Republicans Scare Me
Published September 5th, 2008 | 
I never thought I’d say this, but the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket frightens me even more than the Bushies do at this moment.
Like a lot of people, I used to have a certain amount of respect for John McCain. Okay, I didn’t agree with him on a number of issues and he is a Republican, but he always struck me as being a reasonable guy. Even at the beginning of the primary season (and even though I had no intention of voting for him) I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But now I see that this man is not reasonable, is not really interested in “country first” and doesn’t really give a crap about the majority of people in this country. He’s just power-hungry and insincere. McCain’s Republican party is not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Republicans haven’t been a part of that legacy in very long time, but it’s fascinating how even as they continue to drift farther away from that vision of the country they keep trying to sell it to the rest of us. And John McCain is now the de facto leader of that party.
Barack Obama says “it’s not that John McCain doesn’t care, it’s that John McCain doesn’t get it.” I’ll have to disagree with Obama on this point. McCain doesn’t get it, true enough, but he doesn’t care that he doesn’t get it. Afterall, he represents a party that denies Darwin, but has no problem embracing social darwinism.
Here’s a man who says he hates war, yet not only supported (and continues to support) the ill-advised occupation of Iraq, but seems hell-bent on drafting every man, woman and child to fight future blood-for-oil feuds with any oil-producing nation not in our friendly column under the guise of “keeping us safe”. He’s one of those idiots who still believes we could have won the Vietnam War if we were more committed to victory and thinks we can do the same in the Islamic world without a clear idea what “victory” even means, denying the basic truth about democracy that it’s something people have to take for themselves, that it can’t be bestowed upon another country like a cheap gift or imposed on that country at the point of a bayonet. He embraces the same-old Hooverian trickle-down voodoonomics that has been gradually killing the middle-class in this country for decades. Nearly 50 million people without health insurance and his health care plan amounts to a health tax that will only put more money into the pockets of insurance and drug companies and will not only not insure everyone, but may well add to the number of people who go uninsured. He calls himself a friend to the environment yet supports an energy plan (what there is of it) that is anything but environmentally-friendly. He calls himself a friend to the environment and picks as his running-mate a polar bear-hating, ecosytem-destroying beauty queen who, if she’s allowed more time as governor of Alaska, would gladly turn that beautiful state into a fucking wasteland.
And what about Sarah Palin? She wasn’t picked because she’s what’s best for this nation. She was picked because she appeals to the lunatic fringe of the Republican party . . . and because she’s a woman. Let’s face it — if McCain sincerely wanted a female on the ticket, there were better, more reasonable choices within the Republican Party than Sarah Palin. The choice of Sarah Palin was a cynical, calculated choice made not for the good of the country, but for the good of John McCain’s campaign.
You can put lipstick on a pit bull, but it’s still a pit bull at the end of the day.
You Spin Me Right Round Like a Record Baby
Published August 29th, 2008 | I suppose it’s a given that any writer would be interested in language and how it’s used. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I was on the edge of me seat last night watch Barack Obama take it to McBush in his acceptance speech. My favorite line has to be: “You know, John McCain likes to tell people he’d follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell . . . but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.”
Yes, there was a lot of red meat in that speech (mostly McCain’s) and it’s hard to argue against the speech’s rhetorical power. Admittedly, Obama is my candidate so I’m more inclined to praise the speech, but listening to the commentary afterward only reinforces that Obama scored a home run with just the right language and the right cadence — that the speech was fucking poetry!
On MSNBC, I thought Keith Oberman and Chris Matthews were getting sexually excited. Even that right-wing sourpuss, Pat Buchannan seemed impressed. CNN gave Obama a slight less exuberant thumbs-up. But the most interesting response came from Fox News and McCain’s surrogates. Brit Hume kept calling the speech and the stage craft a “spectacle” — a decidedly negative connotation. Juan Williams (who always looks like he’s in need of some acne products) basically said that the speech was dull. Only Bill Kristol gave the speech relatively high marks which surprised me. McCain’s campaign surrogates looked like they were going to cry. They had almost nothing to say: “stammerstammer . . . no experience . . . blahblahblah . . . stammerstammer . . . blahblah . . . McCain POW . . . blahblahblah . . . stammer . . .” In fact, they sounded a lot like Kerry’s surrogates during the last presidential election, when the Bushies were sticking it to Kerry.
I’ll admit, until last night, I had my doubts about Obama — not about his intelligence and his character, but about whether he had the stuff to take on the Repugnican attack machine and still maintain his dignity. I think McCain and the idiots at Fox finally figured out what they are up against last night. Obama is a fucking ninja and I can’t wait for the debates!
