Sarah Reagan vies for control of the Republican Party

Thanks to the legacy of the failed Bush presidency and the electoral landslide it produced for the Democrats, the Republicans are convening in Miami today to figure out wtf to do next.

No doubt returning to the glory days of the Reagan Administration will be a major theme. But not even Dr. Frankenstein could reanimate that rotting corpse. It’s shining city on a hill has become a whited sepulcher filled with dead men’s bones, a monument to the failure of trickle down economics.

Contenders for leadership of the party include Louisiana Governor and exorcist extraordinaire, Bobby Jindal; lightweight Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty; Mormon scion and former Massachusetts governor Mittens Romney; former Speaker of the Rich House and author of the ’90s Contract On America,  Newt Gingrich;  and of course, the ethically challenged Alaska governor and failed VP candidate, Sarah Palin.

In an interview with Greta van Susteren Monday, Sarah reveals that:

Faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator’s hands - this is what I always do. I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is. Even if it’s cracked up a little bit, maybe I’ll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don’t let me miss an open door. And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door*.

I’m like, so excited that there’s a door for Sarah to plow through should God crack it open a bit. (An improvement over George W. Bush who dispensed with the word “if” when announcing he had received God’s own Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.) Though, I have to wonder why she didn’t consult the Big Guy before accepting a VP bid that would have placed her a fragile 72 year old heartbeat away from the nuclear football; or if she did, what went wrong.

No matter– I’m like, so thrilled at the prospect of Sarah debating a snobby elitist like Barack Obama who right wing blogging denizen John Hinderaker says could learn a thing or two about public speaking from that master of political malapropisms eloquence, George W. Bush:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.

I want what this guy is smoking.

It must take a tremendous amount of psychological effort to sustain the kind of delusion that dominates Republican thinking. To this I say–

Viva la Palinistas!

——–

* Compare:  “[T]he ‘wise man, when seeking entrance through the locked door, would not destroy the door but rather would seek for the key wherewith to unlock it.’ -The Urantia Book, quoting Jesus of Nazareth

1: Steal 2000 and 2004 elections.
2. Appoint proven corporatist attorneys like John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
3. Appoint morons like Michael D. “Brownie” Brown to run critical government agencies like FEMA  to prove Reagan’s mantram that government is the problem, not the solution.
4: Start two expensive wars while simultaneously cutting taxes.
5. Deregulate Wall Street.
6. Bail it out when its pyramid scheme of bogus paper derivatives collapses.
7. Bankrupt government to the point where it’s discretionary budget can be drowned in Grover Norquist’s bathtub.

The Rethugs panicked the supine Dems into authorizing the AUMF (used as justification for invading Iraq) and then the Patriot Act (used to repeal the 4th Amendment).

Now they’re trying to panic Dems into authorizing a bailout of their immoral and profligate Wall Street buddies and donors, burdening our children’s children’s children with the cost.

Well, let me just say this– call their bluff. Burn down their rotten insect ridden house and put up something more enduring in its place.

No mortal who knows God and seeks to do the divine will can stoop to engage in the oppressions of wealth. No noble man will strive to accumulate riches and amass wealth-power by the enslavement or unfair exploitation of his brothers in the flesh. Riches are a moral curse and a spiritual stigma when they are derived from the sweat of oppressed mortal man. All such wealth should be restored to those who have thus been robbed or to their children and their children’s children. An enduring civilization cannot be built upon the practice of defrauding the laborer of his hire.

But cultural society is no great and beneficent club of inherited privilege into which all men are born with free membership and entire equality. Rather is it an exalted and ever-advancing guild of earth workers, admitting to its ranks only the nobility of those toilers who strive to make the world a better place in which their children and their children’s children may live and advance in subsequent ages.
-The Urantia Book

Bush: The Invisible Man at the Rethuglicans’ convention

For the first time in pundit memory, the president and vice-president of an incumbent party, in this case the Rethuglicans, failed to make a live appearance at their party’s nominating convention.

President George W. Bush phoned it in from the White House, while Vice President Darth Cheney reverted to form and was in hiding somewhere at an undisclosed location. There wasn’t even a customary tribute video of the Administration’s accomplishments (sic) over the last eight years.

Which explains why in his acceptance speech tonight, McCain mentioned Bush exactly ONCE.

And why a selection of other Rethuglicans convention speakers only mentioned Bush seven times, according to this index compiled by The NY Times.

The Grey Lady’s front page analysis of McSame’s speech is titled: “The Party in Power, Running as if It Weren’t.”

John McSame– you can run but you can’t hide.

[Photoshop credit to Terry Kruger]

Like flies and maggots descending on a dead boar carcass, facts disproving the Palin maverick/reformer narrative are coming fast and furious.

Where to start?

Brent Bowdowsky over at TheHill.com yesterday wrote a blog titled “Pork-Barrel Palin, The Earmark Champ” that details some of the humongous amounts of money that Palin has secured for her constituents, thanks in large measure to her indicted Senator mentor, Ted Stevens :

Now John McCain learns, as we do, that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) sent a 70-page memo to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) in February seeking $200 million for new Alaska earmarks, and as mayor of the village of Wasilla she lobbied hard for and won more than $26 million of earmarks.[...]

Palin long ago hired the prime pork lobbying firm in Alaska, which features Ted Stevens’s son, and Ted Stevens’s former chief of staff, who serviced her pork lobbying account.

The regular junkets of Palin and her staff to Washington, hustling earmark dough, are legendary in Alaska. Someone will soon add up the airfare, hotel and fine dining tabs to push for the pork, plus the lobbying fees, all at taxpayer expense, starting with Wasilla, continuing as governor.

The dead tree version of today’s LA Times has more, leading with “McCain had criticized earmarks from Palin”, highlighting the fact that Palin was for the infamous “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it.

This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship,” she wrote in a newspaper column [...]

McCain has made opposition to pork-barrel spending a central theme of his 2008 campaign. “Earmarking deprives federal agencies of scarce resources, at the whim of individual members of Congress,” McCain has said. [...]

When Palin spoke after McCain introduced her as his running mate at a rally in Ohio last week, she made fun of earmarking. She said she had rejected $223 million in federal funds for a bridge linking Ketchikan to an island with an airport and 50 residents, referring to it by its derogatory label: the “bridge to nowhere.”

In the nationally televised speech, she stood by McCain and said, “I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.”

However, as a candidate for governor in 2006, Palin had backed funding for the bridge. After her election, she killed the much-ridiculed project when it became clear the state had other priorities. She said she would use the federal funds to fill those needs.

Over at the Politico, we learn that:

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told Washington Post editors Tuesday that issues will have an impact on undecided voters but will not be conclusive.

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

Thus the urgency of Palin’s prime time speech at the Rethuglican’s convention tonight, meant to define her as something she’s not, before her real character is exposed.

At a press conference today meant to display John McSame’s superior foreign policy credentials, the Rethuglicans‘ reality challenged presidential candidate either had a senior moment, or he believes that the corporatist media is so in the tank for him that he is free to utter even the most egregious hypocritical pronouncements and escape scrutiny.

Case in point: the roiling Russia-Georgia war. Scolds the morally correct McSame:

“[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

Excuse me? Has our corporatist media sainted war hero forgotten Afghanistan and Iraq, the invasion of both he so throatily encouraged?

Consider also his previous pronouncement on Georgia that an editor from Wikipedia pointed out contains copious amounts of plagiarized material from the Wiki site.

Guess we know now how McSame would answer that iconic 3:00 AM phone call— frantically try to get online to access Wikipedia.

McSame improvises as an EMF burst fries D.C.’s com circuits

The response from the Obama campaign is obvious— adopt the Rovian tactic of attacking an opponent’ perceived strength. The operative word here is, of course, perceived. As this and other numerous McSame foreign policy gaffes proves, McSame’s alleged expertise is a fiction to begin with.

Should be an Obama PR slam dunk.

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 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.