Moose droppings

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The Palin campaign in pictures. One picture, in fact, covers the waterfront.


This is The Rest Of The Story, in case you have not read about it yet. Reality is even more disgusting than my sense of humor. Good day!

Politicians make some funnys

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HuffingtonPost has put up a report from the annual Al Smith Dinner, where politicians get to clown with some well written jokes, a number of them having an actual biting or even self-satiric edge. I leave it to me to tell you that the dinner is a fundraiser for Catholic Charities since the fool writing for HuffPo failed to mention that. (I haven't watched the video; just read the text.)

McCain said "That One" is his pet name for Obama, and that Obama has reciprocated by giving him the pet name "George Bush." Obama told the gathering that "My greatest strength would be my humility. My greatest weakness is that it's possible I am too awesome." There's some funny stuff there, but it looks like a few of McCain's gags may have bordered on being a bit too ill-spirited for the Al Smith gig. Maybe I'm being judgmental. You decide.

Eight years ago Al Gore and George Bush attended this dinner. At that time, Gore joked that he invented the internet. Bush made the remarks about "the haves and the have mores" being his base, which were unfairly lifted out of context by Michael Moore and spliced into Farenheit 911. This probably happened because Michael Moore is fat.

Joe The Trojan Horse [updated]

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As Oil Can Harry hypothesized in a previous comments section on this blog, Joe The Plumber may have more in common with the McCain family than with us Main Streeters, Memory Laners, and other assortment of American flotsam. You see, Joe the Plumber thinks Social Security is a joke and "hates" it. Is it possible that Joe's resemblance to a dick is more than skin deep? Let's allow Joe himself to answer that.

Joe (from SkyNews): Speaking about his previous encounter with the Democrat, he said: "I asked the question but I still got a tap dance... almost as good as Sammy Davis Junior."

My sources say "yes." My sources, word- and picture-wise, are used for nonprofit research and education purposes as circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis that Joe The Plumber may possibly be a racist dickhead.

Afterthought: Joe referred to the experience of seeing McCain and Obama talking to him on TV as "pretty surreal, man." Surreal. Don't you think it's a pretty elitist plumber who uses twenty-dollar words like that? Who does he think he is --- a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) or something? And while I'm having afterthoughts, here's another one: does anyone think it's a fortunate coincidence that Senator McCain just happened to know about Senator Obama's audience with an everyman plumber at an Ohio political rally? Or that "[w]ithin six hours of the end of the presidential clash, Joe the Plumber T-shirts and baseball caps were on sale"?

Update: Oh the humanity! (Sorry about that. I generally try to avoid cliches like the plague.) Someone in the comments section of Lawyers, Guns and Money, where I found the link (after starting from Eschaton, for purposes of a complete cite) says the Martin Eisenstadt oppo material may be fishy. I don't know if it is fishy or not. And nobody is going to give a drizzle$#i+ about Joe The Plumber if the Dow loses another 1,000 points. But at the least it begins to look as if Joe The Plumber's 15 minutes of fame might be a media stunt brought to you by the McCain/Palin campaign. I say equal time for Josephine The Plumber! (She even talks like Palin!)

Final-debate snipes [updated]

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John McCain thinks autism is the same thing as Down syndrome. He thinks his running mate has an autistic baby.

John McCain said "We need to change the culture of America." In that respect, he has more in common with Osama than with Obama.

John McCain said several times that Barack Obama is "eloquent." I guess that's even worse than being "elitist."

Barack Obama joined in the fun tonight by talking with McCain's imaginary friend, Joe The Plumber. He missed a chance to pick up some stray Hillary voters by failing to invoke Josephine The Plumber, however.

Update: ZOMGZ! Joe The Plumber is actually real! Well, by those same standards, then so is Josephine. Except that I have no reason to think Josephine, in real life, was a stupid jackass.

Josh Marshall makes a funny

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Like so!

Potentially scary situation [updated]

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I have fears that these Palin/McCain experiments with inciting mobs to violence could be the prelude to something unspeakably ugly. Consider what might happen if, in the next 2 weeks or so, that dark-skinned thugs appeared at Republican rallies and started scuffling with GOP nutbags in order to "defend" Obama. Those thugs would certainly be what the French call "agents provocateurs", and they would somehow, indirectly as hell, be on the payroll of some very, very bad people who have a very keen interest in making sure that Obama never sets foot in the White House.

It would create a public atmosphere ripe for backlash against Obama, not to mention much more sordid or violent potential impacts. The corporate media would be the enablers. I'm not saying it would even work. But think about how heinously effective such an idea could seem to desperate, criminal white men.

Update: in acknowledgment of anon in my comments section, here's a shot of actual paranoia ripped from the comments section of this Politico post:

Between 8:45 PM and 9:15 PM tonight (Oct 8) on Intrade, someone just bet a LOT of money against Obama winning the presidency. And I mean a LOT. His stock, which has been over 70 for a couple of days now and at 76 most of the time today dipped down to 64 or so in those 20 minutes under heavy betting before recovering immediately after 9:15 to 73... Very strange.. is there something someone knows?? What is the news tomorrow, JMart?" Posted By: intrade | October 08, 2008 at 11:54 PM

If you need me tomorrow, I'll be in the bunker with my 50 bottles of wine.

Two short notes on 2d presidential debate

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1. Obama seemed preternaturally composed and focused tonight, like a veteran airline captain telling the passengers that there will be some turbulence ahead --- someone who could inspire confidence in a captive audience exposed to peril.

2. McCain tonight was using this creepy, pseudo-earnest hissing whisper when trying to drive home certain points, a cartoon voice that Palin overused until it made me sick during her debate with Biden.

That's all. The first-tier bloggers will tell you the rest of what you need to know, including confirmation that Tom Brokaw is a has-been, and not a very bright one.

Editor's note to BD: yes, I know I'm supposed to be doing more important stuff than this evening, but I worked 10 hours and I got no neurotransmitters left. Some more will grow by tomorrow morning.

"Without preconditions"

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I don't understand why Obama doesn't just decisively knock down this stupid Republican talking point that a party can enter negotiations with "preconditions." Setting preconditions for negotiations is a deliberate attempt to humiliate your negotiation partner. It is a way to win concessions without negotiating at all. Setting preconditions for a negotiation is disingenuous horseshit. It means that the party setting preconditions does not intend to enter the negotiation in good faith. Perhaps Obama could explain to the corporate media that "one thing John McCain doesn't understand is the definition of 'negotiate.'

I wonder how it would look if Obama agreed to another debate only on the precondition that McCain stop lying through his wooden teeth.

Fish with lipstick

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Haha! Just kidding. It's really the threatened and endangered Southwestern Maverickfish (j. mcainiacus mavericocious). Tastes like chicken, they say.

[Editor's note: photograph copyright Associated Press, 1 October 2008, accessed via this link. Fair use is claimed for nonprofit education and research purposes.]

Rhetorical question

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If John McCain can't even face down Obama in a debate, how can he chase down Osama in a cave?

The eyes have it

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A small throwaway question today from Atrios:

What's wrong with McCain's left eye?

I haven't noticed anything wrong with it, but evidently more observant people have, including Big Otis. Keep an "eye" on this detail because (some highly suspicious individuals think) it could be the raw meat for an unprecedented, premeditated "October Surprise" involving the withdrawal of Senator McCain from the Republican presidential ticket.

Since the press started calling McCain/Palin out on their overt lying (about almost everything) in the past 10 days, I've been inviting friends to consider two interrelated questions: How can John McCain remain as the Republican presidential nominee for another 2 weeks at the rate he is now going? Where do you see his campaign 3 weeks from now, given that celebrity journalists are calling him a liar, a mudslinger, and a bumbler?

I have never believed that John McCain would a viable candidate for president in 2008. I do believe that no one in the GOP inner circle saw this result in the making last winter, thinking instead that Rudy Guiliani or Fred Thompson would steal Amerika's heart. Ever since McCain became the last man standing in the moribund Republican field this past spring, I've believed that he has only been some kind of "placeholder" who will move or be moved out of the way when the time comes. For a month or two, recently, I blogged extensively about my hypothesis (i.e., fear) that the Republican Brain Trust would pull a sensational last-minute sleight of hand maneuver before or during the Minnesota convention, and roll out a "serious" dream team of Petraeus/Lieberman '08 to the nation's surprise and delight. That did not happen, thankfully. But I think it's clear that the Republican grandstand play involving Sarah Palin was sufficient "proof of concept" that a nonlinear political media development involving some telegenic unknown could set the corporate press off into a shit-eating fugue for weeks on end, because that is exactly what happened. However, the Republicans missed out on their big legal bait-and-switch opportunity, I think, by failing to be really bold at the convention. That leaves only extralegal tactics from this point forward.

Big Otis thinks the Petraeus ploy may still be in the works, except with Mike Bloomberg pinch-hitting for Lieberman. I think that direct scenario is much less likely now than it was in August, though, because any good stage magician knows that you don't repeat the same trick in front of the same audience twice during the same show. That is not to say I would rule out the possibility that Petraeus and Bloomberg (or even Lieberman) will be heading the Executive Branch in 6 months. But if it happens, I now believe it will happen as the endgame of a complex and probably extralegal "Plan C."

Shuffling McCain aside would be the easiest part of any Machiavellian political coup in the works by shadowy interests. Remember that left eye observation and keep it in mind. Lots of medical problems could cause a person's left eye to go "wrong." Both B.O. and I were close to someone whose personality changed radically, and who subsequently lost the capacity to take care of herself, due to the effects of brain tumors that may have spread there from other affected organs. Believe me: if something like that were responsible for the disintegration of McCain's personality over the past year (not that it was all that together before then, according to every impartial report I've read), then it's not funny. Not a topic for mockery, or schadenfreude, or glee. But it could provide the opportunity that the soulless power within the bowels of the GOP requires to package the most devastating October Surprise ever delivered to Americans. If Michael Myers really existed, he would be the Republican Minister of Propaganda.

The double cutout

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I am becoming unnerved. Something abominable is happening to this country. It is much too big even for my supreme capabilities in analysis and synthesis. The improbable, certifiably stupid and insane Republican presidential ticket is only the tip of an enormous iceberg, as if that weren't by itself enough to make me suck my thumb in wonder by the banks of my own lagoon. This post is a preamble to a large interpretive writing project that I will compose and publish in a series of concise, nonsequential essays.

To address just this iceberg tip at the moment, consider this: for more than 2 weeks our national mass-media dialog (monologue, actually) has largely fixated on a snide, petty, unintelligent nonentity of a provincial politician, Sarah Palin, who was elevated to the status of national sensation by the Republican party and the corporate media. During those 2 weeks Palin has been revealed to be a serial liar, a possible obstructor of justice in an Alaska investigation of prohibited personnel practices, and ridiculously ignorant of political and economic fundamentals... for starters. Her running mate --- "former POW" John McCain --- and his campaign organization have absurdly played the "sexism card" to preempt criticism of her, or even making her the subject of parody on Saturday Night Live. McCain has finally gone off the deep end with his serial lying and slander of Barack Obama, and is no longer even trying to hide it. All this has been reported widely, and it makes me sick to even recap it for conversational purposes. It is even being reported with some degree of accuracy in certain quarters of the corporate media a the same time as some opinion polls appear to show that the Republican Big Lie Campaign is working with "voters." All that is enough to fray the nerves. But there are hints that something more interesting may be happening.

It is now the middle of September. The Republican campaign is utterly out of control by any traditional measure. Only residual decorum now prevents celebrity journalists from saying the obvious on TV: that McCain is mentally, emotionally, and morally unfit for the presidency, and that Sarah Palin is a lightweight joke whose ethical hijinx and lack of intelligence will not stand up to another month of even mild media scrutiny. So what happens in October? Surprises, that's what.

The ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin are the tactical equivalent of a deadlocked Republican Convention. By that I mean the current GOP ticket is untenable, even if the polls say most Americans want to be led by war-crazed moral degenerates. War is bad for children and other living things, as the dumb old hippie poster revealed to us, but furthermore it is also bad for the quarterly profit targets of most transnational corporations. The plutocrats and organizations with the greatest vested material interest in running the U.S. government own far too much of the status quo to allow a President McCain or Palin to get us into a nuclear exchange with Russia or Pakistan.

So Big Otis has got me thinking, once again: what is the real significance of Karl Rove and U.S. News calling out McCain on his filthy campaign of lies? Is the Money Wing of the Money Party preparing to pull the rug out from under John and Sarah? If so, what next? Big Otis seem to think that McCain and Palin may essentially be what are called "double cutouts" in the espionage profession --- "agents" who are enlisted to execute a plot, but not the plot they believe they were recruited for. It is not hard to think of at least one story line in which an aging, confused senator and a mendacious, narcissistic governor will have served their purposes within the next few weeks and are brushed aside in a move much more sensational even than the coming out part of Sarah Palin. Shock and awe.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that anything violent or even illegal would be required to brush McCain and Palin aside. Any method would serve, because it would quickly pale in significance to the rollout of the most mind-bending quadrenniel October Surprise ever. Petraeus/Lieberman '08? Possibly, but the details hardly matter at this point. Anything that gets the corporate media quivering with excitement and the "moderate, undecided voter" throbbing with patriotism would suffice.

This has been my "preamble," admittedly a bit overwrought and driven by anxiety. My exegesis on what the submerged bulk of the iceberg consists of will begin soon. As of now, my working keywords for the exegesis are cognition and awareness. Don't you dare miss it!

Josh Marshall makes a funny

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One of the things I like about TPM is the style of humor employed by Josh Marshall. It's sort of a throwback to a more innocent time in that he rarely swears or relies on topical pop culture references. When he uses terms like "malarkey" and "bamboozlement" they have an automatic ring of authenticity, and they arrest the eye for a moment.

Today Josh and company seem to have gotten impatient with Obama's defense of his "lipstick on a pig" remark, in the face of McCain's phony outrage about it, even though McCain has repeatedly used the phrase himself (not to mention his own well documented public sexist insults of Chelsea Clinton, Janet Reno, his second wife, and others). So the TPM gang does its part to help the Obama campaign and other weak-kneed Democrats get over their defensiveness and "embrace the pig."

I think the logo is cute and devastating. And TPM even provides an example of how to employ the pig in a commercial. Very nice --- wicked, but not vicious. This is the kind of stuff that the "moderate undecided voter" can instantly understand. And the laughter at the end is a nice touch.

Political gang fight metaphors

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Earlier this campaign season I heard someone from the Obama campaign --- maybe The Man himself --- talk about bringing a gun to the Republican knife fight that is a political campaign. At the time I appreciated the sentiment but not the metaphor.

Instead of bringing a gun to the Karl Rove knife fight, Obama needs to break out the Jackie Chan moves. Aerobatic wheel kicks transmigrating into fists pumping like the pedals of Vinnie Paul's kick drums. Head butts, scampering up walls like an insane hermit crab, then dropping his shell 15 feet down right to where McCain is getting "a little thin on top." Bonking people with their own weapons in outstandingly humorous ways. That kinda thing.

In fact, I believe there are now some early signs that Obama may have this very suite of tactics in his game plan. (Can't find the @#$#^@! links I had earlier and am too tired and irascible to go harvest them again; I'm finna go to sleep now.)

As seen on dansolomon.com [updated]

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Last night I responded to an open invitation for guest posts issued by my blog-world friend Dan Solomon, who is busy resettling back in the U.S.S.A. after living in teh England. I offered Dan a StuporMundi Exclusive looking back on my Petraeus/Lieberman '08 fugue, and why I believe the principles behind my strategy would have been sound for Republicans. I'm very gratified that he posted it, and I thank him. Take a look if you like.

Update: Go read my post on dansolomon.com, goddamit!!!

Palin "shock"

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Will Thomas wrote a brief post on TPM remarking on two under-reported aspects of McCain's selection of Palin for his VP running mate. The second one is of high interest to this blog:

"Shock. The pick caught everyone by surprise, including the Obama camp...."

Just imagine how "shocked" the "Obama camp" would be if, in a week or two, they found that Barack was running against Dave Petraeus. That has been my point all along for repeatedly writing about the unlikely Petraeus/Lieberman '08 Republican strategy: if you're going to shake things up with a so-called "hail Mary pass", it needs to be one that really could change the game. As opposed to pulling the stupidest political stunt ever executed since my brain was first fully developed.

And don't rule out Lieberman yet, either. Josh Marshall makes my point with this one word post: "Eagleton"? If Palin bails or is forced to withdraw, doesn't it seem likely that the petulant McCain would return to his first choice?

Maverick tactics

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Brilliant: trying to upstage one of the finest nights in the history of American political theater by doing something astonishingly stupid. Nice job of vetting the running mate, Maverick.

I believe McCain did this in an unscripted petulant frenzy because his advisors bullied him out of listening to StuporMundi.

My friends, I don't think we've heard the last of this daring strategic plan yet.

Final GOP VP comment before selection [updated]

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Here's one last reason I think McCain is more likely to choose Lieberman as his running mate: Joe's physique and appearance will not upstage the allegedly petty and petulant McCain.

Next to Romney, McCain would look exceptionally short, cadaverous, and "a little thin up there." Wouldn't it be deluxe if McCain, standing next to Romney in the sun, suddenly melted down forever: "At least I don't slather on the mousse like a trollop, you cunt!"

Update: Upon McCain's choice of the foxy Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate, several thoughts occur to me. First, McCain will still look exceptionally cadaverous and "a little thin up there" next to Governor Palin. (He may look short next to her also, but I don't know how tall she is out of spikes.) Second, McCain's selection of a governor with only 2 years of state-level administrative experience indicates how desperately and deeply he had to reach into the Republican bench to find a running mate who doesn't threaten his ego and has no established PR negatives on the "national stage." Third, Governor Palin hails from what is probably the most politically corrupt state, per capita, in the nation ("google" Senator Ted Stevens and U.S. Rep. Don Young, for example, then google any other name mentioned as indicted or a person of interest in an investigation). So not surprisingly, she already has her own share of baggage to talk about. Fourth, and finally: what Atrios says: Palin's name has barely surfaced in the corporate media over the past month as a prospective McCain VP choice. Although her selection has apparently doomed my Petraeus/Lieberman '08 nightmare ticket, and with it my future as even a second-tier national blogger, I was closer to being right than the bona fide pundits and lefty bloggers were: McCain selected a longshot with at least some history of making social policy in contravention to the right-wing company line (as seen on TPM).

As an aside, I see that there are lots of references on the web to Governor Palin being a "GILF". I wonder what that means.

Free political advice for The Maverick

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Dear Senator McCain,

After Senator Obama's DNC acceptance speech on the evening of 28 August 2008, I think your best tactic for winning the November election will be to drive home the message that Michael Moore is fat.

Your friend,

---StuporMundi

Suggestion for John McCain

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Dear Senator McCain,

May I suggest that you select a new campaign theme song? I know Running On Empty is descriptive of your character and the extent of your supply of good ideas, but there are better choices considering that Jackson Browne wants to sue you for damages related to misusing his copyrighted material. Instead, how about using Home Home Home Home Home Home Home On The Ranges?

Your friend,

---StuporMundi