Assassination Of Liberalism By The Coward Dennis Miller

"I don't mean to go on a rant, folks, but . . . "

Highfalutin, GOP nozzle Dennis Miller says Sarah Palin is a "great dame." He regards the appearance of the good-looking Governor's "great sex life" as the source of bile coming Palin's way courtesy of a coterie of left-leaning ice queens, presiding over cold, dour lives and marriages according to Miller, in the oppressive chasteness of Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Then, guaranteeing the homely vision of his unkempt, watery-fat, ape face will dispel any notion of giving the missus a proper pickle-tickle this evening, Miller brings Todd Palin's snow machine into his sordid allegory, commenting that it has the look of "mechanized foreplay," a precursor to Alaska's first couple's exchange of bodily fluids most likely.

In Miller's wacky, German scat-porn body politic, that's why Sarah Palin fascinates the folks: the ability to have "non-neurotic sex" with her strapping Tesoro Iron Dog champion, as Monday Night Football's worst anchor phrases it.

So there you have it, Republicans: Your new standard-bearer instills such wonderment (such "starbursts around the living room") simply because she'll opt for the receiving end of a "Cleveland Steamer" without regret, guilt or therapy in its malodorous wake.

Miller, put the little monster away - the Palins ain't in the market for scruffy, irascible three-way. And that goes for the rest of you conservative cattle-rapers: get the grand old elephant's trunk out of Sarah's face. Show some class. Pretend that she's smart and sexy. That goes for you too, Greta. Christ, will someone get Greta's tongue out of the Governor's ear?

Who needs sexist attacks from the left with hyper-sexist flattery from the right? Sarah, I'd avoid back rooms of dive bars with any combination of Rich Lowry, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Dennis Miller and/or Hugh Hewitt throwing back Jaeger Bombs. Get away from that pinball table, Sarah!

I just love watching Miller huff and puff in a vain, awkward effort to ingratiate himself with a confused Republican audience. You're playing to the wrong crowd, Dennis. They don't get you. They don't particularly like you either.

You want an arcane cultural reference that resonates for no one, but I'll use it anyway and not be funny? After 9-11, Miller dumped liberalism for neoconservatism quicker than Vidkun Quisling traded in Norway for Nazism at Oslo's NRK studios in April 9, 1940. You got that, babe?

Let me give you the Dennis Miller transformational chronology from pedant to pussy in the flash of a fireball:

September 10, 2001: Miller loves pot, strippers, whores, gays, blacks, books, college radio, cynicism, polysyllabic rants - a "left-leaning, Dada-ist wisenheimer"according to Slate's Dennis Cass.

September 11, 2001: Terrorists attack New York City and Washington D.C. - the prime fronts of Al Qaeda's war to rid the world of asexual, frigid liberal women.

September 12, 2001: Miller curls up in the fetal position, shrinks in fear, plays tiddlywinks with his spontaneously combusted, new found chicken-hawk vinny, pretends to hate pot, strippers, whores, gays, blacks, books, college radio and cynicism. Still goes on windy polysyllabic rants, this time annoying Real Americans and raining down a torrent of canceled, unwatchable cable talk shows and failed game show pilots - a "tell-it-like-it-is right-wing blowhard" according to Slate's Dennis Cass.

September 13, 2001: Terrorists declare victory over GOP infant Miller, still cowering in the corner of the room with a wet diaper and a baby's intellect - a.k.a an unflinching Republican soldier.

For good measure, Jack Knowledge has to get his licks in on Miller, like Fred O'Bannion laying the lumber, giving the good wood, to Mitchy Kramer:

"Know when you can tell someone could really use a good cockslap? When they manage to make Bill O'Reilly seem somewhat less douchey by comparison. We salute you Dennis Miller, you skid mark on the underpants of society."

The days of the great Dennis Miller Live on HBO are long gone.

"Of course . . . that's just The Potatoe's opinion . . . we could be wrong."

***UPDATE***: Newshounds adds its two cents on Miller's peculiar bit on The O'Reilly Factor:

Comment: Words fail me – actually two words, directed to Miller come to mind. Miller’s commentary was as offensive as that of National Review's Kevin Burke who claimed that liberal women hated Palin because they felt guilty about their abortions and because Palin chose to give birth to a Down’s baby – views shared by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer.

To those males, who claim to channel what liberal women think, I say STFU. As I noted on an earlier thread, liberal women do not begrudge Palin her choice – a choice which Palin would deny to other women. As I also noted, there are other issues, important to women, which Palin either ignored or was uninterested in. But what was really, really creepy (and offensive) was Miller’s fantasizing about Palin’s sex life. It sounds like Dennis Miller, rather than East Side liberal women, has some – ah – problems? And snowmobile as “foreplay” – whatever gets you through the night, Dennis!

All I can say is that one of my best friends is a working mom with four children. I don’t know about her sex life (and don't want to know). What I do know is that she gets very tired. Obviously, I am not a Sarah Palin fan; but Miller's little screed was insulting to her because it revealed that Miller’s admiration is based on her “sexuality” (ability to please her man) and not on her ability to combine a political career with raising a family which includes a child with special needs. And that is very sexist!

Greta, Miller, Lowry, etc. - GOP admiration for Palin has become disturbingly fetishistic. I'm starting to worry about her safety.

I began drafting a "funny" take on that scene from The Accused starring the neocon usual suspects, but better judgment prevailed and I abandoned the project when I envisioned Hannity doing a jig atop a bar table, cruelly ribbing a reluctant Colmes to "get that college ass ready. You're up next, college boy. I want to see that college ass work" as Rush Limbaugh and Fred Barnes held Governor Palin down on the pinball table, while . . . (swallow vomit) . . . Greta thrusted in and out between the helpless Sarah's spread legs, climaxing with an orgasm face.

I feel awful about myself right now. Bad baby, bad baby, GOP!

The Flip Side of Obama's Victory

Sometimes when someone who you expect to screw up most of the time because they have a history of doing so does not screw up, you are overly effusive with your praise and blunder into actually being insulting and reading more into one victory than is appropriate. This is a phenomenon happening with great frequency right now in the "rest of the world" and its reaction to Senator Obama's sweeping victory last week.

I want to point out one example here, which is an article written by Steven Wells, contributor to both the UK Guardian and also Philadelphia Weekly here in the States. The article can be found here and I will just address some of the points made.

Mr. Wells writes this open letter to America ostensibly as a congratulations, but it veers hard right into a rebuke of America's history virtually in its totality. That is the danger of Senator Obama's election - it does not change history, but what it does do is give us a clearer picture of how some people have seen America because now they've decided to tell us how they "really felt" about us, seeing as how as of last Tuesday we moved past our racist history. And that is the other danger - that the world has read far too much into this result.

In this article, Mr. Wells congratulates us for the election result - and lots of other things about America that he finds to be "really cool" but admonishes us for some of the things we've done... and then just keeps on going:

But there’s the other stuff.

You know, overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting fascists, supporting the Khmer Rouge, supporting Islamic fundamentalists, torture, Cheney, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Rush Limbaugh, Nixon, Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan. All that stuff. And electing Bush. And then—astoundingly, mindblowingly, jawdroppingly—re–electing Bush. When you guys suck, you really suck.

Then there’s the racism thing. A lot of us grew up with TV images of cops beating civil rights demonstrators, the genocide in Vietnam, the persecution of Muhammad Ali, the murders of the black panthers, Dr. King and Malcolm X. We know that modern white America thinks its shit don’t stink, that racism is in the past and anyway, things are much worse in Europe, and that American kids are colorblind (despite the fact that they cluster in blacks–only and whites–only groups in college cafeterias).

There’s an article in the latest GQ that describes modern America as suffering from ”segregation without the racists”. Meaning, presumably, that non–white Americans choose the low–paid jobs and choose to live in the shit parts of town. Because if America isn’t profoundly racist, what other possible explanation could there be? Rightly or wrongly this is how the rest of the world sees America—as a nation utterly obsessed with race and profoundly poisoned by racism.

This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil about this election. This was an election about America re-embracing the virtues we extol and have said we embody. About a nation that had lost its way reclaiming the high road. This was not an election about proving something to the rest of the world about our feelings on race, the electoral equivalent of saying "hey, I'm not racist, I've got a black friend!" Meet Mr. Obama: our black friend. I mean, Mr. Wells, Vietnam? Civil rights demonstrators? 1968 called and wants its article back. You don't have something a tad more recent you'd like to discuss?

Further, the slightly-to-extremely pedantic Mr. Wells is from the UK (I presume), and perhaps he should get down off his soapbox, walk home from Speaker's Corner and do a little digging into his nation's own sordid history of racism and xenophobia - a condition, I might add, that persists to this day. I invite Mr. Wells to investigate how England treated its colonial holdings, including the appalling treatment of India that lasted well into the 20th century. But, undaunted, Mr. Wells continues:

The rest of the world looks at a US school system that is more segregated now than it was before the start of the civil rights movement. They look at the major US cities, most of which—like most of Philadelphia—are segregated with a totality that would bring joy to the architects of apartheid South Africa. And then we read articles in USAian magazines and newspapers that talk of racism in the past tense. And we scratch our heads in wonder.

In the run–up to this election, some Eastern Europeans I spoke to were absolutely certain that the USA is so racist that Obama will simply not be allowed to be president. Others—mostly Western Europeans—have been almost giddy with excitement. But it’s an excitement tempered with disbelief. Is the America of Jim Crow, the KKK, Birth of a Nation, ghettos, race riots, lynchings and beatings—where, in vast swathes of the country, blacks and whites are expected to vote for different parties, as if they were entirely separate and distinct tribes—did this America really elect Barack Obama?

Sigh. Mr. Wells, have you ever been to your beloved London? Would you describe it as living in racial harmony, or starkly polarized, with Middle Eastern and Indian citizens living virtually isolated north of the Marble Arch - an area where people I know who live in London refuse to go after the sun sets. Nobody has it perfectly yet, Mr. Wells. And Eastern Europeans? I mean, you guys really want to open your collective mouths about racism and people not being "allowed" to do this, that or the other? Don't make me say it. Don't make me. Wasn't it the anniversary of Kristallnacht the other night - dammit, I couldn't help myself.

Fact of the matter is that every country on this planet has problems with either a religious, ethnic or cultural minority. Show me one that does not. Show me a country where the many have not ever oppressed the few. You cannot. Countries are as good as their citizens, and citizens are people. Imperfect, fearful, flawed people. The best you can hope for is that countries will endeavor to become more enlightened and tolerant as their citizens move in that direction. Some move faster. Some move more slowly. But for the rest of the world, where there is still ethnic cleansing and genocide, if not now then within a generation in the past, to cast a skeptical and overly critical eye in OUR direction is a bit offensive. If you wish to take us to task for the past eight years, by all means, let's talk. But when you take this election and turn it into a referendum on the history of this nation, you're treading on thin ice. A lot of nations have done a lot of bad things. Let's not start pointing fingers or some of you may not like where things end up.

Mr. Wells does finish his backhanded compliment on a high note:

...we think that if America can elect a black president then anything is possible. It might even be that all the talk we hear coming out of American mouths about truth and justice and liberty and common human decency might actually be matched by American actions. By electing Obama you have proved yourselves greater, wiser, nicer and more truly American than we thought you possibly could be. And if you can do something this amazing, maybe the rest of the world can shake of its own horrible racist past too. You give us hope, America. You rejected the party of fear, racism and greed, and you elected the candidate who spoke to the best in you. And that action speaks to the best in all of us. All six billion of us. This morning, America, you really are as great as you think you are. (Don’t let it go to your head.)

Sigh. Having a black president does not, in and of itself, solve anything, with the exception of it making it impossible for that president to be George Bush. It does not make us wiser, better or more decent. It just means we voted for (in my opinion) the better man for the job without letting his race be a deciding issue for white voters. This is the danger in Obama's victory - the world has painted us with too negative a brush up to now, and now whipsaws the other way, and places far too great a weight on one act. The world equates all Republicans as racist fear-mongers and all people who voted for Obama as enlightened. Neither is true and to think so is dangerously simple-minded.

America is a complicated country - I would argue the most complex nation ever in the history of man. It cannot be painted one thing or another thing because it is always so very many things at once. To have painted us as a culture bubbling over with racism at all times and in all places - but that this suddenly and joyously ended on last Tuesday - is mind-numbingly simplistic. I hope for the sake of the rest of the world, they judge both our successes and failures on a more realistic scale going forward.

The GOP Parasite

Shows the districts that voted more Republican this election cycle than in 2004. Fascinating. Writes the epilogue of the McCain-Palin ticket. The two-week march of "spread the wealth" bogyphobia (which most conservative pundits lauded as McCain getting back on message) fell on nationally deaf ears. Apparently "Fake Americans" weren't the only ones who found the ubiquitous presence of the deplorably dense Joe the Plumber on par with scrapes of a metal fork against a ceramic plate.

More significantly, fear mongering and encrypted race-baiting still plays and plays well along the Appalachian Trail into Tornado Alley. Perhaps this election distilled the toxic elements from the Republican Party. Perhaps pure conservatism will rise out of the tenuous pastiche of disparate elements once Scotch-taped together by Karl Rove. Perhaps fiscal conservatives, libertarians, populists and open-minded moralists will coalesce and offer new, promising ideas in 2012.

Ronald Reagan once defined conservatism: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is

Less government interference. Less centralized authority. More individual freedom. These are principles that many of us could get behind. But for the Republican Party of the past decade, these values are puffed up and marketed with no movable inventory on the sales floor. They gather dust in the partisan stock room. We've been waiting for the offer of merchantable goods by the GOP longer than Guns N' Roses's Chinese Democracy.

For me, for my vote, a purging of the Neocons and inexorable religious fundamentalists is a good place to start. If that's too big a step today, how about some restraints on the ceaseless pandering to unbridled prejudice and bigotry masquerading around the back country as moral piety.

Palin's Future

CNN has already begun girding its loins for a Republican loss, running an extensive article (following on the more bitchy previous columns in many outlets about Palin "going rogue" and "off message") about what Sarah Palin's political future is, should the GOP lose on Tuesday.

The end result comes, again, back to a possible major schism in the party. She's a flashpoint at a moment in the history of our country where the potential rise of a three party system (assuming the Dems win on Tuesday) is really closer than I ever believed possible.

On the one hand, there are the "thinking" Republicans. Your George Will. Your Victoria Jackson. (wait, scratch that) Your Peggy Noonan. Your David Frum. These people are smart. They're not walking, talking You Betcha catchphrases. They are measured and considerate people who happen to slant conservative in their bent. And they have made it clear that should Sarah Palin become the standard-bearer, they cannot bear that standard. (see what I did there)

These people will need candidates and a party in 2012 and even as soon as 2010 conceivably. If Sarah Palin becomes the face of the New Republicanism, these people will see themselves as ballast, no longer required on a foundering ship. People like David Brooks recently took Palin and many of those that find her to be a wonderful breath of fresh air to the party to task, saying that they now supported a "counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices...."

People like this do not want to support a party that paints anyone with an education or who lives in a city or has a job that requires functional brain activity as being an elitist. Mostly because, if so, all these people - staunch, unwavering conservatives with brains - are suddenly elitist and generally unwelcome under the New Republican tent. If this is truly the direction the party is taken, I believe these people will strike out and seek new ground. Libertarians? Maybe. Or maybe they will try to bring disenchanted conservative Democrats into the fold and become a true Centrist party. Either way, I think it would be wonderful for America. But what of the New Republicans then?

Well, there is an entirely different group that think Palin should carry forth her folksy, Wasilla Main Street message, win or lose, and be the shining light that will lead true Republicans out of the post-Reagan era wilderness they current find themselves lost within.

"Palin, as best I can describe it, exudes a kind of middle-class magnetism. It's subdued but nonetheless very powerful," Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes recently wrote. "Whether they know it or not, Republicans have a huge stake in Palin. If, after the election, they let her slip into political obscurity, they'll be making a tragic mistake."

Personally, I cannot imagine a party with Sarah Palin as its standard-bearer. What would be the tenants? What would such a party stand for? The thought to me is equal parts terrifying, head-scratching and laughable. But others clearly are very taken with her outsider, maverick message, whether or not it is true or genuine. However, there seems to me to be a fundamental flaw with the idea of THAT Sarah Palin becoming the figurehead of the New Republicans, and it is this:

But one thing is clear: If Palin wants to mount a serious bid for her party's nomination in 2012, she has a lot of groundwork to do.

She has yet to form relationships with many key conservative groups at the local level, whose support would be instrumental in ultimately capturing the Republican presidential nomination. She knows few party chairman in the key early primary states where the race will likely be decided.

"She needs to get out there and get to know conservative leaders at the national, state, and local level," Viguerie said. "She needs to introduce herself in a way she hasn't had the opportunity to do so far."

Essentially, even Palin's strongest and staunchest supporters concede that in order to mount a serious challenge in 2012, or even to continue to be a national player of significance, Sarah Palin is going to have to meet the people and learn the game. Everyone agrees that she cannot simply go back to Anchorage, hole up and wait for primary season in 2011. She has to meet people, gladhand financial backers, get schooled in media diplomacy and all the trappings of being a successful political candidate.

And therein lies the dichotomy I cannot wrap my head around and that confuses me about considering her to be "the future" of anything. Sarah Palin's primary appeal at this point has been her maverick, outside-the-establishment vibe. She is small town straight-talk. But in order to become a viable candidate, she has to shed that skin and grow a new, slicker one. She has to become an insider when her greatest appeal has been that she is an outsider. And that is what nobody has yet adequately explained to me about the future of Sarah Palin: how do you stay relevant in politics when your relevance is dependent upon you not being part of politics-as-usual?

Good luck, New Republicans.

Surrogates Go Where McCain Will Not

As reported by Ben Smith at Politico, The National Republican Trust, a right-wing political action committee, will spend 2.5 million dollars bringing Reverend Wright to the forefront for voters in the crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania (Obama with a big 12 point cushion), Ohio (leaning towards Obama at a 5 point margin) and Florida (practically a dead heat).*

Here's the visual weapon of choice:



As I posted earlier, it was inevitable that the Republicans choose this "nuclear option" even with a desultory John McCain taking it off the table (McCain's ideological impermanence throughout this campaign grants implicit permission for the RNC to run wild and try anything). And rightly so - why would you accept defeat without taking one more shot at the end zone? Why would right wing fear-mongering and demagoguery go out with a whimper when it spent the past decade excoriating America for any temptation to go another way?

However, the demagoguery flows here from the presentation of the message, not from its substance. This is a justified assailment of Barack Obama. He should be taken to task for a person he has consorted with for more than twenty years as a self-described mentor (certainly a much more legitimate line of attack than the William Ayers phooey). Wright is a much more personal figure to Senator Obama and not easily dismissed as a fellow board member or a "person in the neighborhood."

By his own account, Obama gleaned insight and received guidance from Reverend Wright. Wright has made inflammatory, truly anti-American remarks of the same ilk as Ward Churchill's or Cindy Sheehan's lunatic brand of commentary. Obama has attended over 500 firebrand sermons delivered by the incendiary leader of his church. I have no quarrel with someone asking Obama for a bit of elaboration here.

* polliing data from pollster.com.

The Hannity Dilemma - McCain's Jane Fonda

I'm coining a new phrase - The Hannity Dilemma. From this pint forward, the Hannity Dilemma will be used to describe the situation where a standard developed by a hard line partisan hack like Sean Hannity, intended to be used only against those heathens with opposing political views, is instead applied to a member of the standard-setting hack's own political party. The horror.

The award is named for Master Hannity because of his wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonder____ (that's 5 1/2 for those counting - you'll see) near aneurysm after his own standard (paraphrased here) asserted against John Edwards - "people who lie to their families by having affairs can't be trusted by the American people" - was applied to John McCain by Hannity's own weak-kneed liberal pushover but awoken from his castrated slumber co-host, Alan Colmes. Hannity gets so fired up that the standard he developed is used against one of his own, that . . . well, he starts quoting math and yelling protest slogans.



In that clip, Sean Hannity was faced with the Hannity Dilemma. His response: Donna Martin Graduates! Donna Martin Graduates! Donna Martin Graduates!

Now that we have an illustration of how The Hannity Dilemma works, lets apply it:

The Standard: The personal acquaintances of presidential candidates are valid, especially when such acquaintances are or were anti-American.

The Intended Application: In applying this standard, just about every talking head on the right (and some on the left), as well as the Republican Presidential ticket, have been hammering the Obama-Ayers and Obama-Wright connections, and particularly the anti-America angle. Fine. As I've stated before, I think those topics are fair game. As long as the same standard is applied to everyone.

The Hannity Dilemma: Joe Klein draws a comparison today between the scrutiny given to Obama's "radical friends," as opposed to the right's absolute silence on McCain's friendship with his own personal Jane Fonda - David Ifshin. As Klein explains:

Ifshin, you see, had been a vehement anti-Vietnam radical. He had even gone to Hanoi at the height at the war and given a speech denouncing the American pilots dropping bombs on North Vietnamese civilians as “war criminals.” The speech was broadcast repeatedly in the Hanoi Hilton, where McCain was being held captive. More than a few people thought Ifshin was guilty of treason.

He was also a close friend of John McCain until he passed away in 1996.

Klein's telling of this story is quite personal and worth the read, as Ifshin was also a friend of Klein's. It also shines a very favorable light on McCain (or, rather, the man McCain used to be). Their friendship was forged out of a respect for each other, despite their polar-opposite opinions so many years before. Ifshin was vocal about his regret for giving the above-referenced speech, and McCain forgave him. The McCain-Ifshin friendship was also detailed with admiration by the NY Sun in 2006. It's really a great story.

But as much as he regretted it, Ifshin did give that speech, just as Jane Fonda gave similar speeches attacking American soldiers. Guess what the right wing pundits think about Jane Fonda? Well Sean Hannity's guests, like Ollie North, think she's a "traitor" for her actions during the Vietnam war. I don't think it's a stretch to claim that that view as common among the right.

Now here's the dilemma: If Fonda is a traitor, so was Ifshin. So if Obama's associations with people like Ayers who, as John McCain described Ifshin "a long time ago, in the passions and resentments of a tumultuous era in our history, I might have considered my enemy," are fair game that must be examined, shouldn't the right wing pundits be examining McCain's association with this person who was a "traitor" by their own standards? Who is the real John McCain? Can we tolerate a president who palled around with traitors? Donna Martin Graduates!

ACORN: Ghost Stories for GOP Kiddies. Boooo!

To have standing to sue an individual and bring them into the court room, you, the plaintiff, must present an injury. Without injury, without a showing of damages or a theory of damages, the court has better things to do then adjudicate a case where the plaintiff is not entitled to relief.

The RNC is such a plaintiff when it comes to the ACORN pseudo-scandal. The chimeras of conservative moppets' nightmares - eg., a leftist Mickey Mouse primed to vote Obama - currently reside where they should remain: in dreams.

In the words of Barack Obama, "um . . . so . . . just to be clear" voter registration fraud does not bear fruits of voter fraud on November 4. As such, the Republicans cannot show injury. They cannot show damages.

Case closed . . . but of course it's not - since you hardened, righty, Kool-Aid chugging prick masters cannot stop pushing this lark or generally shut your pie holes. Sigh, let's play it out once again.

We revisit Disney and Mickey Mouse's indefatigable quest to vote for Obama: So the registration card filled out by "Mickey Mouse" is handed to representatives at ACORN from the ACORN canvasser (ie., by the way, just for a visual, Micky is a filthy hobo who stinks of Jack Daniels and rides the rails out past Toledo and is approached by an ACORN canvasser/pederast/check-kiter paid as an independent contractor based on the number of cards she submits. Make them black too, Neocons. Make it terrifying.).

If the card is suspicious, it is segregated from the stack of patently valid registration cards. Sometimes, the representative misses a suspicious card because she is working quickly, or is snorting Colombian bam-bam, or absolutely loves Obama. It really doesn't matter - for both the suspicious pile and verified pile are sent to the Election Board for review.

Why? BECAUSE IT'S THE LAW! ACORN is required to submit all registration cards it collects and stamps with its seal. Why? So that the Election Board can keep tabs on voter drives, provide ethical standards and confirm that the voting rolls are in order with the registration cards.

But Warm Apple Pie - what if the Board lets a suspicious card slip through and Mickey Mouse becomes listed on the voter rolls. Oh my god, does fraud win? Republican children huddle close! Fraud!!!! Boooooooooo!!!!!!

Um, no. Though Mickey Mouse is now registered to vote, there is no Mickey Mouse (sorry kids - there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny either. However, hobgoblin Dick Cheney is very real and will spray you with buckshot from his spectral shotgun if you don't pray for the destruction of Iran each evening).

Wait! What about the filthy hobo who filled out the card? He may try to vote as Mickey. Presto! Voter fraud. Fraud, GOP children. Fraud!!!!! Boooooooooooooooooo!

Um, no. The filthy hobo, Mickey Mouse, even Sarah Palin cannot vote without presenting a valid form of identification to the election monitor for authentication before signing the voter roll and before entering the voting booth. Why? BECAUSE IT'S THE LAW.

Okay, okay Warm Apple Pie. But playing along with me just to . . . GOP children? What are you doing? . . . oh my god . . . where did you get that Obama placard . . . stop waiving it . . . there is no change we can believe in . . . sit down children . . . Trig, you too - why are you watching the Couric interview again . . . behave!

Er, so play along with me. Let's say all of these fail safes . . . well . . . fail and the filthy hobo eludes detection and gets into the voting booth. I mean humans are fallible and at least half of the monitors are human (the other half are Democrats). I'm sure a ton of fraudulent votes are cast by misanthropes each election. Countless. Probably hundreds of thousands of these miscreants trolling the election sites. Maybe a million. Who knows?

Twenty. From 2002 to 2005 only 20 people were determined guilty of ineligible voting (and only five of these twenty were found to have voted more than once).

Sleep easy, GOP children. May visions of tax credits for sugar plum purchases dance in your heads.

* * * * *

ACORN is pure Republican hokum used solely to work the base into a heaving swell of stupidity and enlarge the ever-growing gaggle of phantasmal boogiemen conjured up by McCain-Palin this Fall. Maybe it's meant to simply hurt my ears.

It's viable for eighteen more days, as is the right-wing cacophony.

Disney Characters Endorse Obama

St. Petersburg Times reports that none other than Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote for the 2008 presidential election. Mickey's application was stamped with the logo of embattled nonprofit group ACORN, the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now," a grass roots action group pressing various social and economic issues for low income citizens.

ACORN has come under fire for what Republican watchdogs allege are unscrupulous voter registration drives in key battleground states. The building confrontation has become white hot in Ohio, where yesterday election officials in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's most populous voting district, launched an investigation into certain dubious dealings by ACORN canvassers, including an allegation by a 19-year-old registrant that he fraudulently signed 73 voter registration forms in the span of five months in exchange for $20 worth of cigarettes and cash.

Is the registration of Mickey Mouse really a story? I mean I know you need filler for the 24 hour news cycle. He's a six foot tall talking mouse: Shouldn't he be easy to spot and pull out of line at the polling place on November 4th in the unlikely event he attempts to vote?

This is a non-story. Give me something with legs - like Goofy soliciting a transvestite hooker outside the Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland. That's a scoop. Or Cinderella getting violently gang-raped by Donald Duck and an animatronic William Howard Taft in the basement of the Hall of Presidents - a shocking crime that will forever rob the Liberty Square community of its innocence.

In a related story, Greta Van Susteren has pledged to burn herself at the stake if Barack Obama wins Ohio from an ACORN boon. Greta has done for her cause celebre, ACORN, what Nancy Grace has done for poor Caylee Anthony: Absolutely nothing! - except scowls, sneering eye rolls and pushing an investigatory progress comparable to Ray Charles looking for a five dollar bill in a wad of cash.

"Where's Caylee, dammit????? Where's Caylee?????? Now, look at my precious twins and worship them! Bless you, friends!"

Yea, Though We Walk Through the Valley Of Political Death

Invocation delivered today by Reverend Arnold Conrad of the Grace Free Evangelical Church at the beginning of a McCain rally in Davenport, Iowa:

"I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons . . . And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."

One party. Under God. The one true God. Better than your lesser gods, deities and superstitions.

And (of course) the requisite "distancing" from the McCain campaign reacting to Reverend Conrad's peculiar benediction:

"While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.”

I couldn't agree more. Then put your house in order, McCain, or are their too many bigoted moving parts? Is it even your party anymore?



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"Lord, we are so scared of an Obama Presidency. Hear us! Deliver us!"
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They're Trying to Kill Him

Accuse him of palling around with terrorists? Check
Say he doesn't see America the way that ordinary Americans do? Check
Claim he is - hint, hint - from the street? Check
Insinuate that his campaign is funded by foreign terrorists? Check
Stoke the fires of hatred and racism? Check
Invoke cries of "terrorist!" and "traitor!"? Check
Look the other way when a supporter advocates murder? Check
Defend those views as coming from "ordinary Americans?" Check
Taking it a step further and actually accusing Obama of attacking those same violent, enraged nutjobs? Holy shit, check

McCain has gone too far. Will an adult please step in before one of these wackjobs takes the obvious cues being given by McCain and "puts country first" by trying to take Obama out? Really.

MSNBC:

McCain camp defends the behavior?
Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008 3:30 PM by Mark MurrayFiled Under: 2008, McCain
From NBC's Mark MurrayEarlier today, Obama remarked on recent outbursts of "Traitor!" "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at McCain campaign events. "It's easy to rile up a crowd," Obama said. "Nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States."

In response, McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace released this statement, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports. "Barack Obama's assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people obama called 'bitter' and attacked for 'clinging to guns' and faith. He fails to understand that people are angry at corrupt practices in Washington and Wall Street and he fails to understand that America's working families are not 'clinging' to anything other than the sincere hope that Washington will be reformed from top to bottom."

"Attacking our supporters is a new low for the campaign that's run more millions of dollars of negative ads than any other in history."

*** UPDATE *** McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers adds in another statement: “Barack Obama’s attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo."

Dem Democrat "Hooligans"

"I am madder than a old wet hen. Let me translate dat der jumble-o-words I just dropped on yah, McCain: I ain't happy as a pig in slog no more. Even dem lipstick pig variety and such. Get dem commie bastards, Pelosi, the lot of em, and that uppity boy Obama. Get him good!"

Get them, Johnny. Go get them!!!! Burst through that door and hack'em up!!!!!

Nothing is more Americana then an ol' country kook cleaning the crust from his mouth, rattling his partisan chains around like Jacob Marley, calling the Democrats "hooligans" and "socialists," atavistically referring to "an Obama" like he's subhuman for having a feasible health care plan, then starting a hackneyed "U.S.A . . . U.S.A." chant just in case you thought McCain was hosting a tea party in Paris.

And the curmudgeon's incendiary red glare, an octogenarians head full of air! Francis Scott Key was the original Toby Keith. Yippeee! U.S.A! Obama is a muslim, terrorist, radical! Kill darky! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

The gap is shrinking between embellishment and what my eyes perceive. That's frightening.

Whether it's Dennis Miller deranged bellicosity on the O'Reilly Factor, looking into the camera and screaming at McCain to "fight, John. Fight!!!" or Michelle Malkin making the case for her own internment because she can't live under a Democratic administration, the Republican Party is fraying at the base (or is it a Socialist administration as the next bucket of radical paint is dumped on Barack Obama for tomorrow's news cycle).

There are many revealing moments in the short video of Waukesha, Wisconsin apoplexy! A complete lack of respect for McCain, the rampaging codger giving the "maverick" senator the business and telling him in campaign speak to "shut his piehole" (ie, "Let me finish, please"). The imbecilic dissonance of two sequential sentences, one saying "and I'm not mad about the economy," the very next sentence shrieking I'm mad "about the socialists taking over our country."

Socialism (as defined by Merriam Webster): Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Hey Wilford Brimley - you're mad at the economy, you f**king wingnut, or at least you will be when they repossess your PT Cruiser, they take your job away greeting at the Wall-Mart and disabuse you of your last five dollars because the church needed it! It's the Christian thing to do.

What's the use. There is an exorbitant premium on making sense within conservative dens during the last throes of what Karl Rove touted "50 years of Republican domination."

I found McCain's instinctual response to the surly fella even more fascinating. It's almost like he's uncomfortable consorting with these vitriolic crackers demanding a political lynching of Obama. "Act together because all of us are Americans first." All of us. And McCain will "work with anyone" and "work together as one nation indivisible."

But the ideological dummies, clod fanatics of neo-conservatism on the wan and firebrand zealots waving their bibles wildy don't want bipartisanship, cooperation or even the "maverick" persona McCain and Palin shill.

They want leftist blood. They want to murder liberalism. They have no idea why. The rhetoric is a hodge-podge of hate, fear, insecurity, a dollup of subconscious racism (a bigger helping for some folks) and confusion. They cannot formulate sentences to express this madness. It's a venomous melange of terrorism, communism, socialism, radicalism, liberalism, nihilism and any other "ism" reduced and muddled into formless chimeras haunting the good neighbors on Main Street, Mayberry as they slumber.

It's a request for grotesque and unseemly tactics that John McCain may not fulfill - for two reasons:

One, a political view, that this election is not won by preaching to the converted at Republican rallies, but by appealing to the whopping 40% of the electorate that consider themselves independent, many of them rational thinkers, unfettered by party talking points.

And two, a moral view (really, an American view): that I will not spark a match and set this country ablaze when the blood in my veins pulses with doing the right, but sometimes unpopular thing and working with members of both parties if that's what it takes to accomplish it.

How ironic: McCain might lose this election because he truly does put "country first." As dirty as it's getting, McCain may not be willing to cross every line, only most of them. And that will come up short.