Upcoming Republican Astro-Turf Events

Today is "Tea Bagging Day" to protest taxes on the rich, as pushed by Fox "News" and their confederacy of dunces. FYI, here is a list of upcoming events sponsored by Fox "News" and its corporate sponsors:

"Cleveland Steamer Day" to protest the loss of manufacturing jobs

"Dirty Sanchez Day" to protest illegal immigration

"Santorum Day" to protest the granting of human rights to homosexuals

I will post dates as soon as they are available. If you hear of any others, please post them here. Thank you.

2012 Republican Convention Details Leaked

A secret source has leaked information about the 2012 Republican National Convention to me. Not many details are known, but I was able to confirm the following:
* Location is to be the Superdome in New Orleans, unless there is inclement weather, in which case conventioneers will be moved to someplace in Texas, where they'll be better off anyway
* Keynote speaker at the opening dinner will be Bernie Madoff on "Why We Need a Return to Deregulation Now!"
* Dinner will consist of spinach salad and peanut butter sandwiches. Gift bags to attendees will be filled with Chinese-made toys, suitable for licking.
* Janitorial duties will be overseen by Senator Larry Craig.
* Interning at the convention will be a number of Young Republicans, overseen by Representative Mark Foley.
* Special breakfast session on day 2: "The Success of Abstinence-Only Sex Education" by Bristol Palin"
* When asked which magazines and newspapers would be given press credentials to attend, our source said "All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years."

The location was picked by RNC leadership in part to give an early edge to local Republican Senator David Vitter for the Vice-Presidential nomination. Look for a Palin-Vitter ticket in 2012.

The S-Word

Note: If you happen to be reading this, Mr. President, please note that this post has nothing to do with swords. You might want to click on this video to idle away some time until you return to the ranch.

In order to support Republican politicians, one must suspend disbelief, ignore hypocrisy, and be comfortable with cognitive dissonance. The latest example is beyond extreme, however. The Republicans are calling Barack Obama a "Socialist." Yes, the party whose President and Secretary of the Treasury just pushed through a $ 840 Billion buyout of failed companies is calling someone else a socialist. The Republican party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress when they passed the Medicare Part D bill - the largest entitlement program since the New Deal (and one which specifically forbade the government from negotiating with drug companies, leading to much higher costs for taxpayers in order to increase profits for pharmaceutical companies).

But never mind the hypocrisy. The McCarthyite charge of "Socialist" is yet another example of McCain using campaign tactics from the 1950's (for another example, see here).

In the 1980's, the conservative movement which elected Ronald Reagan was helped along by a book called "Free to Choose" by Milton and Rose Friedman, first published in 1980. The book helped promote the idea of less government regulation and laissez-faire economics, the culmination of which has been the economic meltdown of the last year.

Although I disagreed with it, the authors did an excellent job of making a good argument (ironically, Milton Friedman taught at the University of Chicago, where Barack Obama later taught). They argued that the U.S. in 1980 had an economic system dangerously close to socialism. In fact, in an appendix, they included the platform of the 1928 Socialist Party, to prove that many of the desires of the 1928 Socialists were in place already. The reader was meant to shudder and cringe in horror at the red menace which surreptitiously crept over the land, the book appendix version of the movie "Red Dawn".

But there's just one problem. Unless you're a knee-jerk idiot who only reacts to labels and doesn't look at substance, the 1928 Socialist Party platform isn't all that bad. It's a 14 point platform, and some of those points include:
* Abolishing child labor
* Abolition of exploiting convict labor
* Unemployment insurance
* Establishment of the five day work week

If you don't believe me, click on the preview in Google books here and scroll down to the appendix on page 311. Of course, there are some points addressing their desire to nationalize national resources, which would be controversial today if taken to the extreme. But if we had adult political debates in this country, instead of name calling, we could debate the pro's and con's of those positions and arrive at compromises.

So, the next time you hear a Republican call Obama a socialist, ask him or her if they are in favor of child labor. Or competing for their job with prison labor. Or want to abolish unemployment insurance. Or want to abolish weekends. Because unless they agree with all that, they too are a "Socialist."

Sarah Palin has Tourette's!

I think people on the Left are more willing than are people on the Right to listen to and carefully evaluate the opinions of people with whom they generally disagree. Thus, I enjoying reading some conservative columnists, while most Republicans would not say a nice word to Bill Clinton if they were on fire and Bill was walking by with a bucket of cold water. Of course, like all generalizations, this one is false (warning: do not type that last sentence into your computer. If TV has taught us anything, it is that typing that phrase into a computer will cause it to repeatedly say "does not compute" and eventually explode).

All of which is a long way of getting around to saying that I enjoy reading George Will. He writes quite well, and while I disagree with much of what he writes, there is much to agree with. At least his arguments are well thought out and intelligent; he may not have voted for Hillary Clinton, but I doubt he would defend his position solely with the declaration that she is a "shrew," as some acquaintances of mine from the Right did recently. Perhaps it is because his intellectual honesty reminds me of an earlier era when the word "conservative" was used to describe people who avoided foreign entanglements and debt, while now it is used to describe people anxious for preemptive wars and who believe "deficits don't matter."

I came upon an article that Mr. Will wrote in 2004, describing a youngster with Tourette Syndrome. Like many of the columns he writes about individuals struggling with challenges - as we all do - it is very touching, thoughtful, and inspiring. But if you read his description of the symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, you realize that Sarah Palin surely suffers from this malady.

For example, he says the disease's symptoms "include involuntary muscle spasms" such as blinking. Anyone watching the VP debate last week had to be amazed at the constant eye twitch. Could anyone running for VP really be stupid enough to think that voters would vote for her because of her winking? Is "Joe Sixpack," as she describes him, really thinking "I lost my job, my mortgage is being foreclosed, and the government just spent $2,000 of my money to buy out Wall Street financiers, so I'm going to vote for that hot chick who was flirting with me over national TV!"

Mr. Will also says that in Tourette Syndrome, there are verbal symptoms: "the vocalizations are usually grunts, hisses, barks and other meaningless sounds." As Fareed Zakaria pointed out in a recent column, her response to one of Katie Courics questions was "nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head." Her response to questions remind me of the Tin Man Scarecrow, stating the Pythagorean Theorem after getting his diploma from the Wizard of Oz; it sounds impressive, but is completely wrong.

Mr. Will points out that some, but not all, Tourette sufferers vocalize obscenities. Our nation is at war in two distant countries; our government has been starved of competence, leaving citizens alone to cope with natural disasters; financial institutions have been left unregulated to gamble with our money, only to blackmail us into socializing their loses with threats of even greater fiscal calamity. At this dangerous time in our country's history, is there anything more obscene than trying to win an election by accusing your opponent of being a terrorist?

An Apology

I need to apologize for an earlier post. I referred to a popular political commentator as "transgendered." Unfortunately, my editor included a link to Ann Coulter's web site, which could have led some to believe that Ann Coulter is a member of the transgender community. I know of no public documentation regarding her gender status.

I apologize to the entire transgender community.

Hacking Sarah Palin

OK, so somebody hacked into Sarah Palin's yahoo email account. I just saw a story in which the person charged with the crime is pleading not guilty.

I say, big deal. I can't be the only person who could have figured out that her password was "gwb4ever!" Anyone with a password that easy to figure out deserves to be hacked.

But at the risk of being accused of being a member of the liberal media elite, how come there are no stories following up on the crimes that the hacking documented? Namely, Palin was copying the Bush Administration's illegal technique of using private email addresses to avoid open records laws. Palin can call Obama a terrorist sympathizer, and the media repeats it ad nauseum. But we have clear evidence that Palin broke the law, and there's nary a peep.

Has GWB really succeeded in setting the bar on decency in public office so low that the multiple illegal acts commited by Palin (troopergate, receiving bribes while mayor, etc.) warrant no discussion? I am truly becoming scared for the future of our country.

Thank God for George W. Bush

The regular reader of this blog (Hi Achmed!) may be puzzled by the title of today's entry. I have been a frequent critic of still-President Bush. But unlike right-wing critics, who wouldn't say something nice about Bill Clinton if he had saved an orphanage from nuclear attack, we on the left must give thanks when it's called for.

Sure, we've spent the last 8 years wishing we had a President who could interpret "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S." as some kind of warning. Or who could quickly evaluate the relative importance of responding to attacks on the U.S. versus the reading of "My Pet Goat" (spoiler alert: the goat ends up fine). Or who would spend time thinking about Osama Bin Laden, and keep our armed forces searching for him, rather than diverting them against a country that poses no threat to the U.S. but who tried to attack his daddy. Or who would keep his oath to protect and defend the constitution. Or who would obey laws. Or who would understand that a briefing that warns him that the levees might break when a hurricane hits New Orleans means that people have in fact foreseen that the levees might break. Or who could figure out that an unregulated financial industry that bases the country's entire economic safety on loans provided to people with no known income might not be a great idea. Or who could pronounce "nuclear."

But that's all in the past. Now, the country is in a financial crisis, and if there's one thing this country needs, it's an expert in financial bailouts. And if there's one thing Bush knows about, it's financial bailouts. He's the freaking Albert Einstein of receiving financial bailouts. Every company that he ever ran, he ran right into the ground. He always ran to his daddy, and his daddy always got his buddies to rescue him. Including his buddies in the Bin Laden family. And Bush walked away from each debacle with a nice golden parachute. Finally we know what the Republicans meant when they called him the "CEO President."

But, you ask, what can we do when our expert in financial bailouts leaves office? There is only one choice: John McCain. After all, who could know more about failures in the financial industry than a founding member of the Keating 5? And, if you review his economic plan, you have to admit he knows what he's talking about (when you review the video on his plan, pay particular attention to his tip to "avoid talking about your current wife." Majorly good advice there).