Andrew Sullivan on McGinness' Palin book

Andrew Sullivan, who for the past three years has been denouncing the sustained lies and bizarre cult of Caribou Barbie has a few key words about Sarah Palin in regards to Joe McGinness' new book on her titled "The Rogue".

it remains, in my view, deeply relevant to this country's institutions that we fully investigate and understand how a delusional, unstable, ignorant, vicious unknown came to be selected by a tiny group of people with no serious vetting to be potentially one heart beat away from the presidency of the US. The magnitude of that error should make anyone who cares about this democracy worry. Palin is different - less qualified than anyone in history, shielded from press scrutiny, able to get away with constant lies and absurd stories because of a cowed press, terrified of being called "liberal."

- The Daily Dish, "Unattributed Crap"

Sarah Palin sacrificing herself for interracial harmony!

Could I have been wrong all these years, that Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is actual not a racist and loves (really loves!) other people and races?

News reports based on the yet unreleased book by Joe McGinniss titled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin" claims that Palin has a fetish for black men, has used illicit drugs, and has had marital affairs.  It has been suggested by Caribou Barbie that Mr. McGinniss, -who was invited to live in Sarah Palin's neighbor's house and observe the Palin family- is a pervert and maybe even a pedophile!  As everyone knows, Sarah doesn't pull punches when this hockey mom with lipstick gets angry.

Sludge like this is better left in the pages of tabloid newspapers, preferably owned by arch-douche bag Rupert Murdoch.  There are probably far more damaging and news worthy stories about Palin, which has been richly covered elsewhere.  However, my contempt of Palin and the entire faux-populists and deranged crypto-fascists of the Tea Party movement demand me to at least bring to light these allegations.

McGinniss has some choice words about Palin that have raised my eyebrows:

• He describes in the book "that Palin had a sexual ‘fetish’ for black men and had a one-night stand with Miami Heat player Glen Rice while dating future husband Todd Palin. Rice is said to have confirmed the encounter to the McGinniss."
• States that Palin "married her husband only after being impregnated, saying that her first child, Track, was born eight months after the wedding."
• Palin engaging with Brad Hanson, her husband’s one time business partner, in a six-month affair that lead to the dissolution of the two men's snowmobile dealership.
• Palin furthermore has in the past used marijuana and cocaine

Some of these things are pretty lame, while others are just typical low class shenanigans.  The whole black men fetish I find amusing.  It's awfully cold up there in Alaska and a piping hot thick drink of black goodness is maybe what she really needs.

***

Really though, I think more attention should be given to a documentary that is currently being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, called "Sarah Palin - You Betcha."  The documentary, profiled in the Guardian newspaper, is by British film maker Nick Broomfield, who says that Palin "represents the forbidden in a weird and mischievous way" to the minds of evangelical Christian men in the Republican party.  People who are most knowledgeable of her, describe Palin as "dangerous", a "sociopath" and "disrespectful to intelligence".

The Guardian article summarizes Palin in a more coherent manner:

[Broomfield] has her down as a political opportunist who'll simply try to fill any power vacuum – a theory that fits neatly with the portraits offered of her as an overgrown prom queen, a beauty pageant back-stabber (there's some great footage of her puffing on a flute during Miss Alaska 1984, a dead spit for Rula Lenska) who thrives on gossip and vendettas and formulates policy with populist short-sight. Any allegiance to intellectual or fiscal ideologies is flaky at best. Her erratic decision-making meant she left Wasilla with a £22m deficit after her stint as mayor, then, as state governor, slapped an enormous tax on oil companies in Alaska. "She got that through with Democrat support," says Broomfield. "Most of the Republican party were against it."

The dangerous stupidity of this woman and her equally imbecilic followers should not be underestimated.

The other Sarah Palin movie

Sarah Palin (aka Caribou Barbie) and her entourage of semi-literate Alaskan troglodytes are now the subject of another movie. Unlike the celebrated bizzaro-land movie called "The Undefeated" (apparently no one has told her that she lost 2008 election), there is a documentary at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) documenting the actions of everyone's favorite candidate/beauty contestant.  The documentary is called "You Betcha!" which sounds just about right.

It doesn't surprise me that the dismally educated people in middle-America still gravitate to her beauty pageant veneer and fixate on her "us against them" nostrums.  After all, these populist shibboleths have existed since popular uprising have existed (yes... what the Romans have done for us lately!) and have a constant fan base regardless of who is in office. The problem with this half-wit, is that she actually thought being a politician was just a little more than being a B-rated celebrity and all those fans of hers, weren't just buying a ticket to indulge in the latest Republican merry-go-round ride.  She has zero policy credentials on any subject of relevance, whether that be foreign policy, America's global hegemony, the financial industry, or cost structure and delivery of social services like Medicare.

As a candidate Palin was so dismally incompetent on a national level that within a few weeks of the public becoming aware of this hockey-mom with lipstick, the McCain-Palin ticket started to tank with independent voters, women, and moderate Republicans.

While she was a positive force leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections for the Tea Party crowd, the problem that arose was that Palin wasn't always willing to follow the Republican script and would too often improvise. An example of her idiocy was her over-the-top media retort that erupted subsequent to Congresswoman's Giffords' attempted murder earlier this year. Since that incident Palin's numbers have been in decline. 

My take on the great American grifter is that she would really love to run for president, but isn't too keen on all that policy stuff and book-learning; like most of her fans.  She clearly loves the attention and the not insignificant pocket change that her and first-dude Todd have managed to pull in since abandoning the Alaska people for a staring role in this week's TLC re-run.  However, the media has already moved on to observe the craziness of Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and almost as verbally irresponsible Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX).

So like any good huckster she now moves from state to state, trying to locally re-invent herself, while trying to boost her flailing popularity nationally.  I think she will self destruct at some point and hopefully she will take as many Republicans with her in the process.

Quote of the day: Gabrielle Giffords on language

"They really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up, and, you know, even things for example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, you gotta realize there's consequences to that action."

- Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ), March 2010 in response to Sarah Palin's crosshairs graphic.

Sarah Palin, accomplice in mass murder!

Is this a reasonable graphic?  Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in an induced coma, didn't think so when asked about the above graphic issued by Palin, which implores Republican supporters to "reload" and keep pursuing their Democratic Party opponents.  In fact, the local Arizonan Republican candidate to oust Ms. Giffords did far more than Caribou Barbie.  He actually had a gun rally, where they said "Remove Gabrielle Giffords from office, shoot a fully automatic M-16." (ref. below)

Again, this type of inflammatory rhetoric isn't coming from fringe elements and outliers, this is coming from Party leaders, and no less than a former Vice-Presidential candidate of the USA herself.

If the above isn't sufficient to validate the depravity of these so-called Christians, consider what another Republican candidate and Tea party-backed congresswoman Michele Bachmann had to say on the subject:

Controversial Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said this weekend that she wants residents of her state "armed and dangerous" over President Barack Obama's plan to reduce global warming "because we need to fight back."

Whether these politicians believe what they are saying or are merely ginning up the facile minded dunces of the gun-totting "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" crowd is irrelevant to me.  They are inciting political violence to achieve political aims.  That and that alone is what the last decade has been all about: the war and struggle against violent extremism and terrorism!

Neither their words nor actions have been misconstrued by anyone to be merely metaphorical.   They themselves clearly defend their stance as a violent defense against Washingtonian corruption and capitulation to liberalism.  The only question left, is when is the Department of Justice going to start applying the laws uniformly and start sending Republicans to enjoy the warm sunshine and if Dick Cheney can be believed, excellent health care, in Guantanamo, Cuba?

Personal Accountability, the American right wing edition.

So this is what's left of the American political landscape?

Six dead, including a federal judge, a Pastor, three senior citizens, and a nine year old child.  A member of congress in critical condition, recovering from an attack that sent a bullet through her head and across her brain.  And another fourteen wounded.

Unlike those members of the mainstream media (MSM), who profit from the endless vitriol of the Republican party and unbalanced right-wing demagoguery as illustrated above in Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin), reasonable and educated people are aware of the diminution of decency in the theater of American politics and the impact of that endless stream of vituperative speech on the nation as a whole.  Consider what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, had to say on this matter.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government... The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

He did not say that this was the act of one deranged lunatic.  Rather, he cast a wide net on the media, the vast array of bigoted and self-serving members of the political establishment, and those who support these debased opportunists in the general public.

The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.

As others have pointed out, this is the standard model for conservatives when they are not in power.  Kevin Drum of MotherJones magazine describes the counter-cyclical response of the conservative electoral base during these periods:

If you elect a liberal Democratic president, you get this kind of reaction from middle class conservatives. In FDR's day you got the Liberty League. JFK inspired the growth of the John Birch Society. Clinton got the conspiracy-minded talk radio crowd. And Obama has the tea parties...

In the 30s it was opposition to the New Deal. For the Birchers it was communism. For the Clinton-haters it was the culture wars... while today's is the deficits/socialism message.

While it is true that in each period there was a distinct reaction to the policies of liberals and the Democratic party, the current regularity and pervasiveness of these attacks, which do not emanate from fringe groups, but from mainstream corporate sponsors, Republican party members across the nation, and prominent media personalities, indicates that the nation has moved into a political atmosphere that so toxic with rancor and lies, that it cannot be dismissed or quelled.

Let's review a few of those hyper-patriots who are so fond of  invoking Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" quote.

• Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (D), recently was the recipient of an incendiary package
• Governor Martin O'Malley (D) of Maryland, was also the intended recipient of two packages that detonated at a federal postal center injuring some workers.
• Nevada Senatorial candidate and Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, stated that the public had the option of dealing with an out-of-control Congress through "Second Amendment remedies."  The terminology is right-wing code for the assassination and murder of federal officials.
• Several other Republican candidates declared that the "violent overthrow" of the US government may be necessary in the event that they did not win the 2010 midterm elections.
• Byron Williams, a former felon, planned "to target individuals at liberal nonprofit the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."    He injured two police officers in a highway shoot-out, when police attempted to apprehend him for erratic driving.  In interviews after his arrest, Williams claims that he was directly inspired by Glenn Beck, Fox news celebrity, to seek retribution.
• Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- including threatening to destroy her California home -- because he was "upset with her passing the health care law."  The perpetrator's mother indicates that he was motivated by friends and Fox News.
• President Obama has seen a 400% increase in death threats from the public compared to George W. Bush. According to reports, America's first black President "is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service"
• July 2009, Neo-Nazi James von Brunn, launched an attack on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns
• May 2009, Minuteman off-shoot group leader, Shawna Forde, murdered a 9-year old girl and her father in Arizona, in an attempt to finance their militia operations.
• May 2009, Abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his Church by an anti-abortion activist, who had belonged to an anti-government militia group that believed that virtually all existing modalities of government in the USA were illegitimate.  Dr. Tiller was shot point-blank in the head.  He had been a subject of violent militant and religious fanaticism since 1998.
• April 2009, a local Florida man killed and wounded several Chilean students involved in a foreign exchange program.  The killer was an active member of the Republican party who had espoused murdering immigrants to his neighbours.
• February 2009, in a suicide attack aimed directly against the IRS, a Texan man flew a single engine plane into the side of an Austin, Texas IRS building.  The incident led to the killing a of a single IRS employee and injury of several others.
• Tennessee white supremacists planned to murder then Presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and engage in the mass murder of black people.
• July 2008, a lone gunman attacked Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee, killing two patrons and injuring another seven.  The gunman, Jim David Adkisson, stated: "he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets."
• Eric Robert Rudolph, a right-wing Christian militant was responsible for the 1996 Atlantic Olympic bombings, the bombing of a Georgia abortion clinic, the bombing of lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, and a second abortion clinic bombing in Alabama, which killed a policeman working as a security guard and seriously injured nurse Emily Lyons.  Rudolph was assisted by like-minded sympathizers, who facilitated his evasion of police for more than five years.
• April 1995, the Oklahoma city bombing was conducted by right-wing militants Timoty McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier, who were seeking retribution against the federal government for their involvement in the 1990's FBI sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. According to Wikipedia, the blast claimed 168 lives and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

When it comes to the demented actions and words of right-wingers, they can never be held responsible, because in their mind they are the victims.  Like Palin and the propagandists at Fox news, they are never to blame for the climate of fear, hate, and ignorance that has arisen.  It's those dirty, hippie liberals, who are out to undermine the "real Americans," which are to blame.

***

UPDATE: Conservatives have already criticized and asked for the resignation of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for his castigation of conservative rhetoric and theatrics.  As usual, the right-wing is ramping up the propaganda by saying that it is the amoral liberal press that is painting them - the same people who have been marching around the country attending presidential speeches, congressional rallies, and health care debates with handguns and publicly attacking anyone who may disagree with them for the past two years- as the bad guys!

Why WikiLeaks matters in this age of Chinese Democracy

In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

- Scott Horton, "The Madrid Cables"

Within the elite political classes and global mainstream media, there is a rising anger and palatable contempt of Wikileaks' periodic information dumps.  The information to date has not been on the scope of the Pentagon Papers. As Fareed Zakeria said in Time magazine, "The Pentagon papers revealed that the U.S. engaged in a systematic campaign to deceive the world and the American people and that its private actions were often the opposite of its stated public policy."  The information clearly has shown governments across the world, be that autocratic or supposedly democratic, to have engaged in deceit, deception, and propaganda to achieve their own statist objectives.  Many in the MSM yawn and say that everything posted has been known.  Perhaps, but the MSM certainly didn't do their job in actively verifying those known suppositions.  Others, like CNN's Wolf Blitzer are filled with rage that anyone would dare to willingly examine the state secrets of the American Empire without first getting the state's tacit approval; like how him and all the other "respectable" laggards of the MSM do.

One commentator has said, "The difference between WikiLeaks and other media organizations is that WikiLeaks is doing its job properly."  Statist leaning politicians and right-wing bloggers on the other hand, are issuing their typical belligerent and illogical fatwas on WikiLeaks.  Despite an obvious understanding of the role of freedom of the press and in the case of America, the first amendment of the US constitution, we have the following verbal flatulence.

• Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives stated that Juilan Assange of WikiLeaks, "deserves to be hunted and executed" and held as an "enemy combatant."
• Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told NBC's David Gregory Sunday that Assange is a terrorist.
• Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) suggested that Assange deserved the same treatment as terrorists and insurgents.
• Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) has asked American companies to not assist WikiLeaks disseminate the data.  To date, Amazon.com has pulled WikiLeaks from its servers, PayPal has stopped donations, and a Seattle based company Tableau Software removed data visualizations published by WikiLeaks to Tableau Public.
• Tom Flanagan, a professor at the University of Calgary and former advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, half-jokingly called for Mr. Obama to assassinate Mr. Assange.
• National Review's Jonah Goldberg asked, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"
• The same politicians who demanded that America illegally invade Iraq and permanently occupy Afghanistan, now claim that that WikiLeaks will have blood on its hands.

When the White House, the Pentagon, or any other agent of the government willingly passes "state secrets" to the press, such as in the lead-up to the Iraq war through the NY Times' Judith Miller or in the outing of CIA WMD investigator Valerie Plame, the same voices are silent.  When official court stenographer for the Bush White House, Bob Woodward, distributes state secrets in his books, in the way that teenage girls spread gossip, the mainstream press is agog with effuse praise.
 
On another level, the entire WikiLeaks criticism is typical of the fundamental contempt that the political and media class has for democracy, transparency, and government accountability. Governments do not want anyone to understand how incompetent and criminal they are in their everyday blunders. The American government has shown an extreme and persistent proclivity to lie to its citizens, to disseminate false information to the press and public, and conceal their criminal actions to further its own statist objectives. They and their paid cultural managers want a population engaged in the trivial and the irrelevant. A public that is aware and actively demanding accountability is an unacceptable situation for those leading the American Empire Project.

We are living in an age of Chinese Democracy, where the our imperious leaders tell us we are free to do as we are ordered.  The government continues to classify more and more of its activities behind the shield of state secrets, while maximizing its surveillance of innocent people through both legal and illegal means. This is why WikiLeaks matters. The lies that lead to the invasion of Vietnam, the falsehoods that attempted to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the evasion of responsibility surrounding the regulatory framework that lead to the Great Recession, the concealment of war crimes committed by US soldiers and CIA functionaries, the erosion of civil liberties and freedom... etc. are all reasons why whistle-blowers like WikiLeaks matter to functioning democracies.

Matt Taibbi talks about the Tea Party, Palin, & the Banks

I really hope if you have an opportunity to watch Eliot Spitzer on his CNN news-talk show, Parker-Spitzer.  The man always impresses me when he's debating friend or foe, with his enormous knowledge of governance, financial affairs, and the inherent corruption that exists between government and big business.  There really isn't any other show on the MSM cable channels, in America at least, that I think is worth watching.  Even if you're into liberal talk shows, MSNBC's lineup tends to be a little repetitious and self-serving when it comes to engaging in substantive issues. 

The above video post is another with Matt Taibbi, who grouses on the media obsession with Caribou Barbie and the Tea Party movement, the criminality of the banks, and the incompetence of Tim Geithner and Alan Greenspan.  Spitzer and Taibbi unleash a real pummelling on the ass-clowns of casino-capitalism!

March of the Palin Clones, or is Clowns?

Be afraid, be very afraid!

(h/t Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish)

Dean Baker: The Numbers Game

Dean Baker, economist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has an opinion piece in the Huffington Post that is a clarion call about the economic "numbers game" that has been run by the architects of the new Gilded Age.

He asks the basic question:

If this disaster was preventable and we know how to get out of it, why didn't our leaders try to stop it before it happened? Why don't they take the steps necessary now to get the economy moving again?

The answer is obvious:

The answer to both these questions is simple; the politicians work for someone else. On Election Day, the politicians might need our votes, but they won't get to be serious contenders unless they've gotten the campaign contributions of the big money crew. And the moneyed elite has been using its control of the political process to ensure that an ever larger share of the economy's output is redistributed upward in their direction.

He goes on to explain that over the past 30-years, corporations and the wealthy, have bought politicians at the local, state, and federal levels who have crafted legislation that promotes inequality, reduces safety networks for middle class and poor citizens, and marginalizes the earning capacity of the middle class via globalization.

He explains:

For example, they wrote trade rules that were designed to put downward pressure on the wages of the bulk of the U.S. workforce by placing manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in China and other developing countries. This had nothing to do with a belief in "free trade." They did not try to subject lawyers, doctors or other highly paid workers to the same sort of international competition. They only wanted international competition to put downward pressure on the wages of workers in the middle and bottom, not those at the top.

This elite has instituted a system of corporate governance that allows top executives to pilfer companies at the expense of their shareholders and its workers. Top executives are overseen only by a board of directors who owe their hugely overpaid sinecures to the executives they supervise. And of course the Wall Street barons themselves are given a license to gamble with the implicit promise that government picks up their tab when they lose.

As this blog has written (here, here, here, and here), neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are interested in providing a sustainable framework, where the majority of Americans can get a quality education, pursue meaningful life long employment, and engage in building a dream of a more equitable and fair world.  Instead, both parties pursue a scorched-earth policy against the majority of the country's citizens, by providing greater benefits to the top 1% of the population, while pushing the remaining middle-class into perpetual debt and eventual pauperdom.

Unfortunately, the propagandists keep the masses well agitated and entertained through truly mind-warping concepts like:

• Did Bill and Hillary kill Vince Foster?
• The OJ case.
• 9-11 was a conspiracy committed by the Bush junta!
• Was Barack Obama born in the USA?
• The rise of Barack's Socialist/Fascist/African dystopia!
• Obama is a Muslim terrorist sympathizer!
• Anything said by Sarah Palin
• Anna Nicole's drugged corpse
• Kate and Jon's idiotic children and their ridiculous lives.
• Octo-Mom
• Michael Jackson's court cases, pedophile accusations, and finally his drugged corpse

Only when the masses realize how they have been completely sold out by the politicans and their own citizens, will anything meaningful begin to occur.

Hallowed Ground and Charlatans...

There has been a lot of banter recently about WTC/ Ground Zero site as being hallowed ground.  For those who lost family members in the devastating terrorist attacks, the site no doubt invokes many passions and notions of what is sacred.  However, the argument that is being offered is not about Ground Zero per se, but about the appropriate manner of land usage surrounding the site and lower Manhattan specifically.

McClatchy Press has a good summary of the debate currently raging in the MSM about the proposed Cordoba cultural center to be constructed at Park51 place, two blocks from Ground Zero.  I'll highlight a few of the important points.

• Current plans for the cultural center include, "a 13-story, $100 million multi-use facility that's modeled after the city's popular 92nd Street Y. It would house a pool, gymnasium, a 500-seat auditorium for public events, and a Sept. 11 memorial, in addition to a prayer space."  Portraying the center, one that will ostensibly be used primarily as a gymnasium and memorial to the 9-11 victims, as solely and explicitly as a mosque, is simply dishonest.
• No one religion or ethnicity was targeted during the attack.  People from numerous countries and many religions, including Islam, died on that day.  All those people died because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
• The article provides some of the other commercial and non-profit activities within proximity of Ground Zero:  a strip club called the New York Dolls gentleman's club, an off-track betting parlor and smaller mosque that's been there for four decades. The New York Daily News recently tallied the businesses within a three-block area of the World Trade Center site — 17 pizza shops, 18 bank branches, 11 bars, 10 shoe stores and "17 salons where a girl can get her lady parts groomed."
• The people behind the center have been applauded by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, as voices of religious moderation and have assisted America's state department and intelligence units against violent extremism.

Although a number of prominent politicians, such as NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have supported the proposed cultural center, many others have issued vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements.  For example, Newt Gingrich stated that because Saudi Arabia does not permit churches and synagogues in their country, then it is natural that Americans should equally be permitted to engage in such territorial and religious bigotry.  Apparently the former Speaker of the House of Representatives is unable to remember that the US constitution's first amendment explicitly and unequivocally guarantees the right to individual religious worship:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Equally, perennial buffoon Sarah Palin, has demanded that Muslims "refudiate" the project.  As an American, she is entitled to her own demented view of a flat earth-centric universe; however, she is not entitled to her own exclusive language.  Palin is a dangerous and deranged demagogue who is interested solely in extending the cult of Sarah to television viewers and right-wing radio listeners in America's racist and conservative conclaves.  Her bizarre contribution to the argument, while confusing to those of us in the reality-based universe, serve to divide Americans and further inflame international hostilities towards the nation as a whole.

Anytime government in collusion with popular sentiment serves to undermine the liberties and rights of law-abiding minorities, then it is not a matter of democracy, but a question of injustice.  America has a long and sordid history of intolerance, bigotry, and violence against minority groups.  Do we really need to be reminded that the only reason America exists today, is because it murdered its original inhabitants, stole their land, and broke nearly every treaty ever signed with them in the past 200+ years?  We and civil minded Americans should step back and think about what Abraham Lincoln said on his first Presidential inaugural address to the citizens of America:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Quote of the Day: Palin is the "retarded" clone of Dubya

We have already given one obviously unqualified Western governor a chance to wreck the country in the last decade, and not even the Republican Party that continues to defend and like Bush is so clueless and self-destructive that it would go to the country with a female version of the disaster we just experienced.

According to Daniel Larson at the "American Conservative" magazine, the chances of Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) successfully gaining the nomination of the Republican party in 2012 is zero.  As the above quote elaborates, Palin represents the absolute worst aspects of George W. Bush: evangelical religiosity, ignorance of  both domestic and foreign policy, irrationality, pettiness when confronting criticism, and easily manipulated.  In addition, given establishment requirements, party support, and corporate influences, Larson concludes that it is near impossible to imagine her ascendancy.

It pains me to write about this ignoramus or any possibility that she and the maladroits around her may inflict even more damage to the world than has been done by the Bush Administration (i.e. denial of climate change, destroying the American economy, waging two unsuccessful wars in Middle Eastern countries... etc.).  Palin  herself is representative of both the mindless political theater and the absurd anti-intellectualism that defines so much of American life.  Like Seinfeld, she represents a reality that "nothingness" is somehow a virtue.  Instead of insightful discussions on different policies that may elevate millions out of unemployment and end the Great Recession, we are bombarded with fluff pieces over what Caribou Barbie will say next and whether the Teabag express and their racist invective will shutter the Obama presidency.

Surprise, Republicans and Sarah Palin Lie Again!

Whereas all politicians and their paid hacks in the MSM constantly lie and ply the public with erroneous data, deliberately misleading statements, and more-often-than-not propaganda, few entities are as skilled in dissembling as the Republican Party.  Case in point is a recent flare up on the right-wing news cycle by Caribou-Barbie (aka Sarah "I'm an idiot" Palin), in which she accused the Obama administration of deliberately not waiving a 1920 law, called the Jones Act, which "requires all shipping between U.S. ports or in U.S. coastal waters to be carried in U.S.-flag ships that are owned and crewed by U.S. citizens." (Kevin Drum, MotherJones.com).

As McClatchy Press states:

From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act.

The Republican talking point is that the Obama administration is preventing much needed foreign vessels from engaging in clean-up efforts arising from the Deepwater Horizon rupture, which still remains uncapped to this day.

The central problem with this bit of hysterics is that "Maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn't an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn't blocked anything."  Furthermore, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said that no Jones Act waivers were necessary, since all the activities were occurring outside the 3-mile limit to which the act was applicable.

On Tuesday the State Department announced that new offers of aid would be accepted from 12 foreign countries and international organizations, but spokesman P.J. Crowley noted that booms donated by Mexico, Norway and Brazil had been in use since May 11,and that 24 foreign vessels from nine foreign countries already have been helping with the cleanup.

With the exception of McClatchy, most in the press did not find it odd that ex-Governor Palin (technically 1/2-term Governor and full time moron), who claimed to understand oil politics better than any past or present governor, doesn't understand the basic facts surrounding the maritime law she is quoting.  Senator John McCain, another lying dingbat, stated that the Jones Act was subverting the recovery and was costing Americans jobs!  Others were quick to realize that the preening of the Republicans had little to do with maritime conservation or assisting the Gulf coast community, but rather an attempt to push for the removal of a federal law that limited foreign interests from controlling maritime trade within US waters.

The perennial willingness of Republicans to sell out national interests to the first multinational corporation with a fist-full of dollars, is as close to treasonous as it gets.

Deepwater Horizon: Spill, baby, Spill...

"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty." - Bill Maher

On April 20th 2010 the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling platform located approximately 80 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, was critically damaged by an explosion.   Eleven workers were lost at sea and are presumed dead.  Initial estimates provided by operators of the platform stated that the rig may have had as much as 700,000 gallons of diesel on board and 1,000 barrels a day of petroleum were leaking out of the broken wellhead.

Two days after the initial explosion the entire platform sunk.   New assessments indicate that the amount of petroleum leaking out of the ruptured wellhead is approximately 5,000 barrels a day; five times the original estimate.  At least six million litres of petroleum have spilled so far, according to U.S. Coast Guard, making this incident the worst U.S. oil spill since the infamous Exxon Valdez.  In addition, millions of animals, including 1.8 million migratory waterfowl, are at risk.  The potential environmental/economic damage extends across the entire aquatic zone adjacent to the Louisiana coast, which is abundant in shrimp, oysters and other marine life.  The state's aquaculture industry, the largest in the lower 48 states, is worth $1.8-billion annually.

News reports are emerging that BP (the facility’s operator) de-emphasized the risk of a catastrophe in risk analysis’ it submitted to the U.S. government as recently as last year.  BP claimed that it was
"unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur" and in the event of such an unlikely situation, "due to the distance to shore and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."  As of today, the oil mass has already reached the Louisiana shoreline and substantial levels of heavy oil contained within a 1,500 square kilometer oil slick is anticipated to wash ashore in Mississippi on Saturday, before reaching Alabama on Sunday, and Florida on Monday.

According to the federal Minerals Management Service, since 2001 there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions in the American controlled Gulf of Mexico.   Occupational health and safety management under the previous Bush administration was neutered.  Republican hacks, corporate yes-men, and people who had spent their entire careers fighting OSHA were placed in positions of authority.  Policies were then created to allow industries to set their own standards of compliance.   A culture of indifference to human life and the environment, which was the trademark of the "toxic Texan", became the national standard.

With the actual consequences of Mr. Bush’s deregulatory framework and anti-environment policies becoming clearer, the dunces of the Republican Party, who made "Drill baby drill" their call to arms during the 2008 federal election, have suddenly gone silent on this issue.  The Wasilla whack-job (Ms. Palin) has yet to provide an intelligent response to the catastrophic risk she demanded Americans accept so that they could drive their Hummers and fat-asses to their anti-tax and anti-government Tea Party rallies.

Mr. Obama on the other hand, who during his election campaign vigorously defended the position that no offshore drilling should be permitted on America’s coastlines, reversed himself several weeks earlier and allowed Atlantic drilling to proceed in an attempt to garner the support of Republicans for the passage of a global warming bill.  The hypocrisy and sheer spinelessness of this president to abandon the principles for which he was elected to execute is staggering.  Unlike the daft feces-throwing monkeys of the Republican Party, Mr. Obama promised America he would deliver real change and not simply continue on with the policies of the most hated administration in the history of the nation.

The damage is now done.  Millions of litres of toxic sludge will continue to contaminate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the shorelines of the Southern states.  Wildlife will die, ecosystems will be destroyed, and the lives and welfare of those people and communities that depend on these commons will be decimated.

Republicans and Idiot America

Above are the results of a poll conducted by Research 2000 on behalf of the liberal blog DailyKos. It outlines the current opinions of those who are self-described Republicans. For those who have been paying attention to the nearly pornographic display of self-assured stupidity that accounts for political discourse from the so-called real Americans, the above results are expected.

The Economist magazine attempts to decompress the numbers as it relates to the American population at large.  While Bruce Bartlett, former George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan official, charges that "between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid."  He further notes, that he does not consider himself to be a standing member of the lunatic fringe party.  A position that he expounded in his 2006 book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

What should be noted, is that affiliation to the Republican party is at historic lows, with recent polls placing popular support between 21-24%.   With moderate conservatives fleeing the party in the aftermath of the disastrous Bush years and the proliferation of anti-establishment factions, like the tea baggers and right-wing militia movements, the Republican base has been reduced to the cultists and Southerners.  It is not surprising then that these people, being not the most educated, socially mobile, or economically viable, would have regressive and anti-modernist views.  However, to believe that Obama is a socialist, Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is more competent to run the nation, and that homosexuals should be purged from public schools, takes a level of ignorance that one would typically find amongst the illiterate citizens of third world banana republics.

The Cult of Personality- Mr. Obama & Liberals

Glenn Greenwald has a wonderful post explaining how those on the political right, with George W. Bush, and on the left, with current US president Obama, voluntarily abdicated rationality and independence to engage in hero-worship of their beloved leaders. He elaborates

Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom are similar in kind to those whose reaction to Obama is dominated by their view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They're also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who -- like a loved one or close friend or religious leader -- must be protected and defended at all costs.

A year into his administration, Mr. Obama appears either unable or unwilling to exorcise the demons of corporatism, militarism, and crony-capitalism that have long possessed congress and made any real reform, in favor of the public interest, impossible. Whether it is the promised reforms to Washington's corrupt and as usual politics or putting an end to the many reckless and undemocratic Bush era policies, a great many of those on the left who once believed Mr. Obama's exhubrant rheotric, are seething at the lack of change. As Bob Herbert of the New York Times said in his column, "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House."

Palin versus Gore on Climate Change

I have made no attempt to deny over the past year my utter contempt for Sarah Palin, otherwise to be spoken of as Caribou Barbie, the Wasilla Whack-Job, or the grand priestess of American theo-fascist buffoonery. Until now, I had decided to ignore writing about her and the zombie masses that have flocked to her media-manufactured book tour out of sheer disdain. However, the Washington Post, in an attempt to completely repudiate itself as a newspaper, has decided to publish today (9 Dec. 2009) an op-ed written (or purportedly so) by Caribou Barbie, which lambastes scientists as opportunists and frauds, scientific debate as politicized drivel, and climate change mitigation as a massive exercise in liberal taxation and socialism.

I want to remind people, exactly what Sarah Palin believes in. First, she is a bigot who stated to her father, upon returning from a brief stint at Hawaii Pacific University, that she was "uncomfortable" around Asians and Pacific Islanders. “They were a minority type thing,” her father says, “and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” She makes the claim in her pseudo-biography/ manifesto that she had a great deal of "affection" for her gay roommate from college (which no one can find), but opposes all rights for gay couples, opposes allowing gays to serve openly in the military, opposes gay-inclusive hate crimes legislation, and opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Second, she has no background and zero credentials to discuss any subject on science. Her entire history is one that dismisses empirical fact and core scientific knowledge for superstition, innuendo, and demonstrably false lies whenever it serves her personal or political needs. Palin is an evangelical Christian that believes in creationism, thinks that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and proposes that fundamentalist dogma should be taught in every public school; she is an adherent of end-of-times theology, which involves the conversion of the believers of Judaism to Christianity and the rapture; she has made proclamations for the removal of the constitutional separation of church-and-state; and she is against cell stem research or any scientific research that she arbitrarily dislikes. With respect to climate change, she has repeatedly clung to the odious supposition, without providing any corroborating evidence, that there is no man-made (i.e. anthropogenic) element to current atmospheric or climate changes.

In the WaPo op-ed, she specifically calls the stolen emails from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia, proof that, "Leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals." Unwilling to address the science itself or the overwhelming consensus generated by scientists and climate researchers across the planet for more than 20-years, she states that, "while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes."

This woman is an absolute ignoramus and demagogue, who will lie and distort any fact to empower herself and the theo-fascists in the Republican Party that have surrounded her.

In response to this exhibition of white-trash duncery and recycled claptrap, Al Gore has been asked on repeated occasions to address her complaints about the entire Climate change debate and the current United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen (COP15). He states the obvious:

The global warming deniers persist in this air of unreality. After all, the entire north polar icecap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade. What do they think is causing this?
The mountain glaciers in every region of the world are melting, many of them at an accelerated rate, threatening drinking supplies -- drinking water supplies and agricultural water supplies. We have these record storms, drought, floods, fires, three deaths [sic] in the American West, climate refugees beginning now, expected to rise to the hundreds of millions unless we take action.

These effects are taking place all over the world exactly as predicted by the scientists, who have warned for years that, if we continue putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every day, the accumulation -- that's going to trap lots more heat, raise temperatures, and cause all of these consequences that are already beginning.

Reasonable people can argue and dispute matters of opinion, but facts as to whether humans have injected extraordinary levels of greenhouse-effect producing gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is not subject to debate; it is a fact. There is no dispute that ocean levels are rising, whether the oceans are becoming acidified due to excess C02 in the atmosphere placed there by man, or even if this past decade and the decade of the 1990's have been the warmest in recorded human history. All these statements are facts that anyone can independently verify.

The twin forces of globalization and human tribalism have locked us all into a fearful downward spiral and there appears little hope that the majority of the human species is equipped to adjust to a low carbon economy, much less understand the dire situation we have created.

Elizabeth Warren: Banks are Jerking us ALL!

At the recent Buttonwood conference held at New York's Pace University and hosted by the Economist magazine, Elizabeth Warren (the TARP overseer) told Yahoo Tech Ticker that:

This is a moment when all around the country people are saying we've had it about up to here with these large financial institutions that want to write the rule then take our money. I find it astonishing that they have the nerve to show up and say, 'I'm a big financial institution. I took your money. And now I'm going to lobby against anything that might offer some protection to ordinary families in this marketplace'

To contextualize, both the American consumer and government are grossly over-leveraged. The gross public debt is estimated to exceed 100% of US GDP ($13 Trillion) next year. Estimates place all government liabilities, from Treasury bonds to Medicare to military pensions, at a value of $63.8 Trillion (490% of GDP). In the meantime, the dollar continues its decline against other currencies, unemployment is rising, foreclosures increased by 5% in Q3 2009, manufacturing industries are running significantly under capacity and at historical lows, and yet the big banks are making record profits and handing out equally obscene bonuses.

The real question is why there aren't angry pitchforked masses storming 'The Bastille' so to speak today?

The hyper-partisan tea-baggers are certainly not a real source of protestation, for their objective is get more "real Americans" or Sarah Palin-esque clones who are dismally educated congenital corporatists that also happen to be WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon persons) back into the White House.

History on the other hand is replete with examples, the French Revolution but one, where the public realizing the criminal excesses of their political and aristocratic masters demand through civil uprising to remove the sclerotic and incompetent regime du jour. Unless the oligarchs of casino-capitalism and the congressional stooges who have been bought and sold like disposable sex-workers are removed (i.e. off with their heads!), America will continue to decline. The Obama administration has proven itself incompetent or at least unwilling to truly challenge big business and deliver the "change" that they endlessly advertised during his presidential campaign. It remains to be determined whether those who voted for change will have the courage to inflict a lasting and necessary punishment on the Democrats and Republicans, in order to rid the nation of these maleficent corporate parasites.

Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin | vanityfair.com

Andrew Sullivan's criticism of Sarah Palin during the 2008 election was devastating and continues to be unyielding. As a conservative commentator, he dispels any doubt that her choice as VP was a grotesque political folly and perhaps, to the persistent detriment of the Republicans, the single most important reason why independent and moderate voters thought John McCain was unfit to be President. Sullivan excoriates Palin in his review of the Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece, which in itself is an examination of the duplicity, fraud, and freakishness of the candidate of "real Americans."

Sullivan states:

The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.

As an aside, America at the federal level is not a democracy. America is a plutocracy, as it is defined by the "fusion of money and government" and controlled by a small elite of wealthy individuals (including corporations). If one recognizes this fact, it then is not unexpected that the titular (public) leaders of both predominant parties are often populist molded figureheads who espouse so-called average middle-American sensibilities. As an example, in the 2008 elections, Republican candidates McCain, Giuliani, and Romney each were multi-millionaires and portrayed themselves as vanguards of entrepreneurs, middle-class people, and the religiously devout. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were all millionaires and equally pledged allegiance to America's poor, minority groups, and middle class values. Earlier this year when Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), Majority Whip, attempted to pass legislation to provide homeowners with the legal option of changing mortgage terms, bank lobbyists assisted in defeating the bill. Durbin stated, "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."