Much That Is Hidden

The latest issue of Rolling Stone (RS 1062) features this article by Matt Taibbi. It is arguably his most caustic, cynical and spot-on writing yet. It's long, but well worth the read.





CAUTION: Rated "R" (which also could mean "Rabid Right-Wing Religiosos Really won't like this")

The Lies of Sarah Palin
By Matt Taibbi

I’m standing outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Palin has just finished her speech to the Republican National Convention, accepting the party’s nomination for Vice President. If I hadn’t quit my two pack a day habit earlier this year, I’d be chain smoking right now. So the only thing left is to stand mute against the fit-for-a-cheap-dog-kennel crowd-control fencing you see everywhere at these idiotic conventions and gnaw on weird new feelings of shock and anarchist rage as one would a rawhide chew toy.

All around me, a million cops in their absurd post-9/11 space combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in paper-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joylessly out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion bowls and other “wild” drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the “Unbelievable Time” they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they’re at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into the sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague – they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation – at the Xcel gates, “She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her, open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin’ picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – And this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party’s fortunes around faster.

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made on of the all-time campaign season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway Park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman – Reportedly his real preference – By picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-Thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially-pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

But watching Palin’s speech I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who “five children later” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American; the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set or drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.

Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It’s the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.

Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the “Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick,” blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set – who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else’s wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review – seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We’re used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She’s all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It’s just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn’t the most qualified candidate, that the party “went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives.”

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflective prejudices of their demographic, as they would for a reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-Syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would “have a friend and advocate in the White House.” This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin’s charge that “government is too big” and that Obama “wants to grow it” was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical Bush-era Republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $15 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK’d a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that “taxes are too high” and Obama “wants to raise them.”

Palin hasn’t been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin’s paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn’t collect from her own; Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation. The rest of Palin’s speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been railing about for decades. Palin’s crack about a mayor being “like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities” testified to the Republican’s apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They’re probably right). The incessant pausing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people – reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever – for their failures.

Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to “forfeit” to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, its total disregard for reality, its absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won’t matter that she’s got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five month bump and some sideways-cap-wearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the reality-making business is that you don’t need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate’s bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.
One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of sanity and reason pore over the governor’s record in search of the Damning Facts. My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the “truth” about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an Internet connection knows by know that Palin was originally for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she opposed it (She actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn’t actually sell the Alaska governor’s state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).

Then there are the salacious tales of Palin’s swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister’s ex-husband), Palin also fired a campaign aide who had an affair with a friend's wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, who had resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.

Then there’s the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush “Come from Hell” and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama’s Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a “refuge state” for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was “God’s Will.” She also described the Iraq War as a “task that is from God” and part of a heavenly “plan.” She supports teaching creationism and “Abstinence Only” in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you’d expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you’d think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job – But not in America. In America, it takes about two weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you’ve been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He’s been on TV every day for two years and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that’s a lifetime of hands-on experience.

It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama. As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of long-lost, future-embracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin’s Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in Middle America, you have to accept that Middle America probably feels the same way when it hears Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-“I love you, Obama!” ritual at the Democratic nominee’s town-hall appearances.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much as a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we’re actually going to need in government if we’re going to get out of this huge mess we’re in.

Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn’t that she’s totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and porked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: That you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we’ll not only thank you for your trouble, we’ll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn’t require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in awhile, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing “I’m Lovin’ It!” during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn’t require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote all you have to do is put your Country First – Just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, Baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!

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Taibbi’s loudest thumping dart is how, as far as our political process is concerned, a huge chunk of our electorate practically delights in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. At least 29 percent of these folks have a crazy romance with mediocrity, going back at least to the 2000 elections. They are high on the whole “Sarah is an ordinary person!” Yep, she’s a reg’lar gal alright.

As I have on several occasions, I ask how “elitism” has become a bad thing in American politics? Everywhere else it is something to be desired, if not demanded – pilots, research scientists, surgeons, athletes, even our beloved troops. But when it comes to positions where thoughts and actions will affect millions, there are those who quite illogically want someone just like them - down-to-earth but not too intelligent or well educated.

To the question of why one likes Sarah Palin so much, the woman-on-the-street response that really gets me is, “She knows what it's like to be a mom.” If that is not a heinous detachment from the real problems of today, then, arrrgh! The next administration will inherit myriad issues that are perhaps, in a primary leadership / situation room kind of capacity, the furthest things from needing a mother’s touch. Things like war, climate change, nuclear proliferation, a stagnant/shrinking economy, the rise of China, epidemics, education, energy, infrastructure, and Internet security, etcetera, etcetera. In my humble estimation Gov. Palin is not competent to address any one of them.

I leave you with this very interesting list:

The Truth About Sarah Palin

A guide to separating myth from fact

Compiled by Tim Dickinson – Rolling Stone

THE MYTH: "She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay. And made a profit!" — John McCain, at a campaign stop in Wisconsin

THE FACTS: No one bought the jet online. It was eventually sold through an aircraft broker — at a loss to taxpayers of nearly $600,000. The buyer, a Palin campaign contributor, is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE MYTH: "I told the Congress 'Thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "We ... championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "I found ... someone who stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money." — John McCain, introducing Palin at RNC

THE MYTH: "Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems — as if we didn't know that already." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE FACTS (?!): "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem." — Sarah Palin, July 2008

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE MYTH: "We began a nearly $40 billion natural-gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "She's from a small town with small-town values." — Fred Thompson, RNC speech

THE FACTS: Wasilla and the surrounding valley recently named the meth capital of Alaska, with 42 meth labs busted in a single year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE MYTH: Palin has "taken on the political establishment in the largest state of the union." — Fred Thompson, convention speech

THE FACTS: Served until 2005 as director of fundraising group associated with indicted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE MYTH: "She's fought oil companies." — John McCain, introducing Palin at RNC

THE FACTS: Collected $13,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas lobbyists, including Exxon, BP, Shell and Chevron. BP was a sponsor of her inaugural ball.

THE MYTH: "She's been to Kuwait. She's been over there. She has been with her troops. The National Guard that she commands, who have been over there and had the experience." — John McCain, highlighting Palin's national-security credentials

THE FACTS: Never had a passport before 2007, when she made a brief photo-op trip to visit troops in Germany and Kuwait. Has never been to Iraq, and has not met a single foreign head of state.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE MYTH: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending." — Sarah Palin, convention speech

THE FACTS: As governor, sought travel reimbursement for 312 nights she spent in her own home.

Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, politix, rants, Vote for Giant Douche

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I think the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report need to start garnering some Pulitzers. This is simply because, unlike the mainstream media, neither promotes or spares anyone in their humorous quest to report the truth.

Good stuff:


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Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, media, Obama, Vote for Giant Douche

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For those of you who share my passion for politics, I highly recommend recent features by two of my favorite writers. Both have given me much to think about regarding the national election in November, not the least of which is the possibility that, despite my contempt for the DNC, I may not vote third party as anticipated.

James Wolcott's latest in Vanity Fair offers a balanced account of the problems the Democratic Party is headed into (as a Hillary voter, no less). He nails the fact that all of the primary scrapping is, partly, just another thing in a long line of Democrats giving a major pass to the Bush administration's dirty deeds.

Over at Rolling Stone, the always astute and often causticly hilarious Matt Taibbi gives his take on the Obama-Clinton duel. Taibbi leans toward Obama but certainly doesn't give him a pass, a minority stance in the starstruck media which, along with the fact that he gets paid, likely irks the shit out of all the HuffPo suckers.

Two juicy excerpts for the busy/link averse:

WOLCOTT

Cheney’s sarcastic “So?” (when an interviewer mentioned that two-thirds of the American people thought the war in Iraq wasn’t worth fighting) was a spit in the eye of not only the American people but of the critics of the Iraq policy whom he could treat as irrelevant, and why not? Since 9/11, he and the president had had a free hand and played it for all it was worth. Four thousand American dead is a small down payment to make for a permanent imperial presence in Iraq, and John McCain promises to be a stalwart caretaker of the desert franchise, girding his eyebrows to fend off naysayers and quitters. What really twists the intestines into a knot is knowing that Democrats will probably be as ineffectual going after McCain as they’ve been for these last seven years of sagebrush theater. Top Democrats and media flunkies have been both idly and actively complicit in McCain’s maverick identity getting a Holy Ghost makeover. Hillary and Bill Clinton have taken turns polishing McCain’s hood while Joe Lieberman pals around with Big John as if they were touring in La Cage aux Folles, two old queens taking in the sunset. As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler blog decried, “The RNC [Republican National Committee] (and the rest of the conservative world) would never have tolerated the sanctification of some Big Major Democrat of McCain’s type. But liberals and Dems have stared into space as McCain has been endlessly vested with sainthood.” Democrats have pulled their punches for so long that they know only how to hit themselves in the face, earning the reputation for masochism that gives Dick Cheney a good chuckle each night at bedtime as he’s being packed in ice.

TAIBBI

Obama's real weakness is that nobody really knows yet what he's all about. He is running as a symbol of a new politics, a politics somehow less disgusting and full of shit than the old politics. But if it were to get out that he's not that —that all he is is the same old deal dressed up in black skin and a natty suit —then he quickly morphs into a different kind of symbol, a symbol of how an essentially bankrupt political system can seamlessly repackage itself to a fed-up marketplace by making cosmetic changes, without altering its basic nature. There have been disturbing signs along that front, from the accusations that Obama aides called his anti-NAFTA stance "just politics," to his angry stumpery against a Maytag plant closing even as he pals around with Lester Crown, a Maytag board member who raised huge sums for his campaign. Right now, Obama has millions of voters thinking Santa Claus really does exist; but if he keeps getting caught turning the usual tricks with campaign donors, attention is going to shift away from his heroic image and toward the prosaic reality, which in politics is always grubby and depressing. And with that, his value as a symbol will evaporate, and Christmas turns into just another holiday with those same relatives you hated every other day of the year.

On a personal note, SOMEONE is going to have to pull unity out of their ass to avoid passing up an unprecedented opportunity for Democrats to capitalize on what is likely to be massive voter turnout this November. This whole "I'll vote for McCain" bullshit is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. What the hell good are Clinton supporter's "I told you sos" in the face of four more years of Republican veto power?
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Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, John McCain, politix, Vote for Giant Douche

To "celebrate" once again the choices before us in this election year, we present this MTIH classic, originally posted in June 2006:


Raise your glass to the hard working people

I had a conversation last weekend about our current state of political affairs, and the Rolling Stones song Salt of the Earth was mentioned with regard to its line “Let’s think of the wavering millions / Who need leaders but get gamblers instead.”

That ambiguous line was brought home while reading an article/interview with Dick Cheney by former New York Times reporter Todd Purdum, now national editor at Vanity Fair. It’s a compelling piece, showing much of what I could have assumed about Cheney but then other stuff that proved I just don’t know Dick. For example, he was quite a prankster during his tenure as Ford’s chief of staff, and when he was Wyoming’s sole Congressman for 10 years he would make time back in the home office for a crazy coot they called Dynamite Lopez (in the pre-9/11 world he threatened that he carried a stick of dynamite with him – no worries, come on in, the Congressman will be right with you...).

But the crux of the story is about how Cheney’s character, not necessarily his ideology, has changed for the worse. Purdum speculates (and strongly so, as he interviewed a buttload of Cheney friends and aquaintances in addition to three conversations with the Veep himself) that the cause of the change falls about equally between his post-9/11 responsibilities, the massive amount of wealth he accrued with Haliburton, and his shaky health.

Interesting factoid – Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, a longtime Wyoming resident, worked on Cheney’s first congressional campaign in 1978. But the songwriter has changed his tune for sure (only slightly relieving my puzzlement over his initial support - hell, I don't guess Dems raise their head very high in the land of hate crimes). Barlow told Purdum via e-mail that Cheney’s, “dark intellect has become one of the most dangerous forces in the world; he has become a global sociopath, a creature of enormous power and intellect combined with all the empathy of a HAL 9000.”

I can just see the one-sided exchange in the West Wing, “I’m sorry Colin, I cannot allow you to do that."

So, back to the Stones. Regarding our need for leaders but instead getting gamblers, what could be a more accurate description of this administration? They have gambled away much of America’s and their own faithful's good will in a series of crap shoots, both foreign and domestic, that are based on about as reliable a strategy as “I just KNOW I can beat the house on this roll. Just one more.” Indeed, baby needs a new armored Humvee. In fairness, the song really offers an indictment of ineffective politicians of all stripes, pronouncing them a choice between two dreaded diseases - a strange beauty show, indeed.

So in honor of all the stay-at-home voters out there, we present the lyrics of the last tune on 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet (IM-not-so-HO, first in the series of the four greatest Stones albums which includes Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St).


Salt of the Earth (Jagger / Richards)

Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

And when I search a faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray and black and white
They don’t look real to me
In fact, they look so strange

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray-suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

And when I look into the faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and black and white
They don’t look real to me
Or don’t they look so strange

Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag-taggy people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth

Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Let’s drink to the two thousand million
Let’s think of the humble of birth
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Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, Lies and Lying Liars, politix, the past, Vote for Giant Douche

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Having checked news reports into this evening I tuned in to MSNBC expecting to see four candidates at the Las Vegas debate. But alas, at the wire:

Nevada Supreme Court Rules
In Kucinich Debate Dispute
Associated Press
January 15, 2008 8:45 p.m.

LAS VEGAS -- A lower court order that Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich be included in a MSNBC candidate debate Tuesday was tossed out a few hours before the debate by the Nevada Supreme Court.

Lawyers for NBC Universal Inc. had asked the high court to overturn the lower court order that the cable TV news network include the Ohio congressman or pull the plug on broadcasting the debate Tuesday night with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

The Supreme Court's unanimous order said that blocking the debate unless Mr. Kucinich got to participate would be "an unconstitutional prior restraint" on the news network's First Amendment rights.

Justices also said the lower court exceeded its jurisdiction by ordering Mr. Kucinich's participation even though "he first requested and was denied relief" from the Federal Communications Commission.

"It's a matter of being on stage and answering questions. That's the issue," lawyer Bill McGaha argued for Mr. Kucinich during a hearing before four justices in Las Vegas. Three other justices participated by closed-circuit video conference from Carson City.

Donald Campbell, a Las Vegas lawyer representing NBC Universal, accused Mr. Kucinich of trying to make a jurisdictional "end run" around the FCC and federal courts by suing in Nevada state court to be added to the debate.

FCC broadcast rules do not apply to cable TV networks, Mr. Campbell said, adding that forcing MSNBC to add Mr. Kucinich or not broadcast the debate amounted to prior restraint and would be a "clear and unequivocal" violation in First Amendment press freedom.

"Mr. Kucinich's claim .. undermines the wide journalistic freedoms enjoyed by news organizations under the First Amendment," Mr. Campbell said in his appeal.

What's up with this same old MSM bullshit? In spite of the public overwhelmingly wanting him in the 2000 debates they excluded Ralph Nader in similar fashion. How dichotomous that the Supreme Court can rule that campaign contributions are a form of protected free speech but the two dominant political parties can conspire with the dominant corporatist media to shut out a dissenting voice from the free exchange of ideas?

Legal schematics aside, this is once again cowardice of the highest order on the part of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party as well. I for one am through with them. I will not vote for their nominee. They are caterers of a bland buffet of mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, cauliflower and navy beans. This country gets what it deserves for gorging at the Beltway sheep trough.

Go Air Obama ! We need change ! You got two fives?
Go Mike Huckabee ! May Earth live another 6,000 years !

Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, Vote for Giant Douche