Category: Politix

Sarah Palin is a dangerous woman.

As you can see from the map (which appears today at pollster.com), she won’t be Vice President this time, because McCain won’t win.

But the wingnut Right has found their new George Bush, and you can be sure we’ll see her again. Maybe she’ll be a senator from Alaska next, which will give her a national platform and greater recognition, and then she’ll be running for President in 2016 or even 2012, maybe against Hillary Clinton.

For all I know the fundamentalists may be sincere in their screwball beliefs, but they sure don’t know anything about reality, nor do they have any interest in learning. They could never get elected on the basis of their “every-egg-is-sacred, evolution is just another theory” platform, so in order to get into a position where they can impose their thinking on the rest of us, they have made a deal with the devil, namely the demonic, scorched-earth “New American Century” gang, whom we shall call the Neocons.

Here’s the deal: The fundamentalists provide the empty vessel — know-nothing social conservatives like Reagan, Bush and now Palin, and in exchange the neocons provide the muscle (and the computer hacking) needed to win elections. The Christianists get a President (one of their own) who will appoint right-wing Supreme Court judges to reverse Roe v. Wade, oppose gay marriage, etc., and the neocons get a President who will let them make endless war on the rest of the world, while eliminating government regulation of business and robbing the Treasury of every last dime.

The Left, rightly convinced that their own programs and policies benefit the largest mass of voters, gets whipped every time, and they can never figure out what happened.

If you think this is far-fetched, I refer you to the cases of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, a senile old movie actor and a congenital fuckup. They spoke to the religious right directly and unabashedly, stood right up and called other countries “evil,” and claimed Jesus as their role model. Neither of them had any particular presidential skills or aptitude. Most of us on the left laughed at them pretty much the same way we are laughing now at Sarah Palin.

But it turned out that being clueless did not disqualify them from being President. The hardcore right-wing power structure, which had taken over the Republican Party, saw in them attractive candidates, dummies who’d be able to talk the Jesus talk convincingly, and who’d go along with whatever fiscal and military policies the Party handed them, because hey, who understands all that economics and diplomacy stuff anyway?

Palin is the political descendant of Reagan and Bush: attractive, zealously religious, folksy and vacant. She can be molded by campaign handlers such as Karl Rove (and Lee Atwater before him), and she can plausibly pose as presidential material, easily mouthing platitudes, slinging personal attacks and avoiding serious questions on substantive issues. Merely by virtue of who she is she can deliver the votes of the religious right, a coveted and loyal bloc.

Once in the Oval Office, like Reagan and Bush she’ll be content to let the serious ideological thinkers within the Party set policy and run the show. She’ll make good on her Supreme Court promises and other just-for-show religio-political stances, but important decisions about whether Halliburton gets all the contracts (they do) or what country needs invadin’ will be made by unelected guys behind the scenes.

There has been speculation that there was backstage neocon maneuvering to force McCain to put Palin on his ticket. I don’t know if any of that is true, but I’ve been saying for at least a year that the Republicans don’t have a chance in this election. It’s obvious to the voters who is responsible for the horrendous mess we are in, and they are ready to dish out some well-deserved punishment. Party insiders don’t really like McCain, so he was the perfect guy to sacrifice this time around. Nonetheless getting Palin on this ticket will give her the name recognition and credibility to be a believable candidate in the next election or in 2016.

We are about to emerge from eight years of Rove/Cheney/Bush darkness, and won’t it be a relief to see a little daylight for a change! But don’t turn your back on Sarah Palin. She’ll be back, and tougher than ever.

OK, I’ll say it: John McCain is ridiculous.

His campaign is in trouble, and he wants to stop and . . . what? Go back to the beginning? Start over and try a different strategy? He never had a serious chance to win this election in the first place. God bless him, he’s too moderate for the right-wingers who now control the Republican party. When the current president has screwed up as badly as George W. Bush, it goes without saying that the next president will not be from your party. McCain was the sacrificial lamb, an expendable candidate that the party didn’t really like anyway, so who cares if he loses? After they threw him to the wolves they decided to get a little fundamentalist mileage out of the campaign by throwing Sarah Palin into the mix. She’s somebody they can use later, maybe in the next election, once they’ve established her “credentials” as an actual player on the national stage.

But McCain is just doing crazy shit now. He’s like a guy in a board game who — realizing he’s too far behind to win — spends the rest of his time in the game making unpredictable suicide plays, screwing everything up for those who are still serious about the outcome. Picking Palin was crazy. He’d be doing much better now if he had a running mate who knew his ass from page eight about. . . well, anything. But he wanted to spoil Obama’s convention, and the Palin choice did do that.

Then he essentially canceled the first day of his own convention, saying in effect that you can’t do politics during a hurricane. A hurricane a thousand miles away. As if the Republican Party is somehow in charge of emergency preparedness for the Gulf Coast. WTF?

And now he has “suspended his campaign,” so he can rush to Washington to help solve the current economic crisis. And he wants to postpone the long-scheduled first debate. Never mind that he hasn’t found anything in the Senate important enough to warrant his presence since sometime in April, or that in a time of crisis the voters might actually want to hear what the candidates have to say about it, or that ranking members in both houses say they’re doing fine without introducing presidential politics into the wrangling, or that (as Obama has said) it is possible to do two things at once. Never mind that McCain has solidified his place as one of the nuttiest major presidential candidates in history.

I probably live in a liberal bubble here in California, and I watch MSNBC and listen to Air America, but I can’t believe Middle America is going to think this latest move is anything other than proof that John McCain is just too volatile — or kooky — to be president.

I admit it: I’m a partisan.

I’ve been a Democrat since the 1960’s. That’s right — a liberal, a “progressive,” a left-winger. But I think I come to this place honestly. My mother was not political, and my father was a WWII veteran who voted for Eisenhower. I figured out for myself what I needed to know to make my decisions. You can believe me or not. That’s up to you, but I say this just to let you know that I’m not a “knee-jerk liberal,” that I have thought through my positions

Over the decades since my first Presidential election I have remained hopeful, although there have been times when I couldn’t stay optimistic. My basic belief is that we are all we have, and it’s crucial that we take care of each other, and that’s the measure I use when I’m deciding who to support in an election. I’m not pretending to be all that altruistic. It’s just the way I think. I’ve never been able to understand why warmongers get elected, or pompous hypocrites who wear their religion on their sleeve.

But high public office, it turns out, confers great power on it’s holders, and so the competition to gain these offices has grown ever more cutthroat. Men — and now women — are desperate to get this power, and I mean desperate. We won’t go into the reasons why, but they are desperate. And in their desperation they have turned election campaigns into elaborate, amoral displays of deception.

Techniques have evolved that can get anybody elected, no matter their background. Negative advertising, whisper campaigns, sabotage and outright lies about your opponent actually work. I mean, let’s just face it, it’s far easier to cast enough doubt in your mind to stop you from voting for someone than it is to inspire you enough to go out and elect that person.

This is why no one in this campaign is talking seriously about the war, the broken military, the crumbling economy, the failure of the healthcare system, the corrupt Bush Administration or any of the other real issues that face us. This is why we are talking about real or imagined personal slurs or sex ed for five-year-olds. That stuff works, unfortunately, far better than real (and boring) discussions of monetary policy or international diplomacy. Sadly, the introduction of a smear campaign instantly brings both sides into the muck. There is no way to defend against it. You fight dirty or you lose. (This is a corollary to Jones’ First Law of Social Interaction: Bullies always win.)

So every four years I think maybe we’ve seen the worst of the negative campaigning, and every time it gets worse. Fine. I can stipulate that this is how all elections will be run, now and forever. It won’t stop me and you from knowing about the actual issues, and trying to get someone elected who at least seems capable of doing something about them.

I’ve written in this blog that I am a one-issue voter in this election, and that issue is the war in Iraq. I hate it. I hate the fact that it was not necessary, that our president tricked us into supporting it, that it has destroyed my country’s credibility and good will throughout the world, that it is draining the U.S. taxpayer’s pockets to the tune of ten billion dollars a month, and that it has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of victims.

But the war has disappeared from our political radar, except for the candidates bickering over who was right and who was wrong about “the surge.” In the meantime, see the previous paragraph for a short list of all the stuff that is still going wrong with no end in sight. I accept the fact that we have made such a mess of things that whoever is elected will make almost no difference in the outcome. We’re stuck there for the foreseeable future. There is no honorable way out — as if anything we’ve done there has been honorable up to now.

So, while my Big Issue simmers on the back burner, here’s a little negative campaigning of my own: Last Sunday on 60 Minutes they re-ran a segment about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the 76-year-old right-wing “originalist.” Among his many smug responses, he was arrogantly impatient with interviewer Leslie Stahl when she asked him if he had any regrets about his part in selecting George W. Bush over Al Gore for President in 2000. Despite Bush’s disastrous presidency — the incompetence, the corruption, the stupidity — he said (paraphrasing) “That was so long ago — get over it!”

Get over it? I can hit my finger with a hammer and get over it. I have apparently missed my chance to get into Gwyneth Paltrow’s pants, and I’m over that. But I’m having a little trouble getting over the ongoing catastrophe that is the Bush Administration. And now it occurs to me that if John McCain wins this election, he’ll get to appoint a couple of Supreme Court justices himself, and what with his voting so often in agreement with Bush, and since he has actually said that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, I’m not feeling real good about the kinds of appointments he will make.

The Democrats, much as I love ’em, have a bad habit of approving bad appointments to the Supreme Court, even when they have multiple methods of stopping said appointments, and plenty of good reasons to do so. So even though they will probably have a majority in both house of Congress for the next few years, I don’t trust them to block a possible wild-eyed nutcase from getting onto the Court and screwing up the whole country for 50 years.

These judges are there as long as they want to be. Their terms never expire, and they almost never retire. The impact of a heavily packed right-wing court will be felt for thirty years at least, followed by a couple of generations that will have to live with their decisions until such time as the Court gets around to hearing and correcting old decisions. They are likely to make abortion illegal in this country. They will probably approve laws requiring all of us to carry guns (just kidding). They will continue to make it easy for government to take your property and give it to developers, for, well, development. They will continue to uphold obstacles to equal pay for equal work, as they did just this year. They will be unchecked by any kind of liberal balance. The conservatives will simply be able to steamroll any opposition, because they’ll have an automatic majority in every case.

Let me put this bluntly: They will be very conservative Republicans. Republicans are the party of the rich. They will stand with their party in making sure that rich people remain the ruling class (and get richer), while the rest of us hope for something to trickle down. They will continue down the road of making the U.S. a Christian theocracy, with rulings against abortion and in favor of displaying the Ten Commandments.

If you’re sick of all the slimy campaigning and you just want politics to go away, or if you just can’t decide from among the candidates, think about The Supreme Court. They will have a much greater effect on your life and the lives of your children than the guy who sits in the White House for the next few years. This election is a chance to halt the Court’s slide to the far right and bring some balance back to this crucial branch of government.

It may be your last chance for a long, long time.

Well, we have finally met Sarah Palin.

I watched her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention this evening, and she is a snide, snickering, smart-aleck, not at all the sharp, ambitious stateswoman the McCain campaign has been portraying the past few days.

I can’t recall a more mean-spirited speech during this convention or the Democratic one last week. There were so many low blows and so little actual content that it doesn’t require a rebuttal so much as a warning from the referee. This will definitely cost her a point or two with the judges.

Oh, sure, the speech was popular there in the convention hall. I think some of the attendees were starting to feel the Rapture. There was a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in Saint Paul, but Americans won’t be buying what she is selling, which seems to be mockery, smirking and smears.

The good news for the Democrats is this: Until tonight, there was concern that in the Vice Presidential debate, Joe Biden would necessarily have to go easy on her, because she has little real knowledge of world and national affairs, and she’s just a cute former beauty queen who’s gotten in over her head, and by forcing him to pull his punches in this way she could fight him to a draw and come out more or less unscathed. After her vicious attacks tonight, she can forget about anybody going easy on her. No doubt she will try to turn on the damsel-in-distress act when she faces Joe’s big guns, but I nonetheless predict Joe will shred her, and it will be no more than she deserves.

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As I predicted yesterday, we all get to have guns now.

The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the 2nd Amendment since it was ratified in 1791, probably because it’s so simply written and so clear in its meaning that no interpretation is needed. But the current Cowboy Court has ended that neglect today by declaring that it is our legal — if not God-given — right to own as many guns as we want, and to keep them around the house, assembled and loaded. And oh, by the way, no one can make you use one of those cumbersome trigger locks, either!

The 5-4 decision split pretty much as you’d expect, with the “strict constructionists” Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Chief Roberts and Scalia toeing the NRA line. They went with a “strict” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Well, it was strict except for the part about a well-regulated militia. The majority on the Court didn’t include that part in their interpretation. I know — you’re saying “If you leave that part out, it changes the whole meaning of the amendment!” And yes, completely reversing the meaning of part of the Constitution does seem to go against the principle of Strict Constructionism. But, as the right wingers are fond of saying, “You lost! Get over it!”

The other losers will include the sad people who will use their guns to shoot themselves, their wives and children, and the kids who will accidentally shoot themselves or their friends, and the surprised homeowners who will have their guns taken away and turned on them by burglars and home invaders delighted to find that their victims are thoughtfully providing loaded guns for the party.

My favorite part of Scalia’s written opinion is where he says that guns are the weapon of choice to defend your home, because you can point your gun with one hand while dialing the police with the other hand. What a dumbass! If he’d watched even a few episodes of Miami Vice he’d know that you’re supposed to use two hands when you point your gun. But probably Scalia is trying to show that only God-fearing law-abiding, police dialing citizens will be pointing guns and that this new Arm America decision won’t create an epidemic of bullet-related civilian casualties.

Me, I’ll be practicing my quick draw.

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PS: This and many recent decisions of the Supreme Court have been split 5-4. Justice Stevens is 88 years old. Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter are near 70. They can’t go on forever trying to uphold justice against an ever more right-leaning Court. Do you see now why we can’t let John McCain be President?

Today the Supreme Court, which is in no way controlled by large corporate interests or appointed by those who are in the pockets of Big Oil, finally ruled on the Exxon Valdez class action suit, a case that has been going on now for nearly 20 years.

They decided that Exxon should pay just 10% of the original damage judgment.

You remember the Exxon Valdez – a few minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, the supertanker crashed into a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into the water, which then washed up on the shore in an incident that has been described as “…a severe environmental insult to a relatively pristine, ecologically important area that was home to many species of wildlife endangered elsewhere.” The ship’s captain was not at the helm, but in his quarters sleeping off a night of heavy drinking. The incident was characterized at the time as the worst environmental disaster of all time. The cleanup lasted a few months. The litigation didn’t end until today.

The first damage award against Exxon, in 1994, was 5 billion dollars. Exxon appealed, of course, and the various courts involved over the years have reduced it bit by bit until the Supremes got hold of it. They decided that 500 million dollars, or 90% less than the original award, would be fine.

This is an amount approximately equal to six hours worth of Exxon revenue, so obviously the 19 years of denying responsibility paid off for them. It’s amazing how useful the Supreme Court of the United States can be when the President works for you.

Not so fortunate are the 32,000 people who lived along the 1200 miles of coastline that was damaged by the spill, some say forever. According to them, the spill has never been fully cleaned up. They say a lot of the wildlife, killed or driven away by the toxic mess, haven’t returned. The full amount of the original judgment wouldn’t have compensated them adequately for what they suffered. This latest reduction is simply the final humiliation for them.

Legal scholars may be scratching their heads trying to figure out the Court’s reasoning here, but, hey, what’s done is done. Fish, birds, plankton, fishermen: You lost! Get over it! Tomorrow, the Court is expected to rule that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is meant to permit all of us to own guns. All of us, not just those darned “well-regulated militias.”

Yeehaw! Once we’re all armed, we’ll be able to assess our own punitive damages in the future.

Can anybody tell me what the heck Hillary Clinton is up to?

I mean, God love her, she ran a helluva campaign, and she would have been a helluva president, and the road to power is a helluva lot smoother for women now than it was a year ago at this time. But everyone in the country knows that it’s over and she didn’t win.

Everyone, that is, but Hillary Clinton.

OK, there is something to be said for perseverance against great odds. The British in World War 2, for example. They should have surrendered. They were totally outmatched, and their great cities were being bombed at will by the Germans. It was only a matter of time. But they held on — against all odds, I might add — and miraculously they were saved. Sure, it took a gigantic effort on the part of their American friends, but it happened because the Brits simply wouldn’t quit, even when it looked as if they were already defeated.

Is this what Senator Clinton thinks will happen to her? That maybe she’ll get that One Big Endorsement that will change everyone’s minds, or that Barack Obama will be caught on video swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden? I mean, she’s not winning the popular vote, states won, the pledged delegates or the superdelegates. This whole idea that Florida and Michigan should be counted feels way too much like changing the rules after game has started. Her argument about winning in the big states is weak — New York and California, to name two, are solidly Democratic. The fact that she beat other Dems in those state primaries doesn’t mean that they’ll turn Republican in November if she’s not the nominee.

But Clinton is not stupid, and I don’t see her as delusional, so I have to ask: What the heck is she up to? What’s the point of continuing to campaign past the end? Some would say it’s the money. Her campaign is in the hole big time, largely to her, and she wants to keep the donations coming in so she can retire that debt. But I think she’s too honorable to pull a scam like that, getting people to send money for a goal she has already abandoned.

So…

• Is she making a power move for the Vice Presidency?
• Is she trying to retire that huge debt?
• Does she have something horrible on Obama that she’ll pull out around convention time?
• Is she gunning for 2012?
• Fill in your own answer here.

Help me out, people. I’m just trying to understand. I’m not one of those who has already decided that she will drop out of the race, and the only discussion is when she will do it and what she will negotiate for in exchange. I’m not standing by the door glancing at my watch and jingling my keys. I think she’s got something up her sleeve, and I want to know what it is.

And I want to know before she springs it, because I’m just that special kind of guy.