Wise sayings

*
A very special moose-droppings-themed "wise saying":

Obama and Biden were more civil to Sarah Palin than her own campaign staff.

Moose droppings

*
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!

Potentially scary situation [updated]

*
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.

Moose droppings

*
Lucius MacAdoo, from the comments of an earlier post, wonders aloud if we even know for a fact whether Governor Palin can read. Since she recently refused to tell Katie Couric even one news publication she reads --- not even two "gimmes" like the Anchorage Daily News or the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman --- LMA's question may not be considered completely frivolous.

Now, today, in a post-debate Fox interview (as seen through TPM), Palin let the cat out of the bag. She reads the Post and the Times (both brutes of the "liberal media"), even the Economist. She also is aware of all those "investment publications" that come up to interview her about her prodigious energy development accomplishments, but doesn't name one --- not even Fortune, doggone it!

Someone has done a great job of teaching Palin how to make her words drip with earnest, sincere condescension. Listening to the clip from TPM, I realized that I now find Palin to be the creepiest person in the public eye. She can belch daisy chains of discredited lies as if they were her secret recipe for those special brownies she whips up for "her guy" after he's spent a hard day snowmobiling over the necks of baby harp seals.

Consider Palin's supernatural capacity to repeat lies without even an iota of self-awareness to dignify herself alongside stuff like this, where we even find so-called fact-checkers ignoring documented facts. If for no other reason, U.S. political events over the past few months may in the future be considered a historic watershed: politicians have now, for the first time, begun overtly using the Big Lie technique live, repeatedly, in nationally televised broadcasts. They show no embarrassment about being caught, but express anger that anyone should make such an accusation even when their own lies are read back to them verbatim. When private individuals do this, we call them sociopaths.

Do a thought experiment: imagine what the public discourse would be like if the Big Lie strategy (and in this case I think it is a strategy, not merely a tactic) goes unchallenged this fall and takes its place in our national political and social vernacular. What kinds of transactions could people have with each other if half of the population decides, like Ronald Reagan, that facts are stupid things? The first task would be to figure out which half of the population was which:

"Ma'am, that will be $3.50, please."
"I already paid you. Where's my change?"
"No, you didn't pay me."
"Yes I did."
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did."
"No you didn't."

Fish with lipstick

*
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.]

Expect swooning

*
That's my prediction. Sarah Palin will, for the moment, be America's darling once again because the corporate media will agree that she avoided any moose-in-the-headlights moments (even though I believe she had several small but noticeable ones). The media were put on notice that they were being mean to her, so now they will be nice.

Celebrity journalists and pundits will not point out her repeating of discredited lies, because she did it with poise, in their eyes. They will not comment on how she dodged every question of Republican accountability for the past 8 years by scolding Joe Biden for "looking backward" and "playing the blame game" while she took several openings to invoke the glory of Ronald Reagan and the lying, filthy ideology he used on behalf of others to start destroying the U.S. economy, accelerating assaults on the environment, and nibbling away at the rule of law. Looking back is only OK if we are worshipping Ronald Reagan, but not if we are trying to hold his heirs accountable for rendering America into a necrotic basket case, twitching itself toward oblivion in the planet's newest back alley.

Looking composed and glamorous while she recites canned little speeches and Big Lies does not qualify Sarah Palin to be Vice President any more than my Calvin Klein underwear and full head of hair qualify me to stand in as George Clooney's body double.

I have not looked at any news sites or blogs yet tonight, but that is my prediction: expect swooning, completely uncalled-for. I would not even be surprised by a momentary upward twitch for the GOP in the tracking polls. But don't worry: by Monday we may be talking about the decaying financial system once again. And, after all, it's October. Are you ready for your big surprise?

This has been another edition of Moose droppings.

The eyes have it

*
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

*
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!

Moose droppings!

It's time for a Moose droppings! riddle!

Q: How do you turn a sow's earmark into a silk purse?

A: By lying and lying and lying about it!

Editor's note: as you can see, and therefore it goes without saying, today's edition of Moose droppings! would not have been possible without Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. [Holy crap! Four military fighter jets just scrambled about a mile outside my home office window at about 800 ft --- no kidding! I gotta log off now and head for the basement --- might be a "maverick" flying one of those birds!]

Moose droppings!

*
Editor's note: "Moose droppings" is your Fifty50 dispensary for links to mind-bending stories about "Amerika's Governor," or "Alaska's GILF," or the "Pig With Lipstick," or whatever you wish to call Sarah Palin. Credit for the title of this hopefully short-term feature must go to VAR Of The DAR, who originally invented it for an even more ridiculous blog than the one you are now reading.

Today's dropping: Mayor Sarah's BYORK* policy!
______________

* Buy your own "rape kit."

It was a simpler time

*
Back before Michelle Obama had something to hide, before the Bush Doctrine, even before September 11 was a pre-conjugal glint in the eyes of some oily transnational villains, it was a simpler time. A time when Mavericks Roamed The Earth. A time when politicians considered each-other's families off limits. It was a time when high-profile political wives had nothing to hide.

Josh Marshall makes a funny

*
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.

Armageddon is not just for church

*
Sometimes Atrios irritates me with his reasonable-liberal-everyman shtick. Even though he is a proud and closed-minded atheist, he sometimes tries to show how liberal-minded he is by insisting that a candidate's religion should not enter into the public discussion.

I agree with his core principle, of course: the domain of governing and public policy-making should be completely divorced from everyone's religious doctrines. But because Republicans have been working for over a generation to conflate Church and State, and to demonize all political opponents for not being members of their club --- and because the corporate media have completely normalized that concept to most of us --- sometimes it is prudent and appropriate to pay attention to the religious dogma to which officials and candidates subscribe.

So what if Sarah Palin truly believes the dogma of her Assembly of God Pentacostal denomination, which according to CNN includes a belief in "the 'end times' --- a violent upheaval that they believe will deliver Jesus Christ's second coming"? Wouldn't it be useful to know whether Governor Palin or her congregation believe that humans are empowered to help God implement Armageddon? Because in a few months Palin or someone like her may gain possession of The Football, and I think it would be best if that person is not one who comes into the game thinking it's first-and-goal.

As seen on dansolomon.com [updated]

*
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!!!

Status quo we can believe in [updated x 2]

*
Item 1, from HuffingtonPost: "In November 2006, then gubernatorial candidate Sarah Palin declared that she would not support an abortion for her own daughter even if she had been raped."

Item 2, from Reuters via TPM: "The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child."

I believe it's true that in most states, having sex with a 17-year-old constitutes statutory rape whether it was forcible or not. In at least some jurisdictions, a minor male can be prosecuted for statutory rape even if he is the same age as the female.

Supply your own analysis.

Update: an anonymous McCain aide told Reuters that rumors" about Bristol Palin's pregnancy were spread by the Obama campaign. Next up, no doubt: rumors that baby Palin is Obama's love child.

Later update: And when famous preachers and right-to-lifers start crying crocodile tears about how liberals are trying to politicize the Palins' private family matter, I hope that someone reminds them (with a blunt object) that the so-called right-to-life movement politicized everyone's unplanned pregnancy a generation ago --- including Bristol Palin's --- with their strident ideological opposition to reproductive rights for women.

Palin "shock"

*
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?

Final GOP VP comment before selection [updated]

*
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.