What’s shakin’? Let’s take a trip around the Horn.

What kind of asshole has to be tortured before he learns to love his own c*nt-ry?? The John McCain type of asshole. In a Fox Noise interview with John McCain on March 13, 2008, McCain said, “I didn’t really love America until I was deprived of her company.” Unlike “John McNasty,” I didn’t have to become a POW before I learned to really love America. It happened when I was eight years old while eating my first ballpark hotdog at a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game.

Sound unfair? Does anyone really think McCain meant he never loved America until he was imprisoned by “the enemy”? Of course not. Just like Michelle Obama was proud of her country before her now beaten to death remark about not having been “really proud” of America until . . . And kudos to MSNBC nerdling Dan Abrams for drawing the comparison. He’s struck a blow against blatant hypocrisy.

But there’s so much hypocrisy, and so little time.

Stephen Elliot takes a look at Cindy McCain’s most recent round of hypocrisy impugning Michelle Obama’s patriotism by parroting, “All I know is that I’ve always been proud of my country.” Well, except for the three years or so she was fucked up on prescription drugs she stole from her own charity. Can you imagine the amount of foam around Sean Hannity’s ugly little pie-hole if that had been Michelle Obama?

So much hypocrisy, so little time.

That’s why the damage the original hypocrisy causes must still be combated. Vets who were slandered along with John Kerry by the lying sacks of shit who called themselves “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and were funded by, surprise— a Texas oil asshole with a big mouth to match his big wallet— who offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove any of their allegations false. Let’s see if T Bone Pickens will pay up or shut up. Read Sam Stein’s rundown here.

And it isn’t on just one side of the isle.

One hundred and five House Democraps and all the Republicants have finally made it easy to see which of them should have their asses handed to them when their current term is up; just see who voted to give the telecoms immunity today. We’ll see which Democratic senators need to be fired next week when the Senate votes on this travesty. No matter; crimes are crimes, and if our own government is too corrupt to hold these sleezeballs responsible for spying on the American people, justice will have to await a personal accounting in the next world. See how far your lies will take you there, you self-serving traitors.

Alright. I’ve had enough for today. I’ll be working on my tan.

Both energy-things and spirit values are colored by their interpretation through the mind media of consciousness. —The Urantia Book

[T]he content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. - Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

In the clip below, Dan Abrams takes a Repug congressman to task for questioning Obama’s patriotism. But it’s what happening on an unconscious level that concerns me here.

Notice that in the first few seconds of the set-up, Abrams mis-characterizes what’s going on in the picture. Obama, Richardson, and Clinton are standing in front of a US flag,* the latter two standing behind Obama with their hands over their hearts. Abrams says that Obama had “his hands down when the pledge of allegiance was being played.”

Wrong. It was the National Anthem that was being “played.” Putting one’s hand over one’s heart during the anthem is not a matter of convention at all, as anyone who’s ever attended a professional sports event can testify.

Let’s give Abrams the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t consciously sabotaging his own argument here. What he did accomplish, at an unconscious level, was to propagate an element the right wing smear meme that Obama can’t be trusted because he’s not patriotic. And nothing the silver tongued Abrams can say subsequent to the set up is going to displace the symbolic impression of a presidential candidate who won’t place his hand over his heart when saying the pledge of allegiance.

This plays right into the Repugs media strategy of defining a candidate in the media before he can define himself. Witness what they were able to do to John Kerry in the 2004 election.

Kerry’s greatest strength was his status as a decorated Vietnam vet who had volunteered for duty. In contrast, one of the greatest weaknesses of his opponent was the latter’s own “service” record, which included being placed by his rich daddy into a champagne unit of the Air National Guard ahead of far more deserving candidates (and from which he was AWOL much of the time); opting out of a voluntary assignment to Vietnam; and forfeiting his million dollar taxpayer funded pilot’s by refusing to take a medical exam that, had it come back positive for drugs, would have resulted in his immediate transfer to the Army and to the front lines in Vietnam. Despite all this, by the time the Rovians were done sticking their propaganda needles into their Kerry voodo doll (with a huge assist from the MSM), he had become the villainous zombie and Bush the conquering hero.

This is all part and parcel of what cognitive scientist Dr. Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” describes as “a network of associations, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images, and ideas that have become connected over time.” In Westen’s terms, Rove succeeded in altering the components of the network of associations from which the candidates’ respective narratives were derived. Negative feelings that should have been directed at Bush were displaced and transferred wholesale to Kerry.

The same thing is happening to Obama now that he is emerging as the likely Democratic nominee. (For other components of the “network of associations” being used to define his “character,” see my previous post “The Manchurian Muslim Candidate.”)

It’s only after the virus of disinformation slips past the watchdog of the mind that its pernicious effects can be seen in the body politic. By then, it’s usually too late. As Foucualt would have put it, the representation of the reality displaces the reality itself.

The medium is still the message, Dan.

*The photo itself is almost certainly photochopped; Clinton was made to appear midget-sized next to Richardson, much more size distortion than could be reasonably assigned to a wide angle lens.

Heel! Heel! Heel McCain!

“All this emoting over Barack Obama’s [Homey McCain's] wonderful, wonderful personality is starting to trigger my gag reflex. What are we electing here, a faith healer?” —Derbyshire

Ann Coulter says, well it doesn’t matter what Ann Coulter says. She hates the candidate. A lot of the hate directed at the liberals must temporarily be diverted to wither the fired up drive of seventy-two year old McCain, whose wonderful home-boy appeal has brought the diverse working middle class whites, blacks, and Latinos who refuse to vote in their own best interest, flocking to his growing crowds of supporters, many of whom are too young to even have driver’s licenses.

Rush Limbaugh says, (absolutely the shortest): He also hates War Hero McCain. Not worthy of the office. Another “phony soldier.” Anyone who allows themselves to be shot down while dropping napalm on the enemies of our children, I mean the parents of our enemy’s children, and then allows themselves to be taken alive, is a fucking gosh darn fool, and coward, knowing full well the, base and barbarian morals of our Jihadist enemies require them to punish our “phony soldiers” for murdering their children, as our, what do you call them, our real soldiers who fought to bring American freedom to the people of South Viet-Nam, were humiliated by the returning phony veterans against the war, which also attracted the phony soldier John Kerry, who’s medals were undeserved, as were John McCain’s.

They are the real soldiers who, if ever caught by the enemy, they are the brave ones, the ones brave enough to run a foot or two of Bushido steel into their guts, and not deny this proud nation’s people the ultimate sacrifice, after you failed to evade enemy fire and took down your fifth multi-million dollar piece of American hardware, while the dirty fucking hippies blame America first crowd were busy giving aid and comfort to our enemies while Phoney Homey, friend of the immigrants, especially the Vietnamese immigrants I’m told, did not spare us the humiliation of one of our boys knowingly giving the enemy vital information the enemy needed to kill more of our real pilots, as they risk their lives, to drop more napalm on more children, and their parents.

All ahead swiftly, Dittos.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing in the world smells like that.
[squats down]
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours; an when it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…
[Kilgore unhappily walks off]