Lonesome Hawk

Six more years of this shit.

For years, John McCain has been the Walter Matthau of Congress: A grumpy old man who hates so much and for so long it's unlikely a man of that age even remembers why. The man who'd once made the word "maverick" a brand name has merely become, in the twilight of his political career, just another arch neocon who's emerging a decade late from the ashes of his failed presidential campaign.

McCain's jeremiad against the repeal of DADT was a fascinating glimpse of not just a mind stubbornly clinging to its own deterioration but a mindset that is at increasingly starker odds with the slowly changing mindset even within his own party. Fellow southwestern Republican senator John Ensign, proud Promise Keeper of C Street, said it was time to end the discrimination of gay soldiers.

Fancy that: John McCain arguing to keep in place a Clintonian bill that was once derided as effete and liberal, a bill that was a compromise of a compromise from the start and one that McCain actually opposed on the same grounds for which he'd demanded it be kept in place.

McCain in 1993 lambasted President Clinton for proposing the measure “without consulting the people we entrust with leading the country into battle. If there is any issue on which the president should have the advice of experts, it is this one."

Almost 18 years later, McCain now finds himself in the risibly hypocritical and antiquated position of using the same argument for DADT's perpetuation. By wasting Congress's time in moving the goalposts in poo-poohing and balderdashing the opinion of the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs and the Defense Secretary and many of their subordinates, McCain is completely responsible for Don't Ask, Don't Tell's delayed repeal, which still won't take effect for another two months.

Even arch conservative Barry Goldwater softened in his old age against gays serving in the military. This is what the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, who'd once sat in McCain's seat, wrote in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. While I may disagree with the late Arizona senator on many, many matters, what he said years ago is at least as relevant today:

Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They'll still be serving long after we're all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.

But most Americans should be shocked to know that while the country's economy is going down the tubes, the military has wasted half a billion dollars over the past decade chasing down gays and running them out of the armed services.

It's no great secret that military studies have proved again and again that there's no valid reason for keeping the ban on gays. Some thought gays were crazy, but then found that wasn't true. then they decided that gays were a security risk, but again the Department of Defense decided that wasn't so-in fact, one study by the Navy in 1956 that was never made public found gays to be good security risks. Even Larry Korb, President Reagan's man in charge of implementing the Pentagon ban on gays, now admits that it was a dumb idea. No wonder my friend Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under President Bush, called it "a bit of an old chestnut"

When the facts lead to one conlusion, I say it's time to act, not to hide. The country and the military know that eventually the ban will be lifted...

Some in congress think I'm wrong. They say we absolutely must continue to discriminate, or all hell will break loose. Who knows, they say, perhaps our soldiers may even take up arms against each other.

Well, that's just stupid.

There you have it. Barry Goldwater, author of Conscience of a Conservative, and arch neocon Dick Cheney, were against discrimination against gays in the military.

Where does that put John McCain?

Squarely in the middle of the 19th century, at best. And one almost swears that Goldwater must've seen McCain on the political horizon when he wrote, "Some in congress think I'm wrong. They say we absolutely must continue to discriminate, or all hell will break loose. Who knows, they say, perhaps our soldiers may even take up arms against each other."

McCain was making some bizarre, disconnected analogy of gays serving openly in the military to legless Marines in Walter Reed and the best argument he could seem to muster was that our brave heterosexual fighting forces' combat effectiveness would be compromised by the overriding suspicion that the guy next to them in the foxhole taking on enemy fire may have sucked someone's cock last night.

McCain's wife is against him. His daughter is against him. Members of his own party are against him. The Joint Chiefs Chairman is against him. The Defense Secretary is against him. Barry Goldwater and Dick Cheney are against him. And even the eternally fawning Washington press corps is tiring of his cranky old man persona. With McCain's violent wrench to the right, the only people who could possibly agree with him are other spittle-flecked homophobes such as Fred Phelps, Tony Perkins and James Dobson, hardly the kind of company one should willingly seek out.

And one is left to wonder what's in the drinking water in Arizona that made the voters elect this gadfly of everything humane and progressive to another six year term.

The Sraight Talk Express finally wheezes to a halt

Back in 2000, I used to say that I'd like to see a presidential race between Bill Bradley and John McCain. It wasn't that I liked McCain, or even Bradley so much. But I felt that a contest between these two at least wouldn't insult my intelligence.

I was still giving McCain some credit for being a mensch in those days, but that was before I knew about his own checkered marital history, his reputation for being a hothead, and the fact that his POW experience was perhaps the only part of his military service that showed any guts at all.

McCain managed to overcome being one of the "Keating Five", for all that McCain was the only one who was up Keating's ass so far he could see out of the man's nose. Today no one even mentions the Keating scandal when talking about John McCain. Despite being the insider's insider, the Beltway crowed bestowed on him the "maverick" meme (something he embraced until this year, when the ascendance of the tea party lunatics forced him to run as a frothing mouthbreather they could count on). He's been the darling of the Sunday morning talk show set for over a decade. But the one thing he wanted more than anything else, the one thing that would help him resolve his own issues with his father, was the presidency. And that was denied him by not just an upstart from a northern union city, but a BLACK upstart from a northern union city. That his 2008 loss galls him has been plain from his behavior ever since.

So now we're seeing the REAL John McCain -- the petty, angry, greedy, venal small man who's been holding the cardboard cutout of "War Hero Maverick" in front of himself all these years to hide the sniveling little rat-faced git that lurks behind it. When the generals say it's time to allow gay men and women to serve openly in the military, when even the loathsome John Ensign can be persuaded that it's time, John McCain was still out there to the bitter end, insisting that somehow if gay men and women were allowed to serve, soldiers would end up with amputated legs.

This is the real John McCain:

Whether he's always been like this or if this is the "new" John McCain -- a product of bitterness and resentment so deep that it's poisoning him from the inside out -- remains to be seen. But one thing on which McCain could always rely is the slobbering devotion of the Washington Press corps.

Now he can't even rely on that anymore. He's lost Dana Milbank, and if he's lost this hack di tutti hacks, he's lost the Sally Quinn crowd:

If John McCain gets any more hostile toward his Senate colleagues, they might consider having him go through the metal detector before he enters the Capitol.

Impotent Old Men

No, I'm not talking about the Vatican this time. I'm talking about the Three Stooges of Faux Toughness, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, all of whom are every day that the story of the New York car bomb develops resembling more and more the old Al Franken/Tom Davis SNL sketch in which two politicians run ads trying to outdo each other on how tough on crime they'll be. It ends with one ad which has the candidate saying, "We'll kill 'em BEFORE they can commit a crime."

You have to wonder about guys like these three -- two Sore Losermen and a closet case -- and oh, hell, let's throw Dick Cheney in there too while we're at it, who have this hard-on for torture and for eviscerating due process and the Constitution in the name of "toughness" and "strength." Their "strength" is that of the schoolyard bully who still has to wear a diaper in bed at night. Where "strength" became equated with running around like a chicken with its head cut off, screaming "OMYGODTHETERRORISTSARECOMING WE'REALLGONNADIEOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!", I have no idea. But somewhere along the line, Republican politicians decided that there way hay to be made among residents of towns in flyover states that have a near-zero risk of actually being the target of a terrorist attack by keeping them in a constant state of fear. Lieberman is a particularly heinous example of this, and he's not even a Republican (though he might as well be). It's appalling that a Jewish politician whose sole concern in regard to terrorism often seems to be the safety of Israel, a country founded to assuage Western guilt about looking the other way while Hitler massacred Jews, would advocate summary stripping of citizenship and presumable deportation if the government doesn't like the crowd with which you hang out. Given the flexible government definition of terrorism in this country, which does not seem to include nurderers of women's health practitioners and white guys who want to overthrow the government, I'm not sure we can trust politicians to decide who should retain citizenship and who shouldn't. We are all Emma Goldman now.

That these guys are continuing to beat the waterboarding-and-torture drum, while Faisal Shahzad is singing like a canary even AFTER having his Miranda rights read, just shows that for them, the whole Bushian torture-and-military-tribunal thing isn't about our safety, it's about a bunch of impotent old men being able to feel that they can still get it up.

Once again, Rachel Maddow debunked the efficacy of this model, which may make John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham feel like Biggus Dickus, but is actually a less effective way of dealing with suspected and actual terrorists than the law enforcement model they deride:

Somehow I don't think we'll see Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, or the militia types detained under this

Somehow I don't think that abortion clinic bombers, the murderers of doctors at those clinics, old Nazi sympathizers who shoot people at the Holocaust museum, people who go to Obama appearances carrying guns and wearing T-shirts proclaiming that the "the tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (except that Thomas Jefferson has just been expunged from Texas textbooks), Michele Bachmann, and Glenn Beck aren't what John McCain has in mind when he introduced this bill this month:

This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Enemy Belligerent In5
terrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010’’.

SEC. 2. PLACEMENT OF SUSPECTED UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY
2 BELLIGERENTS IN MILITARY CUSTODY.

(a) MILITARY CUSTODY REQUIREMENT.—Whenever within the United States, its territories, and possessions, or outside the territorial limits of the United States, an individual is captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States who is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities, and who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, the individual shall be placed in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

I wonder who's going to be classified as an "unprivileged enemy belligerent"? I suspect that John McCain will continue to regard people advocating that the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader and the President be killed as patriots, and this bill won't kick in against Americans until a Republican is in the White House. Then we can go back to the good old days of arresting PEACEFUL, UNARMED protesters and kids in T-shirts reading "BU$HIT."

Oh yeah, and the bill also niftily defines "high-value detainee" and codifies in law that these individuals, presumably including the kids in T-shirts after a Republican is in iffice, NOT be subject to the Miranda decision.

And you wonder why we think John McCain is nothing but a craven political opportunist whose reputation for being a "mavericky" sensible pragmatic patriot is completely undeserved? We wonder why he's so regularly fellated on the air by David Gregory and his ilk. Because this piece of "legislation" screams only "I HAVE A TEABAGGER PRIMARY OPPONENT AND I HAVE TO SHOW HOW TOUGH I AM...BECAUSE RETAINING MY SEAT TRUMPS EVERYTHING, INCLUDING EVERYTHING THIS COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO STAND FOR."

This is Afghanistan's future too

Last Sunday I was working (for a change) and decided to tune into the Sunday gasbags. After about five minutes of The Chris Matthews Show, during which Gloria Borger wanted to know where was the visual of Barack Obama out there in a hardhat and wishing he was more like Bill Clinton (bet you never thought you'd hear THAT from Borger) and panelist John Heilemann gleefully opined that without health care reform, Barack Obama's presidency will be "in ruins", I was ready to turn it off and then stick an icepick into my own forehead anyway. I've almost forgotten what it was like to live in a country in which while pundits might disagree with a president's policy, they didn't want so badly to see three years out of a four year term lie "in ruins". As much as I detested George W. Bush from the minute he declared his presidential run, on the twelfth of September in 2001, I hoped he knew what he was doing, and was willing to accept the partisan hit in terms of Republican dominance if he did. After all, presidential failure does not make for a nation that is a place you want to be.

But today's pundit corps, in its increasing lust for a blithering idiot like Sarah Palin, who makes the Miss South Carolina pageant contestant who blathered about the Iraqi people not having maps look like a rocket scientist to be president, can't accept that sometimes the health of the nation is more important than fantasizing about fucking the president; that someone who's stupid but "colorful" might make good copy to fill up the 24 x 7 cable news cycle, but could REALLY leave the country "in ruins".

I don't know why John McCain is still sought out for these programs, other than as a constant manifestation of the clubbiness inside the Beltway; the Russert - Sally Quinn - Cokie - Broder Axis of Idiotic Punditry that seeks to decide the success of a presidency based on their own little Social Register of acceptable hacks. It's clear that McCain's rage over being denied the prize that he feels is rightly his as payment for having been a POW has affected his cognitive abilities, for these days he's blathering almost as incomprehensibly as his erstwhile running mate:

MR. GREGORY: We're back with Senator John McCain.

Welcome back to the program. A lot to discuss here, a lot to react to. Let's get to your big issue this week, the issue of withdrawal. You heard Secretary Gates say here today, July 2011 is a date certain for the beginning of the withdrawal. Do you have a problem with that?

SEN. McCAIN: Yes. But let me also say, David, I support the president's decision. I think it's the right decision. I think that it can lead to success. It's a tough decision on his part to send young Americans into harm's way. As Secretary Gates said, casualties will go up, tragically. But I think he made the right decision, and I think that he is--the reality is he's not only tough decision to send young Americans into harm's way, but his--significant elements of his own party are, are opposed. So I strongly support the decision.

The problem with the date certain now is that not only there's a problem with that itself, but there's a, a significant contribution between what Secretaries Gates and Clinton were saying and what the president's spokesperson...

MR. GREGORY: Contradiction. Contradiction.

SEN. McCAIN: Contradiction...

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

SEN. McCAIN: ...between what--and what his spokesperson said just a couple of days ago when he said the president said--he said--I'm directly quoting the president, that "withdrawal date is engraved, chiseled in stone, and I am the chiseler." Now, that's pretty straightforward. So what has that done? It has caused reaction such as you saw with the prime minister of Pakistan. Policymakers throughout the region--Pakistan, India, Iran, as well as Afghanistan--are now trying to figure out whether they can really go all in and support this effort, or do they have to accommodate? Because if we leave, they have to stay in the region. So it needs to be resolved. It needs to be resolved in this way, that we will not leave on a date certain. But we have every confidence--I do, I have every confidence within a year to 18 months we can achieve significant success. We were able to do that in Iraq. And we will leave and not allow the Taliban to make comments like Taliban prisoners are saying, "You've got the watches and we have the time." We don't want to send that message.

Got that? "Significant success in Iraq". O rly?

Bzzzzzzzzst! Sorry, Senator, your answer is wrong:

In what appeared to be a coordinated assault, a series of car bombings across Baghdad on Tuesday killed at least 101 people and wounded scores more, according to preliminary accounts by police and hospital officials.

Five bombs, including at least one suicide attack, struck near a university, a court, a mosque a market and in a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry. The blasts began shortly after 10 A.M. and reverberated through the city for the next 50 minutes, sending enormous plumes of black smoke into the air.

American helicopters, drones and airplanes circled the city in the immediate aftermath, while sporadic gunfire could be heard at one of the sites, near the main courthouse for western Baghdad and Zawra Park, which includes the city’s zoo and amusement areas.

A suicide car bomb in Dora, in southern Baghdad, struck a police patrol outside the main gate of the Technical Institution, a vocational college. Three police officers died there; many of the other victims were students.

The attacks were the worst in Iraq since twin suicide bombings destroyed three ministries on Oct. 25, killing at least 155. They matched a pattern of spectacular attacks in the capital, followed by weeks of relative calm. In August, two suicide car bombs struck the country’s finance and foreign ministries, killing at least 122.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has blamed the attacks on Al Qaeda in Iraq and remnants of the Baath Party in exile, though officials have yet to provide concrete evidence pointing to those involved.

The latest attacks came on the day Iraq’s Presidency Council was expected, finally, to announce a date for the country’s parliamentary elections. On Sunday, under pressure from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Iraq’s political leaders avoided a constitutional crisis and agreed on the rules for holding the election and distributing seats to the winners.

Many officials have expressed fears of intensifying violence ahead of the election, with insurgents and terrorists seeking to undermine Mr. Maliki’s government.

Is this John McCain's idea of "significant success"? If so, I'd hate to see what abject failure looks like.

Why we can't let Joe Scarborough get away with saying idiotic things

Because every now and then he shows that he's NOT the idiot he seems to be most of the time:

Tuesday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: None other than Digby, for whom this feature is indirectly named, for reminding us what a truly heinous, ugly, mean-spirited man John McCain is, that he can't even bring himself to stand up for his own daughter when one of the Harridans of Wingnuttia decides to use her as a punching bag.

Money quote:

What kind of a man is this that he can't even defend his daughter against personal insults from the likes of Laura Ingraham?...I think he believes that Megan deserves to be spoken to like that because he probably speaks to her that way himself. Although she's quite lovely, she's not physically a perfect Barbie like her mother or Sarah Palin --- or Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham ---which is what he thinks is important in a woman. So, he can't bring himself to defend her. She asked for it.

Which means that John McCain = Peter Griffin:

Imagine what having Peter Griffin and the Mother from Hell running the executive branch. No matter how frustrated we may be with Obama, we literally dodged a bullet by not electing John McCain and Sarah Palin.

The price of toxic rage

It would be easy to think that because I sit at a computer every morning and some evenings, documenting the horrors of life in what is now (thankfully) POST-Bush America, that I'm this seething mass of rage and grievance. But if you thought that, you 'd be wrong. This blog is an outlet of sorts, a way to blow off steam, an attempt, however feeble, to provide information and insights. And yes, it's also a social thing for a busy person. But for the most part, while I'm always rather droll and cynical, I'm a pretty cheerful person. At least for now, I'm gainfully employed. I'm in a successful marriage of over 22 years duration. We're not drowning in debt, we live within our means, and I know i'm better off than many people.

I also know how rage and bitterness can destroy a person from the inside out. Grudges and resentment of old slights are a poison that eats us alive from within. I think the most important thing that anyone can learn about life is to let things go. I don't know anyone who was helped by holding grudges, nor do I think that defining one's life in terms of what one lacks instead of what one has is a recipe for contentment.

I read two things this morning that served to underscore the fact that it's important to not be a Pollyanna, but not to let raging at the machine, or at imagined slights, eat their way into your soul.

In 2007, DKos poster and provocateur "Dave from Queens" (David Weintraub) recounted his experience at a Sean Hannity/Mark Levin book signing, when Hannity's goons tried to have him thrown out of the store. Eventually Dave was banned from the site for being an equal opportunity pain in the ass, and became largely seen as a kook. Today he is dead suddenly at a relatively young age, and one wonders just how much his relentless rage had to do with it.

And then we have this piece by Sam Stein, about the post-election bitterness of John McCain. I have to somewhat admire Barack Obama's willingness to see good in everyone, and his attempt to mend fences with the man he defeated for the presidency before the inauguration, but it's clear that McCain is having none of it:

No one expected the Arizona Republican to be a legislative ally for this administration. But it was widely assumed that Obama's overtures to McCain in the weeks after the election would dull some of the hard feelings between the two. Now, they are realizing, it has not.

"He is bitter and really angry," Bob Shrum said of McCain in an interview on Friday. "He is angry at the press, which he thinks is unfair. He is angry at Obama and angry at the voters. He has gone from being an angry old candidate to being an angry old defeated candidate."

Indeed, during the debate over the economic stimulus package it was McCain, as often as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded the opposition. The Arizona Republican denounced the proposal as pure pork on the Senate floor and introduced an alternative measure comprised nearly entirely of tax cuts.

On Sunday, McCain wouldn't let the fight die, even with the legislation through Congress. Appearing on CNN, he described the $787 billion measure as "generational theft" and said that the bill's authors should "start over now and sit down together."

Meanwhile, appearing on ABC's This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham -- McCain's chief ally in the Senate -- said of the process by which the stimulus was forged: "If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country is screwed."

That two Republicans Senators who consider themselves prudent compromisers would forcefully condemn the president's top legislative priority is noteworthy in and of itself. That it comes after President Obama made overt gestures of reconciliation to both McCain and Graham raises questions as to just how long it will take for this era of post-partisanship to arrive.

That John McCain is holding a grudge should surprise no one. It's the story of McCain's career, and was on display throughout the 2008 campaign. McCain clearly felt that his story, that his years as a POW entitled him to the presidency. He felt robbed of it in 2000, and he obviously felt that selling his soul to the very people who destroyed his candidacy in South Carolina in 2000 would ensure victory in 2008. When Ted Kennedy was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976 in a particularly ugly primary campaign, he went back to the Senate and built a distinguished career. John McCain has made very clear that his rage and sense of betrayal trumps everything, and he's determined to make everyone pay because he didn't get the reward he felt he deserved. Most men would find a way to be happy with ten homes and a trophy wife and what could be a distinguished Senate career. But John McCain lives for his anger, it seems.

Another reason to hope the Mayans are right about 2012

Can you imagine having to look at BOTH OF THEM again? It's already clear that Sarah Palin is already designing her own Oval Office rug, but now P.M. Carpenter thinks John McCain is giving signals that he's going to make another go at the White House in 2012.

Perhaps Barack Obama might want to reconsider giving McCain a clip he can use in his campaign ads the night before his inauguration. Barack, do you really think that these gestures are going to matter one whit when you aren't able to clean up all of George W. Bush's mess in a mere four years?

John McCain really IS senile. Now he thinks he's the Prime Minister of India

Either that or he's taking the "Obama isn't a citizen" nutjobs seriously and thinking he might still make it. How else to explain this:

United States Senator John McCain has said there is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks.

If Pakistan did not act swiftly to arrest the people involved, the Senator said, India would be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan.

Senator McCain, the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Barack Obama, told a select group of Pakistanis at an informal lunch in Lahore on Saturday that this was conveyed to him by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.

Ejaz Haider, a senior editor at the Daily Times, who was at the lunch said Mr. McCain told the group that Washington would not be able to do much to stop India, as the Mumbai attacks were its “9/11.”

“The democratic government of India is under pressure and it will be a matter of days after they have given the evidence to Pakistan [that they decide] to use the option of force if Islamabad fails to act against the terrorists,” Mr. Haider quoted the Senator as saying.

Mr. McCain, who arrived in Pakistan from New Delhi on Friday and met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad in the evening, told the group that Dr. Singh was “visibly angry and reeling from the shock of the attacks.”

He said if Pakistan did not act to get the “bad guys,” India would have no option but to use force.

“We were angry after 9/11. This is India’s 9/11. We cannot tell India not to act when that is what we did, asking the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden to avoid a war and waging one when they refused to do so,” Mr. McCain said.

Who the hell authorized McCain to go pour gasoline on the flames of the conflict between India and Pakistan? Maybe we were wrong about Sarah Palin being the dangerous one. They're both crazy, along with their Mini-Me, Joe Lieberman.

Connecticut's Questions and the Hidden Agenda Driving Them. No to Question #1. Jim Himes for Congress! Midnight in the land of the Flip Floppers!

I know I shouldn't rely too much on my own personal experience, because I live in this southern CT to NYC liberal bubble, and I know that the democratic party in this area doesn't really bother much with the workaday signage and campaigning; we live blue here. The big push in these parts is to have calling parties to call voters in swing states to talk with them, and its not beyond the candidates to stop in to attend high roller fund raising events in tony houses in Greenwich or Rowayton.

I'm usually happy to do the calling thing, and even happier to speak with the bunch of neighbors here who have McCain Palin signs out, because I can say that I'm their neighbor....whatever, I suppose we're all neighbors in some higher sense...but CT. swings blue, so even if we have red voters, its not a strong focus. People don't want to be called, and its so seldom that someone has a question that one can answer.

In any case, I'm troubled, as usual, that the local party hardly bothers to put out signs or rally us generally more than to ask for money and a little bit of volunteerism. Its always the same crowd running things and it smacks of the local PTA where a few alpha moms run the show. I'm still pissed that so many "dems" supported Lieberman after he jumped from the party, and that Lamont's organization was sent to a back room as if we was the independent candidate!

The McCain signs are an annoyance and an emotional drag, as things like this always are when the aggressively stupid or the just plain greedy, insist on their point of view with the bold surety that Fox News is the only network that tells the truth unvarnished. Humvee drivers who seemingly want to project an image that they perceive as being very American, but which comes off as just plain idiotic; the silly young men who drive by my bumperstickered car giving me the finger, as if their vote means anything in this county or state...the young man who last night sat around a firepit at a Halloween party up here, and said with all authority that he is just worried that Obama doesn't have the "experience," which I read as "he's black," readying himself for the vote that is not gonna serve him in his construction job and middle class life where he is unable to buy a house in the town he grew up in or even afford healthcare. These things trouble me, but its not about wining CT for the democrats; Its about the American psyche and how twisted America has become about our collective place in things.


The problem that I see right now is that Chris Shays signs that are everywhere. I believe that alot of people are voting for Shays because hes a hometown boy and pretends to be a liberal. That's, um, liberal republican, and hes really only as liberal as his BFF Joe Lieberman is a democrat! These guys are strong supporters of the Bush agenda, even now, and they really don't represent CT., so much as they represent the last bastion of cronyism that is dying a terrible wheezing death around this state.

I worked hard on the Lamont campaign to get rid of Joe Lieberman, and during that time I had the opportunity to speak with Shays at a town meeting and then on a conference call. My issue was not only with Lieberman changing parties after he lost the primary; he started his own party with the dismissive attitude that he was doing this because we didn't know what was best for our state. The whole thing boiled down to the war in Iraq; Joementum had gone to Iraq with Shays some 14 times,becoming one of the biggest defenders of Bush and his war, and he and Shays were the token liberals in the push to victory. Its well known that Joe Lieberman will do anything for the adulation of having the senate floor erupt in cheers as he returns from his fact finding missions ready to advise and instruct or from his close bid with losing his seat, only to be voted in by Ct's republicans who shunned their own candidate because Lieberman was representing them just fine!


The soft spoken Shays has some sharp claws, and skirts the issues that are important to his constituents, while hiding behind the "liberal" label. Its long past the time when Shays should have retired his seat and moved on. Diane Farrell almost unseated him two years ago, and he retained the seat by a slim margin mainly with a last minute flip flop on the Iraq war. Shays claimed that a trip just weeks before the election changed his mind; this after so many, many trips and the fantasy ideals that were put forth even as the entire country crumbled and people died needlessly.

Last week, the Stamford Advocate had a front page story in which Chris Shays threw McCain under the bus in the service of his own re-election. This is the Chris Shays that I know. He flip flops at the drop of a poll number and heaven forbid that reality ever take hold; until recently he was parroting the republican talking points about the economy. Worst though is that he boasts that CT is the first state to provide health insurance for all of its children. Well, its a horrible system with little coverage, and its not working! Having talked to him about this personally, I can say that what he does is to just deny that its true or possible that providers won't take the state insurance. Shay's modus operandi is that when he is confronted with a problem he acts like it is merely a personal problem of the questioner and he refers them to a staff member who will discuss it in private.

But this is an undeniable problem across the board in CT, so even if his staff were to take me into an office and out of the town hall, so that he could move on to other issues, they couldn't solve the problem that I have to drive 2 hours to get to a specialist for my son....or that it took us an entire year to get a surgery approved, only to have it canceled on the night before because it was suddenly denied again; oh they had approved the surgeon but not the hospital!! By the time this orthopedic surgery was performed on my son, he was the oldest, biggest kid that this surgeon had ever done this procedure on! Now we will probably lose our coverage anyway because our provider, a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is opting out of the state's program, and our Dr. barely takes what we have...no one will take the alternatives. I'm looking into private insurance and its going to probably be a grand a month for a family plan if I can even find one that will take us! The issue is that the paperwork involved for a tiny reimbursement is not worth it to many doctors who have full time staff trying to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that is this program (and unregulated health insurance in general!) I've heard lately that some doctors don't want the responsibility of prescribing drugs to children for a gross payment of maybe $19 per visit, which is much less when overhead and man hours processing the claims is taken out! The hospitals with the clinics for the poor, who have the "A" type of insurance, have a deal with the state and they also have institutional insurance and rotating doctors in clinics, so the responsibility is much less.

So, its not about my personal medical issues, as much as its about the boasting that goes on with Shays and Lieberman around this being such a great program. It's the kind of thing that might make them eligible for a task force on national health coverage in a bipartisan position...and I don't think that this plan should be used as anyone's blueprint for how health care should be taken care of in this country. What is really reprehensible is to do this experiment on children...the very poor kids who go to the hospitals tend to get OK care because they have the clinic doctors available. But we cant all go to the hospital clinic, can we? And we make too much money to be in the "A" program, so we pay a premium, which disallows us from a level of service that poorer people have...and no pediatricians or specialists are taking this insurance around lower Fairfield county anyway....so...I would very much NOT like to have the liar Chris Shays walking around Washington DC, misrepresenting what he's done here. It sucks, and along with just about everything else in this region, the move is to push the poor out and make room for more high rises (Trump has a tower going up in downtown Stamford) and mansions. And of course, foreclosures are at an unprecedented high....while Shays claimed that the economy was stable, until he just changed his mind a little while ago.

Jim Himes, who is running against Shays, is an experienced businessman who has worked successfully in business, but his most important work has been in the not for profit housing and financial support sector:

After over a decade at Goldman Sachs, Jim devoted himself full-time to pursuing business-oriented solutions to the problems of urban poverty. Jim found an ideal role with Enterprise Community Partners, where he has run their Northeast operations since 2004. Under Jim's leadership, Enterprise worked with private, public, and community organizations to address complex issues of urban poverty. At Enterprise, Jim developed an innovative program to provide tax preparation assistance and financial services to low-income families at very low cost. Jim led the way in financing the construction of thousands of affordable housing units in the greater New York and Northeast regions, often using new green technologies to achieve energy efficiency and reduce utility costs.

Himes is not a career politician and he is not steeped in the rampant cronyism that has overrun this state. He has spent years developing ways to help lower income people handle their finances and to find affordable housing. He may enter on a junior level, and I'm hearing grumbles from people who feel that he will not be able to get a foothold or be heard on anything important... But, my feeling is that we are going to see an unprecedented turnover of power and faces in this election, and granted that Shays will have to go at some point...besides that he doesn't represent what the voters of his state want, and he lies and flips whenever its convenient...and we always have Chris Dodd, who is the strongest representative that we could hope for!

Shays was so wrong about the war, and even when specialists were telling him and Joe that what they were seeing was not as it seemed, they both insisted that because Baghdad looked better to them in their military security caravan, that it must be so. Shays has been wrong on the economy, on insurance for our children, on federal eavesdropping and privacy issues, and on medicare...he has sided with Bush in just about everything and changes his mind back and forth...I don't want it anymore. Its time for him to go!

Connecticut needs a congressman like Himes on board, and the American house needs this kind of new upcoming public servant working hard to get us back on track and to help America work again. This country is just not feasible for so many people anymore, and the Bush administration has managed, unbelievably, to fulfill its objective, which was to funnel all of the money upwards to a rare few, while the middle class crumbles, and the legions of the voiceless poor grows. Leaders who have been complicit with that movement should have no place in our government going forward. Shays is a lifetime politician who began his career as a young man in my district in North Stamford. Back in the days when the residents of this part of CT were more interested in how a representative might do in bringing funds to our state and our city, the largely democratic population here felt that Shays was liberal enough to represent us. But, more recently, Shays has been singing the Bush line, and that is not working for any of us on any level. And thus the flip flop of this past week...its vintage Shays and I hope that the voters don't fall for it.

There are Shays signs all over the place in Stamford, and its more likely due to the organized republican party getting the signs out, rather than being representative of who is going to vote for the entire republican ticket. There are way more Shays signs than McCain Palin signs, leading me to think that his independent campaign is more organized, and as has happened in the past, democrats will leave the line for the congressional seat vote. I don't encourage that, because it causes confusion, and even with the new ballots, alot of people may lose their votes by making silly mistakes while trying to serve someone that they are familiar with. That is no reason to make decisions about our children's future; no reason at all.

For CT voters who will be faced with 2 questions about the state's constitution,(those of you from towns with other questions about budget concerns and marching bands are on your own!) I have this to say: They vaguely word the first question to be about having the ability to edit the sate constitution in the upcoming term. The answer would be no, because hidden in that simple question is the stated objective to make gay marriage unconstitutional in CT. It is not the time to mess with any constitution for anything.

The time now is to change our leadership and stop worrying so much about what your neighbors are doing in their bedrooms in private. If people want to enter the unholy alliance of marriage, then that's their problem. I don't recommend it personally, but hey, it makes some people feel more secure; so go for it! Just sign a pre-nup so we don't have more backup in the court systems in this state. My question of the secretary of state is why is this aim on stated in the ballot question?

The second question is about young voters who will be 18 on election day and should they be allowed to vote in primaries when they are 17. I don't understand this or what it represents in a real way. It is supposed to encourage young voters to get involved earlier, but I'd be more in favor of lowering the entire voting age so that voting could be something that becomes part of high school curriculum and then we can bring back civics class and poli-sci and all that! The red flag there is that it also involves opening up the state constitution for editing, and its worded strangely, as these things always are! So, I say no right now, unless I get a compelling reason not to. My son just shrugged...it makes no real sense as a half measure regarding the primaries...like, why then don't we allow driver's licenses to people who will be of age when they can afford their car? I don't know if that is the equivalent, but I'm in favor of an across the board lowering of the voting age rather than this confusing half measure as part of editing our constitution...its all about gay marriage....keep that in mind. So, to question 1, vote NO!







c/p RIP Coco

I'd switch teams for Samantha Bee

Well, maybe not. But here at Liberal Fangirl Central, we've elevated Ms. Bee to a seat right alongside Rachel Maddow:

How much are the Republicans paying "Joe the Plumber"?

It would be difficult for anyone other than the most committed kool-aid drinker to believe that Samuel Wurzelbacher is anything other than a paid Republican shill. I'm sorry, but plumbers from Sarah Palin's "Real" America do not have the welfare of Israel at the top of their hit parade of issues. But "Joe the Plumber" does:

The all-out effort from John McCain's presidential campaign to scare voters into backing the Republican candidate continued apace on Tuesday as McCain surrogate Joe the Plumber agreed that a Barack Obama presidency would mean the "death of Israel" and end democracy in America.

The Ohio plumber, who has no license and is actually named Samuel Wurzelbacher, spoke at a McCain campaign event in Columbus Monday. A McCain supporter asked if "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." JTP hardly batted an eye.

"I'll go ahead and agree with you on that," Wurzelbacher said.

The push-back against Wurzelbacher's comments began, somewhat unexpectedly, at Fox News.

The network noted that the McCain campaign seemed hesitant to distance itself from Wurzelbacher. Correspondent Carl Cameron said that the McCain campaign was going to put out an ad today criticizing Obama policies on Israel.

"Just a coincidence?" he asked. "We report you decide."

Later Tuesday afternoon, Shepard Smith pressed Wurzelbacher on his comments, reminding the woefully misinformed McCain backer that Obama has consistently voiced support for Israel. Pressed several times to explain how he could agree with the conclusion that Obama would lead to the death of the Jewish state, Wurzelbacher was unable to come up with any good reasons aside from Obama's position in favor of negotiating with rogue regimes such as Iran.

"You don't want my opinion on foreign policy," Wurzelbacher said. "I know just enough to kind of be dangerous."

You know, sort of like your average Republican....like Sarah Palin.

The more the McCain campaign trots this nimrod out to be a symbol of "the real America" (and you'd think they could come up with someone who didn't look like a neo-Nazi skinhead), the more he looks like the soul brother of Ashley Todd and the other Zombies of Endless War for Jesus who populate McCain and Palin rallies these days. Not only isn't this guy a plumber, I'll bet he's never lifted a hammer -- or at least he hasn't had to since Camp Grandpa recruited him -- a guy named "Wurzelbacher" of all things -- to try to scare elderly Jews.

Quick Hits and Countdown to Election Wierdness...Marc Maron at Comix in NYC...

If American life lacks the punch of a reality show to the point that we demand larger than life puppets as candidates for our highest office these days; if Jerry Springer-esque family drama played out in oil wrestling is the thing we need to fill our check-out-line reading needs; maybe we shouldn't be so fucking surprised that we pay to fully costume the actresses and actors and that the production companies...er...campaigns stand on the sidelines with the storyboard and airbrush machine at the ready. No such luck for the McCain campaign which history may look at as really a night course in performance art 101 taught by some agitprop group found in Washington Square Park. It seems impossible that any professional politicos could have run thigns exactly this badly without it being part of some sorta joke. But then, the delusional current administration did at some point drink their own koolaid and after all that inmates/asylum stuff blows over, it will be anyone's guess if we can ever untangle what part of the nightmare thats gonna lave quite a hangover in this country for a long time to come. Whats left to hope for? Well, I hope that my son might be captured by Obama's hope thing in the way that I was captured by Jimmy Carter and before that the Kennedys, when I was a kid. Maybe he can feel some feeling of being able to shape the destiny of his world before the reality comes crashing in.

Sarah Palin may well be looking towards 2012, and for the appetites of the wingnut fringe, the ongoing Palin saga should be a great diversion while Obama races to deconstruct all that the Bushies have put in place. This, my friends, is not a joke. It would behoove us to keep the lunatic fringe that Palin will lead back underground with her in mind because if we don't there wont be any excuse. I tell myself that its gonna be a good time for me to pull back from politics and to try to work with birds and just be happy...but really, its probably not going ot be possible in the long run. I can always hope though, cant I?

With an unbelievable eleven days to go, Rachel Maddow is taking over the TV-box cable ratings game with her MSNBC show, proving that even a network run my the M$M has to listen when ratings talk. The American people surely have made it clear that they want liberal voices out there, and Rachel has risen to the top on sheer intelligence and star power. Its been fantastic to watch her rise. Tonight Keith Olbermann had Sam Seder on to punditize about snarky republicans spinning Obama's break to see his grandma into some sort of air mile thievery. Sammy immediately turned that silliness into how sick McInsane is in his cold assessment of "the life of the mother" being important in the abortion issue, spotlighting how fucking cold the radical right can be when dealing with real people as opposed to test tubes of cells....and how cold McCain is in general as he would say anything to get a few more votes. This delighted me because no one is better than Sam at pointing out wingnuttia in terms that draw us all together, along with Obama, shaking our heads in disbelief at the silliness of the children in their pretend world.

It occurred to me tonight that with Rachel rising, Sam is going to be moving into the spotlight more and more. At the same time, Seder and Marc Maron are breaking ground with their web based daily live show, Maron v. Seder 3PM EST, M-F, here. Maron is currently traveling cross country with the UK Guardian and talking to a remarkable array of people from all walks of life showing us the front lines in America up close and personal. Of course, Marc also has his way of pulling even the most far-out survivalists close, and helping us to see their humanity if not really understand it. Looking at our ever morphing culture along with Marc makes it all a little more bearable...and seeing things like the plight of homeless veterans standing on line for services with our own eyes is jarring and sad. This is merely a small glimpse of what the future will be like as we pull out of Iraq and the Guardian and Air America are doign a great thing by showing us some unvarnised truths. Maron v. Seder should be on cable or even network TV...I think that they would have to tone it down for network, so it probably belongs on HBO, Showtime, or FX, daily. In any case, look for Maron to also start turning up on Olbermann etc, as he is a tremendously smart commentator with a gift for explaining issues from angles that touch on everyday people while not being so wonky as to over intellectualize them.

Lucky New Yorkers will have the opportunity to see Maron on Friday the 24th and Sat the 25th at Comix in NYC...I'll be there at some point, tho I'm not sure which show yet...I'm in transit again from CT to NYC, and everything is in flux, as usual. Come on down and see our traveling correspondent in his element...its always fun, and Comix is a nice place. Its gonna be a rainy Saturday in NYC, and you know, I love me some weather...

See ya there!

c/p RIPCoco

Susan Smith's kids weren't kidnapped by a black man either.

Remember Susan Smith? She's the South Carolina woman who in 1994 rolled her car into a lake with her two young children inside because the man with whom she was having an affair didn't want a "ready-made" family. Then she claimed that her children had been kidnapped by a black man. Wingnut icon Newt Gingrich blamed liberals:

In Gingrich's view the real cause of Susan Smith's act was not Susan Smith; she was just the "efficient cause" in the Aristotelian sense. The formal cause was the 60's -- liberalism, the Great Society, the counterculture -- and the amoral social ethic they supposedly produced. It wasn't Susan Smith who pushed the Mazda into the lake; it was George McGovern.

Later on, it turned out that Smith had been sexually abused by her stepfather from the time she was fifteen. Beverly Russell was a Christian Coalition county chairman.

Charles Stuart and his wife weren't carjacked by a black man either. On October 23, 1989, Stuart and his pregnant wife Carol went to childbirth class and on the way home. Stuart claimed that a raspy-voiced black man had robbed them, shooting Carol in the head and Stuart himself in the stomach. Stuart later identified a black man, Willie Bennett, as the attacker, and Bennett might have gone to jail for life for a crime he didn't commit, given the media frenzy about the case, had not Stuart's own brother Matthew not had a conscience and confessed to helping Charles Stuart commit insurance fraud by killing Carol. Charles Stuart committed suicide before he could be arrested and tried.

And Ashley Todd was not attacked a black male Barack Obama supporter at an ATM who then carved a "B" into her face because he was enraged at her McCain bumper sticker.

How sick and demented a wingnut do you have to be in order to this to yourself as a political stunt?



You would think that after all these years, and all the cases like that of Susan Smith and Charles Stuart, we wouldn't see the rush to judgment every time someone white claims to have been attacked by a black man. But of course the usual suspects (with the surprising and notable of Michelle Malkin, to whom I will give props for once for smelling a rat when only an idiot wouldn't smell one) were of course frothing at the mouth about the hatemongers in the Democratic Party, especially those Scary Negroes™ who would assault (including sexually, of course -- Mayella Ewell lives!) a poor defenseless flower of white womanhood.

I would be willing to feel that this woman is more to be pitied than censured, because after all, as I said, how sick do you have to be to cut your own face to try to influence people to not vote for a black man? Except that the McCain campaign jumped on this and tried to make hay out of it, as Greg Sargent noted:

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The sickness that infects the Republican Party, and the McCain/Palin supporters who believed this crap, is so deep that I don't think the patient can be saved. It is the kind of sickness that we've already seen from the devolution of John McCain into a raging, angry, vindictive, hateful gargoyle and the lunatic, delusional idiocy of Sarah Palin, and that we now see in their supporters:

Funny....New York was America enough for Republicans to score cheap political points off it for eight years

I don't even know why I'm even surprised by this sort of thing anymore. Ben Smith at Politico transcribes the second part of Brian Williams' interview with John "No Gutter Low Enough" McCain, and his mindless, grinning bulldog of a sidekick:

WILLIAMS: Who is a member of the elite?

PALIN: Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else. And-- John McCain and I are so committed to serving every American. Hard-working, middle-class Americans who are so desiring of this economy getting put back on the right track. And winning these wars. And America's starting to reach her potential. And that is opportunity and hope provided everyone equally. So anyone who thinks that they are-- I guess-- better than anyone else, that's-- that's my definition of elitism.

WILLIAMS: So it's not education? It's not income-based? It's--

PALIN: Anyone who thinks that they're better than someone else.

WILLIAMS: --a state of mind? It's not geography?

PALIN: 'Course not.

WILLIAMS: Senator?

MCCAIN: I-- I know where a lot of 'em live. (LAUGH)

WILLIAMS: Where's that?

MCCAIN: Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there. I know the town. I know-- I know what a lot of these elitists are. The ones that she never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown. I'll be very frank with you. Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.

If Keith Olbermann wasn't already doing a comment tonight, this would be fodder for one.

For eight years, Republicans have invoked the attacks on NEW YORK and WASHINGTON, DC on September 11, 2001 to further their agenda of police state, endless war, and theocracy.

Remember the 2004 Republican National Convention in.....NEW YORK?

Remember all that fearmongering, designed to keep people from realizing that the Bush Administration, with the blessing of the entire Republican Party and far too many Democrats, were using the attacks on NEW YORK and WASHINGTON -- places that according to John McCain, aren't even part of the "real America" -- was destroying this country far more effectively than nineteen guys with boxcutters did?

And now these fuckers -- this crappy pilot who hotdogged himself into getting shot down and then decided the world owed him a living after he spent five years in a Hanoi prison, and a pageant queen from Wasilla, Alaska, who's already planning Piper's inauguration dress for 2012, a woman who's sucked off the public teat to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars but thinks everyone who isn't as pretty as she as and isn't the splooge object of a million sexually frustrated neocon men should just go into a gutter and die -- these warmongering shitheads have the gall to bash NEW YORK and WASHINGTON for political expediency?

There are no words.

John McCain: The Al-Qaeda candidate?

Remember in 2004, when Denny Hastert said that Al Qaeda wanted John Kerry to be president:

At a campaign rally Saturday in his Illinois district with Vice President Dick Cheney, Hastert said al Qaeda "would like to influence this election" with an attack similar to the train bombings in Madrid days before the Spanish national election in March.

When a reporter asked Hastert if he thought al Qaeda would operate with more comfort if Kerry were elected, the speaker said, "That's my opinion, yes."

I wonder what Denny Hastert (and his party) thinks of this:

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.

"If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

I wish I could say it was insulting that the person who wrote this thinks that Americans are so stupid that they would rally behind the candidate of the party that allowed Al Qaeda to commit not one but two attacks on American soil -- and did nothing to retaliate against those who actually committed the first one; that they would not be able to put two and two together and see the ineptitude of the Republican approach to terrorism.

But then I think about McCain/Palin voters and realize that while it might be insulting to me, it describes all too many Americans.

And what if McCain wins?

What if John McCain and his mindless, grinning pit bull manage to pull this thing out? Just suppose that their racism and their fearmongering and their pitting citizen against citizen and playing to the darkest fears of the American reptilian brain work. Suppose that enough canvassers are beaten, and enough college kids and elderly women and young aspiring urban hip-hop artists are removed from the voter rolls, and enough voting machines have their smartcards switched to change every "n"th vote for Barack Obama to a vote for John McCain.

What kind of a country will the campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin have left us with?

It will be a country that has told millions of young Americans whose future is being squandered by Republican greed and abetted by Democratic cowardice that no, there is no hope. There is no future for you. No, we can't. There is no change you can believe in, because the dice are loaded and the game is fixed and the cigar-chomping fat guys in the pinstripe suits in the darkened room above the playing field want it all for themselves, and they Will Not Let You Have Any Of It.

It will be a country in which millions of black children who dared to believe that yes, it was possible for someone who looks like them to become president and therefore it might be possible for THEM to become president, will know that no, it is not possible. They will know that in the eyes of a bunch of frightened, mean-spirited white people, all they are and all they ever will be are just niggers -- that terrible word that no one dare say, so instead they, led by John McCain and Sarah Palin, talked about "Arab" and "terrorist" and tried to refight the 1960's culture wars on the backs and hopes and dreams of Americans a century and a half removed from the Civil War who STILL can't get a chance to grab for the brass ring.

It will be a country in which hate has become legitimate; a country in which Rush Limbaugh can spend the next four years alternately gloating that "his side won" and screaming about how killer negroes are coming to get you and liberals want to take all your money -- because Rush Limbaugh makes millions of dollars a year whipping white people being robbed by other white people into a frenzy of blame against those who have less. That's how he earns his living. That's what he gets paid to do.

It will be a country in which the wealthy get tax cuts and children get deprived of health care and education. It will be a country whose leaders talk about the sanctity of human life and then feed America's youth into a meatgrinder in the Middle East because we will have yet another president with issues about his more successful father and a Vice President whose insane religious fanaticism requires that millions of people die horribly so that her religious fantasy of death and fire and horror can come true. It will be a country that gives lip service to freedom but sets loose private military contractors to squelch uprisings in a population that finally will know that America is dead -- murdered by John McCain and Sarah Palin and all those who worked on this disgraceful, inhuman campaign of theirs; people who simply cannot control their baser natures and therefore can't believe that anyone else possibly could either -- and so they insist on a nation in which authority is all-powerful and people are kept frightened so they can be controlled -- frightened of Arabs. Frightened of black people. Frightened of poverty. Frightened of women. Frightened by sex.

How on earth can any sane person want to live in that country? And why on earth would anyone actively vote to create it?

A side note: Our thoughts tonight are with Barack Obama, who has gone to Hawaii to be at the bedside of his ailing grandmother. Madelyn Dunham will be 86 years old on Saturday and her condition is deteriorating. I hope that Sen. Obama knows that the thoughts and prayers of millions of Americans are with him and his family at what must be a terribly difficult time for him. I also hope that the Usual Suspects on the right will have the decency to shut the hell up. But somehow, I'm not optimistic.

UPDATE: Yup. Right on cue.

Another Dispatch from McCain/Palin "Real America"

Wingnut thug attacks Obama canvasser in Wisconsin:

Police in Caledonia are investigating the assault of a campaign volunteer as she was canvassing for Senator Barack Obama Saturday afternoon.

In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”

The man eventually stopped and the Caledonia police were called. Takehara was asked if she needed medical assistance, but she was not seriously injured. Instead, she says she was shaken up by the homeowner’s reaction.

Tim at Balloon Juice:

The violence will not be anything that the National Guard can suppress. It will be big Republican guys beating middle aged volunteers, vandalism, potshots in the night. Like they did in the 90’s super-patriots will wall themselves off in little clans. If they feel the need to act, they will follow McVeigh and Rudolph’s example and bomb something.

You cannot ‘put down’ festering bitterness like this. It will become a part of life like bad weather and dog crap on the sidewalk. It’s pretty easy to avoid, but we’re past that point now. John McCain decided to lose ugly. The party, always captive to the whims of the top of the ticket in the best of times, eagerly followed suit. Clever people at the top of the party are saying things that can only lead to violence if simpler folks in the ‘base’ take it seriously.

In the future, the notion of "selling your soul to the devil" will be associated with John McCain instead of Robert Johnson. Assuming Barack Obama is elected, these people will not stop. And every person injured as the result of John McCainn playing with matches should be on McCain's conscience.

Another dispatch from John McCain's and Sarah Palin's "Real America"

Yes, Senator McCain and Governor Palin -- this is what you have wrought. This is your campaign. This is your leadership at work. The man who did this is one of YOUR people. YOU have to answer for him. And if any of these nutballs is inspired to harm a hair on Barack Obama's head because YOUR campaign tactics are leading him to believe it would be OK, his blood will be on YOUR hands.

Oh, and the rest of you 43 or so percent who plan to vote for John McCain? This is what you're voting for. Just thought you should know.

(h/t)