Suicide is Painless

It will be an unprecedented political disaster if either candidate garners the support needed to pass the corporate bailout that was roundly defeated this Monday. By now one can make a convincing case that Nancy Pelosi, with purpose, derailed the legislation by giving the GOP no choice but to foot the blame and the bill.

In an ongoing commentary about the fecklessness of McCain’s acuity, he actually claimed credit for the passage of the bill prior to its passage. This move now looks even more damaging than it appeared at first. Not only did he try to broker a deal among his own party on a terrible bill, but his claim of leadership among his own cohort was called into question.

Now we hear word that both presidential candidates are redoubling their efforts to push forward a new version, perhaps lightly modified, of the bill by Thursday in order to claim credit.

The problem, not at all hard to finger, is that the public, with reason, unabashedly opposes this heinous piece of corporate welfare. A saw that has been honed in the past few days states that the only acceptable form of socialism in the United States is socialism for the rich. I would take it a step further and argue that welfare, too, resides in this same realm. A single mother relying on her will, energy and a bit of government support to survive is a leech; a failing bank, witless and morally spent, relying on exploitation, profiteering and a whole lot of government support to survive is rather a national imperative.

I am no economist, but the market failing in reaction to Monday’s legislative conscientiousness rather than as a result of the prior week’s failings, only furthers my claim that this is a load of artificial bullshit that is meant to scare the spineless bunch up on the Hill into repaying the lobbies that have provided endless bacchanals over the past decades. Now there are certainly legitimate concerns about the failings of cash in this strapped marketplace, but giving low interest loans rather than buying equity in the cornered financial institutions provides this fire of mismanagement with the fuel of billions of dollars to continue burning.

Who, then, pushes through a bill that is a mirror of Monday’s failed effort will die a sudden political death. I hope that over this oldest of new years a novel focus on this pending crisis may emerge.

To Be Avoided

Late update: I know all of you really appreciate my artistic ability, but this cartoon gains a little bit of meaning given Palin's recent response about what she 'reads' (by reads I think she means: throws in the bonfire).

Pakistan and unilateralism.

McCain pointed to a public statement Obama made regarding the US going into Pakistan as naive. On ABC Sunday morning McCain reiterated this debate point, framing such an action as 'unilateralism'.

It is my understanding that letting someone know you are willing to do it yourself if they are unwilling to comply, while not bilateral, is far better than not ‘saying it out loud in public’ and then doing it anyway. The latter, secrecy, is the current position of McCain and is nothing more than a continuation of current Bushian foreign policy.

Drinking Games

Take a sip of beer if:
McCain says "Financial Crises"
Obama says "Depression"
McCain says "Fannie Mae"
Obama says "Bailout"
Obama says "Change"
McCain says "Victory"
Obama says "terrorism"
McCain says "September 11"
Anyone blames "the media"
One candidate interrupts another candidate
One candidate compliments the other

Take two sips of beer if:
Obama mentions blogs
McCain says "surrender"
McCain mentions Jeremiah Wright
Obama says "more of the same"
McCain mentions Obama's "bitter" comment
Either candidate talks past their time limit
McCain refers to Russia, Georgia or the Ukraine
McCain says "the Surge"
John McCain asks the moderator to repeat a question


Finish Your Beer:
Anyone in the audience gets dragged out of the auditorium
Anyone says "occupation in Iraq"
Anyone mispronounces any word or name
Anyone uses a sports metaphor
Anyone attempts to speak Spanish to pander to Latinos
McCain says he would rather lose and election than lose a war
McCain jumbles Obama and Osama
Anyone says anything that gets bleeped out

Drink A Full Beer or take a Shot:
If McCain Doesn't show up

Who's Comin' With Me?

By Nathan Rodriguez

I think I'm going to be moving to Canada within the next year or so.

Some of that probably is based on my innate desire as a Hispanic to migrate to the north.

But seriously – if McCain wins in November, I don't think I can handle another four years of GOP rule. I'm utterly sick of the transparent bullshit.

If the way McCain has run his campaign is any indication of how he'll head his administration, we're fucking doomed. The man hasn't held a press conference in 40 days, while Palin has managed to avoid any questions — outside of Chucky Gibson and Fanboy Hannity — for almost four weeks. If she can't handle a press conference, she has absolutely zero business in the Oval Office. What we can judge her by, then, are her actions...and those are a little suspect, in refusing to release about 1,100 emails regarding the Trooper probe. Didn't we just go through this executive privilege claptrap a couple years ago with the whole Rove / Libby debacle?

It's astonishing and disheartening to think that John McCain, who just eight years ago, may have been a decent nominee for president, has turned into someone who will do or say damn near anything to get elected. It speaks volumes that the harshest interview he's faced has come from those geriatric vultures on The View. Say what you will about Obama, at least he faced (and ran circles around) Bill O'Reilly. Think there's any chance someone like Keith Olbermann could get within 50 feet of McPain?

Even more staggering is that we could have half the voting public honestly believe McCain knows his stuff better than Obama. Forget about that whole Iraq-Pakistan border gaffe — he just instinctively KNOWS foreign policy! Forget that McCain's top advisors have links to the embattled mortgage giants, or that he claimed to "not know as much" as he should about the economy — Obama's gonna raise your taxes!

But the real reason I'm so opposed to the idea of a McCain presidency is that he will be the oldest president elected to office. He has battled skin cancer four times, and both his father and grandfather died at a younger age than he is now.

This means one thing: President Palin.

This is a person who thinks drilling for oil is a "mission from God." She is redefining "Christian" to only mean "born again Christian." Her answers to Gibson's softballs on foreign policy were as shallow as a puddle of puppy pee.

I even endured part of Hannity's interview — a glorified suck and fuck — and she still kept uttering the same canned horseshit that makes you wonder if she even knows what the hell's coming out of her mouth. I swear, if she says "stringent oversight," or "change business as usual," once more, I'm heading straight for the goddamn border.

When she actually does get into specifics, she contradicts herself in such a way that even the most unseasoned high school open debater would call her on it: "I'm in favor of economic regulations," followed by a "Oh yeah, and I want to get government out of our lives."

Come again?

The absolute disrespect by the McCain campaign for our intelligence as sentient fucking beings is unconscionable.

They've tried to brand him as the candidate of "real" change, and say they're going to "clean up Washington," when homeboy has spent the last three decades in the corridors of D.C.

Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't feel like change when one party has held an advantage on the Supreme Court, has had a rubber-stamp Congress for the better part of eight years, and the O.G. Maverick, Bush, occupying the White House, with whom McCain has sided more than 90 percent of the time.

And the worst part is, their plan is working. They may just be able to keep this shallow enough that a good chunk of Middle America will once again fall for the same scare tactics and vote against their own interests, and wonder what the hell happened four years from now.

If that's the case, I'll probably be somewhere in Canada...or maybe a little island off the Florida coast (not Cuba).

I've put up with enough lies, enough deception, and enough double-speak for an entire lifetime. Obama may not bring the full change he so eloquently talks about, but I for one am ready for a president who doesn't embarrass me when he speaks, and one who actually talks to me like an adult.

And I'm starting to doubt that will happen anytime soon in this country because whether we're failing as concerned citizens or as journalists, it may be that on the whole, we're a hell of a lot dumber than Obama gives us credit for...so maybe we deserve McCain after all.

All I know is that my landlord should be watching TV on November 4.

Negativity

By Annita Achilleos

How far will this negative ad campaign go? (both of them actually). Can it get worse? Is this really the way to go in order to win an election? Both Republicans and Democrats have spent millions of dollars on ads that simply say how bad their opponent is and some times deliberately misinterpret what they say. Sex education at kindergarten? I mean…come on…the republicans think that the American people are 10 years old? This kind of misinterpretations just underestimates the intelligence of the American people. By using a phrase that has the word pig and lipstick Barack Obama was NOT talking about Palin. I still cannot accept the fact that there are people out there that even made this connection. The American people should not be portrayed as brainless and idiotic!

Anti War

A fundamental question that is never stated explicitly asks why we should ever go to war; what is the motivation to circumvent diplomacy and international intervention in favor of adventurism that simply kills?

Running Laps

Yesterday I read Lysistrata, a middle comedy of Aristophenes, and had stirred within in me a dormant outrage at the direction this country is taking. Before I go into that though I want to digress as to the breathtaking series of events that made this reading so special. Recently I went to Cyprus and Athens with my Greek speaking girlfriend (whose perspective you can read here) and had the good fortune to visit the Acropolis along with any number of archaeological sites from the height of the Greek empire. To depart from the Piraeas to the seat of the Minoan civilization in Santorini, then subsequently read a play written 2500 years ago that describes the infighting between those elegant cultures reifies a hope (and despair) I have that humans across time and place share very fundamental spirits; the Spartan sails proudly puffed with Piraean air would have been no less a travesty to Athenians than smoke billowing from towers in NYC.

The sad truth is that these event s share not only a visceral similarity but also a much more worrisome material relationship. Aristophenes was a well known critic of the excesses of the Athenian politicians. The profit driven war mongering of the Athenian oligarchs, in his view, were systemically corrupting a culture that had achieved sophistication to the point where arts and sciences were truly flourishing. As a voice of reason he was marginalized by the truth of power. And today we see a small cohort of rich Americans desperately holding onto power. While America moves closer and closer to recession the privatized mercenary armies and defense contractors are getting fat on taxpayers dollars. While the few and the rich get richer, our schools are failing and our art, while vital, is marginal at best.

And the reason that we can listen to is often in the depths of late night, whether Tina Fey or Jon Stewart. So read those old plays, and hope that we leave the beaten path of repeated history and find a new venue moving forward.

From the Outside looking In.

By Annita Achilleos (EU citizen (Cyprus))

What will it take for Americans to start voting the right way (if at all)? At the same time, you tell me that the electoral college voting system does not really represent what people vote, and then I ask you…why, in this “great country of democracy”, an absolutely non-democratic voting system keeps controlling the fate of the US and the rest of the world? Why did it start in the first place? And why is it so hard to just count the votes of the people and the candidate that gets the most he/she gets elected? If this were the case, would the democrats rule the country in the last 8 years? That would absolutely make much more sense to the rest of the world, because, you see, in other countries where actual democracy exists (at least when it comes to electing a president), people do not understand the electoral college vote, and they therefore think that the majority of the Americans actually voted for the republicans…twice...and that killed every hope they had for this country to come to its senses. And the rest of the world really needs the US to come to its senses.

Whether we like it or not, if you go back in history at any point one nation had the power and could influence the rest of the world (eg the Greeks, the Romans) until another nation would gain as much power and take over. This last century it’s been the US and the last eight “disastrous” (both on an national and an international level) years it’s been the republicans. You would expect that any person with some common sense would not even think about voting for this party this coming election. You would expect that the average American would go straight for the democratic nominee (whoever that would be!). But it seems that the average American is really afraid of change, and this does sound cliché but it is the truth.

Now you are telling me that the republicans are becoming more popular just because of the vice president they chose? Are you telling me that the American people like McCain now because of Palin? Who is she as a politician? We absolutely know who she is as a mother and as a wife, and we could have known who she is as a politician if she did not lie in every single thing she said and if she was actually knowledgeable of both the domestic and the international political scene. I will tell you one thing: People and especially politicians around the world do not care about how good of a wife or a mother a politician is. We all know what kind of a person someone has to be in order to be in politics, so it really doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man, if you are married or if you have ten different lovers at the same time. When you meet with other world leaders, you are not going to talk about changing diapers or about how you met your husband.

You are going to talk about matters that the rest of the world cares about. Can Palin do that? Can a serious politician say “We are friends with Israel and I don’t think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security” as an answer to the question whether the US should back Israel if it were to try to eliminate Iran’s facilities militarily. Are you kidding me? What kind of an answer is that? Israel is our friend so we’ll do whatever they want! I’m telling you if republicans win again this country is doomed.

Leadership vs Policy

By Jake Imber

A constant confusion of mine has been this focus on "The Ability to Lead" in our presidential elections. I hear McCain and Palin scream it from the pulpit - "I have executive experience! I have been a P.O.W.! I can LEAD!" In fact, it seems like the foundation of their presidential campaign. We can lead, our opponent cannot.

This unrelenting hammering of leadership seems entirely inane. In this day and age, anyone who ascends to the presidential ticket has the ability to inspire, fund-raise, make decisions, cooperate, and evaluate - in essence, to lead. As much as I hate to admit it - Bush has "led" us for the last 8 years. Like it or not, the country has followed his leadership.

What needs to be discussed is WHERE a candidate will lead us as a nation. What are the policies which will define the presidency? What are the key issues that will drive the nation? What matters to the presidential candidate?

I read many pundits poking fun at Obama's "Laundry List of Policies" during his acceptance speech at the DNC. To me, this was the most valuable part of his speech, even if it was not the most compelling to listen to. Hearing him expound on his key policy issues gave me a real sense of who he is and where he would like to lead us. What I am waiting for is to see McCain do the same. What will he do, besides maybe bomb Iran?

I don't know about you, but I eagerly await the debates. I only hope that we can move past the question of whether someone can lead and move towards the question of where the country will be led.

Understanding Democracy.

The sickest thing about the Palin Troopergate scandal lies not in the actual event, but in the response by Palin. Hiring a lawyer is understandable. But this insistence that the Legislature does not have the capacity to investigate Executive misconduct runs counter to the cornerstone of American democracy. The checks and balances system at once ensures the stability of the country while protecting the integrity of each branch. It is no surprise then that with the integrity of the Executive branch compromised the executives of the GOP have so compromised their integrity.

Defining Terms.

I think opponents of McCain ought to fully embrace his self identification as a maverick. But this ought to be done in stark opposition to the idea of change. This distinction, while subtle, if made properly, will pound into the public the idea that McCain rides the same solitary and irrational path that his predecessor blazed. By all indications the Bush administration’s unilateralism is the very essence of the Wild Western ideals of independence and vigilante justice.

In this formulation McCain’s gung ho attitude on war, whether towards Iran or Russia, negates the positive association one may have of the term maverick. This may be an exaggeration but I think it very likely that the USA would be in two more entirely extraneous excursions at the moment were the past months under a McCain administration. And this is not good.

Another association that should be made with maverick is the mob justice. I mean these guys (GOP) are pure thugs in the tradition of Casa Nostra, bullying, voter intimidation and lying are all means to ensure the end of control over power, the value of which is pure profiteering (starkly contrasted with the nominal goal of democracy, freedom or apple pies). Here, we associate maverick with independence from the law, a society where power is a right, not a privilege.

And in fact these two ideas go hand in hand with each other; one of McCain’s advisors was on a lobby that was paid, PAID, to place Georgia in the good graces of the US government. Once there, the Georgians felt as though military adventurism was their right, protected as they were by the umbrella of American hegemony.

Really, McCain is a maverick. But this is a song that’s been blaring for the last eight years.

All it takes is my soul?

Our nation stands today at a remarkable crossroads. We are in the midst of a battle for the very soul of reason in this election. And we must stop considering the GOP as a conservative organization. The sad reality is that the current iteration of the republican party is in fact a pre-enlightenment reactionary group: Machiavelli would be proud of the cunning treachery with which the GOP has gone about its business.

The clearest and only needed example of this is the insistent lying of the McCain/Palin campaign. With reason they believe that anything that stands in the way of their ascension to the throne can easily be wiped away by total fabrication. People don’t support the bridge to nowhere? Well then the VP didn’t support it either. People think Washington is too reliant on corporate lobbyists? Well then McCain doesn’t have 7 of them on his advisory board. People want change? Well then the McCain ticket provides it in spades.

The sad part about this is not that may succeed, but rather that by every indication, it WILL succeed. You see, we have been down this road before. In fact, as is now clear, and was to some of us at the time, the entire occupation of Iraq was perpetrated on a foundation of utter rubbish. And were there consequences for the Administration? No, they maintained the presidency and the congress at the next electoral referendum.

What is then exceedingly clear is that there is absolutely no reason for the GOP to cow to the truth. In our political world, truth has become an abstraction. Like a country of amnesiacs we can be certain only of the present as we watch constructed narratives unfold independent of any past reality.

In this brave new world the surest path to success is to free your reason from the constraints of conscience and to loose your soul from pangs of guilt. In this brave new world laurels are replaced by words not hollow but filled with the burning air of fabrication.

The Palin game

by Nathan Rodriguez

More than a week after the announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin as the GOP nominee for Vice-President, the strategy has become pretty clear.

Keep her away from the media as long as possible. Sequester her like she’s a juror on the O.J. trial, and don’t let her say anything off-the-cuff.

Right now the media are doing McCain’s job of actually vetting the Alaskan governor, so it makes sense to keep her quiet until the dust settles.

This accomplishes a few things: first, it facilitates the Republican strategy of playing “victim” of the media. They get to retread transparent accusations of sexism, and stick to the talking point of “executive experience,” while the media — merely doing its job — asks some pretty reasonable questions about her experience, and the McCain campaign accuses them of “ganging up” on her. It can look one-sided.

How dare the media belittle the myriad accomplishments of Gov. Palin! She’s a mother of five who can balance the budget while blasting a 12-gauge and selling a jet on eBay!

Second, it makes sense to keep her quiet while the national media unearths potentially shady stories. The cornucopia of scandals and suspect statements she’s accumulated in her 18 months as governor are pretty wide-ranging, and it makes little sense for the McCain campaign to expose her to damaging questions before coaching her on the appropriate response.

Had Palin been available from the beginning, it would have been interesting to watch her answer questions about her ever-changing stance on the bridge to nowhere, her husband’s involvement in a party promoting Alaskan secession, her slashing state funding for special needs children by more than 60 percent while claiming to “fight” for them in her acceptance speech, her apparent ease with banning books from libraries, opposition to abortion in cases of rape and incest, and that little brouhaha called Troopergate.

Now, with less than two months before the election, the media has quite a bit of ground to cover, and things will get muddy.

Do they try and delve into her foreign policy opinions? Do they try to pin her down on a few of the beyond-the-pale social positions?

My guess is that they’ll continue to talk about Troopergate and Republicans will try to continue banter about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, to polish up the “victim” image.

In the meantime, if Palin plays her cards right, voters will become weary of these supposed scandals, and she’ll be able to pull off the ultimate goal of the McCain campaign: To keep her responses on controversial issues vague enough to sound reasonable.

Because if she looks reasonable and sounds reasonable —which she should, as long as the McCain campaign continues to control the message —the media will be as obsessed with her field dressing a moose as they are burnishing McCain’s maverick image. And that’s when they will have succeeded in changing Palin’s image from one approximating a manipulative, deeply partisan Kathleen Harris, to a benevolent, independent-minded version of Frances McDormand from Fargo.

Sadly, the mainstream media is just shallow (or busy) enough, and the GOP just crafty enough to make her nomination about image, not issues. And that’s what the Democrats need to combat — to show that behind the swash-buckling image and easy smile resides a wolf in sheep’s skin. If they don’t, Palin will be able to superficially relate to enough Reagan Democrats to make the race much closer than it should be.



Note: This was written before I saw “Sarah Palin: An American Woman” on Fox. For some reason, it seems a little soft...she seems almost...human. I’d better turn the channel before her appeal that, “We don’t have to agree on everything,” begins to cling like the worst kind of dingleberry.
Coming up next – is Sarah Palin totally awesome or completely awesome? We report the hard facts and let you decide!

Obama promises “Change we can measure”

by Nathan Rodriguez

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama recently expanded on his plans to bring about change, with a vow to end domestic reliance upon what he called “dangerous sources” of measurements.

“We cannot afford four more years of the same, tired policies that have failed millions of Americans,” Obama said, before unveiling his bold and controversial plan to have the U.S. switch to the metric system within eighteen months.

“Right now, America’s children are falling behind their counterparts in nations like Russia, India, and China, who grow up with the comfort of knowing exactly how far a kilometer is,” he said, adding “We can’t continue down this reckless road if we don’t even know how far we need to go. We deserve better than a nation where only our joggers know how far five or 10-kilometers really is. Our children, and our children’s children deserve the truth about a hectare, not hot air.”

A crowd of several hundred thousand gathered at a towering temple constructed for the announcement.

“What started as a hint in the cornfields of Iowa became a suggestion in the frozen tundra of New Hampshire, and a firm but polite request in the tobacco fields of North Carolina and Virginia,” he said. “Enough! We can do better than this, we will do better than this, and that’s why I’m running to be president of the United States of America!”

The throng of supporters erupted in applause, and symbolically snapped yardsticks in half before depositing them in a recycling bin upon exiting. The Obama campaign issued new tire gauges that measure pressure in kilograms per centimeter, as opposed to the traditional pounds per square inch, and encouraged supporters to symbolically cross out the “miles per hour” reading on speedometers in vehicles — resulting in several dozen speeding tickets.

The McCain campaign was quick to issue a response.

“The latest statement from Sen. Obama shows just how dangerously inexperienced he is,” said Tucker Bounds, McCain campaign spokesman. “This isn’t the kind of change the American people want, or even understand. What Senator Obama failed to explain are the details — what happens to Denver, which is known across the nation as the ‘mile-high city?’ This just goes to show the importance of experienced judgment and leadership.”

Bounds indicated the campaign was in the process of amending “Country first” placards to have the reverse read, “We won’t budge an inch on the centimeter.”
Conservative commentator Sean Hannity was irate.

“Obama may think he can change water to wine, but this is like asking America to switch from Apple Pie to arugala,” he said. “John McCain brings the right kind of change to Washington, while Barack Obama is trying to bring about one metric ass-load of change we don’t need.”

Most of Sen. McCain’s comments on the issue were drowned out when all of the 14 people in the crowd ritualistically chanted, “U-S-A!”

Meanwhile, Gov. Palin’s handlers again made her unavailable for comments and questions, saying she was busy field dressing a moose and preparing folksy Alaskan witticisms for her upcoming foreign policy debate with Sen. Biden.