Infirmative Action

They keep telling us that race isn't gonna matter as much in this campaign. But they keep feeling the need to tell us. Meanwhile, I hear people on NPR, like the lifelong Democrat who won't vote for Obama because "he's going to put them first, and not us," and I'm ashamed of this country.

This race is the Democrats' to lose at this point. McCain has his ugly 25% and some idealogues who just won't ever leave the Republican fold. And he has his racists, the ones yelling epithets at the rallies. But those people can't give him the presidency.

The only people now who can hand the reins of this country over to Grandpa McCain and his batshit snake-handling VP are the -- what are we calling them this week? "Rural middle-class voters"? "Reagan Democrats." "Joe Sixpack." What we're talking about, of course, are the white people out here in flyoverland. Union guys, housewives, relatively insular small-town people who know in their hearts that a McCain administration is going to continue the slow, corrosive decay of their way of life, but who -- when they get in that booth and it's just them and their conscience -- can't pull the switch for a black guy.

Well, let me shoot a little straight talk your way, my fellow Ohioans, my fellow small-town progeny, my fellow lowbrow domestic-beer-drinking, video-game-playing yokels.

Keep your little-dick ooga-booga darkie paranoia bullshit offa my country, will you?

We don't have time for this shit.

If you're so opposed to an "affirmative action" president, as a few right-wing dimbulbs have posited, why are you going to vote for a guy solely because of his race? Can you really sleep at night, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards-to-Hillary-to-I-was-never-voting-party-anyway?

Don't be a dick. Don't let this year, your year, go down in the history books as proof that we still weren't ready yet to acknowledge a good portion of the human race as worthy of the title. Vote for the guy who you agree with. Close your eyes if you have to. And if you won't do it to save your own soul from the muck of the past, do it for my kids, will you? I don't feel like explaining to them that the grown-ups could willingly, deliberately, get it so wrong.

What the fuck's wrong with Cindy McCain?

Besides the obvious fact, of course, that the trophy racehorse she put her money on thirty years ago has turned out to be a bad bet in the home stretch.

After she and John get called out on dishonest campaign ads on "The View," she warbles that "they picked our bones clean."

(That's not the most pretty image to call up when you look like a mannequin that's been left out in the sun too long, incidentally.)

In the midst of resurrecting the long-shelved Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and secret-Muslim bogeymen, Cindy tells a crowd that Barack Obama has run the "dirtiest campaign in history."

You can't blame her entirely, of course. Has anyone ever picked on her, like, ever? She developed a pill habit over the third-hand splashback of the Keating Five affair -- this is not a woman made for the rigors of the campaign trail.

We all saw John's contemptuous dodge of Obama's handshake after Tuesday's debate, and his deflection to Cindy, who was forced to touch "That One." Given her penchant for hysterical exaggeration, I look forward to hearing "Barack Obama raped me" by the weekend.

Michelle Obama, on the Daily Show tonight, blew off the whole "That One" fiasco and described Cindy as "cordial," claiming they'd already greeted each other backstage. She was cool, diplomatic, polite, and gracious. Can you imagine Cindy McCain, were she to deign to perch her bony ass on Jon Stewart's chair, showing that kind of poise? Hell, Michelle looks more presidential than John these days.

And Cindy's looking... well... a little brittle. It's too bad she doesn't still have unfettered access to Keating's private jet to the Bahamas, because that's one desperate housewife who's gonna need a little rehab R & R when John's done losing this thing.

Stark Raving Mad-Libs

You know, with all that suspending they did to save the American economy single-handedly, the McCain campaign is probably in a tizzy right now, trying to get itself back up and running. I mean, since it obviously shut down so effectively while John McCain battled the evil Wall Street henchmen on our behalf.

So let's save 'em some work this week. I present to the McCain campaign, gratis, this pre-assembled press release for Friday morning. Sets of words in parentheses can be crossed out or circled as needed. My friends, enjoy, and God bless America.





"The (McCain/Palin, Palin/McCain) campaign was (astonished, saddened, outraged, astonished but not surprised) at the (typical liberal, overtly sexist, politics-as-usual) tactics employed by (Joe Biden, Gwen Ifill, Willie Horton) at last night's (vice-presidential, second-dude-or-chick-o-rama) debate. While we've come to expect (underhanded, overly professorial, vaguely-sinister-in-a-jive-talkin'-way) fare from the Obama campaign, last night's (gotcha question count, horrifically sexist aura, refusal to let Sarah win) (was beyond the pale for, is not what the American people expect from, slapped the black right offa) a campaign that prides itself on (change, free Tootsie-Pop vouchers for pedophiles, a cabinet made up entirely of homeless former Black Panthers).

"John McCain didn't (spend five years under the Viet Cong boot, marry a rich trophy wife to facilitate his political career, beat up a hotel maid this morning in impotent rage) just so the Obama-Biden Democrats could (mount a vicious smear campaign, divert faith-based abstinence funds to buy French ticklers for the middle-school-aged children of Eastern elites, talk about the issues for once). Obviously, Gov. Palin's (observant, wide-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights) demeanor and (incisive, index-card-o-riffic, WTF-inducing) answers to Gwen Ifill's (obviously biased, liberally tainted, subtly moose-ist) debate questions place her firmly as the winner of (the debate, the Wasilla potluck chili cookoff, the exclusive favor of the One True Lord). Joe Biden should, frankly, be ashamed of himself for (answering any questions, totally checking Sarah's ass out during that one cutaway, proclaiming that William McKinley first blogged about Alaska in 1912).

"While the (liberally-biased, Satan-fueled numerological fib-based) polls may show Biden winning this (debate, disaster, Hiroshima of public speaking) by a (hilarious, soul-destroying, nearly incalculable) margin, the American people know (what time it is, a good five-cent cigar, that when we start speaking for them we're about to unload the high-grade bullshit). John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate from the bottom of his (heart, blackest inner POW memories, colostomy bag), and together they will (go to, embark on a Holy Crusade to, descend like a plague of rancid locusts upon) Washington to (drive out, have a cookout with, fellate) the lobbyists and power-brokers who (know their day is nigh, have worked so hard on our campaign, rule).

"The American People (know, have heard a million times now, are about sick to death of hearing that) John McCain will bring real (change, war stories, Werther's Candies) for all of America. Barack Obama should (resign from the race, admit he's really a Muslim, give some thought to that wife-swap thing John proposed through the grapevine last week) if he really cares about (America, white people in small towns who don't know enough to quit being racist but enough not to cop to it when CNN's in town, John McCain's obsessive ambitions as much as John McCain does). There's only one Real Maverick who's (spent a lifetime serving his country, turned his back on every principle he stood for eight years ago, could erupt into a festering cancer blister at any moment), and that's our (next President, next William Henry Harrison, man who'll go down in infamy for giving the Antichrist-in-Peggy-Hill-specs some traction), John McCain.

"I'm (John McCain, refraining from strangling you with the barest force of will, tired and confused) and I approve this message."

The strange, random breakdown of the Republican Party

Thirteen hours before it's scheduled to begin, America still doesn't know if John McCain is even going to show up for the first scheduled debate between himself and Barack Obama.

McCain suspended his presidential campaign to single-handedly fly back to Washington and save the financial bailout he'd just finished telling us we had to accept, as bitter a pill as it is... and then he riled up the House Republicans into scuttling the deal at the eleventh hour when they had, as an alternative, a hastily-compiled one-page list of bullet points.

Even conservative pundits like Ed Rollins, who was thirstily gulping the Palin Kool-Aid after the RNC convention, now say on-air that the choice was weird and desperate, and at best, bought McCain a little free air time and post-convention bounce, with no thought given to how she'd survive the rest of the campaign, much less actually do the job of vice-president.

It's astonishing that the failure of Washington Mutual -- the biggest bank failure in history -- is practically page-two news today, crowded out of the headlines by the spectacle of an entire political party collectively shitting its pants and finger-painting the walls with it.

Since I'm rooting for the other guy, you'd think this willful self-destruction would make me giddy, but I'm a little bit frightened about how this is all gonna pan out. McCain and his fired up cadre of House Republicans are lashing out so blindly, at their own party and president as much as their "enemies," that it's borderline psychotic. It's as if they're saying "if we can't have the country, and implement our unfettered free-market mania even after all this, then no one can."

Are they really this willing to let the entire economy seize up like an engine with no oil? To score points back home? I thought the blame was going to be shouldered equally, by all these lawmakers who knew this would be a bitter pill for their constituents, but also knew this had to be done to prevent the immediate, short-term destruction of large sections of the economy.

I'm watching all of this unfold through a vicodin haze -- I'm getting a root canal this morning -- but I don't think I need drugs for it to be completely unreal. Maybe I've read too many apocalypse novels, but I can't help but feel like these are the days we'll be describing to our children when they ask us where we were when it all started to unravel.

Some heads aren't gonna roll

Okay, guys. You can have our trillion dollars. Bail out the financial system. Pay for the mistakes of unregulated cocksuckers who didn't even know what they were selling, just chasing paper. We'll pony up the bill.

But we want something too. And I'm not just talking the chance to bask in the glow of your sublime crisis management skills.

I want trials. I want fat old white guys in suits sobbing on the witness stand. I want pretty teenaged sons and daughters of privilege yanked out of prep schools. I want Botoxed cougars out on their asses, breaking nails to pack boxes as they're tossed out of their McMansions.

You want "unprecedented" moves? How about we unceremoniously yank all that severance money out from under the heads of AIG, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Freeze their assets, turn their houses into VA rehabilitation centers, and put them out in the California sun picking oranges for nine bucks an hour. Is that too extreme? It's not a trillion dollars' worth of extreme.

Anyone who had a position of authority in the financial sector during this crisis should be stripped of all rights to be so much as an assistant bank teller for the rest of their lives. There should be a cap on their personal income, and it should be the poverty line -- anything else they make goes immediately into the U.S. treasury. Monitor their emails and phone calls shamelessly, and forbid them to travel outside of the country for life.

Fuck them. Fucking fuck them. They certainly didn't mind fucking everyone else.

Shut up, you damned idiot.

From CNN, at Sarah Palin's laughable town hall appearance:


Asked for "specific skills" she could cite to rebut critics who question her grasp of international affairs, she replied, "I am prepared."

"I have that confidence. I have that readiness," Palin said. "And if you want specifics with specific policies or countries, you can go ahead and ask me. You can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."



In other words... nothing. She's got nothing. Nothing, that is, except the fatal hubris that comes from being sure God Almighty is on your side, and that he'll wipe your ass and send you on your way to Heaven no matter how colossally you fuck up the world for everyone else, because... well, just because, dammit. I mean, look at ya! What Supreme Being wouldn't back your every ill-informed charge up the hill?

Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and John McCain is a dishonorable dick. They could actually make things worse than Bush 43. How is that even possible?

And now, a word from the man

This is the text of Barack Obama's latest, two-minute campaign ad.

I know this stuff is all focus-grouped and ultra-processed. I know that. But when Obama gets on message, like he does here, I feel like the Grinch when his heart starts swelling back to normal size. I start feeling like there's a chance we could at least try to make things work better for more people.

I was born in 1972 so I don't know a world before Watergate. Everything I've consumed in my entire life has been laced with cynicism like fluoride in the water supply. But it seems to me that if we're given our best, and possibly last, chance to bring some compassion, integrity, and dignity to the highest office in our land, we'd be monkeys if we didn't give it a shot.

I'll shut up now.

Barack Obama:

"In the past few weeks, Wall Street's been rocked as banks closed and markets tumbled. But for many of you -- the people I've met in town halls, backyards and diners across America -- our troubled economy isn't news. 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It's hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they've probably raised your rates. You're paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less.

"This isn't just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you've been living up to your responsibilities, Washington has not. That's why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn't be an ordinary election. But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track.

"Here's what I believe we need to do. Reform our tax system to give a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs. End the "anything goes" culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions. Fast track a plan for energy 'made-in-America' that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work. Crack down on lobbyists - once and for all -- so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans. And yes, bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours.

"Doing these things won't be easy. But we're Americans. We've met tough challenges before. And we can again. I'm Barack Obama. I hope you'll read my economic plan. I approved this message because bitter, partisan fights and outworn ideas of the left and the right won't solve the problems we face today. But a new spirit of unity and shared responsibility will."

Real quick - McCain's outraged by corporate CEO excess

I wonder if that means he's going to get rid of staffer Carly Fiorina, who blew thousands of Hewlett-Packard jobs out of the water before being offered a $21 million severance package for doing the company the favor of fucking off?

Time to cut the ties

I'm divorcing myself from a forum I frequent. It's been overrun by people whose political ideas come out something like this:


McCain is a cooler customer under pressure. I've seen Obama get mad and point fingers at old women in Iowa when they said something he didn't like. His style of dealing with confrontation is a very polished version of south side Chicago chest thumping. It's VERY polished, but it's still what it is.

I spent the last couple years in South Central LA, and it changed me. There's no way you can spend that much time in the ghetto and not have it rub off on you.

You know what Russia's reaction to some south sider bullshit? They're going to laugh right in his face, and he's going to lose his cool. We just cannot face that possibility. He has to be able to handle the pressure of international relationships. I don't think he's got it.


South side Chicago chest thumping?

McCain, the most legendary temper in Washington, is a "cooler customer"?

Somewhere, David Duke has a perma-boner.

You spent a couple years in south central, so now it's okay to discuss Barack Obama like he's a particularly well-groomed breed of show dog. He's very polished, but they show their teeth sometimes. It's just what they do.

I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but it's hard to function in a world where people are this fucking ignorant. It makes me want to go find a hundred acres in the middle of a national forest and go build a shack and learn to eat grubs and bark.

I'm tired of having to give such obvious shitheads equal time. That makes me an elitist -- me, not the candidate I support, before you get too excited -- and I don't care. It's reprehensible to dismiss someone due to their age, gender, race, or circumstances of their birth. But it just as reprehensible to have been born into every advantage, at the best time in history, and to then squander all that intellectual capital on willful stupidity.

All I can do, to maintain some level of sanity, is to surround myself with smart and creative people, to use my time in the pursuit of truth and love, and to take care of business. At some stage, an entertaining time-suck becomes a toxic waste dump that actually makes you dumber. That forum goes on the scrap heap, unfortunately, because it's at the point where it's got all the mental nutritional value of watching Project Runway while being diddled by Sean Hannity in a bathtub full of pork rinds.

I'm gonna go read a book, play with the baby, write video games, do some work, take a walk, paint a room, sex the wife, watch a movie, cook a meal. I'm gonna do my best to stay out of the slime pit, because it's depressing to watch people shit themselves and think it's awesome.

McCain Flakes

Imagine, if you will, that some wag was selling boxes of corn flakes this political season, done up as "McCain Flakes."

Picture the box. Emblazoned on the front, under the name (preferably either in the style of the Corn Flakes logo, or in military stencil) is a caricature of a doddering old man, one jowl noticeably swollen. A combat helmet sits askew on his head. He drools onto his medal-laden chest, clutching a room key for the "Hanoi Hilton," and he leans on a walker. Next to him, a large bowl of cereal, shaped like little elephants. Beside that, a little text explosion: "save ten boxtops for your free 'Songbird' VC informant decoder ring!" In the top right corner, an equally offensive caricature of Cindy McCain, rail-thin, spookily-sculpted, and adorned in obviously lavish fashions. Below her, the slogan: "fortified with Xanax... for a woman's needs."

Even if this was the work of one dreadlocked, freedom-hating, ultra-left graphic designer chained to a redwood with his Powerbook, you know damn well what would be happening on cable news right now. Every commentator to the right of Abbie Hoffman would be gibbering like a howler monkey, screaming that Obama himself was a scumbag for not hunting this jerk down and kicking him in the balls for America. It would be trotted out as an example of the "hatred of the liberal left for our institutions and our heroes." It would be the biggest calamity to face the Republic since, I dunno, the whole lapel-pin thing very nearly caused us all to start wearing fur hats and speaking Commie.

You know this would be the reaction. The O'Reillys and Hannitys would smell blood in the water and their righteous outrage would knock all those soaking-wet Ike holdouts onto page three.

If you don't know where I'm going with this, take a quick gander at http://www.obamawaffles.com/ -- absorb the third-rate caricature of an eye-rolling Obama who obviously wants him some o' dem waffles! Note the small picture of Obama in a headscarf on top of the box, with the instructions that you should "point toward Mecca" for best results. Larf along as you notice the equally-offensive caricature of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on the "missing" panel on the side of the box. And guffaw along with the nail-'em-to-the-wall closing bullet point... "Before long you, too, will be saying with Barack Obama, 'Can’t I just eat my waffles?'"

HA HA HA HA!!! Get it?! GET IT?!?! Neither do I. Must be a red-syrup thing, and I tend toward the blueberry.

Anyway, Obama Waffles are fucking stupid. It's fodder, literally and figuratively, for the same crowd of cretinous lowbrows who think Hillary Clinton nut-crackers are a) funny, and b) an actual political statement other than "I'm scared of girls." I have no doubt these savvy dickheads will make a mint off every Chut and Biffy we saw anemically clapping at the RNC convention, who think jokes about community organizers are funny and that Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have every right to crack wise about "eastern elites."

But here's the thing. Democratic commentators aren't going to insist that the news cycle grind to a halt for 24 hours so we can wail and gnash our teeth over Obama Waffles. They're not going to demand McCain withdraw from the race in protest of this anti-American insult to all that is holy. If it's mentioned at all, it'll be with a dismissive roll of the eyes (as opposed to the all-the-way-'round I sho' wants me sum waffulz! roll) and a shake of the head. It'll be put into perspective as the speck of flyshit that it is, and they'll move on to more substantive issues.

This is the difference between "us" and "them." This is the important part. This is the reason why we're NOT "just voting for the same people anyway" this time.

Somehow, against all conventional wisdom, Obama has managed to stay on the high road for an unbelievable amount of time in this race. Hillary tried to muck things up, and he kept his hands clean as best he could. Now McCain, himself a victim of shitty, despicable campaign tactics in 2000, has chosen to align himself with the worst ghouls of his party in doing the same thing. Obama and Biden have let him hang himself (with his lovely assistant, of course) without returning fire in the same braying-jackass fashion.

Re-read the description of "McCain Flakes" above. Then really think about all your favorite quasi-famous right-wing talking heads. If that was a real product, they'd be having fucking aneurysms right now on the air, and it'd be clogging up the discourse. Obama sees this kind of shit and continues talking about jobs, and tax cuts, and education, and Iraq. You know... the kind of stuff we're supposed to be paying attention to, instead of lipstick on pigs and teenage baby-mamas.

Jesus, even Karl Rove has said McCain's taken the low-road thing too far lately. That's like being told by Hitler that your concentration camp is going a little too well.

Of course, "Obama Waffles" does raise the dreadful spectre of the candidate flip-flop -- you know, when someone changes his position for political expediency. It's a terrible, dreadful maneuver, done only by people of low character. You know, like when John McCain got back in bed with the evangelical leaders he called "agents of intolerance," or when he turned his back on his own immigration legislation, or when he got in bed with the administration that smeared his adopted daughter in a scurrilous email campaign in 2000, or when he was for the Bush tax cuts after he was against them, or...

Oops, sorry. I forgot. It's Obama that "waffles," huh?

Irony is not a mineral rights issue

From CNN's "Political Ticker":

"[Sarah] Palin herself has said that Hillary Clinton had been 'whining' about sexism during the primary season. 'When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, "Man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress in this country, " ' she said at a media forum earlier this year."

I'm beginning to get a faint whiff of hope again, after a week of near-despair over the effectiveness of McCain/Palin's "the sky is orange, and if you say it's blue, you're disrespecting women and shitting on the flag" strategy. The media, after spending a year as McCain's lapdog despite every Republican talking head around pissing on their collective leg, is finally lumbering around to the fact -- not the "spin," not the "debate," but the fucking fact -- that almost every selling point about Sarah Palin is a crass equivocation.

McCain can't even go on The View -- the TV journalism equivalent of a pillow fight with Elmo -- without getting nailed to the wall about the mudslinging and lies he's dishing out, and the shrill, hypocritical bleating of the right over a "smear campaign" that exists either on the utter fringes of lefty blogdom, or in Karl Rove's shriveled, unspeakable imagination. That's progress. That's sanity reasserting itself.

I have no doubt that Palin is going to continue to insist that she's being picked on. I also have no doubt that the li(n)es about "we sold the jet on eBay!" and "I fired the chef!" are going to keep getting thrown out to the knuckle-draggin'est crowds (whose numbers the campaign has been exaggerating!!! It just gets better and better!) on their whistles-stop tours of guns-and-bitter country. After all, the McCain/Palin ticket will always have one great unspoken selling point -- if you squint hard enough, and make enough ridiculous justifications, you can pretend you're avoiding Obama for reasons other than race.

But I'm starting to believe again, for the first time in a little while now, that reason and sanity may just take the upper hand. We can maybe, possibly, elect the guy who went to Harvard and wants to fix our educational system, and not the batshit hockey mom and the magical philandering flip-flopping granddad who wants the world to get off America's goddamn lawn.

Calling in handy

No rant today - I'm helping my father-in-law install a new tub surround in my house. And by "helping," I mean in the sense that I'm standing there looking vaguely confused while he does all the work, and occasionally lifting something.

Real quick, though, I wanted to point out how much I enjoy the letters to the editor in the Toledo Blade decrying the vicious, hateful, hurtful, and totally unfounded attacks on Sarah Palin. Funny, none of these righteously indignant dickweeds seemed too upset over the last nineteen months of baseless bullshit thrown at Obama -- or the treatment Hillary Clinton got in the media.

There's no one more fervent than the recently converted, though, and since the Republicans seem to have invented women's suffrage a week and a half ago, we should forgive them for being so passionate about it right now.

It could be that I don't pay enough attention to the news (although lately, that and diaper-changing seem like my only hobbies), but isn't it a little queer that the swell of "how dare you?" Palin defense is not only louder and greater than, but seems to have started before, anyone else in the media actually "attacked" her?

It's brilliant in its own stunted, depraved, Karl-Rove's-bondage-basement way: whip the base up into a froth about these imagined slights against poor, poor folk-hero Sarah, and then when someone says "what about abuse of power?" or "what about lying about earmarks?" or "what about the fact that she doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is?" no reply is necessary. You're just "attacking" Our Sarah, so you and your questions are beneath contempt.

Lastly, watching Charlie Gibson quiz her yesterday was like watching someone in an interview for a job. One they have no hope of getting. Stalling for time, dancing around the lack of answers... And this was Charlie fucking Gibson. I'd give a limb to see her up against Cronkite in his prime -- or hell, now.

I guess I'm ranting after all. Time to go fix the tub.

Texas, stay safe.

Whore Hero

If John McCain does happen to win this election, you almost have to feel sorry for him. The man who takes the Oath of Office in January of 2009 has to be numb at this point from the bending-over he’s done in his quest for power. He’s traded in everything that passed for a principle in his damaged heart, he’s backtracked on the positions that defined him, and he’s thrown in his lot with the same vile goons who cast aspersion on his own child in the 2000 campaign.

It’s a particularly gruesome irony, and I don’t relish pointing it out, but the Vietnam war hero had to destroy his campaign in order to save it.

He talks up his “maverick” past, forgetting that a year or two ago, most of the fawning faces looking up at him from the RNC floor wanted him to totter off into the sunset. They like the idea of him as a maverick… they just weren’t a big fan of him while he was, you know, being one.

Only when he started kowtowing to the most snuffling, knuckle-dragging elements of “the base” did he get some traction. Only by retreating from his own stances on everything from tax cuts to immigration could he curry enough favor to get the establishment slowly, resentfully behind him. Only by pimping out his POW story – one he claimed not to like to dwell on – could he hoist enough American flags to mobilize that great clump of evangelical dickheads who’ve throttled the Republican party for decades.

You know – the ones he deliberately provoked less than a decade ago? Those guys.

He gave lip service to a high-road campaign, before pulling shit like the ad claiming Obama wants sex-ed for kindergartners. It’s a program to help kids stay out of the clutches of pedophiles. It takes an especially viscous kind of slime, like Lee-Atwater-back-from-the-dead slime, to use a program designed to keep kids safe from molestation and tar your opponent with it.

And then… the final blow, the last capitulation. He wanted someone he could work with as his veep. He wanted a colleague, a trusted ally, someone with whom he could conceivably get some shit done. The Bible-thumpers let him know that the decision wasn’t really his to make after all, and The Maverick reined in his testicles and picked Palin out of thin air. Met her once. Never vetted. Impulsive decision, and one that almost seemed to smack of a “fuck you then, you don’t like Ridge? You don’t like Lieberman? Choke on this, assholes” move.

And now, after months of grim fighting and desultory support from his own party, everyone’s fired up! Everyone’s gung ho! Everyone’s fighting all the way and taking the hill!

But they’re doing it for Sarah Palin. They’re not doing it for John McCain.

A 72-year-old white man with bona fide warrior credentials, and he couldn’t rally a pack of conservatives to fight the good fight until he got stuck with Peggy fucking Hill.

So yes, there’s a chance John McCain will reach his goal, and become the next President of the United States. He’ll have left every principle along the road to glory, and he’ll be second fiddle at his own inauguration, assuming Sarah has learned to say anything besides “I SOLD THE JET ON EBAY!” by then and one of her kids hasn’t flat-out started abusing meth or fellating moose in public.

How broken will he feel, standing there in the January cold, looking down the gaping maw of his last mission, thinking of all the time he’s spent on his knees, all the positions shifted, all the principles jettisoned? How much like failure can success taste? How painful will it be to have let himself down again – to have been broken on the wheel, not of a VC interrogator, but of his own ambition? And then to have the moment of glory stolen out from under him by a carping tundra yahoo?

Let’s get one thing out in the open, since no one will say it. Not every single person who comes home from a war is a war hero. A hero makes his or her presence known by heroic actions, or at least a dignified demeanor – not by signing off on blatant lies in attack ads, not by rattling off their hero's credentials to everyone in the room repeatedly, and certainly not because Rudy “The Biggest Scumbag on the Planet” Giuliani finds it politically expedient to call you one. Being captured by the enemy does not qualify you to run a country. Being a part of the losing team in a disastrous war does not qualify you to run a country. Personal hardship and physical pain do not qualify you to run a country.

The United States does not owe the Presidency to John McCain.

You wanna support a vet? Hire the homeless guy down the street to mow your lawn.

John McCain is a shameful man, and that shame will be his to own whether he wins or loses this contest. The only question, then, is if we’re prepared to shoulder our own share of that shame ourselves by playing along.

K-Tel Presents Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits!

Palin's on the stump. Standing next to McCain, because she can't go out on her own yet, apparently.

Wait for it... wait for it... "I got rid of the executive chef, and boy, were my kids mad!"

Hold on, I love this part... let me get my air guitar out... "I put the jet on eBay!"

Where were YOU the first time you heard... "there is only ONE man who has really fought for you"? Oh, and the "I'm gonna say this because he won't say it himself" intro -- lighter in the air!

Wait... I'm almost to climax... I need that one last chartbuster... "I said thanks but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere!"

You know, even Bachman-Turner Overdrive plays songs besides "Takin' Care of Business" when they hit a rib-off.

I wish I'd realized this strategy worked so well when I was single.

"I have a thirteen-inch penis!"

"No you don't. That's almost completely impossible."

"I have a thirteen-inch penis!"

"People have seen it and that's just not true."

"I have a thirteen-inch penis!"

"Well... you sure are scrappy! I'd better sleep with you and your thirteen-inch penis right away!"

Contrast this morning's CNN coverage: Obama puts the "lipstick on a pig" thing in its proper place within two minutes, then outlines a sober, intelligent, far-reaching plan of education reform. Now we have Palin's parrot act and McCain talking up Todd Palin's snowmobiling prowess.

Watch out, big-spending, do-nothing fat cats: unless your name is Charles Keating, change is coming!

Fuck the Alaska jet, I'm gonna go look for John McCain's dignity on eBay.

Putting on lipstick while Rome burns

When major industries are making money hand over fist, we’re told to leave them alone – anything that stops them from racking up windfall profits is bad for the economy.

When they don’t save for a rainy day, or mismanage themselves into the ground, we’re told we have to bail them out – anything resembling consequences for their actions would be bad for the economy.

It’s good to know that in sickness and in health, in fair weather and foul, it’s virtually guaranteed that money will flow upward, from the hands of the many to the hands of the few, and that, this being vital for the good of the economy, it’s being entrenched immutably into our system.

It’s also good to know that a storm over whether Obama called Palin a pig or not is the top political story on the news, and not outrage over the taxpayer-funded bailout of a bunch of greedy asshats who treated mortgages like they were rent-to-own televisions, to be sold to anyone who stood still long enough and registered a pulse.

Sarah Palin didn’t know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did, or how they did it, and you want her to run the country. Why don’t you just take this to its logical conclusion, and install Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy in the White House, with camera in every room and Gary Coleman as Secretary of Defense?

We’re entertained, the money gets wicked upward and magnetically follows other money, and as long as the house of (credit) cards doesn’t topple over this week or next, who cares, right?

By the time this actually starts becoming a real mess – when we go from wondering how to pay for our plasma TVs and start, like, missing meals – it’s going to be too late to fix it. Whose fault will it be then? How seriously will we take it when it’s too far gone to matter?

Bizarro World on Five Dollars a Day

I listen to death metal and public radio.

I like big heavy history books and cheap paperback thrillers.

I play thirty-year-old video games and fret over my lawn.

I refuse to grow up, but my life is devoted to helping my two babies do just that.

None of this makes me special or noteworthy. It just makes me an American – what I thought was an American. I thought the whole point was that we couldn’t be condensed down into a Bud-Bowl-stupid A or B choice. We could be generous with social programs and still want dickheads who game the system or break the law to rot in a cell. We could support troops and question a war. We could love our families and respect our elders without turning our faith, or lack thereof, into a whose-dick-is-bigger church-envy contest.

So why is it that so many of my fellow countrymen seem so eager to stuff themselves into that little box? Individuality is what’s supposed to be our, you know, thing – our specialty. But when we’re faced with the choice of someone relatively nuanced – someone who at least tries to understand that nothing in the world is black and white – we take the pretend Maverick instead, the Applebee’s version of a rebel, someone who pushes all our John Wayne buttons and makes us feel like it’s Morning in America – the morning of January 1, 1954.

“The surge is working! You didn’t support the surge!” Is a little bit of nuance really that unpalatable to us? We have more, bigger and louder news outlets than at any point in our history – we can’t spend five minutes exploring this whole “surge?” How those vaunted “commanders on the ground” whose judgment Bush supposedly holds sacrosanct were replaced wholesale when they didn’t “support the surge!” How we’re only staving off civil war with Yankee greenbacks, paying former insurgents to be our friends, even as the ruling party is already beginning to disenfranchise them? No shit al-Maliki wants us to go home – he wants us to stop giving a headstart to his next headache.

But hey, “the surge is working!” And Obama doesn’t even dare say “yes, but…” or he’s some kind of pussy liberal candy-ass who doesn’t love America, and oh, by the way, where’s your flag pin, boy?

Russia and Georgia – there are no heroes there. Saakashvili is a dumb fuck in over his head, trying to keep pretending Abkhazia and South Ossetia were ever actually under his jurisdiction anywhere but on a map. Russia, of course, longs to return to the days when it could solve delicate diplomatic conundrums in its backyard with a thousand-megaton flyswatter. And what does it mean for John Wayne McCain?

It gives him a chance to rail about Russia, just like Grandpa Ronnie did. Don’t think that big room full of middle-aged white guys didn’t get boners at the mere echo of what for them was the glory days. “We are all Georgians,” but until we can find a way to conscript another hundred thousand young kids not already up to their asses in Iraq or going off the rails with PTSD, can you guys hold that thought, and, like, don’t let Putin cut off the pipeline? Thanks.

And his lack of understanding of the situation – his boiling down of a complex and frightening mess into us-and-them, with-us-or-agin-us rootin-tootin Yosemite Sam strut, makes him a bigger hero to these onionheads.

It’s shameful that we won’t make use of this ludicrous bounty of information and communication we have before us, to talk about things and make informed decisions. We line up at the trough for soundbytes and even when they’re patently false, we cling to them (bitterly?) because thinking about stuff is hard. “Russia bad!” “Drill baby drill!” “Obama’s a Muslim!” “Sarah said no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere!”

Up against that kind of willful ignorance and hooting dumbassery, fuzzy words like “hope” and “change” sound positively exhilarating. They’re not a solution by themselves – no one said they were, except for some right-wing assholes who know better in their rotten hearts – but as bases to operate from, and guiding principles, could you ask for anything better?

“There’s not a day when I’m not proud of my country,” oozes Mitt Romney, a dig at Michelle Obama. Why is it not possible to love your country and agonize over its faults? Or, for that matter, to acknowledge they exist? To dwell on a history of injustice, or a war fought under false pretense, or an economy ruined by selfish and short-sighted assholes now mewling for the government teat like a Ninth Ward crack baby, is to hate America? How impaired can your thought process be, man?

I know the world needs another blog like McCain needs another misshapen jowl. But I’m tired of ranting to the car radio and Wolf Blitzer. I’m sick of feeling powerless against the forces of proud stupidity. I’m fed up with having to justify myself as a patriot to people who undermine everything that makes this country good, but do it in a cloud of Lee Greenwood ersatz populism. Just the act of yelling will help clear my head and get my thoughts together.

If I find a few fellow travelers along the way who feel as pissed-off and lost in bizarro-world as I do right now, then that’ll be a nice bonus.