The Palin Project - Volume 6: The Beginning of the End

Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.

I know what you're thinking, the above quote must be one of those "liberal media elites" with their sexist attitude toward Governor Palin, right? Actually, it's from die-hard Republican, Kathleen Parker in a column for the right-wing publication, National Review. Ouch... wonder how they're going to do damage control for that one? When members of your own party are calling you an embarrassment with just over a month to go before election day, maybe it's time to consider packing your bags and heading back to Alaska.

This is the final installment of The Palin Project - I'm certainly not done writing about Sarah Palin, but now that her manufactured "All-American" story has been exposed as the farce that it is, I feel that it is no longer necessary to profile Governor Palin as I have over these six writings. But how could this all fall apart for the Republicans? Just a month ago, it looked like McCain/Palin (or as it was then, Palin/McCain) had this election in the bag. The Democrats had a great convention, but McCain stole the thunder just hours later with the announcement of Sarah Palin as his running-mate and The Palin Effect was seen across the country - people were genuinely interested in this woman. After twenty minutes of pure venom in her convention speech, the pundits were fawning over Palin as the next big thing in American politics and seemingly the only person who could rival Barack Obama's level of fanfare.

But guess what? It was all a magic show, smoke and mirrors, nothing more. The minute people started looking under that hastily-crafted backstory, they saw what many of us knew was there - an empty, bigoted, idiotic lunatic-fringe Neocon that has more in common with George W. Bush than John McCain. Between saying she can see Russia from her house gives her foreign policy experience, being unfamiliar with the Bush Doctrine and being completely clueless on the issues facing our nation, America woke up and saw the truth - Sarah Palin is a joke. You have to sit back and laugh at her, because if you really think hard about the prospect of her being a heartbeat away from the presidency, veins in your head will swell up with anger and cause your entire cranium to explode.

The Republicans certainly tried, they told us she was a reformer (she isn't), they told us she's a maverick like John McCain (they're not), they told us she had more experience than Barack Obama (she doesn't) and they told us that Joe Biden better watch out come debate time (he will eat her alive). As Palin's mystique crumbled in the past week, McCain "suspended" his campaign (for about an hour to do nothing) and tried to get the first debate postponed to October 2 - conveniently the day that the VP debate is scheduled. Even Palin's own campaign is acknowledging that she's a laughingstock and will be decimated in a proper debate - she can't even handle a debate with Katie Couric!

Wow.

Seriously, a month ago they almost had this country convinced that she was going to run circles around a 35-year Senator with more foreign policy experience than pretty much anyone in congress during this upcoming debate. The gloves come off this Thursday and Joe Biden warned he would not treat Palin lightly because he didn't want to come off as condescending as John McCain did during his debate. So Mrs. Palin, I hope you're ready for the man that has been nicknamed "Joey the Shark;" and with your campaign sinking, I don't know if that's a man you want to be going toe-to-toe with.

But don't take this writing as an easy victory for Obama on November 4, far from it. But the selection of Sarah Palin does mark the beginning of the end - even if McCain wins the election - because it represents the final nail in the coffin of John McCain's reputation. A man that was once considered to be the voice of reason in politics, a man that John Kerry asked to be his Vice President in 2004, has devolved into another worthless Neocon pandering to the Religious Right and corporate interests in order to get elected. The Palin pick speaks volumes about John McCain's judgment (or lack thereof) and shows that this man cannot be elected if we ever want to get this country back on track. Remember, a vote for John McCain is a vote for a woman who said this in regards to the $700 billion Wall Street bailout:

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

Those aren't even sentences, they're just random words placed together - but hey, at least you can feel safe on those clear days when she can see Russia from her house.

Politics as Usual

Just when it looked like we were going to have a presidential election about actual issues, John McCain managed to turn our country's economic crisis into a political game. McCain wants to postpone Friday's presidential debate so he can return to the Senate and work on this $700 billion bailout for all his lobbyists. Of course, this is Grade-A political bullshit.

Once again, John McCain exploiting a national crisis so he can give off the appearance of being a leader while simultaneously holding the campaign in the palm of his hand. Things aren't going your way? Just hold the election hostage and make things get done on YOUR time and anyone who disagrees "isn't putting country first."

As far as I know, no candidate has ever called for the suspension of a presidential campaign with a little over a month left in order to deal with a financial crisis. The notion that this problem can't be managed without John McCain there is absurd, it's like he thinks congress is sitting around thinking "We have no idea how to solve this issue... if only John McCain were here! You know, that guy that openly admitted to knowing nothing about the economy despite being in the United States Senate for 26 years? Yeah, he can fix it!"

We're in the middle of two fucking wars, McCain hasn't put his campaign on hold for those, has he? No, but he put the Republican Convention on hold for a hurricane that threatened to be worse than Katrina, but turned out to be nothing too disastrous. And then just a few days later, had no problem being out there campaigning while Hurricane Ike ravaged Texas and left millions of people without power throughout the country.

John McCain has turned into the lowest form of political scum that I've ever seen - worse than Cheney, worse than Rove, worse than Bush... it's absolutely appalling to see how low an American Hero will go in order to satisfy his bloodlust to sit in the Oval Office. This man has sold out every idea, every principle and every shred of dignity in order to win and when that won't work, he'll just derail the entire political process. If this man is president, it will be this country's darkest day.

9/11™

I was going to write up a whole thing about the seventh anniversary of our nation's saddest day, but Keith Olbermann summed it up better than I ever could:

"Lipstickgate?" REALLY?!

And you thought I was kidding about the media in last night's blog; today, the top headline from the increasingly irrelevant media is "Lipstickgate." Let's ignore the stupidity of adding "gate" to the end of every scandal like it's an actual suffix and focus on what this controversy is all about, apparently, Barack Obama is sexist. Why? Because he said this in regards to McCain's claim of bringing "real change" to Washington:

You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough!

So where's the sexist part come in? Oh, because Sarah Palin made the cute little joke about the only difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom is "lipstick" during her speech last week. Apparently, it's perfectly okay to equate Palin to a bitch (female dog), but a pig, that's over the line. Except for the fact that Obama wasn't even talking about Palin! But leave it to the Republicans to manufacture outrage like Obama called her a twat or something and then like moths to the flame, the "liberal" media latches right on.

"Lipstick on a pig" is not a new phrase, in fact, John McCain used it in reference to a Hillary Clinton policy less than a year ago. Where were the cries of sexism then? Where was the outrage? Oh yeah, there was none, because liberals are generally rational-thinking adults who understand that McCain wasn't actually calling Clinton a pig, but conservatives are like small children who cry foul whenever someone calls them on their bullshit. Obama wasn't calling Palin a pig, he was saying that McCain can talk about being the "change candidate" or a "maverick" all day long, but it doesn't change the fact that he's been in line with George W. Bush 90% of the time.

This is the problem with trying to engage in logical discussion with a Republican, they can't do it because they have no actual policies to run on. They have no plan to fix the economy, no plan for the war in Iraq, no ideas for health care and they don't care about restoring our standing with the rest of the world, so they have to rely on juvenile, lowest common denominator nonsense like this. McCain's own campaign manager admitted that the election wasn't about the issues, but rather "personalities." Republicans know they can't win on their record, because the record is the biggest embarrassment in American history, but they know how to distract voters and people keep falling for it - this is how we ended up with eight years of Bush, Americans get the leaders they deserve.

I'll have more on McCain and sexism in a future installment of The Palin Project, but I find it astouding that a man who cheated on his crippled first wife with a rich beauty queen can cry sexism. I find it amusing that the guy who reportedly called his wife a "cunt" and makes jokes about rape can cry sexism. And I just find it flat-out offensive that the candidate who has consistently voted against every major women's issue in his 26 years in the US Senate, can cry sexism. If you want to vote based on women's issues, your candidate should be Joe Biden, no person in the House or Senate has done more for women's issues in recent years than the Vice Presidential pick on the Democratic ticket. As for Senator McCain, just because he selected a woman as his running-mate, it doesn't negate the fact that he is the true sexist in this election.

The Palin Project - Volume 5: Working the Refs

"Liberal Media."

It's a phrase you hear all the time, but rest assured, there is no such thing. The Republicans have a knack for sleight of hand, the technique magicians use to manipulate objects during illusions. Republicans aren't making coins appear from behind your ear, but they know how to divert your attention so that you can't see the trick, the recent buzz surrounding Sarah Palin is a fine example of this.

Less than two weeks ago, John McCain announced his running-mate, the governor of Alaska that no average American voter had ever heard of before. Naturally, this was going to raise some questions like "who the hell is this woman?" She is a heartbeat away from the presidency, probably someone who would need to give some details about herself, but oh no. When reporters began raising questions about this mysterious pick, the McCain campaign freaked out and immediately began lashing out at those dirty liberals in the media for treating Palin unfairly.

But what about the coverage of Palin in the mainstream media was unfair? Seriously, find me one thing from a legitimate news source (not a blogger) that was unfair towards Palin... don't worry, I'll wait. There were a couple tabloid outlets reporting some things that could be construed as such, but even those turned out to be somewhat true with the announcement of Palin's pregnant teenage daughter - something Palin herself released a statement on and admitted. Everything else was standard journalism - investigation into this woman's history, her record and just an overall look at who she is - remember, the night before her selection as VP, nobody had heard of Sarah freakin' Palin. But the Republicans, reaching into their bag of tricks, took the opportunity to blast the media for attacking Palin and it worked, 51% of Americans polled said she was being treated unfairly. Nevermind the fact that there was no particular evidence to support such a claim, but the Republicans know if you repeat something enough, it'll come true. It's sad, but in the world of politics, truth is subjective.

There are two more sinister points to all these cries of bias in the "liberal" media, it's a tactic that has worked in the Republicans' favor for decades now:

One, get the citizens to distrust the media. Remember, the press exists to keep our leaders in check, if no one challenges them on their questionable decision-making, then they can get away with just about anything. Post-9/11 America has all but confirmed that point as the Bush Administration was able to run rampant throughout the world until the country finally woke up and realized they were getting screwed. But here we are again with McCain playing the media bias card with successful results, how does this keep happening? It's simple, make the people think there is a media bias, and they will begin to ignore the news, if the citizens aren't informed, they'll just blindly follow along with whatever their leaders do.

Two, get the media to work in their favor. Journalists are a funny bunch in the year 2008, the days of guys like Edward R. Murrow, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are long gone, there are no more investigative journalists, just personalities. After enduring the accusations of having a liberal bias for so many years, the media will now sacrifice their principles just to show their objectivity, even if it means abandoning the story. Look at Sarah Palin, instead of calling her out for her flat-out lies, distortions and smears in her speech at the Republican Convention, the media lavished her with praise for a "great speech." No, a great speech is an accurate one, not that half hour of flat-out bullshit, but the media wouldn't call her on it because they might be accused of being biased. Funny how that works, isn't it? When the Republicans manage to spin the media in their favor, it's no longer a free press, it's a propaganda machine.

In defense of the media, the days of investigative journalism are gone because the average American is fucking stupid. Radio and TV broadcasters are taught to speak as if their listeners/viewers have no more than a sixth grade education, newspaper and magazine articles shrink in size to accomodate lower attention spans and FOX News is the most watched cable "news" outlet. So you can understand why the media fails to do its job anymore, people just can't be bothered by nuanced things like facts, they want senationalism like "is he a secret Muslim" or cute stories like "LoL she said the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom is lipstick! HUR HUR!"

So when you're wondering why America keeps electing horrible politicians, it's partially because the media has been hijacked and/or smeared by those same officials. Republicans know they can't govern the country properly or win elections based off their laughable policies, so they have to go into their bag of dirty tricks, and this is just one of the many that they have up their sleeves. As a result, respectable journalism has been replaced by Larry the Cable News Guy.

The Palin Project - Volume 4: The God Delusion

I'm sure you recall a few months back when Barack Obama came under intense scrutiny for his association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had previously made several incendiary comments about the United States, specifically in relation to the September 11 attacks where he screamed "God damn America!" Now, Sarah Palin's connection with her church is being investigated, I'm sure nothing will come out of it from the "liberal" media, but anything going on in her church is far more offensive than anything Wright ever said. Oh I'm sure I'm going to catch heat for this one, but someone's got to say it - they won't make too much of an issue about it in the mainstream, but that's because Palin's church is all white, so it's alright!

Let's talk about Wright first; here's a man who was born in 1941 in Pennsylvania, the guy grew up seeing racism in it's ugliest form and still served in the armed forces - joining the United States Marine Corps, the US Navy and was assigned to Lyndon B. Johnson's personal medical team - and the media manages to turn him into some America-hating monster. See the problem people had with Wright was that he spoke the harsh truth about this country, and America can't handle it when someone starts talking some real shit, especially a black guy. Wright grew up in the middle of Jim Crow America and this country doesn't like to think too much about those days even though they've only been over for about forty years. It's hard to imagine a time, not that long ago, where black people were forced into separate but "equal" living standards, young people may not think about it too much but the effects are still felt to this day.

This went on until 1965.

So imagine being a young black kid living in a horrifically racist country and right around when Jim Crow was starting to die out, the same country starts sending off young men and women to fight in Vietnam, that might just have an impact on your worldview. Jeremiah Wright grew up in a time where he saw blacks being forced to live differently and then saw people forced to go fight in the most pointless war in this country's history. When he made those comments about 9/11, that's what he was talking about, he was talking about America's history coming back to haunt us.

I know it's uncomfortable to think about, it's unpleasant, but I got news for you, the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom, no matter how many times the Republicans say it. We were attacked on 9/11 because not everyone in the world thinks we should have troops stationed throughout the Middle East. Now look, I'm not saying we invited the 9/11 attacks, but to think that it wasn't the result of certain foreign policy decisions is just infantile and Rudy Giulianish (yeah, I just made that word up). America has done things the rest of the world hasn't particularly cared for - the last eight years being a prime example - so we have to start looking at these things as mature adults and hold our politicians accountable for their blunders.

Now, Wright's comments haunted Obama for several weeks once the videos came out, but I can guarantee you'll never hear as much about Sarah Palin's church. Why? Because it preaches to the choir of religious whackjobs that have hijacked this country over the last seven years. Palin attends the Wasilla Bible Church where attendees speak in tongues, believe in the Rapture, and it's also a place where you can "pray the gay away." This could be your next Vice President, folks.

Of course, homophobia is a-okay in the US of A, a scary black man screaming about foreign policy blunders is not. Yeah, thinking about bad things America has done just makes us sad, let's gay-bash to get closer to Jesus and feel all better! But that's not all, Sarah Palin has spoken at this church and has said some stuff that is flat-out batshit insane. According to Palin, the war in Iraq is "God's plan" and the church-goers should "pray to get a gasline built in Alaska." That's right kids, Sarah Palin wants you to pray for God's will - a pipeline - you know God has a deep interest in getting more oil money to Alaska.

If you think the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history since Vietnam is "God's plan," and you ask Jesus for a pipeline, you're a fucking moron and you don't get to be Vice President. Also, if you believe in the whole speaking in tongues thing, you are certifiably insane and should be committed. You have a voice in your head, that isn't God, it's schizophrenia. So this means one of two things for Palin specifically - either she believes all this shit too and should be committed, or she's exploiting these mentally ill people for political gain - either way, she's not fit to lead this country ever.

Religion and politics do not mix well and in these last seven years, they've been getting way too close for comfort. Do you truly want your country run by someone who thinks the Four Horsemen will descend upon Earth, bring forth the Apocalypse and the rest of the country will find refuge in Alaska? Yeah, for all you losers who don't get to go home with Jesus, they think you'll get to hang out in Alaska for the rest of time, so we need God to tap into their natural resources!

Contrast this with Rev. Wright, who definitely said some things that make us uncomfortable, but he was still talking policy and making sense. As harsh as those things were, he wasn't talking about the Rapture or asking parishioners to pray for a natural gas pipeline so he could line the state's pockets. This is the kind of stuff I would normally laugh at and say, "wow, people in Alaska are really nuts," but this woman could be within a heartbeat of running the entire free world!

We've had eight years of this and Palin may be even more religious than George Bush: she thinks abortions should be outlawed even if the woman were raped by her own father, she opposes stem cell research, against gay rights, thinks creationism should be taught in schools, anti-gambling, opposes comprehensive sex education (despite that whole pregnant teenage daughter thing), attempted to ban books from the library, and wants to recognize "America's Christian heritage" (even though our Founding Fathers had the foresight to include separation of Church and State). Yet she opposes protecting wildlife (they are God's creatures) and mocks faith-based community organizing.

Palin is just another moral-crusading asshole who wants to control how you run your life so it fits in with her particular form of indoctrination. The media had a field day with Obama's ex-pastor, but yet nobody has called Palin out for her special brand of lunacy. If these are the kinds of things they teach in that church, America should be scared; we don't need another four or eight years of this nonsense, but we may just get it. Hell, she probably has her church praying for McCain to win right after they finish praying for that pipeline. But like I said, no one's going to talk about this because it's perfectly acceptable to be this kind of crazy in America - white, bigoted and believe they have superpowers because they pray to the invisible man in the clouds that wants us to kill people in the desert. The Constitution says there will be no religious test for office, so these beliefs should not disqualify her from public office, but her desire to mix her religion and her public office should. Sarah Palin is not qualified in any shape or form to be the Vice President of the United States.

You know, the only person Jesus ever condemned was the hypocrite? Sarah Palin needs to look in a fucking mirror.

Here's the video of this lunacy... remember, just one heartbeat away from running the free world:

The Palin Project - Volume 3: Sarah W. Bush?

Despite all my excitement and optimism after Barack Obama's acceptance speech, I'm legitimately a bit worried after Sarah Palin's speech last night at the Republican Convention. Not because it was good, God no, but because Palin struck me as someone very familiar - George W. Bush. Why should it worry me that Palin reminds me of the worst president in American history? Because America elected him twice... well, one and a half times.

She has everything the neocons loved in Bush - she's young, a Bible-thumper, moral crusader, hypocrite, celebrates ignorance, a manufactured backstory, easily controlled by her handlers and is completely devoid of any substance. Oh sure, her speechwriter (George W's, by the way) got some great jokes in there, but unfortunately, pretty much everything she said wasn't true. See for yourself here: Factchecking Palin and here: Palin vs. Reality.

I won't waste your time by pointing all the details out here, but two of them really stuck out to me. Sarah Palin told America that as the mother of a special needs child, all parents of children with special needs would "have a friend in the White House." She says this when less than two years ago, she slashed funding for school programs that cater to special needs children. It's even more amusing that she has also cut funding for programs that help pregnant teenagers, when she now has a pregnant teenager daughter. I know I say this a lot, but I'll say it again - you can't make this shit up, folks.

Oh, I'm sorry, families are "off-limits," right? Again, families would be totally off-limits if Republicans weren't so blatantly obvious with their hypocrisy. "Gay people can't get married! We need a constitutional amendment to ban gays from having the same rights as others... but please pay no attention to Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter!" No one is denegrating Dick Cheney's daughter, no one is bashing Palin's pregnant daughter or her disabled son, we're bashing Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. You can't vote against something that goes on in your own home.

The other part that really bothered me was this quote:

Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America. He's [Obama] worried someone won't read them their rights

Really? This coming from the campaign with the P.O.W. at the top of the ticket? John McCain was brutally tortured in Vietnam, a heinous act that no one should ever have to suffer through... unless they're Arab? Either we're a country that treats all human beings fairly, regardless of their alleged crimes or we're no better than those who held John McCain captive for five years. Justice should always be served to those who wish to harm America, but it's the principles of this country to treat everyone with basic human dignity that makes us the world's true superpower.


Getting back on track, the media is a hot button issue right now in regards to Sarah Palin, they're being so tough on her! Yeah, you know, doing all that mean research that John McCain should have thought about doing before picking her as his running-mate? Just like the Bush Administration, Sarah Palin has managed to "work the refs" and blame the media for the laundry list of scandals that has come out about her. Sorry again, Ms. Palin, but dissent and scrutiny is not bias, it's the media doing its job. You signed up for the job and called Hillary Clinton a "whiner" when she went after the press during the primaries - once again, you can't have it both ways, Governor.

The thing that struck me most about her speech last night that parallels George W. Bush was her bitterness, sarcasm and elitism. The left gets charged with the "elitist" tag quite often, but just like Bush, she's managed to make herself look like the down to earth person while belittling and mocking her opponent. The audacity to criticize Barack Obama's time as a community organizer is just jaw-droppingly offensive to the very people you claim to represent. Obama did his community organizing through a church group and you're going to mock that? This is someone who could have worked at a major law firm and made some serious cash, but instead chose to help those who fell on hard times by setting up job training programs, asbestos removal in old buildings, and a voter registration drive. Speaking of the voter registration part, his group managed to register over 150,000 new voters - that's 1/5 the size of Alaska's entire population.

Here's a guy that literally put "country first" one neighborhood at a time, got in there and told people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and reach their potential, and that's amusing to you, Ms. Palin? While you were mayor of a town with literally less than a thousand voters, Barack Obama was in the south side of Chicago, working to make it a better place. The fact that you even tried to compare your second biggest achievement to something Obama did twenty years ago - at the start of his career - speaks volumes of your character (or lack thereof).

Barack Obama could come out and say, "While I was the president of the Harvard Law Review, Sarah Palin was entering beauty pageants," but he has more class than that. He has more class than to exploit his "off-limits" children on national television by mentioning their "special needs" or that they enlisted in the military on September 11, 2007; but Ms. Palin showed last night that she doesn't have that kind of moral fiber. It's no surprise, it's what Republicans like Sarah Palin and George W. Bush do, they tear down their opponents and hope that no one will notice the glaring hypocrisy and then blame the "liberal media" when someone does.

Sarah Palin is a joke. An embarrassment on every level and wholly unqualified to be anywhere near the Oval Office. She has no record, she has no agenda for making this country a better place, she wants to tell you what you can do in your own home (but pay no attention to what goes on in hers), she wants to censor materials that she feels are inappropriate, and she wants to continue to drive the partisan wedge between this country while running on the false notion that she's a "reformer" - just like a young man from Texas that appeared on the national stage about eight years ago.