A Thrill Junkie in Charge?

I spent much of my morning surveying both the MSM, designated “pundits”, and the on-line community vis-à-vis the selection of Palin by McCain. Dems and progressives are generally delighted and having fun expressing outrage (feigned and otherwise,) intellectually honest conservatives are aghast, and –as might be expected – the designated members of the echo chamber (Gingrich and his ilk) are all in false congratulation mode over the “boldness” of his choice.

My thoughts move quickly from the obvious (clearly a political choice from a man who has put the perceived needs of his campaign ahead of governance issues for our country) to the less obvious: what this says about a man who has, indeed, faced death, and who should know better than to taunt the reaper.

As at least one conservative writer commented, the ultimate hubris behind this decision shows that John McCain clearly believes that he doesn’t need a qualified vice-president to serve in any meaningful way the day after the election. He has no intention of making room for even an Al Gore, much less a Dick Cheney. Those advisory roles will no doubt be played by the neo-conservative Feiths and Liebermans in his circle.

But even beyond that, McCain has either never for one moment considered the possibility that he might die in office – or he truly doesn’t give a shit about the future of this country. Those are the only options available for a man who has argued that the U.S. faces some of the gravest threats in its history.

So if we assume that the latter is not true, then we must examine the former: that he has failed to achieve the central benefit available to anyone who has brushed up against their own mortality: the knowledge that life is fragile and can be stolen in a heartbeat; the understanding that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

This fits well with other things we know about McCain: That in addition to his time as a POW, he has crashed at least two airplanes in circumstances that were also life-threatening, and that he likes to “roll the dice” so recklessly that his campaign has barred him from casinos for the duration. What we have hear folks is a thrill-junkie, someone who delights in flipping the bird to the so-called fickle finger of fate.

That may make for a great personal narrative. It might even be amusing and novel on the political stage. But is it really the temperament Americans want in their President? The high-roller may be fun to watch at the table, because none of us has to go home with him at the end of the night when he loses.

But the thought of this man – and that attitude – at the helm of US foreign policy should send shivers up the spine of any thinking citizen.

Best so far

As he did last night on CNN, Paul Begala takes the sharpest knife so far to the McCain campaign over their selection of Palin.

But that's just from the Democratic perspective. Sullivan picks up one of the more intellectually honest Republican reactions.

But I think I like this one best. It's from one of Sullivan's conservative readers, who puts it on a broader landscape. He sees it as the final demise of the whole nasty mess that is movement conservatism.

A Gift for the Season

Lots of what you need to know about the new Republican VP nominee.

There IS Hope for America

From the DNC. These guys are from Missouri!

P.S. Didn't Hillary Rock?!

Deconstructing Stupid

This kind of shit really pisses me off. Enough that I went searching through the archives there, looking back over David Ignatius’ constant bemoaning of partisan politics when they were being played most effectively by Republicans. I couldn’t find anything! Imagine that!

All of this began when the Republicans decided to impeach a President for lying about a blow-job “because we can” as Newt Gingrich explained at the time. That began the era of truly ugly, partisan power politics that Ignatius so bemoans. Nixon may have started it with the racial coding of his campaign and the dirty tricks of his administration, but it has reached its gross and ugly fruition in this Bush Administration. Never in the history of this country has one party so abused the power under its control to achieve its agenda, both at the Executive level through power-corrupted cabinet officials and through its legislative leadership and behavior. And when the American people finally woke up and elected a Democratic majority in 2002, suddenly a supermajority of 60 became necessary to get anything done, because issues from small to large became subject to filibuster. This was a breathtaking change in how our government had ever functioned up until that time and we accept it now as a given standard.

This is what the Republicans have done to our government.

But in the face of the continuing Rovian bile that substitutes for reason in Republican campaigns, Democrats shouldn’t fight back?

The “Get Even” bunch?! You’ve got to be kidding me! The Democratic leadership of this last Congress could easily have drawn up Articles of Impeachment against this President, and even the least informed citizen could have helped to write the list of crimes. Yet stupidly, IMHO, they believed themselves faced with the choice of actually pushing forward some legislation that would benefit real people, or spend their two years trying to hold the Bush administration accountable.

So spare me the post-partisan lullabye. The Republicans continue to demonstrate every day that the only ball they know how to play is hardball.

Game on.

h/t to Glenzilla, who picks it up as part of a larger theme.

Spread it Around

I am finally comforted to see that the Obama campaign has both the skill and will to fight back. The only question I have is: Why only run this in Atlanta?

Worse than FISA

My computer is still not back, but I am braving the waters of suicidally-slow response to post a link to HuffPost that you will (hopefully) be hearing more about.

A bit of background:

In case you have not made your living negotiating the sausage-making process of government, you may not realize how important "rules-making" is. Many of the most horrific government policies have come not through the legislative process, but through "rules making" that would never survive legislative review

I live with this each day in my non-profit environment. If you get to write the definition of "homeless" for example, you can instantly erase huge portions of the homeless population! Did you know that most homeless kids are not homeless? As long as they have ten friends willing to let them spend the night three nights over the course of a month they're all good!

But I digress....

FISA was a battle lost. And the almost inevitable consequence of failing to check the erosion of rights is........

more erosion of rights.

And this time, all we get is a hearing, not a vote.

Blog Interrupted

My trusty laptop has become very unstable this week, and is in the process of having herself wiped out in preparation for a reconfiguration (just in case she doesn't survive!)

I hope to be back in a couple of days.

Signing off for the Weekend

I made several posts tonight, and so hope to provide sufficient amusement for the weekend. I'm off to Milwaukee to deliver one Angel and cuddle another.

Calling McCain Out

I think it's self-evident that the on-line left has had a positive influence on the MSM -- to the extent that it has had any influence at all. If nothing else we have called them out on their stupidity, their willingness to be used at tools, and their general abandonment of the public responsibilities of the 4th Estate.

But in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, Joe Klein has decided to morph into someone who has been pretty wonderful lately. Here he calls McCain out.

Great Snark

I have to give Andrew Sullivan full credit for finding this one, and for a post so aptly named.

Unfit for Service

While we all listen to McCain ratchet up the collective testerone level on the issue of Georgia, I think it’s a good time to remind people of the nasty side of this man who wants the power to make war.

This article from April apparently caused a bit of a stir in the McCain camp when it first ran. They were actually afraid it might catch on in the media and cause them trouble. This is perhaps the first time they under-estimated the loyalty of their media base.

I’ll just give you the highlights, which begin with an accounting of the one incident that has been publicized, a 1992 encounter with fellow Republican Charles Grassley:

It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."

McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.

Wow. No punches. I guess that makes it okay. A second Republican weighs in:

Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."

A spokesman for McCain's campaign said he would be unavailable for an interview on the subject of his temper. But over the years, no one has written more intimately about McCain's outbursts than McCain himself. "My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern," he wrote in a 2002 memoir. "I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's."

That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges, does not often serve the pubic’s interest. Ya think?

…"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone who I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life."

He defied authority, ridiculed other students, sometimes fought. The nicknames hung on him at Episcopal mocked his hair-trigger feistiness: "Punk" and "McNasty."

And lest we think that McCain has, as the oldest candidate ever for President, has finally mastered his demon:

In 2007, during a heated closed-door discussion with Senate colleagues about the contentious immigration issue, he angrily shouted a profanity at a fellow Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, an incident that quickly found its way into headlines...

Reports recently surfaced of Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, taking offense when McCain called him "boy" once too often during a 2006 meeting, a story that McCain aides confirm while playing down its importance. "Renzi flared and he was prickly," McCain strategist Mark Salter said. "But there were no punches thrown or anything."

Catch the persistent framing here? McCain must have a reputation for actually coming to blows with people who tick him off, if anything less is just not a big deal.

Salter, who has co-written five books with McCain that, among other things, explore the origins of his feistiness, said he thinks McCain's temper first became an issue after an incident in 1989, during McCain's first term in the Senate.

The nomination of a beleaguered John Tower to become defense secretary was already in trouble when Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a conservative Democrat who later became a Republican, helped doom it by voting against Tower. A furious McCain, believing that Shelby had reneged on a commitment of support, accosted him, got within an inch of his nose and screamed at him. News of the incident swiftly spread around the Capitol….

Part of the paradox of McCain is that many of the old targets of his volcanic temper are now his campaign contributors. Former Phoenix mayor Paul Johnson is one example. In 1992, during a private meeting of Arizona officials over a federal land issue that affected the state, a furious McCain openly questioned Johnson's honesty. "Start a tape recorder -- it's best when you get a liar on tape," McCain said to others in the meeting, according to an account of their "nose-to-nose, testosterone-filled" argument that Johnson later provided to reporters. But Johnson, who once was quoted as saying that he thought McCain was "in the area of being unstable," today says that he has mellowed…

Wow, well that’s a comfort.

And this is the person that polls show more American’s feel confident in trusting our military to than Barack Obama, the cool-headed, never-seems-to-get flustered man of compromise?! Have we lost our collective minds?

If George Bush – who was never more than a cheerleader and a pretend cowboy – can wreak such havoc on the world and the US reputation in it – just imagine what could happen with this hair-triggered bully in charge!

The Democrats need to refresh the mushroom-cloud ad that took Goldwater out of contention – and this time, it would be more justified.

Feeding the Beast

Leaving his digs at TPM, Josh Marshall has a post today at The Washington Monthly that is worth reading.

But I take issue with this:

When Baghdad finally fell, reaction in the Arab world took many forms, each intense and ambiguous. But one unmistakable variety was a sort of chagrin over the fact that it had taken the tanks of a Western power to rid Iraq of what was an unmistakably hideous regime. Antiwar liberals, if they were frank with themselves, couldn't help but feel a parallel moral unease. As much as President Bush had acted as a bully on the international stage, as much as the lead-up to war had been destructive, clumsy, and dishonest, by early April the war he started had brought down a regime of death squads and secret police, foreign aggression, and internal oppression. Those are things liberals are supposed to oppose, and usually do. Yet those who opposed Bush's war--even with good reason--had to concede that their preferred course would have left the torture chambers running indefinitely.

There is nothing stated here to argue with, except the logical consequences of the position!

Shall we invade Darfur? Genocide is happening there every day while the entire world stands by silently.

How about Zimbabwe? Certainly Mugabe’s brutality towards his own people is no less heinous than Sadam’s was.

So why Iraq? If the United States is going to set itself up as the moral police in the world, why make Iraq our first example? The Republicans had hissy fits when Clinton finally – belatedly – decided to act in Yugoslavia…. So why the sudden urge to become the world’s primary defender of human rights?

Oh, that’s right, the oil.

Every time a liberal writer “admits” that if leftists had their way Saddam Hussein would still be in power they feed the distortion machine of the right – leaving us all in peril.

Either the US is taking on the role of the world’s policeman – fighting war after war in countries that most American citizens can’t find on the map – or we join the world of realpolitic and intervene only when we must.

None of the abuses of the Hussein regime in Iraq ever rose to the level we have all read about in our newspapers happening every day in Darfur. If the US was going to play policeman of the world’s morality – why not there?

Oh, that’s right, they had no oil.

Refreshing Our Memories

In response to Russia's invasion of Georgia McCain said, among other things, that NATO should have taken heed of GW's urging and accepted Georgia into NATO, and that they should "revisit" their decision and do so now.

Had that happened, we would be engaged in ANOTHER WAR right now. Do you think McCain doesn't understand that? Of course he does, he is all for MORE WAR.

Be Very Afraid

And be glad that John McCain isn't already President.

Hell Freezes Over

Mark your calendars, I am actually linking to a video with Paris Hilton. If you haven't seen this, you must.

Let us all do our part to help this move viral. It's exactly the sort of response the McCain camp deserves.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Fight Back

First the disclaimer: I only agree with about 90% of this post, and I think the language is way over the top in describing Obama. Having said that, this blog assumes a certain Democratic orientation that permits -- nay requires -- this type of inside-the-family critique when it's called for.

If Obama doesn't begin to fight back a little harder against the slime being lobbied his way, we could actually wind up losing this thing.

I promise to organize some really interesting dirt on McCain to post very soon.

Just Shoot Me

I have to admit, this ad is effective in its own way, but PLEASE STOP! Nothing is more galling to progressives that lived through the Reagan era than the deifying of the man that has occurred since he left office.

Reagan was not responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union; the Soviets were -- by stupidly spending their nation into near bankruptcy by overspending on military expenditures they couldn't afford (among other things). Sound familiar?

Reagan carved the words "tax and spend liberal" into the media granite while racking up the highest deficits of any President in history. Sound familiar?

And Reagan was a public embarrassment for much of his time in office. Remember the great line about trees emitting most of the carbon dioxide in the air? Remember catsup as a vegetable in school lunches? Sound familiar?

And Reagan was another Republican who couldn't let little things like the law stand in the way of what he wanted to do oversees, like sell weapons to Nicaraguan terrorists, oops, I mean, Freedom Fighters. Sound familiar?

And the Reagan administration was also full of people who were never held accountable because....... they couldn't remember! Sound familiar?

And only Reagan had Alzheimer's disease; the rest were just liars.

So now Obama is going to sell himself to the American people by comparing himself to Reagan?!

Just shoot me, please?

Big Brother at the Border

The Washington Post exposes a little-known aspect of our new no-privacy country.

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

If this was going to be applied in China during the Olympics, I guess it would be getting more media attention.