The Vet Who Did Not Vet

Required Reading Before the Election

It wasn't incompetence. It was systematic and it was planned.

What's happened to us and to Iraq in the last 7+ years was also predictable and inevitable given what we elected. This isn't news, but unfortunately, some of us still haven't gotten the memo, hard as that may be to comprehend.

So it bears repeating.

Naomi Klein gave exposed the stinking anatomy of so-called "free market" (Chicago School) economics. Thomas Frank now comes to help us get our minds around what happens when we elect conservatives to rule.

Well, there's a relationship between what they say they believe (shrink government and then drown it in the bathtub) and what they do when they're in a position to govern (Katrina, crumbling infrastructure at home: $85 Billion to war profiteers in Iraq).

Read The Wrecking Crew and The Shock Doctrine before the election, especially if you think John McCain is your friend. He isn't.

Snip of the Day

"The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush's failed radical conservative "you're on your own buddy" philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an 'elitist'?"

McNasty McSame

The McSame you won't see in the US press.

Oooooooo Ruh Roh!

Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

Eeeeeeuw. In his home state, even.

Think the Phoenicians know something 'bout they homeboy?

I Wanna Know Where Love Is!

FI-NUH-LEE!

Finuhlee is our lead scent Chi, whom we dispatch to search for truth-in-advertising about Senator John McCain, AKA McNutz, McBush, McWar, McFavors.

It's hard work, but today, in the piles of senatorial ethics and straight-shooter underbrush surrounding the AZ GOP senator and presidential candidate, Finuhlee turned up this, ahem, gem from the New York Times, about the 26-year mutually loving relationship between McBush and Arizona gazillionaire, lifetime "free trade" supporter, and real estate developer Don Diamond. An excerpt:

"In California, the McCain aide’s assistance with the Army helped Mr. Diamond complete a purchase in 1999 that he soon turned over for a $20 million profit. And Mr. McCain’s letter of recommendation reinforced Mr. Diamond’s selling point about his McCain connections as he pursued — and won in 2005 — a potentially much more lucrative deal to develop a resort hotel and luxury housing.

"In Arizona, Mr. McCain has helped Mr. Diamond with matters as small as forwarding a complaint in a regulatory skirmish over the endangered pygmy owl, and as large as introducing legislation remapping public lands. In 1991 and 1994, Mr. McCain sponsored two laws sought by Mr. Diamond that resulted in providing him millions of dollars and thousands of acres in exchange for adding some of his properties to national parks. The Arizona senator co-sponsored a third similar bill now before the Senate." [Emphases added.] More

For a closer look at Mr. Diamond's recent donations (reported)--or anyone else's, for that matter--Arianna Huffington has provided a helpful database. Be sure to scroll down, in Diamond's case. Wwhile there, you can also peruse the affectionate support given to McNutz from the senior management team at Diamond Ventures. Don't you just know there's way more love there.

And while you're at it, read their bios, available at the Diamond Ventures site. These little tidbits are useful to connect the dots. For instance, take David Goldstein. Notice all his magnanimous public service on behalf of habitat conservation and desert land use. No self-interest there. Now notice his campaign contributions -- the Goldstein of Diamond Ventures, not the Minneapolis Goldstein.

Bless his tireless little heart, Finuhlee also turned up this little jewel on Open Secrets:

"Lobbyists in McCain Land Deal Have Close Ties to Senator," Post Reports
Published on May 9, 2008
"The Washington Post's story this morning about a land deal supported by John McCain that benefits his donors, bundlers and staffers illustrates how furiously Washington's revolving door spins. It's enough to make even a senator dizzy...." (Continue)

And my personal favorite, widespread indicators of McCain's particularly loving care of Peabody Western:

". . . (Public Law 93-531 as amended in 1996 (Partition), 1999 (Settlement), 2001 (Enforcement of Resettlement) and 2005 (Expansion of Resettlement) . . . bills introduced by Senator McCain - has led to the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Hon Abdeltalif Amor's condemnation of human rights violations inside the US, over the stripping of rights and forced resettlement of these gentle and deeply spiritual band of Dineh-Navajo Indians from Arizona, swept off of lands they'd owned since 1500 A.D. so that Peabody Western Coal could mine the Coal from beneath their farmlands and tap their wells to slurry pipe it to a power station in Nevada)."

For more on this, a little legislative history and this little item in which Peabody alleges that in a deal for Peabody facilitated by Donald Hodel, Reagan's Interior Secretary, the Tribe sought "special preferences." AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Last but not least, McCain's little family-owned jet travel present from his efforts at campaign finance reform. You do know that he pursues his presidential campaign traveling on wife Cindy's private jet, right?

Serving up John McCain as the champion of ethics in government and campaign finance reform is like serving up Ann Coulter as the good manners maven. In my opinion, his one great lifetime achievement was marrying a woman with a whole lot of money. After that, he's just a dime-a-dozen crony Republican. His POW service cuts him some slack--which he's well and truly used up by now. But it sure doesn't erase the entire rest of his life, or relieve him of the obligation to disclose his favors, the sources of his financing, his wife's tax statements, and the sources of her fortune. After all, Cindy McCain is no more irrelevant to his career and campaign financing that Theresa Heinz Kerry was to John Kerry's.

I wanna know where the love is. I SO wanna know.

More on campaign financing.

AZ's Solar Plant imperiled? And Whoa, Mexico, Latin America Get Muscle?

Check it out.

From The New Republic:

WASHINGTON--It could be said that Latin America will come of age politically the day that Pemex, Mexico's oil behemoth, ceases to be a state monopoly. Until that happens, the psyche of many Latin Americans will be beholden to the mythical notion that government-owned natural resources are the custodians of national identity. That is why President Felipe Calderon's efforts to open up the oil sector to private investment in Mexico have profound cultural implications.

Legislation that would allow foreign investors to sign contracts with Pemex in order to explore, distribute and refine oil falls short of what is needed. But given the taboo that surrounds anything related to Pemex and the fact that the president's party is in the minority, Calderon's move deserves ample credit.

Go here for more. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum . . .

Oh, and from The Christian Science Monitor:

Phoenix - The sun shines 325 days a year in Arizona, on average, and some here see that as the state's biggest energy asset.

But fledgling efforts to turn Arizona into the solar capital of the world depend on making the initial investment in new energy plants affordable – something that could become much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, if a federal tax credit for solar projects expires at the end of the year as scheduled.

Time to call your progressive senators, Arizona.

AZ's Annual Mecham Memorial March of the Morons

Led by such towering giants of wisdom and statecraft as Mesa Representative Karen Johnson and (former) Parker Representative Babara Blewster, Arizona's Republican legislature is queuing up again to show the world just exactly what "a bubble shy of plumb" looks like.

Johnson, known for her bill to arm school students, and Blewster, who once expressed amazement that a House colleague is Jewish because she lacks a "big hook nose," have done more than all other American women combined to prove the proposition that women really ought to stay barefoot and pregnant.

In grateful recognition of her contributions to gender equality, Blewster's GOP colleagues have nominated her observation that "even African-Americans are more advanced than Native Americans" be engraved in tasteful 106-point red, white, and blue type over their cloakroom door.

Blewster joins Johnson to lead their Republican colleagues in periodic competitions for the coveted "Bacon Award." (Note: Long-time Zonies believe that the prize was originally meant to have been called the Beacon Award, but the GOP proofreader preferred the subtle pork allusion.) The Bacon Award goes to the Republican with the highest score on the Slackjawed Stupid Index, the SSI, a measure of Arizona GOP legislators' intellectual capacity that is administered quarterly. (It doesn't take long.)

However, keen GOP-watchers know that springtime really brings out AZ Republicans' primordial urge to pee in the gene pool. For it is in late April that they conduct their annual Edwin Mecham Memorial March of the Morons. Mecham, you may recall, graced the state as governor until he was impeached for various things. But not before inviting a national boycott of Arizona for his decision to prevent the state from celebrating Martin Luther King Day.

This year's Grand Marshall, of course, is GOP Sen. Russell Pearce. Pearce made national headlines recently when he introduced the fondly-titled "employer sanctions" measure, which actually turned out to be the "bankrupt Arizona" bill. It penalizes employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants to do hideous things like pick crops, bus tables, and make beds. . Consequently, these workers are fleeing our state, taking their wallets with them. The result? Many AZ agricultural, service, entertainment, mining, construction, and landscaping businesses are filing for bankruptcy< This has the effect of shutting off the entire downstream flow of their tax dollars. In all, Pearce has given us home foreclosures, lagging rentals, closed businesses, swelling unemployment rolls, gutted school budgets, stalled highway repairs, and even more crumbling overpasses. His brilliance is surpassed only by his emulation of Jesus.

Pearce has more genius in store for us, no doubt, but he may soon be eclipsed by Scottsdale's GOP Rep. John Kavanagh. Kavanagh's newest brainchild would bar state public university and community college students from organizing groups based on race--you know, like the Black Business Students' Association and the Cinco De Mayo Festival planning committee. Kavanagh, whom we assume is illiterate, certainly hasn't read that a major corporation is cooling on Oklahoma. The reason? It's anti-diversity, homophobic climate, which is being carefully nurtured by GOP state Rep. Sally Kern. Nor has he read the Constitution, which, I'm pretty sure, guarantees freedom of association.

Not to be outdone, the heavily "Christian" and Republican Center for AZ Policy, and that darling Cathi Harrod, its main stone-thrower, are showcasing their sagacity again this year by pushing still yet again one more time for an anti-gay amendment, SCR 1042.

As you know, even though McCain supported them (of course) the sane among us kicked their asses last year by making Arizona the only state in the nation to defeat their nasty little marriage proposition. Of course it wasn't just anti-marriage and it wasn't just anti-gay. In its infinite wisdom, the Center pushed for language that also would have outlawed any cohabiting couple from receiving the privileges and benefits of marriage. I suppose we can expect them to sharpen their focus this year just to queers.

Gee, Zonies who aren't straight, white, fascist, and phobic have a lot to look forward to. Time to haul out the shit-kickers.

But wait! What's that giant sucking sound?

Oh. That's just bottom-feeding. The AZ Republican caucus is over at the neo Salt River having breakfast with GOP presidential contender and Rev. Rightwing Racist Homophobe Hagee courtier, John McCain. Oh, you heard the part about his calling Cindy the "c" word. Nice crowd.

Questions They Won't Ask McBush

Because the nation desperately needs three more weeks of the same old same old relative to Jeremiah Wright and Hillary Clinton, the following questions will not be asked of McCain and his answers will not be repeated on endless news cycles for months to come. I'm sure you have other questions that will not be asked or answered. Please advise.


How will "we" (by which I mean us and our children) pay for your war?

Explain how being indebted to China for the cost of this war secures America.

What will "we" (ditto) have to do without here at home in order to pay for your war?

The Shi'ites and Sunnis have been warring for centuries. Why will a delay in our leaving change that?

If we don't give Iraq notice, why on earth should they "step up"? We're doing the dirty work and providing billions in slush funds. Isn't that exactly the wrong incentive?

Are you afraid to stop the war because war profiteering is the only thing driving what's left of this economy?

Do you intend to ask the Department of Justice to conduct a criminal investigation into the fraud and abuse that have cost US taxpayers billions in this war, and to seek compensation? If not, why not? After allm, that fraud dwarfs the cost of earmarks.

What will you do to clean up fraud and waste in the Pentagon, and to seek restoration of overcharges from US corporations?

What was your role in forcing the sale of Navajo tribal lands on Black Mesa to outside coal companies?

Hagee, McCain, and the Media

Why is it that Republicans and their talking head shills always discover the difference between right and wrong just after they've trashed a Democrat but just before they'd have to trash a Republican if they applied the same groundrules?

NOWWWW it's not a good idea to examine a pastor in the context of a politician's reach for the White House. NOWWWWWW, when WHITE Pastor Hagee ought to be under the microscope where other viruses are examined, suddenly it's risky bidness. So says a triumvirate of Right-leaning shills on the Chris Matthews show this afternoon. One is the evangelical who left Bush's employ in disillusionment. The third is a writer for the New York Times, which always puts Democratic bad news above the fold and buries Republican bad news somewhere deep inside. For example, the flap break-ins of State Department passport files doesn't appear on P. 1. in either the Times or the Washington Post today. Nope. It might be dominating TV, but that doesn't mean it's news, right?

Hagee, after all, only insulted gays and lesbians and Catholics and women. No big. McCain won't be hurt by his having sought Hagee's endorsement, never mind the fact that Hagee also believes that the US government ought to hasten Armageddon by bombing the Middle East, and (as Matthews pointed out) McCain thinks bombing Iran is a pop song. Hello?

At a more serious level, the damage has been done to the Democrat, and now God has enlightened Chris and Co. just in time to keep them from repeating the error. McCain is excused from all political consequences of his actively having solicited the endorsement of a verbal batterer and troglodyte. Not just excused. He is actively protected by the same media that has kept Obama on the end of the Rev. Wright skewer for what, going on two weeks? This is so typically Republican, so intellectually and morally bankrupt.

So, How's It Workin' Out For Ya?

The Fool in Chief is on the tube now, giggling about how it's "intersting times," meaning that, not his but your savings are imperiled, your home is foreclosing, gas is heading to $4/gallon, and everything that depends on gas is going up in price like a skyrocket. Your groceries, utilities, medicines, and everything else.

So I want to ask all the panic-stampeded lemmings who thought John Kerry and John Edwards would be a disaster and so voted for Bush/Cheney: "Hey, how's it workin' out for ya?" Because you know what? THIS is the disaster.

And Bush 3 -- aka McMoron, McCain -- wants more of the same! Can you believe it? More war, more Bushenomics, more fundy social policy, more Cult of the Individual, more guns, more Shock Doctrine, more fat pink pigs at the federal trough while the rest of us go down like the Titanic.

And you know what? There are actually people out there, walking around, who plan to vote for McCain.

I had somebody here in my house yesterday who told me point blank that she wouldn't vote for Obama because he's a Black man, and she might not vote at all because they're all losers. She's a smart person, and someone I would never have expected to fly a racist flag at all. I'll say more about that part of the experience in another post.

To hear an intelligent, 40-something woman who has lived through the last 7 years same as the rest of us mindlessly reduce Democrats and Republicans to one interchangeable mass was simply stupefying! And this morning, an old school friend sent a cartoon cereal box around the 'net making the same point: same flakes, more nuts.

This makes me want to rise up in wrath and knock heads together. Anyone who can't tell the difference between 8 years of peace, prosperity, and a budget surplus--not to mention intact standing globally (Clinton's White House) and the endless blight that has been Bush's GOP economic, foreign, trade, and domestic policy is already dead, just walking around decomposing.

Oh, by the way. Did you know that whenever home prices tank, the wealthy go around buying up real estate? This is called "the rich get richer." They don't lose, no matter what happens to the rest of us. "Class warfare?" Are you kidding me?

The current infusions of cash into the credit stream--however vital they may be--nevertheless are bailouts of huge banking firms whose greed and corruption caused the economic meltdown in the first place--which brings to mind Gore Vidal's observation that the Republicans' economic policy is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us. And so it is, and, for as long as we vote them into office, so it ever shall be.

Kiss your notions of retirement goodbye and enroll in McDonald's School for the Service Economy, because if Bush somehow manages not to trigger a global depression this go-round, McCain will if he gets the chance.

McCain Ohhhh La La!

The New York Times's revelation about McCain and the "lady lobbyist" raises a number of questions.

One: Who leaked this?

Two: Why now?

Three: Where's the beef?

Four: If extramarital sex is relevant for Bill, why not for John?


One. My guess is that the campaign leaked it to get it out, over, and done with before the November election. Either that or, hedging my bets, this is a slimeball hurled via the NYT by the hardcore conservatives who hate McCain, and is intended to put Huckabee in the driver's seat. A bit late, that. And I'm not aware that the NYT carries water for the Far Right.

Oh my, the intrigue, the intrigue!

Two. Why now? Because better now than later.

Three. It will be interesting to see where the evidence is. Now the monkey is on the NYT's back to show the proof.

Four: Well, it won't be. We know that. Plagiarism for Obama is not what plagiarism was for Joe Biden. Avoiding Vietman service was not for W what it was for Bill. We in America have amazingly elastic standards. It all depends on who you are, what you spend, and where you spend it. There were rumors, you might recall, that 41 had a mistress, but that was well and truly quashed. My sense is that what gets quashed has to do as much with perceptions of "aristocracy" as with perceptions of "clout," not that the two don't co-vary significantly--meaning that aristocrisy virtually always has clout, and nouveau does not. Ergo, Clinton is fair game and 42 is not fair game.

I think we will speedily see the Powers That Be coalesce to ensure that this, too, will pass. You will notice that Monica and Bill and Whitewater and Hillary have not "passed."

There is a Five. It is, what will Cindy do now? If she gets her panties in a bunch, there goes John's money. Bummer!

This is the Real John McCain

From ThinkProgress.org:

Maverick Fails The Test: McCain Votes Against Waterboarding Ban
Today, the Senate brought the Intelligence Authorization Bill to the floor, which contained a provision from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) establishing one interrogation standard across the government. The bill requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.

Just hours ago, the Senate voted in favor of the bill, 51-45.

Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a former prisoner of war, has spoken strongly in favor of implementing the Army Field Manual standard. When confronted today with the decision of whether to stick with his conscience or cave to the right wing, McCain chose to ditch his principles and instead vote to preserve waterboarding:

Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, has consistently voiced opposition to waterboarding and other methods that critics say is a form torture. But the Republicans, confident of a White House veto, did not mount the challenge. Mr. McCain voted “no” on Wednesday afternoon.

The New York Times Times notes that “the White House has long said Mr. Bush will veto the bill, saying it ‘would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime.’”

After Bush vetoes the bill, McCain will again be confronted with a vote to either stand with President Bush or stand against torture. He indicated with his vote today where he will come down on that issue.

John McCain: He was against waterboarding before he was for it.

So what this means is that McCain, himself tortured, is fine with our instituting torture, which he himself has said will result in the torture of American POWs.

Tell me, where exactly is the moral high ground here? Where is the principle on which the stalwart McCain supposedly stands

I'll tell you: He has one principle: The advancement of John Mccain. End of story.

AZ's McCain Unfit for Public Office

A tip of the ear to my buddy at Blog for Arizona for this definite "need to know" piece.

Did you think forcing Native Americans off their ancient lands and stealing their resources was a thing of the past? Think again. This hideous story centrally involves the Republican presidential candidate, spans 18 years, involves over 10,000"relocated" Native Americans, and entails cruelties that most Americans do not think are possible in this country on this scale. In addition to McCain, it involves many of the same old DC Republican/Neocon insiders and corrupt corporations, and gives us a real big clue where McCain's heart will be on energy, and why.

Please, folks: Read this report summary, follow its links, and help us get the word out. This repulsive story deserves the widest exposure, and in a centered, balanced, sane world, would be widely reported. For, in the words of the spokewoman for the UN Human Rights Commission:

The Black Mesa region in Arizona, USA is home to the indigenous communities of the Dineh (Navajo) and Hopi peoples. This region also contains major deposits of coal which are being extracted by North America's largest strip mining operation. The coal mines have had a major impact on families in the region. Local water sources have been poisoned, resulting in the death of livestock. Homes near the mines suffer from blasting damage. The coal dust is pervasive, as well as smoke from frequent fires in the stockpiles. Not coincidentally, the people in the area have an unusually high incidence of kidney and respiratory disease.

The Dineh (otherwise known as Navajo) were stripped of all land title and forced to relocate. Their land was turned over to the coal companies without making any provisions to protect the burial or sacred sites that would be destroyed by the mines. People whose lives were based in their deep spiritual and life-giving relationship with the land were relocated into cities, often without compensation, forbidden to return to the land that their families had occupied for generations. People became homeless with significant increases in alcoholism, suicide, family break up, emotional abuse and death. -- Marsha Monestersky for the UN Commission on Human Rights and Women Enacting Change at the UN. "The forcible relocation of over 10,000 (Dineh) Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations."

Study synopsis:

ACSA study reveals that after assembling a team of "pro-Peabody Western Coal" Indians and obtaining a false "Hopi-Navajo" Tribal Counsel designation by the [notoriously corrupt US] Bureau of Indian Affairs for these paid Tribal representatives, in the period 1974-1996, Senator McCain was able to get large bands of the Dineh-Navajo relocated off their lands, so that Peabody Western could mine the coal under their farms at nominal expense. Common Cause has suggested McCain was indirectly compensated by street name cash contributions to his Federal Election Fund during three Presidential runs, and through family business with Las Vegas Casinos who benefited from the coal driven power he supplied.

Misogyny in America

As night follows day, any rise in homophobia is paralleled by a rise in woman-hating. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that, after two decades of virulent gay-hating from the Right, we are seeing a proud and public form of misogyny in America we haven’t seen since, oh, George Gobel.

I’m not suggesting a cause-effect relationship here. I’m saying that homophobia is fundamentally also an expression of misogyny. When a gay man is bashed, he’s being savaged because he isn’t conforming to his assigned male supremacist role. He is stepping OUT of that role defiantly because—regardless of the actual acrobatics—he is perceived to be willfully assuming the role of a woman. He is being punished for breaking ranks but despised for (symbolically) behaving like a girl.

Hillary Clinton is just the most obvious lightening rod for the woman-hating tribes. She, too, is stepping OUT of the assigned role and defiantly competing with men as an equal.

The symbolism is inescapable and the consequences predictable and the punishment swift and ceaseless. She can’t easily be attacked physically. (Oh, it could happen and it might still happen, but it can’t be done easily. She has Secret Service protection.)

But she can be subjected to incessant ridicule and subversion from the mainstream corporate media. It is a given that she would be. The corporation, that playpen of male domination into which frustrated gladiatorial violence is sublimated in glass ceilings and the myth of masculine commentatorial “gravitas.” The media, the collective mouthpiece of male-supremacist culture which speaks, as misogyny always does, out of the mouths of both men and women; otherwise the game would be too, too obvious.

After Fox, the most visible (but by no means the only) culprit from our vantage lately, anyway, is MSNBC: Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, David Shuster. I’ve already commented on Matthews and Carlson. Their buy-in to male supremacy is as deep and unexamined as the color of their eyes. Carlson, especially, exudes contempt for women and people of color unless they know their proper places: cheerleaders for the Right. It’s just as incessant but more subtle, oily and oblique, the gentleman's country-club idiom. The "vaginal-American" exchange comes to mind, a coinage that somehow managed to demean everybody all at once. While Carlson didn't utter it, he didn't rebuke it either. He used it for all the yukkety-yuk value he could get.

Matthews’ misogyny is much more obvious. He’s a brawler, like McCain. (Remember when McCain joked--joked, please--"that the reason Chelsea is so ugly is that Janet Reno is her father"? There's something core frightening about any adult male who will attack any girl, let alone publically and by means of a classically misogynistic/homophobic formula. It's of a piece with McCain's violent, racist joke "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," and it makes me wonder what goes on behind his closed doors.)

What else would we expect? Matthews' fixation with Hillary Clinton is legendary, and the depths of his misogyny as expressed in his incessant trivializing commentary about her is profoundly shocking as much for what he says as for his utter cluelessness about it. He breathes misogyny in and out, in and out, like oxygen, and is no less oblivious to it. It’s his natural element, taken for granted.

And that is what tripped up Shuster. Apart from the stunning contrast between how goons like McCain and Matthews ignore the Bush twins and pillory Chelsea, and the nastiness of the whore metaphor, I was offended because it never even once occurred to Shuster NOT to use that metaphor for someone's daughter. It was just so natural because it is just so natural. Just so Don Imus.

Women in America are waking up. Hillary and Chelsea are all of us, and we are seeing a play we don't like very much. In fact, we are enraged.

More on this subject anon.

"Reprise the 100-Year War," and Other Purgatives

Lordy what a wasteland is cable news. My choices at this hour are Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews. It's reminiscent of that crack Dorothy Parker made about Katherine Hepburn: that she ran the gamut of emotion from A to B.

If Chris hadn't already lost my confidence some years ago, nothing he could do would so seal that deal as inviting Tom DeLay on his show. That's sticking his hand into the sewage and pulling up a . . . well, you get the picture.

But if the conservatives want to field a piece of crap for national cameras, that's fine with me. Let's go for it. Let's remind voters of the four horsemen of the conservative apocalypse: DeLay, Abramoff, Scooter, and. . . . Gee, there are so many it wouldn't be fair to choose only four. Taft? Reed? George Allen?

*****************

So McCain is it? I know why conservatives can't stand him. Neither can I. I haven't forgotten that he said that having an abortion or not would be his 15-year-old daughter's decision if she got pregnant, and he hoped the procedure would be legal and safe. I remember very well when he called Falwell an agent of intolerance because it amazed me that he'd show that kind of integrity. But that was before he donned the bishop's cap of "Christian" fundamentalism and decided to oppose safe and legal abortions and write gays out of the Constitution.

No straight-talker, he. McCain is, if anything, even more opportunistic than his former competitor, Romney. Since the end of his military career, it seems to me that McCain has mostly sought new opportunities for self aggrandizement, no matter who he's had to shaft and no matter who he's had to blow. He divorced his first wife, married a pile of money, got tangled up in that very dirtyKeating savings and loan scandal (caused, in part, by Republican deregulation, just like today's mortgage crisis), and shifted political positions like a Vegas dealer shifts cards. McCain not only sails where the wind blows. He blows the sails when necessary, as in his little cuddle with the Bushman. McCain should have had the regard for his wife and children to denounce Bush, not kiss him. He's as phony as they come.

Let's make our anti-McCain campaign slogan "Four more years!" That should do the trick. That or, "Reprise the Hundred-Year War!"

******************

Remember when Romney said that his sons were serving the country by assisting his presidential campaign? That's when he lost the nomination. So much arrogance was revealed in that remark. It was a genuine Marie Antoinette moment, and Americans saw it for exactly what it was. Good riddance--at least from the TV screens for now.

*****************

Do I really have to think about a Vice President Huckabee? "IthinkI'mgonnabarf!"

Karma Elephant

This from Andrew Sullivan's site today. Couldn't have put it better myself:

'So far today I have gotten the usual daily spam e-mail from various fringe and self-acclaimed conservative groups and personages — variously alleging that McCain was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks).'

There is karma here, isn't there? These were the same kind of tactics used against John Kerry in 2004 - except then they were accepted by the conservative establishment. What's triking to me is how the fanaticism of the far-right, aided and abetted by Republican elites, may now be coming back to bite them. McCain is the victim. But perhaps the poison the right has peddled in these past few years has to work its way through the GOP bloodstream before being overcome.

Since the days of Terry Dolan, the GOP has been a bile-spewing, filth-propagating, divisive, and sharply polarizing force--and not just in the USA. But we're talking elections, and that's a home issue, and the GOP has studiously cultivated division, fear, suspicion, distrust, and outright rage in every election from Soddy Daisy's chief of public signage to the nation's President.

Given that heritage, it's ironic, and amusing, to watch three of its chief ghouls go after John McCain, one of their own, still yet again, but this time, apparently without regard for their party as a whole. I hope they keep it up, the Limbaughs, the Dobsons, the Coulters. If they fail--and I think they will; I think McCain will be the GOP candidate--they will have written "DOA" on the Far Right wing of the GOP, and that just can't be a bad thing, now can it?

These guys seem to have missed the memo that evangelicals woke up sometime around 2005 and realized that the environment, energy, the war, and poverty are (duh!) issues relevant to conservative Christians. Since then, there hasn't been a highly focused, united flying wedge of conservative Republicans.

Since then, that very constituency has seen, time and again, evidence that one of their own, W, is a liar, a thief, and a profligate with the national treasury, the national environment, and the nation's youth. From this undeniable evidence, they have rightly concluded that they cannot trust--guess who--Limbaugh, Dobson, Coulter, Savage, Reed, and all the rest.

They've decided to face the future armed with their own intelligence and the evidence of their own lives, with reference to the New Testament as contrasted with Leviticus.

Let's hope they continue to do so. They will vote for an Obama before they vote for a Huckabee or a Romney.

It's ALL About the US Supreme Court

The next president will determine the course of US social, political, economic, and military strategy for a generation to come, because he or she will determine the defining seat on the US Supreme Court.

Issues abortion, gun control, regulation of the marketplace, the power of the presidency, and, above all, whether the Constitution is interpreted in light of the need and realities of the 21st Century or in light of the realities of the 18th Century, will be decided by the next Court.

Do not be beguiled into thinking that the Republican Party can be appeased or will drop its extreme agenda and become part of Obama's Coalition America. If you have doubts, please read the series about the rise and the agenda of the US Far Right here on this blog. They didn't invest 30 years of planning and funding to drop everything now and start singing Kumbay with progressive Democrats.

The Republican Party has not changed. The struggle between McCain and Romney is about how McCain is playing in the perceptions of Middle America, and the will and power of the Bush Establishment, which has backed Romney. Remember that Babs and Poppy have introduced him, and that the get-out-the-vote operatives of former FL Governor Jeb Bush were Romney's guys in this Florida primary.

In fewer than 8 years, McCain has moved from arch-critic of the Religious Right's takeover of the GOP to Chief Bootlicker of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. The difference among McCain and Romney and Huckabee on social policy is so narrow that a mosquito would have to diet to fly through it. The Republican Party has not changed and is not changing. Guiliani is DOA. So much for a changed GOP social agenda.

Now that he has won FL, defeating the establishment candidate, McCain will trend to the hard Right in order to secure his nomination. Pay attention, America. The "maverick" is not so much a maverick as a weathervane. He is anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-separation of church and state, an enthusiastic supporter of Bush's tax-free wealthy class, pro "free market," anti-emvironmental protection, and pro-endless war. Look for these emphases.

And then imagine the kind of man (word used advisedly) that John McCain will appoint to the US Supreme Court, and ask yourself whether you children and grandchildren can hope to have a viable world if he is elected.