Then and Now: A Reflection on the Civil Society

I ran across this while I was cleaning out my trusty day timer thingy. It's got zip lockable pockets into which I put my stuff. So I was rummaging in my stuff to see if there's anything in there that time and experience have transcended when I ran across this prayer, said to be Ben Franklin's.

Now, please don't feel that I'm pushing religion down your throat. That's none 'o my biz. I'm just asking you to read this sociologically, within the context of then--the period when our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written--and now--the period when folks protest a President who encourages learning and hard work, and actually take Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh seriously.

O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to Thy other children as the only return in my power for Thy continual favors to me.
Amen.

I get really hot under the collar when I hear conservatives blabber about personal responsibility and individual rights. That's all well and good, but it ain't the whole hog. They would have us believe that poverty is a choice and that success is self-made, and that lending a hand to a neighbor is creating a nanny state.

That's when I go on about how there's no such thing as "self-made." What I mean is what Franklin recognizes here. Whether we attribute it to God or to human technological and intellectual advancement, the fact is that in the USA especially, all of us rise up by virtue of enormous advantages that we personally had no role whatever in creating.

These are the myriad advantages without which none of us could claim to have "made it," no matter how hard we worked. All of us are indebted to a great, collective social bounty. (The only reason that conservatives don't hyperventilate and call it "socialism," too, is because that would really mess their ideology all up. Oh wait. They do call it socialism and they want to "privatize" it! More about THAT later!)

Here's what I'm talking about, and even if we don't all have each one, we all have some of them. I'm talking everything from driveable highways, free public schools, emergency medical technicians and ambulances, libraries, book stores, museums, parks and truck farms, and phones that work, and gas and electricity on demand, and civil order, and national security, and accessible food supplies, all the way up to the elegant essentials of nature: air to breathe, water to drink and play in, sunshine, moonlight, vast canyons, awesome mountains, great wheat and corn fields, fish and plants and animals large and small.

I'm talking from spiritual and physical to technological and communal and intellectual, and, yes, political: We have the greatest constitution and bill of rights the world has ever known.

It all counts. ALL of it is ours without our every having even acknowledged it, let alone had a hand in creating it. And I haven't even gotten to the individual advantages of race, class, culture, gender, wealth, and connections that grace so many.

So wouldn't you think we'd be honest enough, and humble enough, to own that massive debt, and to get that there's only one way to repay it? To get that it can only be paid forward because it can never be paid back?

Franklin understood that unequivocal, inescapable, profound, and universal truth. I think it's no coincidence that he could help to write our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. These come, ultimately, from the same wellspring: a proper, grounded, fact-based understanding of the human being's place in the cosmos.

For all their "Christianizing," the Right, the GOP, and conservatives don't seem to have grasped this at all. Therefore, it's no coincidence that they would lead us, if we let them, straight to Hell.

Sarita Peron de Palin & You

"I come from the people;
They need to adore me
So Christian Dior me
From my head to my toes.
I want to be rainbow high."

Especially since word of the $150K wardrobe hit the airwaves, the comparison between Eva Peron and Sarah Palin has been irresistible, and thanks to my buddy Michael, I'm not the first Lefty blogger to pick up on it.

Naomi Wolf's comparison of Sarah Palin's role in Bush's GOP to Eva Peron's role in her husband's coup in Argentina may be the most substantive example, but there's a lot of it going around. See, for instance, My Left Wing.

Do read Naomi Wolf's post on HuffPo about "the muse of the coming police state." Keep in mind that right now, here in the USA, we're witnessing the waning days of an eight-year presidential assault on the people's powers (the Constitution) and what could indeed be a third consecutive stolen election. If you still doubt that a coup is plausible, only consider what's at stake, what we've seen in the last eight years, and who's controlling elections in presently red swing states. This is serious stuff. Here's an excerpt:

"Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

"You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom."[Emphasis added.]

What we're talking about is fully contextualized in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. If you have not read that documented analysis of current, global political/economic developments--readable, astounding, mind-boggling--then you ain't seen nuthin' yet, baby. You ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Again, at the moment, on this day, during this week, and on Nov. 4th especially, this is about the reality of stolen elections--e-voting machines that flip votes; fraudulent voter ID, voter intimidating, vote chaging, purging registration rolls, blocking owners of foreclosed properties from voting, etc., ad nauseum.

Reports are pouring in from early voting states of vote tampering, intimidating, vote flipping, purged rolls. It isn't theory. It's reality. Here in the USA, we have a concerted, widespread, systematic Republican effort to manipulate the election, a president willing to intervene in the election process, and a corrupt and partisan Department of Justice.

We know it's coming. The question is, what do we do about it.

This is Really Eerie: Palin is Just W in Drag!

Hey, wait a minute! I think we've seen this show before! Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag. Totally. Selfish, arrogant, likely sociopathic, abusive, nepotistic, cronyist, liar, evangelical, ignorant, greedy and a bully. No wonder the GOP loves her. But man, are they slow learners or what!

That's my take. I report, you decide. This from yet another heads-up article in today's NY Times:

In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

For God's sake, haven't we been there and done that?

Press Finally Outing McCain, Palin on Lies, Unreadiness, Judgment

From a New York Times news story today, "McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions:

Harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, but Senator John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Senator Barack Obama’s record and positions.

Today, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, certainly no flaming liberals, also are reporting that Palin did NOT visit Iraq after all, regardless of what McCain and Palin claim:

Report: Palin Did Not Visit Iraq, by Anne E. Kornblut
WASILLA, Alaska -- Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin are scrambling to explain details of her only trip outside North America -- which, according to a new report, did not include Iraq, as the McCain-Palin campaign had initially claimed.

Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq, but did not actually visit the country, according to a new report in the Boston Globe.

Earlier, McCain aides had said that Palin visited Iraq, and expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

And meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle homed in on this jewel:

In a televised interview Friday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin defended her request for an estimated $200 million in federal projects from Congress - even as earlier in the day her GOP running mate John McCain insisted Palin had never sought money from Congress.

In a second ABC interview with Charlie Gibson, the GOP vice presidential candidate acknowledged that she has supported millions of dollars in congressional money - including the famed "Bridge to Nowhere" - to allow Alaska "to plug into ... along with every other state, a share of the federal budget in infrastructure."

Maybe God is not yet dead after all?

I'm being facetious, of course. I mean, maybe responsible US media are figuring out that it's not in their interests, either, to shoehorn the Ditzy Duo into the West Wing.

I really hope Rightwing Reader is reading this. (By the way, he never identified his websites, did he?) He did say, after all, that he hates lying. I assume that he also hates being manipulated, and gives a damn if the nation is in competent hands (having seen what incompetence means). If so, like all the rest of us, he would do to read a wide variety of informed commentary on these campaigns and these candidates.

It's time to get our heads out and pay attention. I have a feeling we're entering the most dangerous decade in US history. I, for one, don't want Johnny Hothead and Moose-a-lini anywhere near the launch button. Whatever weaknesses Obama and Biden might have--all candidates have weaknesses--I take theirs any day of the week.

From the editorial, and keep in mind that despite the rhetoric, the Times is not a "liberal" paper. Granted, it's to the left of the Wall Street Journal, but what isn't?

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

From Bob Herbert's op-ed. I quote this because I think it nails the issue precisely. This isn't about bashing bit-part mayors. That's another faux class-war bullet shot at the only party that isn't waging class war: the Democratic Party:

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

It all kind of makes you wonder what else they're lying about, and what other judgment blunders they're up to, doesn't it? Let's find out now. Before November.

Democrat, Republican, Independent, None-of-the-Above, we all deserve to know.

And surely we owe it to our kids to find out.

Which American City do You Want to Lose?

"He will make Cheney look like Ghandi." Pat Buchanan on John McCain in the White House.

This video is chilling. I happen to believe it's also one of the two most essential considerations in this election. The other is global warming. A distant third is the US economy.

To what should be our universal horror, McCain thinks Bush's economic plan is just great (see Dr. Phil Gramm if you're inclined to "whine" about it). He's a gung-ho Neocon "free" marketer. Your job? Kiss his butt. Your home? Ditto. Your healthcare and retirement. In spades.

To what should be our universal horror, Palin thinks global warming is God's work, a step toward Armageddon and the Rapture. In her eyes, anything we do to lessen it is a slap in the face of God. That's why there's not going to be any improvement in a Christianist-controlled McCain-Palin White House. (If you doubt it'll be Christianist controlled, tell me why McCain couldn't have his own choice of VP?)

McCain knows one solution to all problems, and he thinks it's funny: Bomb, bomb, bomb. As this video points out--from seasoned veteran nuclear policy guy Scott Ritter--if we attack Iran with one of our new generation of what Bush chillingly calls "usable nukes," the genie is out of the bottle and it won't go back until Islamic extremists take out at least one American city.

So, Rightwingers: Before you ride out on a flood of Limbaugh's hate-mongering to vote in White Daddy, think good and hard about that. Which city will it be?

(Thanks to friend Vicki for sending me the video.)

Who is Sarah, What is She?

Moose-a-lini.

(Thanks to my buddy Michael M. for this hat-tip from progressive commentator Ed Schultz.)

Arizona Republicans' War on the Constitution, Again

Point One: Let's get clear. Proposition 102 isn't about marriage.

Proposition 102 is only one state-level deployment of a powerful weapon in radical Christianist Republicans' war on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. That weapon is a fierce 30-year PR campaign to gin up heterosexual Americans' suspicion, dislike, and fear of gay men and lesbian women.

Again, their target--keep this front and center--is not gay marriage. Gay marriage is merely the decoy. Their target is the US Constitution.

Here's why.

All that stands between you and me and the kind of radical fundamentalist theocracy that Sarah Palin represents are the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court that interprets them.

At present, only a tiny handful of constitutional guarantees, explicit and implicit, keep a possible President Sarah Palin from, say, criminalizing homosexual conduct, defining those who protest as "terrorists" under the Patriot Acts, and seizing our assets. Absurd? Not if you've paid attention to Guantanamo and St. Paul.

The distinction is merely one of degree. The thing is, if these few constitutional protections can be neutralized, there's nothing in US law to stop a powerful movement from turning its guns elsewhere: On you, for example. Even the little that we citizens have been permitted to know of the Patriot Acts makes that clear.

Exaggerated? Not at all. After all, that movement has already seized control of the Republican Party. Fact, not opinion.

The so-called "marriage protection" campaign has nothing to do with marriage except in the minds of a sector of citizens--evangelical and fundamentalist Republicans--who've been bombarded with virulent anti-gay propaganda for 30 years. This has taken the form of mass-distributed CDs, videos, direct-mail campaigns, and voter guides, and a whole host of home-schooling and private Christianist academy curricular materials, and conservative church and legal initiatives orchestrated by the extreme Christianist Right. Fact, not opinion.

The point of all this is to reverse 250 years of traditional American legal thought in order to neutralize the Constitution's defense of women, minorities, and the interests of the people as a whole vs. the rights of the individual. Campaigns like "Defense of Marriage" exist solely to draw conservatives to the polls to directly assail a handful of key constitutional protections, and to vote into office the next phalanx of radical Christianists to make laws and appoint judges who will reverse the great liberal legal tradition that has made America the beacon for freedom all over the world. Fact, not opinion.

The Targets

The Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee to every individual of equal protection of the law is the springboard from which judges and justices at every level have found in favor of minorities since Brown v. Board of Education (1954). From that Supreme Court decision flows every subsequent legal advance in US human rights.

Its privacy protection, implicit in the 9th Amendment and reinforced in Amendments 3, 4, and 5 of the Bill of Rights, is absolutely central to each individual's defense against unwarranted state intrusion into personal matters such as non-exploitative sexual relations between consenting adults, and a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy under strict and limited conditions. It also underlies the sensible search warrant.

The Constitution's powerful 1st Amendment affirmation of every individual's freedom to choose his or her religion (or to decline religion), and the wall it imposes between your religion and mine, between my religion and yours, and between a state religion and all of us, are the last and greatest defense each of us has against the radical ideology represented by Sarah Palin, James Dobson, and John McCain.


The Strategy

It isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact that a radical, extraordinarily powerful, richly-funded, highly orchestrated Christian Right already virtually controls the Republican party. Moderate Republicans know it and discuss it openly. If you doubt it, consider this. A few days ago, its own presidential candidate was powerless to select his own vice president. John McCain knuckled under to the Christianist Right because he had to.

Radical Christianists' takeover of the party began in 1991. Why?

Because when extreme fundamental Christianist Pat Robertson lost his White House bid in 1988, radical Christianists got it that they could never take control of the country from the top down. In 1989, they founded the Christian Coalition and developed a winning strategy to seize control of the country from the grassroot up, by seizing control of the Republican party.

This they accomplished by fielding closeted radical fundamentalists for grassroots offices in order to gain, and eventually dominate, delegates to the Republican National Convention. By this means they can, and as we can observe today, they do, write its platform and determine its presidential candidates. Obviously, with control of the platform and the presidency, they control political appointees at every bureaucratic level, dictate what happens in state and local elections, and above all, determine federal appeals court and US Supreme Court appointees.

The fundamentalists' decisive take-control strategy first came to national attention in the well-known San Diego Stealth Initiative. It continues today, more powerful than ever. If in 2000, John McCain could still denounce its takeover, by 2008, John McCain has been forced to capitulate to it and to advance it one giant step by placing extreme Christianist Sarah Palin one heartbeat from the presidency.

Paralleling this GOP take-over strategy is Part 1 of radical Christianists' legal strategy. Their lynchpin legal initiative is the "original intent" campaign, a point-blank assault on traditional American constitutional values as enunciated since the founding of the country. It asserts (absurdly) that at some unknowable place and point in time, all the founders universally concurred on one interpretation of every constitutional issue for all time. That this never occurred--and that the idea itself was denounced even by Madison himself--doesn't stand in the way of fundamentalist extremists. Truth is irrelevant.

Part 2 is the fear-based, seductive PR campaign against so-called "activist judges," also a chimera: The fact is that any so-called "activist" judge exists only in the eye of the beholder. It's a PR tactic obvious because radical Christianists deem only mainstream judges who interpret the Constitution in accord with traditional American values as "activist."

Not surprisingly, in other words, the only "activist" judges are those the Christianists denounce as "liberal." These are the judges and justices who find that the Constitution and Bill of Rights actually give equal protection to women, minorities, labor, and--powerfully--sometimes to the people as a whole (as in environmental protection and gun control) over individuals.

Given this reality check, in the real light of day, Proposition 102, Arizona's GOP-dominated legislature's upchucked version of a measure we defeated just two years ago, can be seen for what it is, and the reason it's back on the ballot can be exposed for what it is.

These are heavy duty weapons aimed at the heart of American freedoms. They and the radical theocratic ideals they serve constitute the most serious threat to democracy in our history. Such propositions are first-line guns in a war on the ideals that make Americans uniquely Americans. The ironic thing is, those guns aren't just aimed at queers.

What the founders who drafted our majestic core documents saw is this simple paradox: A Constitution that defends the rights of one American defends the rights of all Americans. Without our Constitution intact, and without a committed, staunch legal tradition and Supreme Court unshakably devoted to that simple principle, we're all at the mercy of the next commander in chief and the hidden strings that control him or her. That's not democracy. That's fascism.

So don't be stupid. If you vote for Prop 102, it's just youself you're firing at.

Deepak on Palin

Deepak Chopra on Barack Obama and Sarah Palin:

"She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind."

Read the whole post. I think it's worth your time.

Which is harder, to stand up to hate and violence, or to give in? That's what we're up against.

The Lord of the Flies: Karl Rove, John McCain, and Election 2008

Amazed, astonished, appalled it's a virtual dead heat? Here's the reason.

We're watching different picture shows.

Images have always been a key part of political campaigns, but when Kennedy beat Nixon, Republicans learned that feelings trump thoughts every time.

Republicans unveiled Willie Horton, not even a little concerned about the long-term consequences for America's race relations. They knew the Horton script played on deep-seated race fears and would escalate our collective national guilt into a paranoid projection that many would be powerless to resist.

Ronald Reagan: Image personified. W: That uniquely American cowboy icon packaged as the Marlboro Man. McCain: War hero, maverick. "The Right Stuff." These are Good Daddy archetypes that bypass our brains and go directly to our oldest, most irrational fears, and trigger a panic about the state of our security.

The Strong, Good Daddy image is meant to play directly to our inner child. Contrast Republican messages about Hillary and Sarah and you'll see its female counterpart. Hockey mom Palin is pretty, fearless, maternal, upfront: Good Mommy, aka Pitbull in Lipstick, Mother, womb. Hillary is the other half of the Good/Bad duality. Bossy (pants suit), shrill, controlling, bitchy, inscrutable: Mean Mommy, aka emasculating: vagina dentata, latent dyke.

The GOP strategy works two ways. It isn't only that fear-based archetypes bypass our brains and render rational argument irrelevant. It's also that archetypal imagery like this, that speaks to the inner child, calls out the inner child, not the thinking, rational adult.

Show me a dictator who doesn't get this.

What's going on here, consciously and deliberately orchestrated by Karl Rove and the GOP, isn't a contest about what's best for the country. It's not about issues. It's really just a re-enactment of Lord of the Flies. Unfortunately for us and for the planet, the rational, problem-solving kid cannot withstand the fear of the beast. Reason, order, calm, the collective good, and the disciplined evolution of solutions isn't anywhere near as gratifying as fun, war, red meat, and individual survival.

McCain, Palin and the Right are to Jack and his tribe what Obama, Biden, and the Left are to Ralph and his tribe. That is why, for example, the inner Rightwing child isn't at all offended by McCain's adolescent, vulgar "bomb bomb bomb, bomb-bomb Iran" jibe. Their inner kid is thrilled. What could be more fun! (At this point, it's not really about reality, of course. Though he will learn to his horror, their inner kid doesn't yet know the part about torsos spilling entrails, or blown-off legs. All he knows is camping out in the back yard where Daddy and Mommy are close by if the need arises.) "Maverick's" just a big word for coloring outside the lines. What could be more natural? What could be better?

Captured by primitive terrors prodded daily into life by W's war on--guess what? Terror!--the inner Righwing child just cannot hear--much less be moved by--appeals to reason, experience, sanity. He is regressed.

Sometimes reality is its own parody. Through Sarah, future son-in-law Levi Johnston has become McCain's virile, promiscuous, bellicose young avatar, and he speaks for and he calls out all the other Levis out there:

"The boyfriend of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter describes himself on his MySpace site: 'I'm a fuckin' redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin' chillin' I guess. Ya fuck with me I'll kick ass.'"

Elsewhere, Johnston admits to having a girlfriend (Sarah's daughter, Bristol), but in the section of the MySpace page where it asks about children, he wrote, "I don't want kids." Of course he doesn't! He is a kid.

Like his older brother who will be driving for senior officers in Iraq--they don't leave the Green Zone--Levi doesn't have to worry about reality, and if he ever should, Mommy and Daddy will make sure it's all all right: No wedding? Knocked up? Whatever. Iraq? Whatever. It's all good. It's the Lord's work.

This is not so different from the legions of Rightwingers who cheer when Bush says "Bring it on," but don't actually volunteer to fight. McCain has done that for them vicariously. This isn't about reality. It's all unfolding at mythic levels where a man is a hunter/killer and a woman is a pretty hockey mom.

Here's the deal: Feelings trump thoughts every time. The GOP gets it; we don't.

As the Washington Post reported recently:

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

This not only explains the power of GOP marketing. It also explains why the GOP can lie, and lie, and lie, and lie without ever paying a price at the polls.. The facts that contradict its messaging may be regularly blipped across our screens, but the party and the message are impervious because our kid isn't capable of using facts to manage his fears. That's not where he's at. Our kid responds only to myths. Archetypes.

Apparently this is almost incomprehensible to Democratic campaigns. Time and again, we shout out the myriad catastrophes wrought by the Bush administration, time and again we point to McCain's enthusiastic collaboration (he voted with Bush 90%-95% of the time). Time and again, we ask voters if they're better off now than they were when Bush took office. But for all our efforts, at best, the margin between Obama and McCain fluctuates a point or two.

The facts are well known, but the facts are irrelevant, just as they were irrelevant in 2004. By all logic, Bush would have been defeated. But it wasn't about logic.

Today's voters know the record--at least the parts of it that comes home, such as gas prices and home foreclosures and Bush's idle fiddling while New Orleans drowned. But that was then. This is now, and there's an uncertain future ahead.

The most profound emotion is fear. If told often enough that Obama will raise your taxes, Obama is a closet Muslim radical, McCain is a maverick, Palin cuts waste, Palin is ready now, don't let reporters be mean to Good Mommy, the voters--in a spasm of deliberately induced regression--will let their feelings trump their thinking.

Two other points, quickly.

(1) The GOP shores up this induced mass regression by vote caging, black box tinkering, and erecting hurdles, confusion, and fear for all Democratic voters. Expect that again BIG TIME this year.

(2) Obama will have a hard time playing his own fear card, which is the one thing he must do if he hope to win. He has denounced the tactic, pledged a higher level of campaign, seems sincerely committed to campaigning on the issues, and seems dispositionally uncomfortable with hitting below the belt.

But the facts are what the are: This election is about images, not issues. He'd better get into that picture show.

The Real Palin

From Andrew Sullivan, conservative commentator, author, blogger:

Are we allowed to ask questions about her tenure as mayor of Wasilla? Here's a story from the Wall Street Journal, exposing just how fiscally and operationally reckless Palin's mayorship of Wasilla was:

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla...

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Ms. Palin said Wednesday in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Litigation resulting from the dispute over Ms. Palin's sports-complex project is still in the courts, with the land's former owner seeking hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from the city.

When Palin took over Wasilla, the town had no long-term debt. By the time she was done, debt service had increased by 69 percent, the town had close to $19 million in long-term debt, making the debt around $3000 per capita. And the Mccain campaign is asking us - seriously - to consider her a fiscal conservative.

She is a Bush-Cheney fiscal conservative: low taxes, unprecedented new spending, utter incompetence, endemic cronyism and massive debt.

[Emphasis added.]

That last deserves repetition, for RWR and others of his unresearched opinion:

She is a Bush-Cheney fiscal conservative: low taxes, unprecedented new spending, utter incompetence, endemic cronyism and massive debt.

Why We Aren't Dealing with Global Warming: Connecting the Dots

Ever wonder?

The answer lies in dominionism, the extreme fundamentalist theology espoused by Sarah Palin and a great many other local, state, and national policy makers.

Dominionism (see also Christian Reconstructionism) stems from the biblical injunction that man (used advisedly) was given dominion over the earth and everything in it. Dominion is understood to be man's right to use and abuse earth and its resources as he sees fit.

Dominionism underpins a great deal--not all--of contemporary Republicans' hard-core resistance to conservation, renewable energy, and the science of global warming. For instance, VP Dick Cheney's vocal rejection of conservation as an affront to Americans' way of life may be an outgrowth of dominionism, or (as I suspect) he may merely be manipulating dominionists to serve his "survival of the fittest" philosophy that the strongest (i.e., most ruthless businessmen) are entitled to whatever and as much as they want, regardless of the consequences to others.

Dominionism alone is destructive enough. It doesn't just apply to earth and its resources, but also to mens' status relative to women and children. Shored up by other biblical passages, dominionism is at the core of fundamentalism's unshakable patriarchy.

It gets worse.

End Times

What makes dominionism so terrifying today, however, is that Far Right Christo-Fascists like Palin also subscribe to a terrifying End Times theology. I'll try to make the connection clear.

The End Times--which they believe have commenced--will bring the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the Second Coming. (This site lays out the End Times perspective. An aside: The references there to Israel are critically important because for Sarah Palin, James Dobson, John Ashcroft, Clarence Thomas, and many, many other Republicans (yes, they're all Republicans), if events in Israel can be satisfactorily manipulated, the Second Coming can be hurried along. Bizarre as it may sound, these views ARE at work in US foreign policy now.)

End Times believers are convinced that they (the saved) will be with Christ in Heaven forever, whereas the rest of us will be consigned to burn forever in a fiery lake in Hell. Therefore, End Timers both long for the Rapture and believe they are compelled to convert as many souls as possible before the Rapture occurs. (Enter developments such as Joel's Army, the Promise Keepers, the massive buy-up of US radio and TV media since Falwell first launched his Moral Majority, Bush's faith-based initiatives, and so on, all of which have both secular political and fundamentalist theocratic objectives).

Because Far Right fundamentalists--Assemblies of God, Southern Baptists, Pentacostals, and many others, including today's fashionable "post-denominationalists" or "generic Christians" (to some extent these are both theological terms and political stealth terms)--are convinced that the End Times have begun, they believe strongly that any effort to combat global warming is not just useless but is in fact sinful. Combating global warming, developing renewable energy sources, conserving energy, protecting the environment are sinful because they obstruct in God's will for imminent End Times and delay the Second Coming.

This is why it's essential to know the code when you listen to Sarah Palin and many of those who passionately support her. When Sarah Palin says that she will govern "with the heart of a servant," for instance, she means that she will govern in accord with dominionist teachings.

She is signaling that She will be a faithful servant of the fundamentalists' vengeful God of Armageddon. She is saying that she is willing, ready, and able to rush the End Times along.

When she says that she "isn't one of those who sees global warming as manmade," what she means is that she sees global warming as an act of God designed as part of the horrible End Times. She's saying that combatting global warming, saving polar bears and beluga whales, conserving natural resources, and protecting wilderness are defiant acts of sinners that will have no place in her regime.

When she speaks of the Iraq war as the work of God, she's offering a clue to her views that apocalyse in the Middle East--in Jerusalem, to be precise--is necessary before the Second Coming can occur. Bear this in mind when you weigh various conservatives' analysis of Iran, Israel, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East. For a great many of our Republican policymakers and leaders, it's about the oil and it's about the End Times.

Don't just take my word for it. Google and read. Try "red heifer," for instance, or "End Times," Rapture, Tribulation, Armageddon, Zionist fundamentalism. etc.

You'll find many, many affirmations from the fundamentalists themselves, as well as many analyses from former fundamentalists and those who have carefully analyzed a movement that has grown from lunatic fringe to control the GOP in just under 30 years. The sheer number of websites devoted to serious proselytizing, not to mention that fundamentalist leader Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series has sold by now close to 80 million copies, give us some idea of the scope of what we're up against.

And that's just for starters.

Joel's Army

See what the respected Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about Joel's Army, the militant Christianist movement that espouses the use of violence to impose its religious views.

See Kos for more on links between Dominionist stealth candidate Sarah Palin and Joel's Army. This piece, written by a former cultist, has insights not readily available elsewhere, and bristles with informative links. The writer's diary and the linked articles are a good window on segments of US Christo-Fascism, a huge, well-funded, and very, very powerful voice in Republican politics and policy, foreign and domestic. The fact that Palin was selected over McCain's own preference--Lieberman first, then Pawlenty--speaks volumes to the power of this bloc in the GOP. It ain't your daddy's conservative voice.

But then if you've been paying any attention for the last eight years, you know that, don't you?

Do You Really Want Palin a Heartbeat from Launch Code?

For those like RWR (my faithful if somewhat confused Rightwing Reader) who embrace the fantasy that Palin is "awesome" and simultaneously claim to hate lying, let me recommend this thorough fact-check of her RNC sermon and her actual record. It's awesome and it doesn't lie.

And on this basis alone (there being many others) I would say this to Republicans out there: If you're going to vote for McSame and Palin expecting an honest, conservative, small-government, no spending, no-lobbyists, pro-America administration, my friends, you're going to be had. Again.

For anyone who hopes that McCain will bring some sanity to US foreign policy, let me share this perspective from Ottawa, our neighbor to the north.

Please keep in mind that, now that McCain has put Palin a heartbeat from launch code, this is the Armageddon mentality that you'll be putting into the White House. It's worth the read.

From today's Ottawa Citizen
5 Sep 2008 By: DAN GARDNER

God help us if political pandering to religious zealots with apocalyptic fantasies puts someone who wants the world to end with a finger on the button.

Well, God bless America. And here’s hoping the rest of us get a little of that divine pixie dust because we’ll need it if the American political class continues its descent into flaky, Bible-waving irrationality.

It is a truism that only a devout Christian who prays for miracles, believes that God’s will is done on earth, and gabbles about the wonders of his faith to anyone who will listen can become president of the United States of America and, as Americans like to say, leader of the free world. In today’s America, Thomas Jefferson — the greatest of the Founding Fathers and a man who viewed the supernatural claims of religion as nothing more than primitive superstition — would be utterly unelectable.

But someone who believes that every word of the Bible is literally true, someone who believes all who disagree will be cast into fire to be tortured forever, someone who believes the actions of the United States must be guided by scripture and prophecy, someone who believes the end of the world could come any day now and who hopes and dreams and prays it does — someone like that can be president of the United States of America, commander-in-chief of the mightiest military in human history, and the person on whose judgment the fate of the world most depends.

Oh, and someone like that can have the launch codes. God bless us, indeed. Now, whenever I write one of these little missives about the dangerous malignancy of religion, I hear from decent and rational Christians who say that they personally don’t believe the world is 6,000 years old, or that angels guide footballs into the hands of wide receivers, or that the loving Jesus will return to smite infidels and launch a thousand-year Reich. This is a caricature of my faith, they say. And they are right.

But I am not responsible for that caricature. I am merely describing what tens of millions of Americans — hundreds of millions worldwide — have made of Christianity. It is they who are responsible for embracing and promoting a system of belief that increasingly resembles a primitive, irrational, millennial death cult.

A 2002 CNN/Time poll found that 59 per cent of all Christians and 77 per cent of those described as born-again, fundamentalist or evangelical agreed that the events portrayed in the Book of Revelation would happen at some time in the future. A 1999 Newsweek poll that asked a more specific question — “Will the world end in an Armageddon battle between Jesus Christ and the Antichrist?” — found that almost half of all Christians and three-quarters of evangelicals believe human history was nothing but a round or two of midget wrestling before Jesus puts the smackdown on Satan. (That image of Jesus is actually common in much of devout America: One popular illustration portrays the Son of God as a professional wrestler.)

And what a smackdown it will be.

Jesus returned to the world with “conviction like a flame of fire” in his eyes, write Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in the Left Behind series of Christian novels. The very words of the Lord caused the blood of infidels to boil and “burst through their veins and skin. ... Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated.

Forget the hippy Jesus. This is Jesus as totalitarian maniac. The carnage of the final battle will be so awesome, LaHaye and Jenkins write, that Christians will have to drive carefully to avoid “hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses.”

More than 60 million copies of the Left Behind books have been sold. Although it’s technically fiction, LaHaye is widely respected as a biblical scholar by evangelicals, and the authors insist their books are a literal rendering of the Revelation prophecies that will inevitably come true. And that’s how their audience reads them. “Many people have asked me,” a Christian bookstore owner told the New York Times before the final installment in the series had been published, “do you think they’ll finish the series before Christ comes?’” (Happily, they did.)

All infidels should be nervous about this stuff, but Jews have a more immediate reason to be concerned. The Armageddonists believe a mass conversion of Jews is a critical event in the chronology. Not all will see the light, of course, and Jews who insist on remaining Jewish will be filleted and splayed with the rest of us. But get enough Jews to turn in their menorahs and the End Times are on — which helps explain why so many evangelicals have a creepy interest in all things Jewish.

And that, in turn, leads to scenes like this one: A couple of Sundays ago, David Brickner, the executive director of “Jews for Jesus” — a group that proselytizes among Jews — told Pentecostals at the Wasilla Bible Church that bad things happen to people because God is punishing them.

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television,” Brickner said. Just look at the terrorism that plagues Israel. That’s God’s judgment. And Jews will continue to suffer it until they see the light."

As religious flakiness goes, this was modest stuff. It only came to light because, sitting in the pews that Sunday morning, was one Sarah Palin — long-time member of the Wasilla Bible Church, governor of Alaska, and Republican nominee for vice-president of the United States.

But what really makes this incident interesting is that so few Americans found it interesting. No one seems to much care that Ms. Palin belongs to the sort of church that wants to hear from “Jews for Jesus.” And the fact that her church declares the Bible “the inspired, inerrant word of God” — a conclusion presumably shared by the woman who may be the next vice-president — was apparently of no interest at all. Even the revelation that Palin herself had described both the invasion of Iraq and the construction of an oil pipeline as part of “God’s plan” garnered only a fraction of the attention lavished on the irrelevant story of her pregnant daughter and the dazed boyfriend-cum-fiancé who stood on the stage of the Republican convention Wednesday night.

In a sense, it’s understandable. So someone with a good shot at the White House sat quietly and listened to a religious nut spout flaming nonsense. It’s hardly news, at least not in the sense of being novel. Quite literally everyone with a shot at the White House does the same. Routinely.

John McCain — who began his second attempt at the presidential nomination by kissing the ring of Jerry Falwell — attends a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Among its doctrines, the SBC declares the Bible “has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.”

All scripture. No exceptions. God’s sanction for slavery and genocide. The subordination of women? The ringing declaration in Leviticus that all homosexuals must be put to death? The eternal waterboarding that awaits anyone who disagrees? Word for word, it’s all “true and trustworthy.” The demonstrably false description of the universe and its origins in Genesis? Bang on. The technicolour lunacy in the Book of Revelation? More factual than On The Origin of Species.

The SBC is by far the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and, not surprisingly, a whole lot of Americans see things its way. One-third of respondents told Gallup they believe the Bible “is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word.” Almost two thirds said the Bible’s account of Noah’s ark is literally true. The same proportion said it is true that God created the world in six days and Moses parted the Red Sea.

And don’t think this is only a Republican thing. In 2000, it was Al Gore, not George W. Bush, who said he decides policy by asking “what would Jesus do?” and today every leading Democrat is only too happy to blather on about his very special relationship with Jesus. How much is sincere and how much calculation is impossible to say but it is astonishing that Barack Obama agreed to make his first joint appearance with John McCain a few weeks ago at the cavernous Southern Baptist church of Rick Warren — a superstar evangelical whose message is more positive than many of his kind but whose substitution of fantasy for reason is every bit as total.

Or rather, it should be astonishing. But it doesn’t seem that many of us are astonished.

And even fewer are prepared to call these beliefs what they are. Or to do whatever they can to ensure that the most powerful office on the planet is not handed to anyone who eagerly awaits the destruction of that planet.

As certainly as Thomas Jefferson would be unelectable today, he would be disgusted.

Amen.

[Reprinted courtesy of the Ottawa Citizen. Emphases added throughout.]

General Sarah and Our Homegrown Suicide Bombers

Sarah Palin makes crystal clear that unless the mainstream talking heads focus Americans' attention on the choices that actually are up for grabs in this election, our lives and livelihoods are on the line.

Extreme? I think not. How many indicators does it take to make one probability? We see intimations of what I'm talking about in the police state rampaging in St. Paul this week. We see intimations in Palin's extremist Assembly of God roots, with all its assertions that Democrats are bound for Hell, no less--not for political oblivion, but for Hell. They're obvious in Blackwater, Inc., and in the utterly unscrutinized Patriot Acts 1 and 2. Plainly we see them in the explosion of utterly unaccountable detention centers all across the land, dedicated now to immigrants, but to whom tomorrow? There will be somebody, because the Corrections Corporation of America doesn't plan on backing off a 35% annual rate of growth in the stock market, you can bet your tutu on that. (Do the math: Private prisons are reimbursed by states on a per diem/per capita basis. The more people in their greedy maws, the more money they make.)

The list continues. James Watt lives in Palin's disdain for God's creatures. Polar bears? To Hell with them, too. It's pure DOMINIONist theology, rooted here-- "And God has given him DOMINION over them"--and in the desperation that makes a soul convinced of its evil willing to incite Armageddon by any means necessary--global warming, nuclear war, whatever.

If we can't see our mortal peril here, I fear for all of us. The analogy I see is to suicide bombers. Dominionists, Reconstructionists, the End Timers all are willing to sacrifice themselves and their own children to their twisted version of salvation. The rest of us are simply irrelevant.


Somewhere I just this second read that in order for the Republicans to win, they have to distract the country from the straightforward fact that we're in a hell of a mess that they created--economically, environmentally, internationally, infrastructurally, and constitutionally--not necessarily in order of priority.

Distraction is Palin's first mission. If she continues along last night's lines--and she will--Republicans will move to the Right and the media will reflect her sarcastic attacks as water reflects whatever crawls beside it. It's a terrifying thought, because as I've said here before, the Far Right Christianist approach to governing is one election away from implementation. That's her second mission. John McCain, fool that he is, doesn't realize how badly he's been had.

(If there are terms here you're not intimately familiar with--Dominionism, Reconstructionism, etc.--please do your homework. There are links in the Righthand column under Heads Up that will point you in reliable (fact-based) directions.

Cyborg Sarah

Sarah Palin is all over the news, but so far I haven't heard an informed, incisive analysis of what she means in the larger context of national politics.

Sarah Palin no accident. What created her is exactly what makes her viable today. A large and well-funded extreme Right militant Christianist movement begun some thirty years ago is just now watching its true firstborn come onto the international stage.

It isn’t that we haven’t seen Christianists (more or less) before her. We have, but they, mostly hybrids, arrived onto the political scene by stealth rather than invitation. They were a vanguard whose mission was to quietly penetrate the local levels of the Republican Party and secure the national government for a far more radicalized cohort that was, meanwhile, being cultivated in home schools and private Christian academies run by sophisticated and heavily funded evangelical and fundamentalist cults, nurtured on Christian rock, and inspired by Tim LaHaye's Left Behind visions of the Rapture.

We may have seen men and women like Karen Hughes and Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer and Sam Brownback and Kay Bailey Hutchison, but we ain’t seen nothing yet.

It isn’t that Palin herself was specifically selected from infancy to be groomed for the presidency. She wasn’t. However, of millions of seeds cast in the past three decades onto that cold theocratic ground, hers is the one that has blossomed into the most plausible perfect contender for this moment.

What’s important to notice is that she had already percolated far enough up the ranks to be both noticed and to pass the right vetting criteria. That didn't happen in a vaccuum.

What is sought is a campaigner, not a stateswoman. And what was found? Precisely the right counterpart to the Obama/Clinton muse: a very smart, beautiful, young mother simultaneously savvy about but innocent of the system she’s to destroy, simultaneously equal to but no threat to the big boys, simultaneously seductive and PTA, simultaneously Vogue and Revelation, simultaneously church-lady and moose-killer, simultaneously ethnic and white.

It might be a little far-fetched to say that in the Far Right Christianists’ collective unconscious Sarah (note the biblical name) evokes the Madonna, but I do think something of near archetypal force is being prepared for us here and woven into the candidate’s manufactured storyline. This, after all, is Karl Rove’s forte.

What we do not see, and yet must see and see clearly, is that in every hamlet, town, and city in America are dozens or hundreds or thousands of families who have been nurtured for 30 years in the bosom of intensely politicized little congregations, churches like Palin’s Wasilla Assembly of God that serve on a Sunday as a hybrid House of God and local precinct station, ready-made to serve the One God so long as he is a Republican.

What we do not see, and yet must see quickly, are the phalanxes of Christianist soldiers, graduates and soon-to-be graduates of intensely politicized Christianist day schools, home schools, bible colleges, patriot schools, and law colleges—even US military academies and Army bases. Fed a pabulum of King James and NRA, these 20- to 40-somethings have been churned out by the thousands from schools like Liberty and Patrick Henry, schools that were founded explicitly for the purpose of turning this constitutional democracy into a fundamentalist’s idea of a Christian nation.

And it isn’t just these bureaucrats. To them and to the secular right, the white supremacists, and the Freepers, add the minions of Joel’s Army who have sprung from the loins of The Promise Keepers and the wives of Eagle Forum. This is the Far Right. It isn’t their mission to listen to reason or to ponder qualifications for negotiating with the Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans. Such arguments resonate with us but not with them.

I am saying that what dismiss as home-grown ignorance and naïveté is in fact a tightly orchestrated mindset impervious to anything outside itself, and it is legion.

Remember: We’ve seen a modest Palin prototype before, placed at the Justice Department, no less, to break the law by root out qualified Democrats for state Attorneys General and hire only those Republicans she could personally determine had truly swallowed the Kool Aid and the wafer. Her name is Monica Goodling. Asked whom she served, she answered in truth: “The President.” Unfortunately for the democracy, she was supposed to serve the Constitution.

Note the heights she attained and the mission she effected. Do you think for a second that this Monica Goodling cares whether Sarah has the “experience” necessary to assume the presidency if something happens to George McCain? Not even Sarah cares. Remember: We’re not talking qualifications that we might seek for a stateswoman. That’s the farthest thing from the minds of George McCain, Sarah Palin, and the extreme Right Christianist GOP elite.

It isn’t mere arrogant cluelessness that explains Palin’s acceptance. It’s that Palin has an undisclosed mission and it isn't ours. In a scenario in which her people talk openly of hoping to rush Armageddon, statecraft is the last thing that’s wanted or needed.

From the Matrix-like land of ultra-Right extreme Christianists, Sarah Palin is a cyborg. She looks like one of us and she’s anything but. This is a heads they win/tails we lose game.

Unfortunately, when the faithful are called to defend her, they will. Every attack we make, every point we score will be a call to arms. It is imperative that we rally more of our troops than they, and that ours are more intensely committed than theirs. We've much to do, but we must get it done.

If the Republicans win in November, it’s game over. Enter fascism unleashed. That’s what Sarah Palin is, and that what she means for the US political landscape. Today we see its mere outlines: suppression of political dissent in St. Paul; run-amok Patriot Acts; privatized concentration camps on our soil, targeted and terrorized subgroups, illegal domestic espionage, proposals to dehumanize GLBGT people, video games of conversion at gunpoint, or death; private Christianist armies; a planet subjected to unbridled greed and exploitation; shredding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If McCain wins, Sarah Palin will be his successor, and following Palin are millions more schooled in her school, steeped in her fanatic rage.

The Tailhook Candidate

D'ya think Jerry Springer did the vetting? Really, this Palin crowd will keep the tabloids in barbecued pork rinds, like, forever. And I just can't wait until we get the extended family.

Maddow may be right that the question is whether Palin will make it through the week, but I doubt it. She's a superstar to the base, after all, and if She resigns, the base will tar and feather George McCain. Not gonna happen, IMHO. Such a thing would inscribe on the skies what we already know about George McCain: that his management style is shoot first, ask questions later.

George McCain is a former (apparently not very good) Navy fighter pilot. His personal style, from jettisoning his first wife because a car accident damaged the looker he had married, to bagging heiress Cindy for the cash and the connections, to carpet-bagging Arizona, to this latest beauty pageant, is pure Tailhook. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that George McCain selected Sarah Palin, whose primary qualifications for high office appear to be that she is pretty and has a uterus that she uses for its intended purpose.

We all saw George McCain checking out her rear-end attributes at the, um, unveiling. I'm fairly sure that this (and the girls, of course) were the central focus as Palin ran a thorough Republican vetting gauntlet in a secret location somewhere in Flagstaff a couple of days before the announcement. Guess what. She passed. This makes Sarah Palin in fact the perfect Tailhook Candidate, the pin-up Hockey mom queen with the AK-47. This is female perfection to the Republican mind, and she will have enormous appeal to the Mr. and Mrs. Bubba Brigade. God help us if they turn out to vote.

(Photo courtesy of Timesonline, UK.)

What She Is and What She Isn't

This good point from my friend Melissa Hefferlin, on Palin: "In considering the McCain choice of running mate, one marvels at the more qualified, more senior women he passed over in order to choose Palin. What she IS perhaps makes sense for him: a woman, heavy on family values, hard-right conservative, oil-aligned, young, pretty, perky in a really annoying way (sorry, it slipped out). However, I am insulted that McCain finds genuine qualifications utterly beside the point, and believes that women like myself (white, 40, middle class), or anyone, would be placated and seduced by a V. P. candidate choice of anyone from my gender, never mind that she has been in politics for about six seconds, with a background in PTA. This choice is terrifying in what Palin is (ferociously white and right-wing), but even more so, in what she is not. This choice is insulting to the office, and to the voters. At least I hope it is.
Melissa Hefferlin

More On Palin: The Next Bridge to Nowhere?

Didn't expect to see this in the Dallas Morning News!

"Five reasons why Sarah Palin is a laugh-out-loud choice for VP. It's one thing for millions of voters to put forward a sitting senator as a possible commander in chief, but for John McCain to hand-pick a first-term governor of a tiny state is bizarre. Here are five reasons why, if she is the pick, this is a huge mistake." More

A little background from the Alaska Daily News:

"During her first run for mayor, critics complained that Palin, at 32, was too young and inexperienced. The Wasilla mayor was a full-time, $68,000-a-year job. They objected to a quiet campaign by some Palin supporters raising emotional issues like abortion and gun control, which had no apparent tie to municipal politics.

"And they said that by posing for ads with the area's Republican legislators, who implied they could work better with her than her opponent, she was injecting divisive party politics into what was technically a nonpartisan race.

"The high-profile support from local Republicans was hardly surprising, however. Party officials say Palin was already being groomed for bigger and better things, even as she talked about sewers and road-paving projects. In Alaska's fastest-growing region, Palin was the fresh young face of the suddenly dominant Republicans." More

And then this, from Mudflats, a Palin hometown blogger:

"Just months ago, when rumors surfaced that she was on the long version of the short list, she was questioned if she’d be interested in the position. She said she couldn’t answer “until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day. I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here….” More

Sarah Palin: Mother of the Year

McCain's nominee for vice president is sure to speak to kitchen table conservatives, Americans whose entire known world is family, football, and faith. These are good people. I know them. And as they've demonstrated in the last two presidential contests, they are dangerously naive people for whom the most important credential a politician can bring is that he's just like us.

For them, it's not just any family, it's heterosexual family. It's not just any football, it's home-town football. It's not just any faith, it's born-again bumper-sticker good old time religion: white, Protestant, and fundamentalist.

Palin speaks that language fluently. In her first speech to a world awaiting some reassurance that she has a clue about the gravity of the issues awaiting her, she chose to devote ninety-five percent of her remarks to laying out her home-town girl bona fides. I felt like I was watching "Big Love," that scene where Barb makes her pitch for Utah Mother of the Year.

This morning I contacted an old e-mail acquaintance who lives in Alaska to get her take. She said that Palin doesn't miss a trick and is scary. The scary part is that she's shot up the ranks of the GOP from nobody to AK governor in a political nanosecond, all on the strength of her connections and charisma.

It will be tempting to dismiss her as a lightweight and a pretty face. That would be a mistake. McCain (more realistically, GOP kingmakers) didn't pick her because they thought she'd lose.

In the coming weeks, keep one thing front and center. There's not only small awareness of it; more important, there's not even a scintilla of concern about the wider world here. There's not only scant exposure to how others might see our common humanity or solve our collosal problems; as her acceptance reveals, there's a phenomenally smug certainty that different strokes and complex deliberations are just not all that relevant in her world, soon to be our world if she's elected. We're talking about many shades of white, here.

Palin brings no knowledge to offset McCain's acknowledged weakness in economics, no experience whatsoever in global affairs, defense, security, and emerging global crisis spots. She brings less than no concern for looming environmental catastrophes, fond as she is of that epic sport, airplane machine gun v. wolf. And she brings basically no acquaintance of the hugely diverse human species. She's a forty-something bit-part mayor of a small Alaska town just now in her first role in statewide government, and already up to her ears in controversy for a serious alleged abuse of power.

However cute she might be, however good a mom she is, however charismatic she seems, and however skilled a politician she is, Sarah Palin brings but one thing to this campaign.

Like John McCain, she brings an overweening ambition that's more than ready to place its selfish apetites ahead of the national interest. This is the unmistakeable message in her acceptance of John McCain's cynical offer of the vice presidency, an offer as disturbing in its foolishness as it is dangerous for the planet and its inhabitants.

This nomination speaks of unbridled ambition utterly unmodulated by self-awareness or good judgment. Like John McCain, she is only too ready to feed her ego at the expense of the needs of a nation, a world, in crisis.