Tag: Sarah Palin

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“Game Change”: Sarah Palin and McCain

Just watched HBO’s “Game Change”, about Sarah Palin’s exciting tenure as John McCain’s running mate. Not bad. Not great, but not terrible. I can’t even really tell the politics of the makers– one tends to assume that a Hollywood film is made by liberals. In general, Palin is made to look like an idiot, but then, Palin really is an idiot and even some conservatives will admit that.

A competing conservative biopic, “Undefeated”, has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been described as “Stalinesque”.

Someone on a message board on IMDB wrote– poorly– about the idea that in order to make a good film (or tv), you have to be able to empathize with people who are different from you.

The problem for conservatives is that the minute you do that, you become a liberal

“Game Change” paints a rather flattering portrait of John McCain in one respect: McCain (Ed Harris) is depicted as running a principled, honest campaign. He is clueless about just how incompetent Sarah Palin is, but he is “ethical”. So he rejects bringing up Jeremiah Wright. He remembers being smeared by George Bush in 2000 with a scurrilous claim that he had fathered a child out of wedlock with a black woman. (The photo used to “substantiate” this claim was of McCain’s adopted Asian daughter.)

That is a very, very relative statement, but yes, compared to the current Republican primaries, he was Florence Nightingale. He was also bitter after the election– in a way that Al Gore and John Kerry clearly were not– and I suspect he was somewhat delusional about just how much damage Palin did. The idea of blaming the media for denigrating the most incompetent personnel decision in modern presidential political history must have occurred to him in his sleep.

Did you know: a committee of the Texas Legislature rejected an amendment to a bill that would have required that public school sex education classes be “medically accurate”.

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Wienergate

Unemployment. The War in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq. Global warming. Thousands killed in Syria. The government collapsing in Yemen. Spain and Portugal going broke. Japan. Cancer. AIDS.

The Anthony Wiener story is intended to amuse the illiterate, the sheep, and the frigid-hysterics while the government and big corporations continue to ensure the gradual impoverishment of the middle and lower classes and continuation of disastrous foreign policies over there.

I am hugely disappointed in Jon Stewart. The story was funny for five minutes, not 105. And it wasn’t funny because a foolish young politician made stupid decisions. The very, very funny part of the story is Wolf Blitzer with a straight face pretending to be a journalist. At least he got that right.

I was baffled, at first, by the amount of time Stewart was giving this story. Wasn’t he doing exactly what he frequently ridicules other media organizations of doing? Tunnel vision. Flogging a trivial, inane issue to death?

Mystery solved: Stewart is very touchy about some critics who claimed he low-balled the issue on the first day because of his personal friendship with Anthony Wiener– not, they believed, because he was rational. Those critics successfully manipulated Jon Stewart and made him look like a fool as, on the very next Daily Show, he desperately tried to muster the hysterics to prove that he really, really can’t be tricked out like some CNN tart. He made the story the centerpiece of three consecutive Daily shows, long after it stopped being funny.

But then, that’s about all you get on the news these days, including the CBC up here in Canada. When it’s not falling over itself to drool over the royal wedding.

At the end of the June 8th “Daily Show”, Stewart played a clip of a reporter listing five or six important stories she had intended to cover and then announcing that she would not be covering those stories because there were new developments in the Anthony Weiner story.

My wife and I could never could figure out if the reporter was being sarcastic or serious. It is so had to tell nowadays. But it was utterly shameless of Stewart to play it because he was doing the same thing or worse.

If you were to be honest with yourself for a moment… if you woke up one day and heard that Anthony Wiener, who is married, had flirted with several other women online, would you really believe that this was an important story that needed to be on the front page of every newspaper and online news website in the country?

But you believe it now, don’t you? Because it was on the front page of every newspaper, top of the news on every broadcast, all over the web. You believe that no story would be given such prominence by so many different news organizations and media entities if it wasn’t really and truly important.

Or do you think for yourself?

No matter how many news organizations cover it, nor how many gallons of ink are spilled on it, or how many photographs or videos or web pages, or self-serious pundits using euphemisms, no matter, no matter, no matter, the Anthony Weiner scandal is trivial and irrelevant and unimportant.

The real story now is just how bad is the entertainment-news industry in the U.S.? And the next real story is, is this really what Americans want– because they do tune in– or is something they are having shoved down their throats? The Anthony Wiener story might well begin to seem important to some people because coverage of it is ubiquitous.

This story will die soon enough. Unlike Sarah Palin’s enduring idiotic appeal to every numbskulled dissident survivalist in the U.S.– something that appears to be trivial but isn’t (we’re talking about the intellectual ability of a potential candidate for the highest office in the land)– this never was a real story, there never was a real impact, and not even Fox News can make a whole turd out this fart.

No crime was involved. No political issues were involved. It’s none of anybody’s damn business.

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Palin Pizza Trump Taco

Yesterday, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump had pizza together in New York at Famiglia’s, a chain, in Times Square. The pizza at Famiglias is widely regarded by New Yorker’s as detestable.

She muttered something about a real New York pizza as she left.

And I don’t want to contribute any more to the mad media fascination with the most mediocre mind in American politics.

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Newt Gangrene: America, America, America

“In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”

Never imagine that any kind of scurrilous, scumbag, divisive politics is beneath a Republican. Newt Gingrich has found Jesus. Just in time for 2012. Do even fellow Republicans buy this? Does anyone in the Republican Party ever acknowledge that the movement itself would be better off if it sounded a little less cynical and opportunistic?

Is there anything more that anyone needs to know about Newt Gingrich than that he is willing to stand in front of a crowd of Republicans and make the statement he made above, (at a gathering of the Ohio Right to Life) February 28, 2011?

Nobody can seriously believe that Newt actually believes this. If he does, America is far worse off than even I imagined. But it does magnify something that has become more apparent since 9/11: he doesn’t even care if you believe he believes it or not. It doesn’t matter.

How does one avoid being rude when observing what should be obvious but obviously isn’t? That New Gingrich, ready to make another run at the presidency, studied the polls and decided that Americans– actually, Republicans who vote in the primaries– want a leader with genuine religious convictions so, all right, we can do that. Here’s how: you say “In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.” You say this in front of “Ohio Right to Life”. Just drink in the applause. Ahhhh. Feels good. It’s so easy. And the money keeps rolling in. And James Dobson is already behind you, on his knees, lips puckered.

It’s like “fiscal responsibility” and “no new taxes” and “strong military” and anything with “America” in the title, on a book– not that anyone will actually read it. They just need to know that you, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and everyone else out there on the right, has not only read at least one book in your life but has also written one. Something like “Fighting for America”. Or “Finding the Real America”. Or, “America– the America of Americas”. Or “God and America”. Or “How Immigration is Ruining America” by Nancy McDougal and Sid Hofstetter.

Not that you could actually have ever been bothered to actually write the book. Gosh, that’s not time well-spent for God’s appointed leaders– that’s hack work, for what’s-his-name– the elite intellectual snob we hired just for this kind of work.

But conservatives don’t give a flying leap about whether you actually wrote a book you “authored”. That’s for those effeminate, liberal, snobbish eastern elites. People like Al Gore and Barack Obama. No, by God, a real leader just puts his name on it. Nor do they seem to give a damn about the rankest hypocrisy imaginable (see sidebar).

I suppose people should be reassured that Gingrich has discovered, thrillingly, if belatedly, that 2+2=4. We all look forward to the next miracle: how he will balance the budget, cut taxes for the rich, and increase military spending, without cutting any programs.

Aside from all that, isn’t Gingrich more or less openly saying that America should become a Christian Theocracy? If not, then what is he saying?

It’s really the Christians who have fallen down on this. Where are the church leaders who have any real religion? They would be standing up now, declaring that Christianity should not be exploited and tricked out in this way, and that politicians like Gingrich do more harm than good to real spirituality.

A lot of harm

Do Republicans ever hold any of themselves accountable for anything:

He [Newt Gingrich] also acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista Bisek, then a House staff member, while leading impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton for lying about his own sexual transgressions. NY Times, 2011-02-28

I don’t think they do hold themselves accountable. I think they believe they are special, touched by god, with wisdom so sublime and transcendent that mortal men cannot even begin to apprehend the audaciousness of their wisdom.

When you think you are so right that those who disagree with you are not mere political opponents but enemies of the state– nay, enemies of God!– foreigners, and subversives, consistency is truly the hobgoblin of little minds.

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Bullies

There is a grave flaw in the conservatives’ argument that the government should stay out of our lives as much as possible. Or maybe it isn’t a flaw. Maybe it is the real essence of conservatism.

If our world is a school yard, big corporations and the rich are like the bullies. Conservatives want the government to stay out of it: the bullies knock you down, kick you, and take your lunch money. They abuse the girls, toss their garbage wherever they like, and when the ice cream man arrives, they take all the ice cream, drive off the ice cream man, and then resell it to the rest of the kids at twice the price. Oh wait– the school yard does have an army. It’s role is to go to other school yards and bully those kids and take their lunch money. They bring it back and have a parade commemorating their success, and then keep it all for themselves. Every day, they remind you that the bullies in the other school yards are all plotting to steal your lunch money, or worse. They make up songs praising themselves and force everyone to sing them.

If George Bush runs this school yard, then the bullies take your credit cards and run up a huge bill buying weapons with which to go invade other school yards. They buy these weapons from themselves and make huge profits. Most of the weapons cost a lot but they don’t work properly and eventually get tossed. Then they hold solemn parades on the basketball court. “If only,” they tell us, “the other bullies would stop trying to take our lunch money, we could have peace!”

In Glenn Beck’s and Sarah Palin’s ideal world, that’s the way it should be. If you’re not big enough or tough enough to stand up to the bullies, too bad for you.

They look solemnly at the faces in the school yard: you don’t want the government telling you what to do, do you?

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Ridiculously, He Won

Palin owes her power to identity politics, pitched with moralistic topspin. She exploits the same populist impulse that fueled the career of William Jennings Bryan—an impulse described by one Bryan biographer as “the yearning for a society run by and for ordinary people who lead virtuous lives.” From Vanity Fair, September 2010

Is it even remotely possible that this dangerous lunatic could end up as President of the United States? The story is that she is preparing a run, setting up fundraising bodies, collecting direct-mail lists, distributing IOU’s to any number of Republican House and Senate candidates. That looks like groundwork. This looks like someone who believes her own (selected) press. I am so smart that even I don’t know how smart I am. Everybody who matters knows how smart I am.

There is something seriously demented about American politics. Americans hate their government. They believe that Washington is full of idiots and liars. These are the people they elected. Okay– so we were a tricked. These people were good when I voted for them, and then they got corrupted by Washington.

So a new guy comes along and says I won’t get corrupted. I’m going to clean out Washington. So they elect him. Two years later they hate him too. They hate him so much that when he spends $30 million smothering the state with ads declaring that his opponent is a child-molester and a heretic, they vote for him again. That’s all it takes, apparently, to fool the American voter. $30 million, supplied by the lobbyists representing the companies that persuaded their representative to do their bidding instead of the voters’.

So ask these voters, what’s ruining this country? Those damn unpatriotic foreigners! Feminists! People who don’t wear American flags in their lapels. Moslems! Mexicans! Homosexuals!

My friends, there isn’t a single Mexican in the country who can pay your Congressman enough money to do his will– but that’s who you’re upset about? You complain about the government wasting money on roads and schools, while they build billions of dollars of weapons for imaginary enemies? You have been driven into massive debts and bankruptcy and you’ve lost your job and your house because of the actions of greedy, dishonest American investment bankers, and you don’t like Obama because he’s smart and thinks he’s better than you?

The Vanity Fair piece on Palin is fascinating if only for a glimpse on that perennial American political paradox: how millionaire white American capitalists inevitably campaign for political office as “just folks” and try — and often succeed in painting their Democrat opponents as “elitists”.

Sarah Palin is America’s Evita in that regard– the poor little aw shucks hockey mom with down home values and divinely inspired common sense. How far that can take you in federal politics if you don’t even know who Margaret Thatcher is (presumably, she does now) is the question to be answered in 2012.

A friend of mine has mused that the Democrats should have lost the last election on purpose– the country was going to hell as a result of George Bush’s incompetence and there would be hell to pay and most people are too stupid to connect policies and consequences and delayed consequences, so whoever was in charge at the moment would get the blame.

My theory is that the Democrats did try to lose the election. They almost nominated a woman, realized she might win, thought better of it, and nominated a black man instead. Ridiculously, he won anyway.

There really, somewhere, should be a picture of John McCain sitting in an easy chair smiling. Smiling away…. Well, he should be smiling– instead, he seems bitter. Does he seriously believe that he could have come up with a plan that would have balanced the budget and reduced unemployment to 7% by now? Sure– by cutting taxes for the richest 1% of the population.

 

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The Palindrome

Enough already! I thought the end of the election would bring an end to the incessant fascination with the least fascinating politician out there: Sarah Palin. Get over it, horny Republicans! She’s not that interesting.

I didn’t think she was all that interesting from the start. As far as young, photogenic, female Republicans go, Condoleezza Rice, you could argue, is more interesting, because she is fairly smart, and even though she is the most over-rated politician in the U.S. Or was the most over-rated politician in the U.S. until Sarah Palin came along. Wait. All right, maybe Condoleezza Rice really isn’t that interesting.

So you think Sarah Palin is so hot? Why? Come on. What special qualities does she have that make her unique and interesting? Interesting ideas about the economy? Interesting ideas about the arts? Interesting ideas about leadership? Interesting ideas about energy? Interesting ideas about a single bloody thing on the entire planet? I didn’t think so. Interesting personality? In what way?

So all there is, we admit, sigh, are the looks. She is a relatively hot 43-year-old hockey mom. Bravo. There is a clip on Youtube of her in a red bathing suit competing in a beauty pageant. This, evangelical Americans tell us, is an asset.

So what it comes down to, really, is that she has become “interesting” because she received so much media coverage that people became curious about this person who was receiving so much media coverage. In other words, she became a celebrity: someone who is well-known for being well-known.

So McCain made the biggest strategic blunder of any recent political campaign and she hurt his candidacy and hurt his credibility and completely annihilated his argument that only people with the proper experience should run for high office and she ran a smarmy campaign about “real” Americans who could be white or gun-owners or embittered, clinging to their religion of Opieism (that the real America is Andy of Mayberry’s homogenous rural Aunt Bea-America), afraid of them, afraid of change, and lost.

The million dollar question is– why is she still here! Why is she still in the news? Who cares about her views on anything? She is a proven loser, and a proven dingbat who never belonged on the world stage.

And that’s why I hope she stays there, in the spotlight, the darling of the pro-life evangelical right. If the Democrats are really, really lucky– if God really blesses them, as I think he will– Sarah Palin will be the Republican nominee for 2012. And the Dobsonites and the other “values voters” will be ecstatic, and maybe we will finally have an election about those so-called “values”, and just maybe a resounding message about small-minded bigotry will be delivered at last.

Incidentally, in Colorado, a pro-life ballot initiative– a real measure of just how “mainstream” these values voters are– failed with 73% of voters rejecting it. Astonishingly, the organizers plan to take the same strategy– redefining “personhood”– national.

On Values Voters – Colorado’s Pro-Life Amendment 48
Kind of a weird site on the Colorado initiative… [down]

The site suggests that this is a scientific debate, not a “political” debate, and that science absolutely “proves” that life begins at conception. Of course, science also “proves” that the world is billions of years old, the earth is warming, vaccines work, and man descended from monkeys, and I would guess that most of the supporters of the Amendment 48 might have a problem with that science… and probably have a problem with science, period.

In spite of Kristi Burton’s attempts to secularize the debate and disguise it’s religious origins, the song playing in the background of the first video contains the lines, “Let it be said of us/that our hearts belong to Jesus”.

What would probably help these initiatives more than anything else? If the Republican Party became pro-choice. That’s the only way you could even begin to persuade mainstream America that abortion is something other than a wedge issue to attract gullible evangelicals to support tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for corporations and deregulation of toxic industries.

 

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Obama’s Terrorist Pals

It is a little bizarre to see Sarah Palin and John McCain both continue to charge that Obama “pals around with terrorists” long after the slightest shred of credibility has long left that scene. They do the same with the “Joe the Plumber” references, though any rational person can now quickly verify that, in fact, Joe the Plumber keeps more of his money under Obama’s plan than he does under McCain’s.

You would think–I did– that a politician would stop using a certain line of attack once it has been discredited. So it’s somewhat amazing to see McCain and Pail continue to flog those charges at every opportunity.

Did someone advise McCain that the truth here doesn’t matter? It doesn’t matter at all. If you repeat the same charge over and over and over again, no matter how ridiculous, a certain segment of the voting public will begin to believe it. Heck, about 20% of adult Virginians think Obama is a Moslem. How hard can it be to persuade other white Americans that he actually pals around with terrorists.

It occurs to me that each side tends to make the accusations that they would feel were most shocking if levied against their own candidate. McCain lacks empathy for the working man. He is erratic. He is unconcerned about the working class. The Republicans have the most horror for charges that a candidate is not patriotic, doesn’t bowl, doesn’t like guns and shooting furry creatures.

And Obama pals around with terrorists.

And they repeat it and repeat it, and no one wants to be charged with inflammatory rhetoric here, but isn’t that the classic “big lie” strategy? Don’t like that insinuation? How else do you explain the utterly brazen disregard for factual information here? McCain simply doesn’t care whether informed, reasonable people believe it’s untrue– he’s going to repeat it anyway, over and over again, because he believes it will sway voters. He believes in this. He has no hesitation. He has nothing but contempt for the idea of campaigning with honor and respect, as a gentleman, in spite of his increasingly absurd claims to be driven by such sentiment. Driven by it? He pisses on it every time he speaks.

When a committee of legislators in Alaska found the Sarah Palin had, indeed, violated State Ethics rules in the way she tried to force Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her former brother-in-law Mike Wooten, Palin brazenly claimed that the report exonerated her. Palin has been touting her “maverick” credentials as the governor who stopped the notorious “bridge to nowhere” when she did no such thing. McCain was pro-choice only a few years ago. He voted against the Bush tax cut when it was first presented. Forget all that. Don’t even look it up. You are too stupid to look it up. When I tell you I believe something it means exactly what I say it means and nothing more and nothing less. What is a “google”?

Of course, the standard conservative rejoinder is “the Democrats do it too”. Bullshit. Yes, both parties exaggerate and distort each other’s and their own records, but they are not the same. The Republicans, in this election, have built their entire campaign on it. The Democrats might be saying that Northwest is North, but the Republicans are insisting that up is down and black is white.

I’m biased! I’m biased! Yes, indeedy, I prefer Obama. So that qualifies me as biased. If I preferred McCain instead, I suppose I would not be “biased”. I would be “objective”, “fair”, and “reasonable”. Everything I say about McCain is a lie because I am biased because I prefer Obama. So when I say that Sarah Palin doesn’t look like a very strong candidate because she can’t even handle an open-ended interview or press conference, let alone a cabinet meeting— it’s not true. It’s biased. Now you know.

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Palin’s Executive Experience

The “Executive Experience” argument: Can we please stop this nonsense? Palin was an “executive” of a very small town and then, for two years, of a very small (population-wise), weird state with massive oil and gas revenues to pay the bills. Senators, like McCain and Obama and Clinton and Biden, are intimately involved in issues related to national governance, including foreign affairs, homeland security, disaster relief, justice and law enforcement, the environment, the military, and so on. The idea that Palin is more qualified to deal with these issues on a national level because she had final authority to negotiate a pipeline is silly. The idea that any of the Senators are unprepared because they only participated in national government and didn’t make final decisions by themselves is silly.

What’s even scarier: Palin has displayed a marked tendency to fire competent people in highly-placed, well-paid positions and replace them with cronies, including, in one instance, a high school friend whose primary “executive experience” consisted of managing a mailbox franchise. In that sense, I suppose, she is a true Republican– look at Bush’s attempts to put Harriet Maier on the Supreme Court. Maybe she could appoint her mother-in-law to the Supreme Court.

Palin is also a book-burner– she is lying about that little episode in her life– and she’s either a hypocrite or a liar about abortion: she suggests that her daughter made a “choice” about keeping the baby, while insisting that, if she could, she would make it illegal for anyone else to have a “choice”. In fairness, she hasn’t tried to push the social agenda as governor… but then, a governor does not appoint Supreme Court justices or the Attorney-General of the United States.

Palin and her staff occasionally used personal e-mail accounts to conduct state business so they would not–so they thought– be subject to subpoena, if anyone dared to challenge her actions. Can’t wait to see who she appoints to the office of Attorney-General. But that certainly is good preparation for someone who might inherent the constitution-bending role of Dick Cheney.

All politicians “fudge”– well, they lie– to a certain extent. Palin is a bit unusual in the zest with which she embraces this task at the Republican convention and interviews, even when there are tapes and emails showing the contrary. McCain must be hoping that this information doesn’t filter down to the bubbas and marges of U.S. politics by November. The lies pertain directly to her aura of incorruptibility– in fact, we learn quickly that Ms. Palin is immensely corruptible and corrupting, as well as unqualified for the office she aspires to.

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One Breath Away: The Vice Presidents

I never ever dreamed that I would ever see a worse nomination for vice-president than Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew — never, ever, ever.

Here’s a list of recent Vice-Presidents:

Lyndon Johnson
Hubert Humphrey
Spiro Agnew
Gerald Ford
Walter Mondale
George Bush
Dan Quayle
Al Gore
Dick Cheney

All right. There is Dick Cheney.

I’m sure some conservatives feel that liberals are just picking on Dick Cheney. They’re right: we are. Probably because he’s white. If he had been black and advocated torturing people, we’d probably cut him some slack. Yes.

Cheney understood the federal government, having worked in various capacities for several Republican Administrations, unfortunately. He understood how to get away with invading the wrong country, torture, violations of civil liberties, deregulating the financial industry. Cheney understood better than Bush himself that when the sheriff breaks the law, nobody is going to arrest the sheriff, and if you did, you would appear in court and find out that the judge was the sheriff’s mom.

Quayle was merely grossly incompetent, unprepared, petty and annoying, immature, and unsuited for office. Other than that he was okay.

And then there is Sarah Palin. Palin is right about one thing: in a statement made before she was nominated she said that any woman who accuses her critics of sexism is doing a disservice to the cause of women’s success in politics. But the Republicans were off to the races with their hysterical accusations of media bias before any bias could even have expressed itself. Thus the immortal Wolf Bitzer, perhaps the most sheep-like national reporter out there, practically sponged himself drooling over Palin’s acceptance speech: “she hit one out of the park”. And I am not a reporter: I am a guppy.

You could argue that Bitzer just meant that she was a hit with the Republican crowd at the convention.  If so, he should have said, “Palin is big hit with the Republican crowd” not “she hit one out of the park”.

Why have so many people lost their minds so quickly. Neither Palin’s critics nor her defenders knew anything about her before making brash assertions. The difference is, that the critics were correct — nobody knows enough about this woman to nominate her to be the second in line to the most powerful office in the world. And the more we are finding out about her, the more shockingly wrong she seems for the office.

The unseemly embrace of this woman by the entire panoply of right-wing commentators and the nattering nabobs of neo-conservatism, like Dobson and O’Reilly and Limbaugh, borders on the bizarre. No, it is bizarre. It’s not like they have been touting this remarkable woman for years and she finally got the recognition she deserves. It’s not like they actually knew much about her. It’s more like a desperate mob having been tossed a lifeline. An amazing lifeline. Oh, the sweetest, most remarkable, most well-qualified and pure and magical lifeline of all: a hope of winning the election and making those big tax-breaks for the rich permanent and invading Iran and sparing all those Bush Administration officials any kind of investigation — with teeth– into the carnage they have wrecked upon the constitution.

And she’s hot!