Well.  It’s what she does up there, now isn’t it.

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(Photo credit— unknown)

Sarah Palin effortlessly hoists a steaming two gallon Crock of Shit in a last ditch effort to sway Georgia voters back to the dark side for incumbent Saxby Chambliss.

WASILLA — With the dust and turkey stench not even dry cleaned out of her the GOP’s clothes from her last public debacle, Sarah Palin is scheduled to troll for votes in Georgia for Senator Saxby Chambliss, the GOP’s dead ringer for Crocker Jarmon, a “fictional” conservative incumbent upset by librul upstart challenger, “Bill McKay,” in the movie “The Candidate.”

Crocker Jarmon. . . ••••••••••••••• . . .Saxby Chambliss

Don’t even try to make sense of how or why the GOP rationalizes an electoral PR disaster like Palin benefits a Good ‘ole Boy pol like Saxby, outside of the fact the ignurnt noes dey own.  His Democrat opponent Jim Martin is swimming hard against a crimson tide of turkey blood and Southern Comfort, but has consistently trailed Chambliss by a couple points. We’ll know soon enough if there’s a new generation emerging in Georgia, or if they remain just one more dying bastion stubbornly clinging to the traditionalist conservative’s desiccated Crock of Shit.

•  •  •  SCATOLOGY WEEK  •  •  •

A workman draining blood out of turkeys looks on in disbelief as an unidentified man tumbles down the turkey wafer conveyor belt while Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin babbles on about how brutal the “time consumption” was for her on the campaign trail.  WTF does she think it would be like if she had been elected?  (Click it.)

WASILLA — The sound and smell of turkeys hung heavy in the air as a hyper-caffeinated Sarah Palin gave another interview today, this one with local Alaskan television. Remarkably, the governor was entirely oblivious of the goings-on behind her. The ex-vice-presidential candidate, who is no stranger to turkeys, spoke in stream-of-consciousness breathlessness, while a workman methodically cut turkey throats and drained their blood:

( Accurate transcript phonetically spelled )

“…I have the same values and convictions, en positions, en policies, um jist a greyter appreciation I think for uh what other candidates go through, ya know it’s it’s pritty brutal the the uh time consumption therrre and thee uh uh innergy that has to be spent in order to git out’n about with the message on a national level greyt appreciation for other cannadets who’ve gone through this but also jist a greyt appreciation for this greyt country there’s soo many good Americans who are jist, desiring of of their govermint ta kinda git outa the way an allow them ta grow an pragress an allow are biznisses to grow an pragress so greyt appreciation for those who share that value, meh and it was a blast everyday was jist a blast out there on the trell.”

(At this juncture a strange man in some distress tumbled down the processing conveyor full of turkey wafers, behind the governor;  he was later identified as a Detective Thorn of the NYPD, and he was insistent that the green wafers were not made of turkey, but were in fact “…made of people.”  The governor’s interview continued unabated.)

Any other future plans for office?

Uhm yaa know, plans jist include ah ah eh gittin’ through uh eh the budget process were goin’ through right now buildin’ the state’s budget based on ah the price of oil that has plummeted so greyytly an rainin’ in tha growth of govvermint, and uh uh plans like that that havta do with um helping ta govvern this state and building this team that is continually being built ta provide good service to Alaskans, so in my role as governor thats thats what my plans are all around.”

So why was today so important for you, personally?

Ohhhh well this was this was neat! It I wuz happy ta git to be invited ta particapate in the this an an uh, ya know for one ya needa little bita levity in this job espeshly with the uh so much that has gone on last coupla months that has been so um political obviously that it’s nice ta git out an an do somthin’ ta promote a local business an an  ta jest participate in sumthin’ that isn’t so uh heavy handed politics that uh invites criticism!  Certainly we’ll probly invite criticism fur even doin’ this too but at least this was fun.

Well. Fun for you, Governor.  Not so much for the turkeys;  or Detective Thorn; who also turned up dead shortly after his trip down the conveyor belt. By insisting it would be fine to allow yourself to be interviewed with a turkey executioner, you have once again single-handedly demonstrated your uncanny penchant for shittin’ in your own mess kit.  Scatologists everywhere salute you.

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•  •  •  SCATOLOGY WEEK  •  •  •
This concludes our half-assed coverage of Scatology Week;  we hope our nation’s current scatological politics will not become a permanent part of our heritage as a free and gasous country, but will instead become the rarely necessary punctuation of a history ripe with the fragrance of defiance in the face of so much effluvia from our shitbag political leaders and their shitbag followers. May they decompose in peace.

Sarah Palin’s political career will probably be studied for quite some time, but not because she’s ever going to be elected to anything again.  It’s going to be studied as the culminating disaster of a disastrous political campaign and philosophy that shredded every value America has ever embraced as the true American Way in an effort to grasp power.

Frank Schaeffer

Sarah Palin will never hold national office nor will any Republican at the presidential level for a long time to come. Why? Because America has uneducated jerks in it but is not a nation of uneducated jerks. The Republicans are done, hoisted on the petard of their own “southern strategy.”

The Republican Party is only a step away from becoming the fringe of the fringe, identified more with cross-burning weirdoes wearing hoods, folks like the Alaska secessionist party, all those gun owners stocking up on assault weapons before the “Socialist/United Nations/Obama/Muslim” conspiracy comes to fruition, than with anything remotely like a serious national political force.

The Republican Party— and I speak as a former lifelong Republican who, up through the 2000 primary campaign supported John McCain and even worked for him by arguing his case on various conservative and religious radio stations— is now the toy of the Rush Limbaugh windbags. These folks include outright crazies (such as Sarah Palin’s Assemblies of God pals who are waiting for Spaceship Jesus to rescue them and/or rooting out “witches” from their midst), white racists and a few not-very-bright attention seekers, including Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity etc.

Read their blogs! Listen to their talk radio! You’ll be in the twilight zone of front page tabloid fantasy on a par with Bat Boy Attacks! headlines. Bill Buckley roll over.

The Religious Right, the racists, the anti-gay hate-mongers are now not only marginalized but thoroughly out of step with even members of their own former constituency. For instance the Gordon College student newspaper (Gordon is an influential Evangelical College north of Boston) endorsed Obama this year. Many young evangelicals voted for the Democrats. James Dobson, Fox News, Limbaugh, et al, were utterly powerless to do more than stir up hate. They are losing the next generation of their “base.”

And that’s a good thing. The under-educated will always be with us, but we cannot allow them to be used by the unscrupulous to control our elections ever again. There’s simply too much at stake.

Meanwhile many former Republicans— like me— ran to Obama as fast as our legs could carry us and away from our willfully “we’re not an elite” moronic former party. Republican commentators such as David Brooks and George Will mourned the loss of the Republican center. Others noted the Republicans have become anti-intellectual. “Anti-intellectual”?  They wish!  How about simply anti-literate?

Indeed.  But what will we do about it?  Will we find the spine to do what’s right?  Cradle to grave education opportunities for all our citizens; mandatory graduation from statemanship schools for all who would enter public life;  schools of philosophy;  an overhaul of our nation’s plan of suffrage.

Meanwhile the fringe of the fringe is holding meetings where they’ll talk to themselves and look at the “facts” of their alternative universe in order to figure out “what went wrong.” These are the same “leaders” (like William Kristal) who think Sarah Palin has a big political future!

Sarah Palin will never be president because the right wing of the Republican Party has perfected the art of believing their own bullshit, starting with the idea that is-Africa-a-country-or-a-continent?-Palin has a future. Palin and her fans don’t know it yet, but having reduced itself to a grim angry joke, the Republican Party has also divorced itself from American politics and. . . is destined for the garbage can.

I agree;  but a grim angry joke with any political power is still a serious threat to the health of the nation. When the majority of Americans vote for a new direction, it cannot countenance a political party trying to pull us back to an ignorant and immoral past, a politics of fear and hate.  If the Republican debacle of the last three decades has produced anything of value, it is the crystal clear knowledge that their politics and their philosophy must be abandoned to oblivion.

“The greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.”

So says psychology professor Robert Altemeyer, who provided Wateregate whistle-blower John Dean with forty years of study on the authoritarian personality type that roughly 28 percent of Americans proudly call their modus operandi.

John Dean:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys, and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.

The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide no true, specific proposals to address America’s needs. Rather, they simply ask voters to “trust us” and suggest that their opponents - Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden - are not “real Americans” like McCain, Palin, and the voters they are seeking to court. Accordingly, McCain and Plain have called Obama “a socialist,” “a redistributionist,” “a Marxist,” and “a communist” - without a shred of evidence to support their name-calling, for these terms are pejorative, rather than in any manner descriptive. This is the way authoritarian leaders operate.

In my book Conservatives Without Conscience, I set forth the traits of authoritarian leaders and followers, which have been distilled from a half-century of empirical research, during which thousands of people have voluntarily been interviewed by social scientists. The touch points in these somewhat-overlapping lists of character traits provide a clear picture of the characters of both John McCain and Sarah Palin.

McCain, especially, fits perfectly as an authoritarian leader. Such leaders possess most, if not all, of these traits:

* dominating

* opposes equality

* desirous of personal power

* amoral

* intimidating and bullying

* faintly hedonistic

* vengeful

* pitiless

* exploitive

* manipulative

* dishonest

* cheats to win

* highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic)

* mean-spirited

* militant

* nationalistic

* tells others what they want to hear

* takes advantage of “suckers”

* specializes in creating false images to sell self

* may or may not be religious

* usually politically and economically conservative/Republican

Incidentally, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney also can be described by these well-defined and typical traits — which is why a McCain presidency is so likely to be nearly identical to a Bush presidency.

Clearly, Sarah Palin also has some qualities typical of authoritarian leaders, not to mention almost all of the traits found among authoritarian followers.

[Read more →]

Yeww.  The folks at LIAR may have crossed the line, this time.
But I don’t really think they give a rat’s ass.

Todd Palmer and Rob Pringle.

Palin: “Where does a lot of that earmark money end up, anyway? [...] You’ve heard about, um, these — some of these pet projects they rilly don’t make a whole lotta sense, and sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothin’ to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!”

It’s hard to know where to begin deconstructing this statement. This was a speech on autism, and Palin’s critics have pounced on the fact that a recent study of Drosophila fruit flies showed that a protein called neurexin is essential for proper neurological function— a discovery with clear implications for autism research.

Fruit flies are more than just the occasional vehicles for research relevant to human disabilities. They are literally the foundation of modern genetics, the original model organism that has enabled us to discover so much of what we know about heredity, genome structure, congenital disorders, and (yes) evolution. So for Palin to state that “fruit fly research” has “little or nothing to do with the public good” is not just wrong — it’s mind-boggling.

Evolution? Nope. Sarah believes in Creationism. That means she believes that Noah had a little fruit fly cage aboard the ark, where he kept Mr. & Mrs. fruit fly alive, right next to millions of other little cages with married insects in them.  But. Sarah is clearly jealous of the little critters.  They’ve been to Paris, after all;  she hasn’t.

What else does this blunder say about Palin and her candidacy?

[Read more →]

The Grand Oil Party slogging through the political wilderness

Updating my initial compilation of the Obamacans (Republicans for Obama ) is becoming quite the task. Add endorsements from the likes of W’s former Secretary of State Colin Powell and press spokesman Scotty McClellan; former Reagan’s UN Secretary Kenneth Adleman; former McCain adviser Charles Fried; former Minnesota Republican Governor William Weld; former South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler– well, you get the idea.

More interesting is what a post-election loss will mean to the Republican party as a whole as the unholy alliance between its corporatist and fundamental evangelical wings rips itself asunder. At stake is control of the party. Will it be Palin v. Romney? Huckabee v. Ridge? (In order to make it a fair a balanced civil war, Fux News will have to give Palin her own yack show alongside Huck’s.)

Today’s LA Times leads with a story titled “Social conservatives fight for control of Republican Party” , which points out the fundies have quietly taken over the machinery of the GOP.

In skirmishes around the country in recent months, evangelicals and others who believe Republicans have been too timid in fighting abortion, gay marriage and illegal immigration have won election to the party’s national committee, in preparation for a fight over the direction and leadership of the party

Meaning that even if McCain wins, God forfend, the battle for the soul of the GOP is already joined. Reports of Palin going rogue are the first visible sign. Recall her Freudian slip at a rally last month where she referred to “a Palin and McCain administration.”

Could be the basis for a hit scripted reality show: Survivor meets The Handmaid’s Tale’s , a ripped from the headlines, theocratic melodrama timed to usher in the end of days.

All of which should provide some badly needed (though temporary) comic relief as the Obama Administration struggles with the legacy of ruin left to it by the Bushies. That would include the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,  a health care system on the brink of collapse, military occupations in two Muslim countries with the promise of more military operations to come (witness recent incursions into Syria and Pakistan, not to mention covert ops inside Iran),  and an overcrowded planet facing severe resource depletion and environmental degradation set against a background of runaway global warming.

Can I get me a witness?

[Image from data5.blog.de]

So this is how it’s gonna be. President McCain has said that Palin is qualified, and his way of “assuring the nation” is to let Vice -President Palin run the Joint Chiefs Staff.  The first meeting got off to a volatile start when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tried in vain to explain to Vice-President Palin why it is innapropriate for the “First Dude” to be present at Joint Chief staff meetings. . . only to get a folksy lecture on who’s “in charge now,” which began with, “Listen up, Troopers,” and concluded with, “I will fire your disloyal asses!”   Click it.

Our economic woes have pushed the two wars we’re still waging out of the headlines. But our sons and daughters are still still fighting and dying;  our treasure continues to be wasted on Dick Bush’s legacy of war crimes.

Terrorists who would do us harm must be hunted down, but these unnecessary wars must end.  Only Barack Obama will end them.  Bullets must give way to Ballots.

Remember that when you vote.

The Republican plumbers are ready to work on our very strong planks.

Sarah did a sitdown phone interview with James Dobson.

(H/T to Chris Kelly) She may have even had some notes, but they didn’t have anything in them about the very very strong planks that form the floor foundation of the Republikin party. I can’t be sure if these are direct quotes, but ya know, I think they’re viry viry close.

I think this greet country of ours also is a strong platform around the planks in this platform that respects the life and respects the entrepreneurial spirit of this great pro-Amerrikin country and those things, also back to the social issues that are what Republicans, at least in hour viry greet past had articulated and tried also to stand on.

Are they reaching you yet?

Now, finally, we have viry solid planks in the platform that will allow us to build an even stronger foundation for our greet country. It’s all good and it’s encouraging. You would maybe have assumed that we would have gotten further away from those viry viry strong planks. But no, they’re there, they’re solid, we stand on them, we can jump up and down on’em, and they support us in return,  and also again I believe that it is the right agenda for the country at this time. Viry, viry clear and contrasted tickets in this election November 4th. People are going to see the clear contrasts, you just go to the planks in our platforms and that’s where you see them.

Now?

I am such a very strong believer that McCain believes in those viry viry strong planks and we do have good conversations about some of the detells of the diffrint strong planks and also what they represent. I’m viry heartened that John McCain . . . he doesn’t want a Vice President who will check the opinions . . . of me at the door and also we talk about some of these and they’re viry important.  It’s most important though, also as you’re suggesting, that our viry greet Amerrikins also know that John McCain is solidly there on those solid planks in our platform that build the right agenda for Amerrica.

Now??
It won’t get any better.

Blue Gal has an interesting post today on Sarah’s wardrobe peccadilloes, and while some women’s clothes aren’t one of my things, photoshop is. So when BG said this pic was “Not a photoshop,” I was intrigued.

After a close examination of this picture, I went surfing;  ‘cuzz you just never know what the waves will bring in:

“Alley Trash”?  Who’d a thunk it.

“What’s in a name? that which we call [trash]
By any other name would smell as sweet. . . ”

Palin as Giuliani-in-drag-on-the-ticket, pontificates on Pro-Americans at a Halloween fundraiser gala.

“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get ta visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the rill America, bein’ here with all of you hard-working, veiry patriotic, veiry pro-America areas of this greyt nation.”
—Sarah Palin

The “REAL” America Sarah Palin enthuses about to small town America as if she were talking to five year old children can best be understood by its two major differences:  yurr Pro-Amerricans, and also yurr Anti-Americans.  Pro Amerricans love America, also Anti-Americans hate America.  Also, Pro-Amerricans love our flag,  Anti-Americans also hate our flag.  Pro-Amerricans also hate terrorists, Anti-Americans arrrrrrrrre Terrorists.  Also.

“Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”
—Repuglican Representative Robin Hayes, North Carolina

Real Americans.

Lemme tell you about “REAL” Americans.

Real Americans know shit from shinola.
Real Americans put country before political party.
Real Americans put their personal morality before party.

Real Americans, and their real American values, are always harmonious and synonymous with the highest reality— the universally acclaimed public good— as it is best understood by any of us; anything less would be, hhyeah, un-American.

Real Americans almost always try to embrace this qualitative high bar of reality, and through morals, and ethics, derived from, as John McCain says, our Judeo-Christian principles, Real Americans pursue our collective good destiny before, and in the name of, a Divine Creator.

But what has become the traditional Rovian/Atwater/Buchanan way of winning elections— divide and conquer— is a highly corrosive toxin to the unity of All Americans. [Read more →]