BartBlog

October 2, 2008

The Tattlesnake – I Knew Sarah Palin Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:49 pm

…Or, At Least, Someone Like Her

Centuries ago, before personal computers, Blackberries, cell phones and The Google, Your Decrepit Tattler worked for a company that published a glossy magazine in a mid-sized, Midwestern US city. The glossy was eponymously named after the city, and the company also owned the local civic-booster travel guide and an FM radio station.

One day the word went out – the company had hired that year’s winner of the state beauty pageant to flack for the magazine, and proudly announced that the owner/publisher was confident she would go on to become Miss America, thereby enhancing the magazine’s ‘national prestige and image.’ All of us Worker Bees were ordered to come up with ways to promote the wonderfulness of Wendy Jo Stepford – her real name has been lost in the mists of age, but that’s a serviceable substitute – making sure we ‘excited’ local and state media coverage of her and, of course, the magazine for which she stood.

Our Advertising Director Ron, the dog, eagerly took it upon himself to be her personal escort and tutor, and arranged photo-ops around town to display her at various events – inaugurating the Oktoberfest celebration, cutting the ribbon at a car dealership opening, saluting the interstate trucking industry, dining at a new trendy restaurant – where she could smile with incredibly large teeth, open her eyes unnaturally wide, and proclaim forgettable hooey with the breathy guileless sincerity of a pretty 20-year-old in a miniskirt.

At first, the plans of the owner/publisher went smoothly – wherever she went, Wendy Jo attracted crowds of young women asking her about her choice in cosmetics and wardrobe, and leering old lechers who lusted to be her Sugar Daddy, and the media couldn’t get enough of her blandly sweet persona and trite, platitude-laden lexicon. Plus, she looked good in a two-piece bathing suit – somewhat incongruous for a German beer festival where she was posed with ruddy men in lederhosen, but it put her picture on the front page of the city’s highest-circulation newspaper.

The first crack in Wendy Jo’s edifice occurred during that suds-soaked Teutonic rave-up when she was asked about the history of Oktoberfest – they might as well have asked her to define Quantum Mechanics. She paused for a long uneasy moment, eyes practically bugging out of her head in naive intensity while her mouth froze in a large-mouthed professional beauty contestant grin; then came the groaner, delivered brightly: “Uh, those Nazis in Germany had a lot of bad stuff about them, but I think we can all agree that Oktoberfest was a pretty darn good idea!” Oh, you betcha! Gemütlichkeit!

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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.”

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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!

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September 27, 2008

The Tattlesnake – The Rate the Debate Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:56 am

And, Don’t Worry, I’ll Keep It Brief…

The best and the worst of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain in Oxford, Mississippi, Sept. 26, 2008, plus a little free advice to Barack:

– Obama’s Best Moments: Nailing McCain on how often he’s been wrong about Iraq; hanging Junior around McCain’s neck like a millstone.

– McCain’s Best Moments: Remembering part of his record accurately, if not all of it, and the names of some obscure foreign leaders, which he probably practiced all afternoon to pronounce correctly.

– Obama’s Worst Moments: Letting McCain interrupt him and get away with it, and the unanswered charges by McCain, such as the $900-some million in earmarks supposedly racked up by Obama. Also, agreeing with McCain too often.

– McCain’s Worst Moments: Aside from accidentally admitting, as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, that the US had tortured people in their custody in defiance of international and national law, after all these years of BushCo denials, McCain brought up Sarah Palin briefly and expressed his pride in her. Hasn’t this doofus been paying attention? She’s a disaster on wheels, and she just dropped 14 points in the polls.

– Worst Attempt at a Joke: McCain, slamming federal research money for studying bear DNA: “I don’t know if it’s a criminal issue or a paternal issue.” Head smack! He meant ‘paternity.’

– Best Physical Appearance: Obama — he looked calm and presidential throughout the debate.

– Worst Physical Appearance: McCain’s hunched and hunkered-down stature, and grimacing during some of Obama’s answers – he looked like he was either trying to pinch a loaf in his Depends or do a bad impersonation of Don Rickles.

– Best Debate ‘Strategery’ (a tie): Obama for pounding McCain with the hideous specter of the loathed Dubya and staying cool, fool, in the face of McCain’s attacks; McCain for pummeling Obama on his lack of ‘understanding’ and ‘naiveté,’ even though it opened the way for Obama to prove him wrong, which he did.

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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.

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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.

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September 20, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Increasingly Ridiculous GOP Economic Excuses Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:40 am

Bleeding Stupid

REPUBLICANS: “We’re doing everything we can to stop the bleeding.”

VOTERS: “Who shot this guy?”

REPUBLICANS: “We don’t know and we don’t want to find out.”

VOTERS: “What?”

REPUBLICANS: “We don’t believe in finger-pointing.”

VOTERS: “You mean you don’t want to know who shot this guy so that we can hold them responsible for the crime?”

REPUBLICANS: “Uh, we don’t want to indulge in the blame game.”

VOTERS: “So, you’re saying you don’t care — whoever did this can just roam free to do it again?”

REPUBLICANS: “That’s finding fault. We think finding fault is counter-productive.”

VOTERS: “You’re crazy.”

REPUBLICANS: “No, we’re moving forward in a bipartisan manner.”

VOTERS: “Say, what’s that in your pocket? Why, it looks like a gun!”

REPUBLICANS: “Uh, er…that’s just a banana ’cause I’m so glad to see you!”

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?

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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 15, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Special Who Said It? Quiz Edition

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

No cheating with ‘the Google,’ now. Answers below the fold.

1. “My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who … God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian … I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. … Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.”

A. Sarah Palin at her Juneau Church last June.
B. James Dobson at the Focus on the Family Summit last week.
C. Rev. Sun Myung Moon in 1979.
D. Adolf Hitler in 1922.

2. “I am prepared and need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

A. Joe Biden in a Democratic primary debate in December 2007.
B. John Kerry to Newsweek, 2003.
C. Newt Gingrich on Fox News, April 2006.
D. John McCain in a GOP primary debate, October 2007.

3. “If the real thing don’t do the trick, you better make up something quick.”

A. Karl Rove to political science students at Liberty University in 2006.
B. Richard Nixon to John Ehrlichman in the Oval Office, May 2004.
C. From the lyrics to Huey Long’s 1930 campaign song “A Chicken in Every Pot.”
D. From the lyrics to Heart’s song “Barracuda,” played to close out the 2008 Republican Convention.

4. “No, I’m not going to define it.” [After being asked to define 'honor.']

A. Richard Nixon in a press conference, October 1973.
B. Barack Obama on NBC’s The Today Show, October 2007.
C. John McCain in an interview with Time Magazine, August 2008.
D. Rudy Giuliani in an interview with The New Yorker in 2005.

5. “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. … And I won’t be buried under their damn flag.”

A. Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a sermon, June 2006.
B. Joe Vogler, founder of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.
C. Barack Obama’s father in 1962.
D. Saddam Hussein in June 2003.

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September 14, 2008

The Tattlesnake – An Insidious GOP Email Campaign to Sucker Women Voters Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:49 pm

The ‘Obama is a Muslim’ Tripe Was Bad Enough, But This?

I receive many daffy emails from my conservative acquaintances, usually on the order of chest-thumping twaddle like “A Simple History Lesson” involving conservative cavemen who productively hunt and fish while Milquetoast liberals serve the beer, set the table and polish the silverware. That none of this is the least bit historical or even humorous doesn’t deter the modern office-bound neoconservative — typically a wimpy chickenhawk who these days hunts for bargains at the gas pump and fishes for compliments from women 20 years his junior — from forwarding it all around with the challenge to send it to a liberal and giggle as he gets angry. Neocons follow a tired script; as they sink deeper in their self-created quicksand they scream louder that it doesn’t exist to make themselves feel better. From their perspective, it’s better than admitting you’ve been dead wrong and taken in by cynical con artists like Karl Rove, I suppose.

The latest batch of anti-Obama email is mostly of the ‘Scary Rev. Wright Hates Whites’ variety, even though Obama severed ties to Wright months ago. (Ah, who lets facts get in the way of an unfunny cartoon, right?) One that stood out was a drawing of Obama, Wright and Louis Farrakhan singing in unison about the ‘change you can believe in’ and another was more blatant, with Wright shouting “God damn America and kill whitey!” with Obama nodding assent from an aisle seat while wearing a bag on his head. “I’m not here,” reads the balloon emanating from the Obama character.

But this fetid crapola is nothing compared to the one I received yesterday from the wife of a friend of mine, a nice, white, middle-aged, suburban-bred women, with a tendency to moderate conservatism.

The email, titled “Why Women Should Vote,” subtitled “A Message for All Women,” starts with a brief history of the women’s Suffrage movement and then focuses on a November 15, 1917 event wherein women were jailed and beaten for marching on the White House demanding the right to vote, most of the information gleaned from the laudable HBO film “Iron Jawed Angels.”

After informing modern women of all their ancestors went though to give them the right to vote 88 years ago, the email implores them to make sure and use that right this year. It closes with this paragraph:

“We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party — remember to vote.”

But the kicker, stuck in at the end, is:

“History is being made.”

When I read it, the obvious conclusion that came to mind is that the reader should vote for the ‘historic’ candidacy of Sarah Palin, regardless of the supposedly non-partisan nature of the email’s contents.

That the Suffragettes advocated policies that the regressive Palin is against – such as equal pay and equal rights for women – almost goes without saying; that Palin herself, should she have been alive in 1917, would have been condemning the women’s Suffrage movement is also obvious – she’s a traditional conservative woman, and that was the stance of traditional conservative women of that era.

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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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — 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.

(more…)

September 5, 2008

The Tattlesnake — An Ad Obama Should Run Immediately Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:49 pm

But Probably Won’t…

Spot Title: ‘Community Service’

IMAGES: Montage of candy stripers helping senior citizens and feeding disabled vets; volunteers serving food at a disaster relief shelter, piling up sandbags during a flood, handing groceries to a family at a food pantry.

VOICE-OVER: “Every day, all over America, volunteers willingly give up their free time to help their fellow citizens, a proud tradition of helping others that has made America great…”

CUT TO IMAGES & AUDIO: Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin snickering over Obama’s community service at the GOP convention.

V.O.: “Yet, to hear the Republican Party, their selfless efforts to help their fellow Americans and that tradition of aiding those in need is only worthy of snide laughter…”

CUT TO IMAGE: Ask the Republican Party – what do they have against community service?

V.O.: “Ask the Republican Party – what do they have against community service?”

CUT TO IMAGES OF OBAMA & BIDEN

V.O.: “Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe in service to America – not only in Washington, but in local communities across the land. They believe this country was built on Americans helping other Americans. Why does the Republican Party have a problem with this?”

CUT TO IMAGE: Elect Obama-Biden in 2008 – if you believe in helping America.

If Obama doesn’t run an ad like this soon, and make it a regular talking point, Thom Hartmann will be right – the GOP will paint community service as some kind of far-left liberal tripe to be snickered at.

September 4, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Teach Me Tonight Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:56 pm

John McCain Instructs Sarah Palin On the Fine Points of Foreign Policy…

McCAIN: “Okay, now, let’s start with Iraq. What do you know about Iraq?”

PALIN: “Well, I’ve been to Kuwait for a short visit and that’s right next door to Iraq!”

McCAIN: “Is it? Okay, then, you’re an expert on Iraq! Let me give you one tip, though: Don’t let the reporters trip you up on that ‘Shia-Sunni’ stuff. Listen, they’re all the same over there – just a bunch of crazy ragheads peddling carpets.”

PALIN: “Uh, what about those Kurds or whatever I’ve heard about?”

McCAIN: “Ah, curds are something you get in cottage cheese. Don’t bother your pretty little head over that BS; I know I don’t.”

PALIN: “How about Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan?”

McCAIN: “Don’t worry about ‘em. More crazy ragheads and we’ll just blow ‘em off the map if they cause any trouble.”

PALIN: “Well, what else do I need to know?”

McCAIN: “Let’s see, you’ve been to Germany once, so you’ve got Europe knocked, and your plane touched down in Ireland, so that covers the UK, and you know about Russia since you’re right across the water from ‘em – that’s about it except for China and North Korea. Hey, did you see the Olympics on TV?”

PALIN: “Sure.”

McCAIN: “A lot of the people in the audience there were Chinese – you know, like gooks. The North Koreans are the same damn thing. Just watch out for ‘em, is all, ’cause they’re known for being diabolical. I read all about it in those Fu Manchu books when I was a boy. Man, when I become president, I’m gonna send in the Marines and rip that Chink demon Manchu a new one!”

PALIN: “What about all of this stuff in Georgia I hear on the radio, war or whatever? I don’t even know where that place is.”

McCAIN: “It’s just north of Florida. You don’t have to worry about any of that crap – that’s just Cheney trying to start the Cold War again to give us Republicans something to campaign on this year. Sure can’t campaign on the wonderful friggin’ economy can we? Ha, ha!”

PALIN: “So, is there anything else I need to know?”

McCAIN: “Nope. You’re as much of an expert on foreign policy as I am now.”

PALIN: “Wow, I never realized how easy foreign policy really is! Thanks, John!”

McCAIN: “C’mon over here and show Big John how grateful you are.”

PALIN: “I’ll get the Viagra. Do you want me to wear the moosehead again?”

McCAIN: “Oh, yeah, gotta have the moosehead. Heh, heh, heh — you’re gonna make a great Vice President, kiddo!”

September 1, 2008

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

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:51 pm

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.”

(more…)

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