Metamorphosis Complete

John McCain disavows the title "Maverick." He truly has become Bush.

Tea Party, ca 23 A.D.

I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are truly innumerable examples of teabaggers unwittingly spouting stupefying irony/ignorance (here and here , for example).

But did you know that this tea party mindframe has existed practically unchanged for 2000 years? It's true!

PS: On a serious note, the Obama protesters are actually not at all comparable to the Monty Python crew. Why? Because the while the Romans did tend to levy oppressive taxes on their tributary states, Obama actually cut taxes for 95% of working Americans. Including teabaggers. No shit.

Unrelated, but what the hell.

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Update: Someone (15000 someones) agrees with Justice Holmes!

Final Stretch

Instead of televising a debate, we should do something more like this:

Fuck debates. What a joke.

Anyways,this is how it's gonna be till election day.

I thought this was interesting:

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker

This is HILARIOUS.

Of course, at the moment, it doesn't feel that good to be a banker.

Superstar Sarah

I was reading more on Palin (for the life of me, I cannot understand why I can't let it go. Her story is not particularly interesting, other than the insanity that it reflects in McCain for having chosen her, and in others for supporting her. Maybe it's just that she's so easy to rip on that everyone's having a field day. Anyway.) and I found that even Maureen Dowd --the Sarah Palin of NYT editorialists (yeah I'll say it)-- gets her barbs in. Excerpt:

Palin has rocketed in the polls, drawing women and men with her vapid — if vivacious and visceral — scripted cheerleading. But if you’re reading this, Charlie, we want to know everything, including:

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs — as mayor and as governor?

When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

As Troopergate unfolds here — an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law — it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?

Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian? "

And also, seriously...I mean seriously.

Finally:


In other words:


Beauty queens are all the same. Except for ones from the midwest, who have an annoying accent when they spout idiocy.

Not Done With Palin

NYT gives her a bum rap. She's uber-secretive, cronyistic, petty, ignorant, and has ties to religious fanatics. Sound familiar? No wonder McCain thought she might energize the base.

Here is an excellent editorial by Marc Fisher that comments on the sort anti-technocracy that I've bemoaned before. An excerpt:

Most people I spoke to readily conceded that Palin lacks experience with or knowledge of many important national and foreign issues. But, as Allison McGarvey, a teacher who lives in Stafford County, said, Palin is "a courageous woman, and what she doesn't know, she can learn quickly. Let's face it, no president knows all the issues. Anyway, I don't see how a candidate can pick one stand and just stick to it. The world situation changes every day. It's their moral and ethical background that's important."

In this hyperdemocratized society, the national conviction that anyone can succeed is morphing into a belief that experience and knowledge may almost be disqualifying credentials.

Like many at the rally, Victoria Robinson-Worst sees Palin's lack of experience as an asset. "I know people who have experience who are totally incompetent," said Robinson-Worst, who lives in Loudoun County, designs wedding flowers and raises two children. "And I know people who have no experience who step in and get it right. I mean, women can do amazing things."

This is where culture wars, identity politics and self-suffocating academic theories of deconstructionism have led us: Authority is suspect. Experience is corrupting. Ignorance is strength?

Next will be "war is peace." Or have we already heard that one?

Krugman tells how this campaign is gonna be.

This is a relatively objective critique of Palin's inexperience.

This is perhaps the most interesting take on what the Palin pick really means, and it's quite scary.

Even Friedman has a point on Palin. (And Friedman is kind of an idiot.)

Damning With Faint Praise

Wonkette nails it. Condi's apologia is so piss-poor it's laughable. Condi ends by saying, "There different kinds of experiences in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy." Chief among these: dealing with matters of foreign policy. Shitty among these: having babies, winning beauty pageants. Which ones does she have again?

Finally, an authoritative fisking of Palin's stance on the "bridge to nowhere," with damning photo to boot.

The reviews below also really hurt, since the worst (in my opinion) are plucked from the National Review, an arch-conservative publication with highly apologetic tendencies towards bush. Ouch. If I'm agreeing with Bill Kristol, something is terribly wrong.

Read Me

A good quickie on the role of the media this election cycle.

So Clever

I love Wonkette. Didn't see the movie.

Link Dump - Mostly Palin, That Hilariously Unqualified Minx

I'm a little disappointed that I missed on my forecast of Lieberman for veep, but I am stoked that my prediction of "the perfect storm of electoral failure" still looks on the money. I mean, what was he thinking?


"She's a moose hunter. That sounds like a euphemism for something, but it's not. She actually hunts moose."



Palin's to do list.

Two main points from the NYT article on McCain's pick:

Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States. In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow.

Whooops! said the McCain staffers who initially tried to claim that Palin's travel abroad would help offset her lack of "formal" foreign policy experience. This was an asinine claim even if it had been based on reality. Also:

Ms. Palin is known to conservatives for opting not to have an abortion after learning that the child she was carrying, her youngest, had Down syndrome. “It is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community,” Mr. Reed said. "I mean, these people are themselves -- almost without exception -- born with severe mental retardation."

Okay, so Ralph Reed didn't actually say that last bit. But he's proven it many a time.

I do feel bad for her daughter Bristol in all this. Not just because she's young a dumb and got knocked up, and not just because the whole country now gets to know about (and presumably pass judgment upon) this, but because Palin has declared that she's looking forward to her daughter's having the baby with "the man she will marry." So there will be a shotgun wedding so as not to torpedo her mother's political aspirations. Nice.



This is not right. The meth-heads with guns that wanted to to kill Obama were deemed "not a credible threat," but some dude in prison who wrote a nasty letter to McCain was dealt with swiftly and harshly.


Unrelated:

Unfortunately, escape is not so easy.