McSame demonstrates he no longer needs his wife to access the internets

Frank Rich begins his New York Times Sunday column yesterday by noting what a favor Barack Obama did for his presidential rival, John McSame, by traveling overseas this weekend:

THE best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

Or at least Pasadena’s annual Dooh Dah Parade. With the Rethuglicans‘ economic legacy in mind, I’m expecting a gaggle of gay guys to compete in a yanked-from-the-wall, ATM drag race down Colorado Blvd. But I digress.

Frank continues:

In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to “those issues.” As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read “Greenspan’s book” as a tutorial.

Consulting former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for advice on the economy is like reading a book on military tactics by General George Custer. Greenspan as much as anyone is responsible for the present economic catastrophe, which promises to be the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression.

Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how “to get online myself.” Perhaps he’ll retire his abacus by Election Day.

[See image and caption above.]

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.”

Only a couple of weeks have passed since The Wall Street Journal speculated that Gramm would be McSame’s Treasury Secretary (should the Rethuglicans hit the electoral trifecta and steal yet another presidential election).

Gramm certainly has the support of McSame’s best boy, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Lindsey once called Phil: “A legend in terms of fiscal discipline.” A legend also known for engineering the Enron Loophole that has enabled unregulated hedge funds to help rocket energy prices into the stratosfear. And who as vice chairman of the UBS investment bank helped usher in the era of sub-prime mortgage loans, collateral damage evident in the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the whole Bush-damned housing market.

[Meanwhile, Phil seems to have taken a page from Rudi Guiliani's book. He was last seen dressed as a platter toting Marie Antoinette haranguing people in line at the Austin unemployment office: "Ya'll want some nice soft, squishy brie to go with that whiiine?"]

Frank proceeds to point out McSame’s multiple-economic flip flops on everything from tax cuts for the rich, to social security reform, mortgage bailouts, and off-shore oil drilling. The latter is supposed to lower gas prices a couple of pennies a gallon before the sun goes nova.

Then there are the self-defeating pander plays like his summer gas tax “holiday” that would in many communities suspend road maintenance, costing consumers more at the repair shop than they would save at the pump. Senator Pothole is probably unaware that the $40 billion federal highway trust fund already expects a $3.2 billion deficit next this year as a result of people driving less and using more fuel efficient cars. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), head of the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, says that we are now less than a year from total bankruptcy!

And in a perfect fusion of flip flopping pandering, McSame promised in February of this year to balance the budget by the end of his first term, then in April said he’d do it by the end of his second term, and then just this month went back to predicting economic nirvana by his first term. No wonders his intended base is suffering from cognitive whiplash.

Rich puts the capstone atop McSame’s pyramid of absurdities by pointing out what has to be a record– a mere 24 hour interval between him saying that “great economic progress” has been made under Bush to saying that “Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago.”

The only way to make sense of McSame’s economic policies is to follow the advice he himself gave when asked how he would go about choosing a vice president:

Well, basically, it’s a Google.

[Image credit to Marc Luscher @luscher.org]

A Charge To Keep, by W.H.D. Koerner

The above painting was proudly displayed in Governor George Bush’s office in Austin, Texas. As Crooks and Liars describes it:

In 1995, he issued a memo to his Texas staff, describing the painting, by W.H.D. Koerner in 1916, which he kept on his office wall. Bush told his aides:

The…painting is based upon the Charles Wesley hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have.” I am particularly impressed by the second verse of this hymn. The second verse goes like this: “To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage to do my Master’s will.”

This is our mission. This verse captures our spirit. […]

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

When one looks at the painting, you see a man on horseback — who actually looks a little like Bush — apparently leading a group of missionaries. It worked for Bush on a couple of levels: the title comes from one of the president’s favorite Methodist hymns, the man in the picture looks like him, and he related to the missionary work depicted in the painting.

He liked all of this so much, Bush used the title for his autobiography (which he admittedly did not write). He even brought the picture with him to Washington upon taking office.

The funny part is the truth about the painting: “Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.”

Hard to think of a better metaphor for Thursday’s announcement that Bush has set forth an “aspirational goal,” part of “a general time horizon” for withdrawing US forces from Iraq. An event that John McSame likes to call “surrender.”

Not only did Bush pull the rug from beneath McSame’s feet, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki proceeded to roll him up inside it by telling the German magazine Der Spiegel that Obama’s plan for withdrawal of US troops for Iraq is just hunky dory with him:

“US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Oh dear, how cold it must be for Saint John to be dangling there alone, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind…

A Mind’s Eye View of Star Trek’s The Game

In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s The Game (Episode 106, first aired 10/28/91), the crew of the Enterprise becomes totally addicted to a virtual reality game brought aboard the ship from an alien world.

A slick pair of VR specs sends visual imagery to brain, energizing the brain’s serotonin and dopamine receptor sites. The more one plays, the more one is chemically rewarded, rendering the higher cortical (reasoning) areas of the brain moot. This puts the ship and, by extension, the entire Federation at grave risk.

I was reminded of The Game as I read today’s New York Times editorial titled There He Goes Again. It’s a rather mild take-down of John McSame’s ridiculous economic proposals, the core of which is keeping in place Bush’s tax cuts for the billionaires amongst us. Money quote:

Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot. The unbalanced budgets of the Reagan years and two Bush presidencies are proof.

Perpetuating fantasies is the very function of the Rethuglican propaganda machine. Believing that Iraq is a success, that we aren’t already in a recession, that we can drill our way out of rapidly increasing gas and energy prices in time to ward off an even more severe economic downturn, that attacking Iran will enhance our national security, that tax cuts for the hyper-rich will trickle down their legs to benefit the rest of us are just a few of their most prominent delusions.

Neurocognitive evidence for addictive delusional behavior is provided in Dr. Drew Westen’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Westen reports an experiment in which political partisans are presented cognitively dissonant information about their favorite politician. Functional MRIs reveal which parts of the brain are involved in processing that information, and the extent to which it will go to restore mental harmony. Even the most clearly bogus rationalizations are no match for the brain’s electrochemical reward circuitry, the same used by drug addicts when getting their fix. Not only does the subject again feel good about their candidate, but they end up feeling better. (Westen wryly notes that the term political junkie is thus more than just a metaphor.)

Message to McSame and their MSM enabled Rethuglican propaganda machine:

Take those rose colored VR glasses and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine.

UPDATE: A McSame VP candidate, South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford, experienced a moment of cognitive flatulence Sunday morning when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to identify any economic policy differences between McSame and Bush.

Kinda hard to watch, but Huffpo has the vid.

This vid was released on the 18th, and 460,000  1.4 million people have seen it already. You should too.

Photo credit: Crooks & Liars

Whether its tax cuts for the rich, Iraq, Iran, lobbyist love, opposition to the new bipartisan G.I. Bill– even torture– John McCain continues to morph into George W. Bush.

Congressional Quarterly reports that in 2007, “Maverick” McCain supported Bush with his Senate vote 95% of the time, and thus far in 2008, a perfect 100%.

The political liability for doing so was demonstrated yesterday when a planned Bush fundraiser for McCain at the Phoenix Convention Center had to be canceled because not enough people were expected to show. Instead, it was moved to a private house, well out of range of those nasty recording devices called cameras, which would have put the two in the same frame.

You can run but you can’t hide, McSame.

MoveOn has more.

EAT SHIT, AMERICA!

Mc. . . McSame. . . How many times did you eat a McDonald’s cheesebooger before you realized you are what you eat? How many times did you eat a McDonald’s cheesebooger before you realized it was never going to taste different, or better, or be good for you at all?

How many times can the Republicans make you eat the McSame McShitburger candidate before you realize they are all the same? How many times will you vote for a Republican candidate for president before you realize it will never be different, or better, or good for you at all?

Five times? Seven times? Ten times?

Ten times. . .

Nixon; Nixon; resigned to avoid impeachment; Ford; Reagan; Reagan Redux; Bush Senior; Bush Junior; Bush Junior redux.

Three more to go? Better bring your lunch.