liberal/progressive label with more gusto since they found out – guess what? – in the current horrid economy, L/P’s have more disposable income than the poor wretches still watching Fox, a strong selling point to advertisers.

Prediction: Rachel will dominate the time slot by November.

August 19, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Corsi for Dummies Edition

Was ‘The Obama Nation’ Author Convicted of Distributing Child Pornography in 2003?

Jerome R. Corsi is the author of “The Obama Nation,” [1] a book that includes what influential columnist Joseph A. Palermo has dubbed an “excrementitious narrative” [2] packed with lies [3] and achieved The New York Times’ bestseller list by suspicious means [4]. Corsi also co-authored, with John E. O’Neill, the equally excremental “Unfit For Command” [5] in 2004, which helped sink decorated Vietnam war hero John Kerry’s bid for the presidency.

Now a reputable news source [6] has reported that Corsi was convicted of peddling child pornography in 2003. “In early 2003, authorities indicate, Corsi was indicted for the distribution of child pornography. …Corsi was handed a lenient sentence that included no prison time.” [7] This is not difficult to believe since those on the Republican right, such as former Congressman Mark Foley, have a consistent inclination towards this sort of vile pornography and the despicable use of underage children for sexual satisfaction [8] and typically receive lenient sentences from Republican judges. [9] It’s undeniable that Corsi has a deviant obsession with, as he puts it, “buggering boys” [10a] and “boy bumpers,” [10b] as evidenced in his past statements.

Is Corsi a Racist?

Corsi has demonstrated his strong affiliation to racist white supremacists, both in the past and recently. [11] It is not hard to imagine that someone of this mindset would agree wholeheartedly with these words of David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, “Obama is a visual aid for white Americans who just don’t get it yet that we have lost control of our country, and unless we get it back we are heading for complete annihilation as a people.” [12] The idea of a black man as president no doubt has Corsi crawling the walls. [13]

What we are left with is a clear picture of Jerome R. Corsi as a perverted white racist peddler of lies and child porn who would be welcomed by NAMBLA. [14] This is a man, plainly, who is not to be trusted. [15]

(Please make sure you read the footnotes and my final paragraph below the fold.)

Footnotes:

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August 15, 2008

The Tattlesnake — Wolf Woman On the Prowl and Other Howlers Edition

Is There a Full Moon?

– Hawaii Jive-O: Cokie “Larry Talbot” Roberts just can’t get over Barack Obama going on vacation in a – gasp! – “foreign, exotic” locale like Hawaii, where he was born and raised, and where his grandmother still lives. It just “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” she blathered dementedly on ABC’s This Week last Sunday, even though she reluctantly admitted that she knows “Hawaii is a state” and all, but it seems in Cokie’s World it’s not a real blood-and-guts American state like, say, one-time secessionist Louisiana, her birthplace. (It’s a uniquely dumb angle of attack on Obama, especially considering that the audience for Cokie’s Sunday morning entrail-readings on ABC generally have intact frontal lobes and go on vacation there themselves, and a flip-off even the rest of the Punditocracy apparently thinks is too goofy to echo.)**

Then the very next day on NPR’s Morning Edition, the radio network’s Senior News Analyst “Two Hits” Cokie — part of the Steve and Edie Roberts power couple who no doubt vacation in the blue-collar Indiana Dunes when not busy traversing gossipy Washington cocktail parties, primping for TV appearances, and regurgitating David Broder’s latest conventional wisdom — reiterated her batty babblings regarding the “exotic” and “odd” vacation spot of Hawaii, but omitted her ABC suggestion that Obama instead go to mundane Myrtle Beach, SC, for his down time. Gee, if he had, I wonder what she’d be carping about then? “It’s incredible to me that Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and still has his 85-year-old white grandmother living there, would take this opportunity to politicize even his vacation by going to Myrtle Beach – why, he has no family or connections to that area! Is he ashamed of his white grandmother, afraid it might put off some black voters by reminding them of his mixed racial heritage? He should have visited her in Hawaii – I mean, it is a US state, after all!” And that’s the way the sausage is made these days by our ‘Obama-friendly’ Big Media, folks.

**(Correction: <Today’s New York Times features an article by Michael Falcone that repeats Cokie’s nonsense.)

– They Like Me; They Really Like Me! Check the people surrounding McCain at a real public event, as opposed to those green-screen Berlin beer hall meetings with the obvious party-hack GOPbots cheering as one at his Talking Points and giggling at his lame jokes. I saw a clip just the other day on MSNBC from a factory in Ohio, and the ‘average workers’ standing behind McNasty all looked like they just ate wallpaper paste. The moneybags Republican factory owner, drooling over paying no taxes under the GOP, no doubt ordered his wage slave proles to provide PR window-dressing for Johnny Mac’s eruptions, but they just couldn’t force themselves drag a smile along. ($100 bucks to gas up the beast and losing your home will do that to you.) Reminded me of the facial expressions of real combat troops in Iraq when the loathed Rummy came calling – “You can order me here to greet him, but I don’t have to look like I enjoy it.”

– Unprecedented: Speaking of the military, Jack Cafferty reported on CNN on Aug. 15th that, for the first time in many years, the military is donating more money to the candidate without military experience than the veteran. Obama’s campaign is apparently racking up the bucks from our people in uniform, nearly twice as much as the Republican ‘War Hero.’ Perhaps they’ve realized that the screwy GOP doesn’t know how to fight a war or take care of the troops.

– What does it say about McCain’s integrity that he’s willing to take money from this slick pile of money-humpin’ Christopublican offal? Read on:

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August 13, 2008

The Tattlesnake – ‘Underdog’ McCain’s Rocky Road Edition

Does the Superficial Stupidity Never Cease? CNN reported Aug. 12th that at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania recently, his campaign played the theme from ‘Rocky’ to announce his entrance. Oh, boy. Yep, we know the not-so-subtle subtext: Long-shot working-class white guy crawls into the ring against a snooty, pampered black champ for the Heavyweight title. Has anyone in McCain’s zoo actually seen this film? In the first ‘Rocky,’ the black champ ends up winning the fight after the white guy takes a bloody beating.

Incidentally, where are the Big Media fulminations over the presumptuousness of McCain speaking for “every American” regarding the Russia-Georgia conflict? If that isn’t presumptuous, I don’t know what is.

Praying For Reign: You may have read that James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is trying to stir up a mass prayer asking the Lawd to provide a deluge of rain to drown out Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver, August 28th. Nice folks these far-right Christians.

Aside from the fact that Dobson so far does not support McCain, and has said he could never bring himself to vote for him, what if the weather in Colorado’s largest city is nice that day? Will the wingnut Family Focusers admit that the Almighty isn’t listening to them and prefers Obama for president? Furthermore, will they stop invoking God’s name for the crass political purposes of influencing an election and go pound sand? (Update: The video advocating that Obama’s speech be rained out has been removed from the FF website and the perpetrator is now claiming it was all just a joke.)

August 11, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Double-Take On the News Edition

You Could Get Whiplash

“Somewhere between the stained blue dress and the vice president shooting a guy in the face, between swift boat lies and ‘war on terra’ alibis, the absurd became the ordinary, facts became optional and satire became superfluous.”
– Leonard Pitts Jr., “When Hysteria and Satire Meet,” The Miami Herald, July 17, 2008.

McCain the Antichrist?Huhhhh? I’m not a big fan of Johnny MacFlipFlop, but the Antichrist in the flesh? Whoa! I smell Rove: This is perhaps the only way the GOP will get far-right Christians to vote for McNasty – by convincing fringe Christopublicans his election will hasten the End Times and bring on the Rapture. Oh, brother. Or maybe Obama is the Antichrist, as Time Magazine postulates the McCain camp is trying to depict him, and the Fundies will vote for BHO to bring about Armageddon. Or maybe they’ll vote against the Antichrist, depending on which one it really is – if you’re a wingnut who believes in a Republican Country Club Jay-zus backed by his Invisible Omnipotent Dad, you certainly have a lot of figurin’ to do this election – and these are Godly folk who taint fond o’ that thinkin’ stuff much. What to do, what to do…who’s got the snakes this week?

– The Big Media Fatuous Fathead of the Week Award: It’s a squeaker, but the prize goes to Amy Chozick of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for devoting over a thousand words to speculating whether Obama is ‘too thin and fit’ to be president. (more…)

August 8, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Sen. Buffalo Chip’s ‘Female Trouble’ Edition

Yet Another Aging Republican Frat Boy Vying for the ‘Ladies Choice’ Award

In the latest installment of John McCain’s bizarre relationship with women, he gleefully offered up his long-suffering wife as a contestant for the X-rated ‘Miss Buffalo Chip’ Beauty Pageant at the Sturgis, SD, Biker Rally, an event which included simulating fellatio on a banana and something called a ‘pickle-licking’ contest, although it’s not clear, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, if that last item is actually part of the beauty pageant or a separate Olympic sport.

McCain, hunched over and reading his speech from a music stand, was caught on videotape grinning and crowing,

“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”
– From CNN, August 5, 2008.

Yes, that line was part of McCain’s script. Gee, the president’s wife AND an Easy Rider ‘sissy seat’ occupant in a string bikini — will wonders never cease in the alternate universe of the McCain campaign? If elected, will Misogyny Mac be president of the US and the Hell’s Angels as well? (The Carpetbagger Report has further details.)

I’ve had friends who were bikers; some of them were good people, and I think Americans should live, dress and act however they choose, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else – but I wouldn’t want any of them in the White House. (And they wouldn’t want to be there either.) The bikers I’ve met roughly demarcate into two groups: the mellow ‘hippies on hogs’ who are generally decent folks who like the freedom of the ‘ride fast’ motorcycle lifestyle, and the angry, violent, usually racist “I’ll kill your ass and piss in your skull” types who live to cause other people grief. The latter were the crazies who murdered that black guy at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert in 1969 and I’d bet a sidecar stuffed with sawbucks that those were the same types who were revving their engines while McCain spoke.

At any rate, you might think this would be one of those “Aha, here’s the politician’s true character laid bare” moments the Big Media likes to spring on Dems, from Hillary’s laugh to Obama ordering orange juice instead of coffee at a diner, but, except for Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams on MSNBC, it was hardly mentioned save for a few male pundits who, chuckling indulgently, dismissed it as more of McCain’s ‘maverick’ sensibility joined with his ‘fighter jock mentality.’ Yep, that’s just what we need in the next president – a guy mired in the frat boy sexism of the mid-20th century to lead us in the 21st.

Earlier this year there was some baseless bantering by the Punditocracy that Obama might have some ‘problem’ with women, but these same Below-the-Beltway talkers are silent on McCain’s manifest disrespect for those who don’t happen to be male. McCain’s degrading relationships with women have a long history, as Kate Sheppard delineates in “McSexist: McCain’s War on Women,” (In These Times, July 24, 2008):

(more…)

August 7, 2008

What McCain Isn’t Telling You About Offshore Oil Drilling

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 12:51 pm

And neither is our corporately-run Big Media whose owners, no doubt, have some Big Oil stock in their portfolios.

Aside from the fact that, without federal regulation of the kind that’s anathema to neocon Republicans, there is no way to guarantee that any offshore drilling will produce lower prices at the pump, here’s the rundown on another angle of this GOP scam to reward Big Oil and then possibly deny even that trickle of offshore oil — available in ten to twenty years — to Americans, courtesy of Cenk Uygur at Huffington Post:

If We Drill in the U.S., We Don’t Get the Oil
By Cenk Uygur, Huffington Post
Posted on August 1, 2008

One thing has been driving me crazy about this drilling debate — everyone seems to assume that if we drill for oil in the US, that we will get the oil. And hence, we won’t be dependent on foreign oil anymore. But we won’t get anything, Exxon-Mobil will.

The oil that comes from that drilling will not be United States property (Republicans aren’t suggesting we nationalize the oil companies, are they?). It will be the property of whichever oil company got the rights to that contract. They can then sell it to whoever they like — and they will. They will sell it on the world market, so the Chinese will have just as much access to the oil that comes out of the coast of Florida as we will.

(more…)

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