May, 2008 archive

St. John “Hundred Years War” McCain seems to have figured out that a hundred years of war may not be a good plank for his campaign.

So now he has scaled it down to five.

Like most predictions emanating from the Republican Party, this one appears also to have been snatched directly from thin air. Concomitantly (I’ve waited years to work that into a post), he has shown that he has truly turned into McBush:

“He laid out what his dream was … without offering one single solitary concrete way explaining how he’d do the things he stated,” said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Having studied the Iraq situation probably as much as anyone who also has to, like, you know, work for a living, my personal opinion is that, if we leave tomorrow, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in five years, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in 20 years, the damn place will go up in flames.

Why? Because we never should hadda oughta been there in the first place, and, by going there, we’ve opened a can of worms that will wiggle for generations. It wasn’t our can, it’s not our worms, but it sure as heck was our can opener.

This column offers a trenchant analysis of St. John of the Hundred Years’s new way of counting the days, as well as his full conversion to Bushieness (emphasis added):

If he believes what he is saying, then McCain is again showing only a passing understanding of the conflict in the Middle East. Even by the most generous assessments, it would take at least sixteen months to withdraw our troops from Iraq. To have the bulk of our troops home by January of 2013, with his preconditions having been met, would require that McCain somehow achieve this functioning democracy and dramatic decrease in violence within two years of taking office. From where does he imagine he will find political reconciliation? In what sense can he expect a reduction in violence, given no evidence that a long-term reduction is sustainable? It is simply not feasible to assume that our exit from Iraq, if it were to coincide with the happy ending McCain portends, could possibly happen in either 100 years or on his new shortened timeline.

It is far more likely, however, that McCain does not believe what he is saying, that he has not in fact, had a genuine change of heart. The conditions on the ground in Iraq have not changed. But the political conditions for this election have. This is not an honest assessment from the self-appointed king of straight talk. It is rather yet another false promise, uttered with a straight face, as an attempt to survive an election, and with no intent to follow through.

With comments that break with himself and the GOP, McCain is showing yet again that he has a willingness to lie that truly makes him a Bush Republican.

(This does not apply to anyone who resides in the same domicile as I.)

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

Boing Boing,

Via Mithras.

So, we’re sitting here watching the ball game when Shane Victorino hits a homerun.

Some guy in the stands catches it, turns around and gives it to this little girl, who looks to be about five, who’s sitting next to him.

She just turns the ball around in her hands while her father, who’s sitting on the other side of her, looks.

Then they are being led off by the ushers so she can get the ball signed by Victorino.

Baseball is such a great game.

. . . that come with your credit card bills. Robert Reich:

For years, banks and the credit card companies that service them have been sending us greater and greater sounding offers. But they’ve been hiding how much interest they’ll be charging and how they calculate the outstanding balance. It’s not unusual for them to suddenly increase annual interest rates, impose high penalty fees, even shorten billing cycles to make it harder to pay on time. Sure, they disclose their right to do all this stuff when you sign up, but it’s in print so small as to give you a headache even if you understand it.

In other words, they’re offering what look like great deals, but the deals are becoming nightmares for millions of Americans. Sound familiar? It’s just like what mortgage lenders were doing before the bust.

Don’t expect any help from the Current Federal Administration. After all, helping the little guy wouldn’t make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

One can have hopes.

The Republic Party is down in the dumps after losing a solidly Republican district in that bastion of progressiveness, Mississippi (emphasis added):

This was the third special election in as many months in which the Democrats have grabbed a traditionally Republican seat. In March, Bill Foster beat Jim Oberweis — a Republican endorsed by Sen. John McCain — to take over former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s old seat. Earlier in May, Louisiana Democrat Donald Cazayoux won over a heavily Republican district despite big spending from the GOP.

“This is as bad as I can remember since post Watergate,” said Shirley. “It was so bad in 1974 after Gerald Ford was nominated for Vice President that there was a special election for his congressional district, which had been Republican since the civil war, and it went Democratic… The fact is that these are comparable races. These are all three seats that have been in GOP hands for a long, long time… Ultimately voters want to know what a politician is going to do for them. What has happened with the Republican Party over the last eight years is that some of the consultants have decided it is too hard to define what we stand for so we are just going to paint Democrats as worse than us.“

And, on the news tonight, I heard a Republic operative argue that the voters “have lost confidence in the things we (Republicans–ed.) believe in.”

Au contraire, loser breath.

The fact is, the public has seen the results of the things the Republic Party believes in.

• An economy in tatters because of an ideological refusal to regulate misconduct on the part of the business, because, after all, businesses are wealthy and therefore must be moral.
• A city left to drown because of an inability to respond to emergencies (and, in my opinion, because the majority weren’t white folks, and therefore just weren’t all that important).
• A war conceived in perfidy, born in lies, and prosecuted by bozos.
• A tolerance for, nay, a fascination with doing things, which, had they been done by others and offered for sale, they themselves would condemn as pornographic (Caution: link not work or child safe).

But wait! There’s more!

• A hypocrisy of “family values” that involves trumpeting abstinence, monogamy, and heterosexuality, while patronizing prostitutes, soliciting homosexual sex in men’s rooms, targeting children for homosexual advances, and encouraging wife-swapping.

And, on top of it all, they have betrayed the sincere voters who believed that they actually meant what they said and would do what they promised.

No, it’s not that the voters have lost faith in what the Republic Party believes in.

It’s that, after the Republic Party has been in charge for the last few years, voters have seen what it actually believes in.

Their actions belie their words.

It is their actions which have undone them.

Now, we shall see, as the fall elections approach, what lying words they will unleash to again distract their supporters from their deeds.

Addendum:

Balloon Juice weighs in.

Several times today, I heard the phrase, “Republican brand.”

Apparently, the Republican Party thinks it has a marketing problem.

It doesn’t.

It has a problem of truth versus lies, of being and doing right versus being and doing wrong, of upholding the Constitution of the United States of America versus subverting it.

It’s about a proven record of deeds:

Misdeeds.

Contrary to the beliefs of the marketeers, marketing isn’t everything. All the marketing in the world cannot erase the shame that the phrase, “Republican brand,” the brand of wars for lies and of making the rich richer and the poor poorer, evokes.

You can market the sow’s ear all you want, and you still have a sow’s ear. And even if a lot of persons buy your sow’s ear, it’s still a damned sow’s ear.

Can anyone say, “The Republican Party, the Yugo of governance”?

Yugo. There’s a brand for you.

Q. What to Communism and NeoConservatism have in common?

A. Both of them share a naive fantasy that government is unnecessary and evil.

• Communism, because government is the arm of oppression for the bourgeoisie. After the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat would gradually wither away, as the natural virtue of the working class would lead to a paradise in which each contributed according to his abilities and each took according to (and only according to) his needs.

  Needless to say, it didn’t happen that way. Instead, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie lead simply to a new ruling class, and the dictatorship of the proletariat never came about. All that came about were dictatorships.

  It’s called original sin, brother.

  That’s why Communism as an ideology is dead, dead, dead.

• NeoConservatives, because to them the government is the arm of the working class that leads to nasty things like OSHA, EPA, safety nets, and taxes. If the government were made to go away, the wealthy, whom the NeoConservatives idolize would not have to pay taxes or pay attention to the needs of the working class, while, at the same time, the invisible hand of the market will lead to a paradise on earth.

  
  (Aside: Of course, the question does come up, without government, who’s going to build and maintain the roads their chauffeurs need to drive them places or the schools needed to teach students how to say, “Do you want fries with that,” but, as long as they’ve got theirs, they have no cares . . . .)

  Well, it’s not going to work like that. The invisible hand of the market knows not morality.

  It’s called original sin, brother.

  That’s why NeoConservatism will be dead, dead, dead.

Both are empty, hollow beliefs that depend on a misreading of human nature, a misunderstanding of the social contract, and a perversion of natural law.