McCain is done, he’s an awful candidate.  NoBama is simply benefiting from the financial mess that Democrats caused. Barney was deep in Freddie’s Fannie.

At this point, I think McCain is trying to look forward.  There is a strong possibility that he will lose this election, he has a running mate that is rapidly becoming a liability to him (the findings of the ethics panel are out and Palin did apparently abuse power in Troopergate), and he needs to focus on what possible political future he still has.  If McCain comes out looking like a wingnut at this point, he will have no future in any area of American politics—including the Senate.  I don’t think this is how he wants to go out.

I think McCain lost his shit for at least awhile. Then at some point someone told him how disgusting this all looked. Or he took a long hard look at it himself and decided to go out with a little dignity. The attacks weren’t working, and if you’re going to lose you might as well do it with a little bit of grace.

Palin, on the other hand will be a wingnut hero for some time.

These are exactly the kind of folks McCain has hitched his wagon to, and they might have just enough pull to give him the win. Be afraid. Be very afraid. He’s gotta dance at least twice with those who brung him.

Obama has chosen Good and McCain has chosen Evil. I think Obama should be at least a little more evil for the win.

I have a couple of co-workers sho seem reasonable. One is a Jamican immigrant who reciently became a US citizen. He was hardcore Obama until fellow togues-speaker Palin got the VP slot. Other one is a sensible Anglo woman and wife of a Gulf War vet. She was all anti-war and thought W was an idiot for going into Iraq. But she thinks Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist 5th Collumnist. She “learned” this in her church. She knows better.

Third coworker is getting married to a current Iraq war vet who gets a minor disabilty payment. They hate W, but they hate Obama even more. They crossed over to vote for Hillary as part of Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos. Good think we tipped Texas for Obama with our hybrid primary/caucus system.

The assholes in this video will win it for McCain.

McCain’s political legacy has already been determined whether he can redeem himself or not.  He leads his party at the moment, and he’s decided to lead it off a cliff and into a steaming pile of already-flung shit.  Whether his personal legacy can be as a tragic hero who finds an honorable voice at some time in the future or he’ll die bitter and angry like some toxic combination of Joe DiMaggio and Idi Amin is to be detemined, but the political legacy is already made.

My guess?  He’ll get booed over and over in the weeks to come, by smaller and smaller audiences.  Palin will soon go out there on her own, supporting Congressional candidates, raising her profile with the base, and will be seen as a Republican front-runner for 2012.  And if that seems like an absurd idea, then you haven’t watched that absurd party much in the last few months, much less the last few years.

For the good of the country, I hope some adults emerge from that kids’ table they call a political party.

Gotta love how McCain went out of his way to say “citizen” because all those rats in the audience would gnaw him to shreds if he said Obama is an American.

“Strategies and tactics.”  I gotta believe that what’s going on here is a comprehensive strategy to de-legitimize the Obama presidency.  It starts with a foundation of hardcore nutjobs who believe that Obama is the Antichrist, an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist, and, of course, an Angry Black Man.  Build on top of that a structure of MSM in-the-tankism, purported voter fraud, and a get-out-the-vote machine gone totally haywire.  The latter item comes into play once the John Stossels of the media sewer gain some traction with the notion that so many of these eager, young voters are too stupid to be allowed to vote.

If they build it right, this is a structure that will provide shelter for the base.  It won’t matter to them if Obama wins by a landslide, he still won’t have a “mandate” because he stole the election, he’s corrupt, and he’s dangerous.

John McCain is an American hero, right?  Sarah Palin is just like you and me, isn’t she? They would win all 50 states in a fair fight, wouldn’t they?

Rolo, I’ll respectfully disagree, subject to future behavior changes by McCain.

I think - okay, I hope - that this is why he fought back against the worst smears today. I think he realized that, whoever wins, has to lead this country, and he can’t de-legitimize an Obama Presidency.

It’s possible that he thought that he was just fighting to win, and someone finally knocked it through his thick skull that he was doing more than that.

I could be wrong; I’m not a McCain apologist in most matters. But in this one, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt if he calls off Palin and continues pushing back.

Of course, for all I know, tomorrow, I might be embarrassed that I posted this. But for now, I’d hate to deny the possibility that he’s trying to do the right thing.

I think he’s an old man and has been making decisions badly for quite a while. But back in 2000, he wasn’t keen on the irrational zealots of the far right, and said so.
He learned through defeat he wasn’t going to win that way, so he sucked up to them and won a nomination.

But now, election time is growing close, and Obama’s ahead in the polls. And his base doesn’t want to cheer deregulation or American imperialism. They want the man who is most likely to be the next president of the US dead. They may riot, they may go into the woods as survivalist militia groups—we don’t know what they will do, really,  but they are truly near panic over Obama and they are scaring McCain.

He tried to talk sense into them, but that doesn’t seem possible. If anything, they may be more likely to abandon McCain to follow some fringe group.

I’m gonna go with LHW on this, maybe I’m one of those soft headed liberals who was fond of 1999 era McCain (not that I would have voted for him for dog catcher even then) who likes to believe he has some shred of decency.

Sometimes I think we misdirect our rage at the right wing politicians when the real villains are the masses who love them. We like to think it’s all top down tyranny but it’s not. It’s populist tyranny, that’s what fascism is, animated by the worst collective impulses of the volk. The politicians and corporate overlords just use the hate to make themselves rich, maybe with the exception a few psycho true believers, SP may or may not be one of them I’m not sure…I think deep down their as scared of their vicious mob of a base as we are.

We have met the enemy and they are something like a quarter of this country’s population…And they’re not going away.

Have you seen this fake e-mails that Jerome Corsi claims he brought back from Kenya?

I am not joking when I tell you he got taken in by a Nigerian scammer and proudly brought these things back home as real.

If someone knocked it through his thick skull that he’s playing with very dangerous stuff, I’m guessing it was his own Secret Service detail.  They probably aren’t too appreciative of their charge making the job significantly more dangerous for their buddies on Obama’s detail.

I’ve had, let us say, experiences with conservatives, and they rarely operate for the moral good, but rather with a moral gloss that covers their own interests in relation to their sensation of where power is emanating from at any time.  Conservatives, generally, will bow to whatever seems to them to emanate power, but will kick someone when they are down (since they do not respond positively to anyone that they feel has no power).

But on their way, as they perform these maneuvers to establish power, they often like to pick up one or two moral tokens to decorate themselves with.

Believe me, I have seen this in action.

For instance, my father, seeing that I am down, berates me for my condition, whilst condemning me for reading philosophy when I “can’t even speak properly”.  (In his view, I should not have been aiming so high.)  Meanwhile, my mother, taking his lead, screams out, “philosophy is evil!”

It is a right-wing conservative feeding frenzy, all based on the fact that I am down, and in a position (from a conservative point of view) to be kicked.

So I remind my father of his and my mother’s vicious antics a few months later, after they’ve forgotten and cooled down a bit.

“Yes,” says my father, “Your mother was certainly out of line when she said that philosophy was evil.  On that point, she went too far!”

So they reduce their whole bloodlust and hatred in their own eyes with an excuse—on a very minor point, your mother went too far.

(Of course, what else can be expected of women, from a conservative perspective?  Aren’t they always nuts and inclined to go a little too far??—a warning about how Palin may be used.)

Jesus christ, the post AND the comments are about the most depressing things I’ve seen in LONG time.

The virtue of Bush/Cheney/Rove was knowing how to ride this kind of crazy and bend it to their will. True Wingnut Whisperers. McCain lacks that gift.

Granted, I’m writing a thesis and haven’t been reading comment threads lately, so I’m probably late to this explanation.  But… Bible Spice?  I hate her as much as any self-respecting liberal, and I can’t deny I chuckled the first time I read that, but that name just smacks of sexism to me.

“I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

Pam, that’s a tell.  He now knows it’s down the drain, finally.

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I’m not disputing that there aren’t a lot of wackadoodles in the McCain-Palin camp, lord knows we have plenty of them here in Tennessee, but some of these folks in this particular video seemed fake to me, like they were reading lines. Have we, um, checked the kerning on this one?

... but on the other side of the issue, I just saw this over at TPM which notes that the McCain campaign is certainly provoking people at their rallies and manipulating the media. They are seeding the crowd with supposedly “random” supporters to—like black conservative radio host James Harris who urged McCain to bring up the Wright issue.

So yes, the McCain campaign’s hands are plenty dirty.

Shorter McCain: I’m not saying Obama is a Commie/Arab/Socialist/terrorist/ET. I’m just saying you don’t have to be *scared* of him.

Sometimes I think we misdirect our rage at the right wing politicians when the real villains are the masses who love them. We like to think it’s all top down tyranny but it’s not. It’s populist tyranny, that’s what fascism is, animated by the worst collective impulses of the volk. The politicians and corporate overlords just use the hate to make themselves rich, maybe with the exception a few psycho true believers, SP may or may not be one of them I’m not sure…I think deep down their as scared of their vicious mob of a base as we are.

No, Lamenter, the base aren’t the only villians. The whole structure doesn’t work unless there’s a leader present who keeps the followers perpetually angry, perpetually scared, perpetually resentful. In other words, it’s both—the leaders and the followers—who are dangerous. Both of them together.

And, what Obama followers seem to you to be a vicious mob?

some of these folks in this particular video seemed fake to me, like they were reading lines. Have we, um, checked the kerning on this one?

Southern Beale, it seems to me that trying to dispute the reality of this would be exactly as pointless as the kerning-related activities of the right-wing bloggers. It seems to me that this is no joke. Maybe the statements seem like lines because they’re meant to be, in a sense. Those people learned them and they will repeat them over and over. Nonetheless, I think they believe them.

I think deep down their as scared of their vicious mob of a base as we are.

Oh, I see what you mean now Lamenter.

Maybe, but a ‘leader’ like that isn’t a leader. They are more like a catalyst. Sure, any leader is responsive to the desires of those that are led, and that is as it should be.

But a leader who acts mostly out of fear of the ‘led’ isn’t really “Leading”. And a leader who gets into that situation isn’t a good leader in the first place. They’re just a trickster who got in too deep.

he still won’t have a “mandate” because he stole the election, he’s corrupt, and he’s dangerous.

Why is it that the only people who get to dole out the mandate are the Republican base?  Because, srsly, Bush seemed to think that he had a mandate when his approval ratings were down around Nixon level, all because, well hey, at least he’s still got the Republican base, right?

I gotta believe that what’s going on here is a comprehensive strategy to de-legitimize the Obama presidency.  ...

If they build it right, this is a structure that will provide shelter for the base.  It won’t matter to them if Obama wins by a landslide, he still won’t have a “mandate” because he stole the election, he’s corrupt, and he’s dangerous.

John McCain is an American hero, right?  Sarah Palin is just like you and me, isn’t she? They would win all 50 states in a fair fight, wouldn’t they?

Ding ding ding.  rolo is correct.  LongHairedWeirdo, I respectfully believe you to be very incorrect.  The visible, vulnerable chink in the armour of your argument is this: “[McCain] realized that, whoever wins, [they have] to lead this country, and he can’t de-legitimize an Obama Presidency. “

The GOP showed clearly in the 1990s that they don’t much care if a Democrat president is unable to lead.  They don’t want<> them to be able to lead.  They want the people angry enough to turn to the GOP to solve the mess, the chaos, the “gridlock”; and they want an electorate stupid enough to turn <i>to rather than on the party that caused those problems in the first place.  If they delegitimize a Democrat presidency whilst simultaneously dumbing-down and angering-up large numbers of Americans then they can achieve this.  It worked in 2000, and the base and waverers are a lot dumber and a lot angrier than they were then.

Just one further note: Godwin’s Law is in applicable when the comparison is apt and the analogy sound.  That said, the way the GOP operates reminds me a lot of Weimar Germany: the simultaneous delegitimization of democracy and opposition, combined with the disdain felt by most in the political class for the actual working of a democracy, combined with appeals to atavistic elements of the national and individual character.  Frightening.

Funny.  Obama doesn’t remind me, at this stage, of JFK.  He reminds me of Walter Rathenau.

I’ve got a comprehensive strategy to legitimize Obama’s presidency, so screw those right-wing fucktards.

Remember when people had framed portraits of FDR or JFK hanging in their living rooms?  Obama is going to be one of those kind of presidents!

Don’t let the wingnuts get you down.  Yes, there’s a lot of nastiness out there—but it has always been there.  We have a chance to rise above it.  Get some hope, people.

I really enjoy the Right-wing high-pitched shrieking.

Sure, they’re ignorant and ugly, but you get 20 or 30 of them to bitch in unison, and it’s almost harmonic.

Here, check it out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2103071/posts

This exchange leaps out at me:

Protestor: “Palin voted to have women pay for their own rape kits. My friends shouldn’t have to pay for their own rape kits. How would you feel about that?”
McCain supporter: ”She should die!”
McCain supporter #2: ”She should pay double!”

This is some pretty strong evidence to me that among right-wing circles, they’ve started to circulate the claim that “rape kit” means “abortion.” I’m not really in touch with “movement conservatives,” but for those who are, do you guys have any idea where this idea got started and who spreads it?

Don’t let the wingnuts get you down.  Yes, there’s a lot of nastiness out there—but it has always been there.  We have a chance to rise above it.  Get some hope, people.

PB

You’re right, that is the strategy we should use. It can and probably will work, to some degree. Whether it will be enough remains to be seen.

<blockquote>I hate her as much as any self-respecting liberal, and I can

I don’t think McCain or anyone in that campaign has any control over the toxic wingnuttery.  They can respond to it, they can whip it into a frenzy, they can try to direct it a little bit, but they cannot steer it and they cannot calm it.

Too bad they chose to stir it up, then.  They’re like the character in a horror story who summons Cthulhu, tries to give him orders, and then has the audacity to be surprised when they get eaten first.

They’re like the character in a horror story who summons Cthulhu, tries to give him orders, and then has the audacity to be surprised when they get eaten first.

Exactly. A trickster who went too far.

Why wasn’t G.W.Bush ever referred to as ‘Bible Spice’, he’s lightweight religious fanatic too, but he doesn’t get compared to pop singers.

Because the comparisons to monkeys, shrubbery, and pubic hair were much funnier and more direct. 

You do have a point, though.

Why wasn’t G.W.Bush ever referred to as ‘Bible Spice’, he’s lightweight religious fanatic too, but he doesn’t get compared to pop singers.

Bush’s followers were slightly more subtle about their sexual attraction to him, as well.

Where is the sound in the video? I want sound!

McCain knows he has to tone it down and stuff Palin in the attic. I think he’s being genuinely scared by the own base he unleashed. Serves him right.

BTW, for all the stuff about how persecuted small town Americans are, the only place in this campaign that has been mocked is Chicago.

Can anyone who was voting age (or at least remembers) 1992: did Arkansas get similar treatment to the way Chicago is being treated now? I want to know if it’s a prejudice against big cities thing, or just a prejudice against the place the Democratic nominee is from.

Can anyone who was voting age (or at least remembers) 1992: did Arkansas get similar treatment to the way Chicago is being treated now? I want to know if it’s a prejudice against big cities thing, or just a prejudice against the place the Democratic nominee is from.

Little of both I think, during the Clinton era, the Limbaugh/Coulter type creatures went out of their way to characterize the president as an inbred hick, even as they did the usual “extoll small town America” schtick.

“Palin could have cleaned up most of the crime in Alaska “

Whitewashed is the term you are looking for.

I’ve lived in Chicago all my life, 30 years, and I think “the Machine” is pretty overblown at least these days. The current Daley’s power is a shadow of his father’s and while the spoils system is definitely all over the place I see more incompetence than corruption.

Really what “the Machine” is in modern times is, you get in if your daddy was somebody. I don’t see how that’s different from the South or from New England, which is why I think there’s a huge element of racial and ethnic prejudice here. When WASPS are running things it’s an “old boy network” when it’s blacks, hispanics, Irish and Italians, it’s a “machine”.

Anyway, I worked on Obama’s campaign for the Senate primary in 2004 and he was SO NOT the “Machine candidate” he was up against the state comptroller and son of a longtime Chicago pol, Dan Hynes, and Daley’s former chief of staff, Gery Chico, for God’s sake.

“Why wasn’t G.W.Bush ever referred to as ‘Bible Spice’, “

::sigh:: It’s stupid shit like this that makes it hard to take commenters seriously.  When one has to EXPLAIN one’s hyperbole to some sandal wearing PC-cop, it kinda takes the sting out of it, y’know?

WHY? you ask.  Well, gee, maybe because the Spice Girls were GIRLS?  POPpy girls? Like Palin? So applying the simile to GWB wouldn’t be APT?  Is this why hippies are such crap speech writers?

Can you really not see WHY this is such a great putdown?  In the words of Kennly Collins, “psh.”

It’s not like any of these don’t take place in strong Republican strongholds.  But the most finely tuned “machine” was considered to have been in Chicago, so any successful politician from Chicago is associated with machine politics.

JoAnne, you are greatly over-estimating the power of ‘the machine’ in Chicago. There’s certainly corrupt shit going on, don’t get me wrong. Just look at the recent attempts by the Daley administration to bypass the Shakman decrees. But really, the reason Daley won even after that story was made very, very public is not becuase we are all under a totalitarian system. Its because the majority was still not convinced that anyone else could run the city better.

Can you really not see WHY this is such a great putdown?  In the words of Kennly Collins, “psh.”

Eric, Rejector of Memez

I know this is a feminist site, and I try to moderate my language somewhat when here, but sometimes, stuff is just hilarious even if its wrong.

In my opinion, “Bible Spice” is one of those times.

When WASPS are running things it’s an “old boy network” when it’s blacks, hispanics, Irish and Italians, it’s a “machine”.

Excellent point.

Because, if Irish, Polish & Italians run a government, it must be like some kind of crazy alcoholic Eastern-European communist Mafia state where everyone says “Fuhgeddaboudit”.

When WASPS are running things it’s an “old boy network” when it’s blacks, hispanics, Irish and Italians, it’s a “machine”.

This is my perspective as someone from the North Shore and not the city, but it always seemed to me that the strength of Daley Jr.‘s administration was that he opened the machine up to non-Europeans.  In other words, you didn’t have to be Irish, Polish or Italian anymore—African-Americans and Latinos could come in, be a cog, and get their slice.  If you’re going to have a machine run everything, may as well make sure it benefits as many people as possible, right?

” Acceptance and even encouragement of organized crime (you know what color gang-bangers are, right?) “

Wow how far the organized crime has come in the US when it means people of color are up there with the Italians, the Irish, the Jewish mafias in terms of money and power.

Sorry organized crime in politics in the states is still dominated by people of European descent.

Give it another 100 years and people of African, Hispanic descent in criminal organizations will have that type of power.

This frightens me. Most of all, the thought that Palin might be backing this behavior.

The blogosphere (and to a lesser extent the mainstream press) have made fun of the Palins extensively. But highly educated, cultured, Jewish professionals thought that the Nazis were contemptible and ridiculous when they first appeared on the scene.

In contrast, the GOP tried to extend this system when they let a bunch of State’s Attorneys go for not pursuing “voter fraud” cases viciously enough.

U.S. Attorneys, not state attorneys.  And it bears mentioning that many of those U.S. Attorneys were top-notch prosecutors.  Really the best of the best and not just because they were too ethical to pursue investigations and prosecutions for political purposes.

Bible Spice is nice,
but my new fav’ is ‘Apocalypstick’

I know this is a feminist site, and I try to moderate my language somewhat when here, but sometimes, stuff is just hilarious even if its wrong.

I’m the same with the ‘N***** stole my Bike!’ meme, no-one takes it literally, it just accepted as a stereotype, and consciously a stereotype(and therefore without any truth to it) but the stereotype lets you set up expectations to be contradicted, which is always funny. In fact, it’s the basis of most comedy.

Anyone who complains about this kind of thing is really putting their self-righteous egotism in front of common sense.

From the way the question was phrased, it wasn’t clear to me if Ben D. knew that Chicago used to be synonymous with machine politics, or what it was.

Fair enough. I could stand to calm down a bit I guess

I didn’t mean to be non-calm, was just going off on how dumb the GOP “machine” stuff is