Oh Say it Ain't So!

Andrew Sullivan on Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican Convention: "A largely content-free speech that went out on a limb, defending patriotism, attacking liberals, vowing to defeat evil and defend the family. I was somewhat surprised to hear that the GOP is about cutting spending, and restraining government, and that liberals have been in charge for the last quarter of a century - but, hey, this is the 2008 Republican National Convention. Reality is what they say it is." It's always that way, right, RWR?

I've always wanted to ask a solidly religious Bible-based Republican: As opposed to the subject of gays getting married, isn't there an actual commandment against bearing false witness? Would that be relevant at all in your world?

"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?

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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!"

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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.

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

Where's Pico?

You might well ask.

Pico's been in a really bad mood about the banality of the debate surrounding this race for president, for one thing.

Consider: Governor Mitt Broomstick has declared that Guantanamo is not a national embarassment but rather is a monument to America's determination, and that if elected, he would double it. He opines that that "we" don't want to give terrorists access to lawyers.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'd like to think that a rich former governor running for president has access to better lawyers than I do, but I gotta say, whattya mean "we," white man?

"We" don't want to give terrorists access to lawyers? What happened to "innocent before proved guilty", or, is he saying that if you're charged with "terrorism," all bets are off? If so, given this administration's boundless expansion of the term, shouldn't we all now be rioting in the streets? Haven't we seen that "terrorists" include Quaker ladies opposed to the war and anti-Bush protesters in T-shirts? What's next? Writers on strike and people who drive Priuses? Don't laugh. Anyone who presumes to question the omniscience of a Bush or cut into his profits is bound to be pretty high up the list. It's looking like we can all kiss our attorneys farewell, but I think we knew that when we discovered the illegal wiretapping and the detention center contracts, when "rendition" entered the mainstream vocabulary.

After all, it's just a step from "don't need no stinkin' lawyers" to a lynch mob. If a person who's charged isn't innocent until proved guilty, why bother with judges and juries at all? (Like at Gitmo.) If, as Governor Mitt believes, detention is a synonym for conviction -- which it is, absent habeas corpus, then the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper." Where have I heard that before?

Like most Republicans, Romney isn't big on constitutional due process. But Jeeeebus, wouldn't you think Wolf would have the gray matter to point that out? To ask the questions that expose his blithe dismissal of the one thing that makes us all Americans? That Constitution wasn't written only for US citizens. It was written for all who come under the scrutiny of our system of justice, because its authors had close personal knowledge of life under less humane and enlightened systems.

But that was before the Age of Britney. That was back when people took liberty and their vote quite seriously.