Goodbye, Gabby

It should have become apparent to anyone who realized just how badly wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was in the January 2011 shooting in Tucson that she would eventually have to resign her seat. So it was no surprise when Giffords announced that would in fact quit the House of Representatives this week to concentrate on her ongoing recovery. She was able to put the announcement in her own words, literally - she made the announcement in a video release - so the woman who has been an inspiration to many has a very good chance of recovering fully. And she's vowed to remain active in politics regardless.

Alas, she won't be an inspiration to pass meaningful gun control legislation, which has a very good chance of getting defeated in Congress - if anyone has the gall to even bring it up. (Every time a horrendous shooting occurs in this country - which happens frequently enough to feel like an everyday occurrence - Chris Matthews asks the panelists on his Sunday broadcast show if gun control legislation has a chance of even getting considered, and his panelists respond with an imitation of Marcel Marceau in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie - "No!") This isn't so much a partisan condition as it is an American condition - a peculiarly and insufferably American love of firearms.

Am I suggesting that Americans are peculiar and insufferable? You can draw your own conclusion.

On the other hand . . .. Sarah Palin - one of the most peculiar and most insufferable Americans in recent memory - has seen her stature reduced a result of the Giffords shooting. In the 2010 midterm election campaign, Palin posted a map of Democratic House districts targeted by Republicans, depicting the districts with rifle crosshairs over them - one of them was Giffords' district. After the shooting, she gave such a mean-spirited defense of her actions in the wake of charges that she incited violence that her rising star dimmed quickly. So some taste survives here, enough to not only lessen Palin's visibility but to also eliminate the Minnesota Twins (Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann) from the Republican presidential nomination contest early.

Ending With A Whimper

Pundits overwhelmingly predicted that Chris Christie would not run for President, and they were right; the New Jersey governor said so on Tuesday.  Christie cited his responsibilities as governor as a reason not to run, but many commentators noted the lack of a campaign apparatus on the ground and the lack of time available in getting one up and running.  My mother, not a professional pundit, probably had the best analysis: "He's too lazy to run!"

Christie also expressed his commitment to serving a full term as governor of New Jersey and focusing on the state's issues. Many saw this comment as a dig at Texas governor Rick Perry for not even paying attention to his most meager responsibilities of his office (and the Texas governorship's most important duties are meager from the start)  and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for not even finishing her term and resigning to make a lot of money as a professional celebrity, as if to keep himself in possible contention for 2016 by burnishing his governing credentials.

Oh yeah, Palin (speak of the devil - some would say I'm being literal) finally announced that she would not run for President, and no one noticed.  Not because Christie got all the attention, because people finally got sick and tired of Palin's teases on her decision.  I've said that Palin is to politics what Madonna and Lady Gaga are to popular music.  By that, I mean that Palin isn't gifted or talented in her field - in fact, what she produces in her profession is pretty awful - and such a person normally doesn't last.  But Palin, like the two pop singers I just mentioned, has lasted because she's able to get people to keep paying attention to her.  But she forgot to keep doing the one thing that allowed Madge and Gaga to turn gimmicky novelty acts into careers.  Palin forgot to keep leaving people wanting more.

Christie's absence theoretically helps President Obama by denying the Republicans a candidate that can pick up some reliably Democratic states, while helping Mitt Romney having more of the dwindling Republican center in the primaries.  Palin's absence helps Perry shore up his Tea Party credentials.  But just because the GOP's biggest bully and its biggest dunce aren't running doesn't mean Americans have dodged a bullet; Obama hasn't won re-election yet, and Romney and Perry have enough fatal flaws of their own as would-be Presidents.

Love and Bondage

The possibility of a fascist state in America that I alluded to in an earlier post became slightly more realistic yesterday when it turned out that a pact to protect the sanctity of marriage that was put out by the Family Leader, a right-wing advocacy group, that had been signed by two Republican presidential candidates featured a rosy view of black family life under slavery. The document, signed by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, expressed the belief that a black child born in slavery in 1860, before the Civil War, had a more stable family life, with two parents, than a black child born during Barack Obama's Presidency.

If this statement had expressed outrage or pity over this assessment, the Family Leader might have gotten away with it. But the wording suggested that the Family Leader endorsed slavery. Though they retracted the wording, they've still managed to call attention to the underlying racism of social conservative groups fighting for . . . no change. They want to return to the 1950s ideal of white nuclear middle-class families before gays came out of the closet, women went to work, and actresses like Cybill Shepherd mouthed off about marriage being a misogynistic institution . . . and when blacks were seen but not heard.

I understand why Bachmann signed the vow. She thought John Quincy Adams and other Founding Fathers ended slavery long before 1860. I don't know why Rick Santorum, who's evidently dumber than he looks (he reminds me of the 1980s video game character Evil Otto) would sign this pact, because I don't think he has anything against black people. It's the gays he hates.

Anyway, like Michele Bachmann's statement about the Founding Fathers and the belief that "Father Knows Best" reflected real life, the Family Leader's statement just isn't true. Plantation owners had no regard for slave family units; slave marriages were not recognized as legitimate, and many families were broken up at the auction block. Absent fathers may be a problem in black America today, but both parents were likelier to be absent in a slave child's life because the master sold them to another cotton grower.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has reared her ugly head on the cover of Newsweek, telling the magazine that she can win a general presidential election and toying with the possibility of a presidential campaign. And even while family leader is trying to distance itself from charges of racism, Palin is dismissing President Obama as a "sugar daddy" for doling out money in the form of government spending and that he has "run out of sugar." Unfortunately, Palin, more evil than Evil Otto, hasn't yet run out of sweet talk designed to keep people paying attention to her - some of that same talk being sourly racist.

It should be obvious that the United States is becoming more like apartheid-era South Africa, where we will see more laws based on fundamentalist Christianity, white people will be the minority but will still control everything, people of color have no voting rights, women have no health amenities, and the capitalist system merrily rolls along enriching only a few people. Pretty soon other countries will boycott us.

Except China, which will continue to make our kitchen utensils and underwear.

Weimar Redux

He was elected as President in the midst of an economy in shambles and seen as someone that a broad coalition of voters could support. With his stature and distinction, everyone believed he could bring about an era of national renewal. Hope and change were in the air. For awhile, it seemed like his country could recover from the costs of a long war it had been humiliated in. But the economy got worse, and by the time the President was preparing to stand for re-election, the far right was in a position to take total control and ensure that its opponents would be neutered for good.

Barack Obama in 2011? Nope, German President Paul von Hindenburg in 1932.

I was going to call this post "Obama Is Luo For Hindenburg," but that seemed too provocative. But it does seem accurate. Germany, having lost the First World War and been forced to pay enormous reparations, tried to handle its responsibilities and manage its economic activity through a democratic government, the Weimar Republic. But the global depression that set in after the 1929 stock market crash in the United States dealt President Hindenburg's administration a severe blow. Hindenburg, who had gone through five chancellors in his first seven-year term, managed to win a second term in 1932 but the Reichstag (Parliament) was dissolved that September, preparing the way for the National Socialist German Workers party - a.k.a., the Nazis. Adolf Hitler's party won the most seats in the November 1932 elections. Hitler promised a return to prosperity and to law and order, and he had become so powerful that Hindenburg was forced to appoint him as his chancellor - his seventh - in January 1933.

Hindenburg died in 1934, but the Nazis were able to set the stage for a takeover of Germany through the Enabling Act, which gave the government dictatorial powers, and the dissolution of opposition parties. The Reichstag fire provided them the cover they needed to do this as an "emergency."

Right now, we're like Weimar. I believe we could be headed down the road to right-wing totalitarianism. Obama is dealing with the aftereffect of ten years of a quagmire of war in the Middle East with an economy that seems permanently stalled. Obama is already trying to placate the right the same way Hindenburg tried to placate the Nazis. He may be re-elected, but the far right wing of the Republican party could easily take control of both houses of Congress. And if the right (as in correct) demagogue manages to get elected President in 2012 . . . well, look at the damage that's already been done by the right in the House, where they've taken aim at the President's health care plan, and abortion rights. Imagine what they can do once they take over the White House!

These are merely my opinions. But I'm not alone in my fear of a right-wing takeover of everything. Noted dystopian writer James Kunstler, who pretty much sees all of Western civilization falling apart, couldn't help but notice how Sarah Palin is playing the role of a nasty, strident demagogue promising a return to national glory if she and her ilk are put in charge. Kunstler sums Palin up quite nicely:

"Sarah Palin represents a dangerous force in American culture that is startlingly similar to the grandiose hyper-patriotic militarism that Hitler brought to Germany during his rise to power. We have better things to do in this nation than go down some twisted path of vengeance-seeking in the name of lost glory. I hope that Sarah Palin's competitors on the right will stand up to her American fascist themes and call her out for what she is: a half-educated TV performer unqualified for high political office. The true shame of this country is that we have to take a clown like Sarah Palin seriously."

As for Obama, poll numbers show him sinking on economic issues, and he looks increasingly vulnerable. His Presidency could have a Hindenburg-like outcome. Not Hindenburg the man. Hindenburg the airship. This Presidency looks like it's going down in flames!

Ah, the humanity . . .. :-(

Mitt Is It?

As Sarah Palin, a plain rash if there ever was one, irritates people along the East Coast with her non-campaign tour, titillating her rabid fans as if she were Lady Gaga, Mitt Romney has officially entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

The differences between the two politicians could not be any clearer. Palin seeks to appeal to the basest instincts of the American voter, plastering excerpts from the Pledge of Allegiance on her tour bus to, as author James Kunstler says, appeal to voters who are proud to have made it as far as first grade. Romney is a grownup. He plans to talk about the economy - the one issue on which President Obama remains vulnerable - more than on ideology - and he has the bona fides to back himself up, as a successful venture capitalist, the rescuer of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and governor of Massachusetts.

Romney's biggest liability with the libertarians who now control the Republican party is the health care reform legislation he sired in Massachusetts, because of the mandate that all Massachusetts residents buy health insurance. Except that it's working to bring down health care costs, and Romney has said that, while he opposes doing anything similar on the federal level, each state should do as it sees fit to reform health care on its own - and that his approach happened to be compatible with his state. He won't renounce the Massachusetts health care plan. His Mormon faith may remain a sore spot among the evangelical Protestant voters who dominate the Republican primaries and caucuses. But I don't think many other voters, Republican or otherwise, will fear that a President Romney will take orders from the Mormon Church.

Unfortunately for Romney, one advantage Sarah Palin has over Romney is her ability to generate buzz. He announced his presidential candidacy in New Hampshire at the same time she was in the state, and so she bumped him off the front page of the Manchester Union-Leader. Romney should be glad the Internet's killing print media. He probably isn't thankful, though, that anyone can search the Internet and find video clips of his TV interviews demonstrating that he can't get his position on the auto company bailout straight.

Nevertheless, Romney, like Obama, has the substance. If he's the 2012 nominee, the debate between Romney and Obama on the economy will be most substantial debate on the topic in years - maybe even decades.

A Tale Of Two Speeches

If you need any proof that President Obama is as a decent as Sarah Palin is not, then, by all means, consider what each of them said yesterday about the shooting in Tucson. Obama, at a memorial gathering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, gave a comforting, conciliatory address that was aimed at helping people get beyond the tragedy and see the best in America, noting the bravery of those who risked their lives to save others and disarmed the gunman. Obama has long been criticized for being cool and detached, but last night he emanated enough warmth and compassion to bring the crowd to their feet and applaud thunderously, and he invoked the spirit of the murdered little girl Christina Taylor Green as a touchstone. He asked us to make America the country she imagined it could be.

Sarah Palin was just plain mean.

Palin's eight-minute video diatribe was devoted to presenting conservative activists like herself as victims of a media smear campaign designed to discredit her and anyone else whose vicious rhetoric may have led to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and several others. Palin's use of the term "blood libel" - mentioned here yesterday - was a reference to the anti-Semitic belief that Jews killed Christian children to make Passover matzo from their blood, suggesting a Nixonian smear of a Jewish media establishment. (Ms. Giffords, we all know now, is a Reform Jew.) Palin insisted that debate in this country has always been heated, starting with the duels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so why bother to expect today's debates to be less heated? She conveniently ignored examples of bipartisan collegiality from more recent times, such as the congressional friendships between Democrats and Republicans, and she missed the point that we in fact don't have duels anymore, meaning we've made the effort to improve the quality of political debate. Or, to put it this way: Aaron Burr sought to validate himself in 1804 by dueling with his rival Alexander Hamilton; Richard Burr validated himself in 2004 by facing the voters of North Carolina with his U.S. Senate campaign rival Erskine Bowles. No one died when the latter Burr won his match.

Palin's biggest concern, though, is the fear that this tragedy might be used to spread the kind of hatred liberals seek to condemn against people of her ilk. "America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week," she said. "We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy." What she appears to be saying is that she hates people who hate, a contradictory and un-Christian statement. What she's really saying is she hates people who hate her.

Obama's approval rating is at 53 percent now - the same percentage of popular votes he won in 2008 - and though the poll was taken before the shooting, I can't help but wonder if his poll numbers are going up in part because of the poor quality of potential Republican presidential opponents for 2012 and that of Palin in particular. She has damaged herself with more hypocrisy than my subject of ridicule in yesterday's post, Ben Quayle ("I was raised right," said the noted porn fan) could ever aspire to. If her supporters swallow this one, God help us.

And, at the risk of sounding sour, I don't think the current spirit of renewal, unity and self-reflection will last. After 9/11, we did not become the wise and sober people we appeared to be in the last three weeks of that September.

The Year of The Dumb Republican Woman

Too many women in Republican politics, it seems, are turning out to be just as stupid as men are. Of course, what do you expect from the party that gave us lawmakers hoping to make abortion a capital crime? Nevadans Sharron Angle and Sue Lowden may have disappeared for the time being, but several GOP women threaten to loom large in what passes for political discourse in this new year.

First, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann is getting a seat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Next! Incoming New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte is already hitting the ground running in her attempts to appear dumber and dimmer than Bachmann. Delivering the Republican response to President Obama's weekly address this New Year's Day, Ayotte declared that the American people sent a message that they want both the size of government and the deficit reduced by voting for GOP candidates in November. Never mind polls indicating that most people don't consider the deficit a top priority and that they support more government spending to create more jobs while opposing cuts in Social Security to bring down the deficit. By talking up the need for jobs today, Obama seemed more in tune with average Americans than Ayotte did. How dumb is that, a Republican giving a Democratic President the advantage in the debate? The election was not an endorsement of Republican ideas, as one new senator insists, but rather discontent with the status quo. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the only freshman Democrat elected to a full Senate term last year? No, Marco Rubio of Florida.

Sarah Palin, of course, continues to dominate among dumb women in the Republican party, with her folksy (read uneducated) demeanor and her insistence on opposing everything coming out of the Obama White House - including First Lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. One might think Sarah Palin is actually pretty smart in her attempts at solidarity with the dumb male GOP primary voter by shooting a defenseless caribou and encouraging consumption of fatty foods. After all, those are the biggest pastimes of her intended audience. But with only 49 percent of Republicans endorsing her possible presidential bid compared to 67 percent of them expressing enthusiasm for a run by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee - who, being someone who's dealt with obesity himself, has sharply criticized Palin for her attack on Mrs. Obama - she appears to have peaked and her moment in the sun has passed. Only no one can convince her.

Chris Matthews, incidentally, thought it was ridiculous of Palin to compare herself to Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California, the nation's most populous state, who, Matthews said, revitalized the American economy and ended the Cold War as President. Uh, Chris? The collapse of OPEC revitalized the American economy. Pope John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa, and Lithuanian nationalists ended the Cold War. That damn actor in the White House had nothing to do with any of it.

Finally, to perpetual remedial student Christine O'Donnell, who has enjoyed fourteen minutes and thirty seconds of fame with the clock ticking. Under investigation for using campaign funds for personal expenses, O'Donnell countercharged that she is the victim of a leftist smear campaign directed by Vice President Biden and aimed at destroying her political career. Uh, I think she already did that herself. How many points did she lose by in her bid for Biden's U.S. Senate seat in Delaware? Seventeen?

Unlike with Bachmann or Palin (the jury's still out on Ayotte), I don't dislike Christine O'Donnell. I'm more inclined to pity her. And, if God protects fools and children, she sure has it covered both ways.

Mrs. Palin Goes To Haiti

A lot of people have been speculating on whether Sarah Palin's trip to Haiti on a humanitarian mission with Franklin Graham was either for truly altruistic means or for political purposes. I propose the following theory. I don't think she realized she was going on a humanitarian mission until she got there. I think she was going there to lounge on the beach and drink mai tais. But what happened was, when she landed at the airport, Graham told her where she was and she said, "Haiti? Oh, I thought we were going to Tahiti! I thought the flight was pretty short."

And this is a plausible conclusion, because, for all of Sarah Palin's strengths, thinking ain't one of them.

Besides, it's an honest (for her) mistake, right? A tropical island, the locals speak French - easy to confuse one with the other, what with the names being so close. Haiti, Tahiti, Haiti, Tahiti, let's call the whole thing off!

As for her trip, I wish she had. Because, all kidding aside, this trip was politically motivated. The known caribou murderer wants to prove she has a heart. Palin is clearly thinking (but not thinking clearly) about running for President, and she wants to show how warm and caring she is (despite using the kind of language to describe her Republican critics that would have embarrassed National Lampoon's Animal House's Doug Neidermeyer) to appeal beyond her arch-conservative base. If she weren't seriously thinking of running, do you think she'd spend her time pretending to help poor black people?

Port, Au-Prince, I wanna catch a glimpse . . ..

Strange Days

A few media reports that made me wonder what the hell is going on:

President Obama brought former President Bill Clinton to the White House to help him handle the "deal" he worked out with Republicans over tax policy and figure out how to sell it. At a joint White House press conference, the President had to excuse himself to tend to personal affairs, leaving Clinton on his own and owning the press room. I thought I was in a time warp and it was 1995 again - Bill Clinton in the White House, explaining how to foster bipartisanship over economic issues!

Wesley Snipes reported to prison to begin serving his sentence for tax evasion. Well, they got Al Capone for tax evasion, too; they couldn't get Snipes on legitimate charges for his real crime, bad acting. Hey, as long as they're getting Snipes for not paying his fair share, why not arrest the beneficiaries of the Bush tax plan?

Sarah Palin is going to Haiti, apparently on a humanitarian mission. She's going to show Haitians how there are worse things than a disputed election, like the prospect of someone like her as a leader. Haiti? She must have thought she was going to Tahiti. Oh, well, its the same difference to her, right - tropical island, the locals speak French, and the names are close enough! Sorry, Sarah, I don't think you can get a Mai Tai where you're going!

PBS did a story on its NewsHour broadcast about rap lyrics as poetic art. This is the wackiest story of them all.

Strange days indeed . . ..

Palin Rising

Remember when Sarah Palin was written off as a joke? Remember when she was regarded as an also-ran in American politics? Neither can I. Especially since she has made her self the front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and is making politicians of both parties quaking in their boots more than scratching their heads.

My fellow Drew alum and noted journalist Karen Hunter has warned that Palin should be taken seriously because of her ability to sell herself as a candidate for national office. I agree. Palin is doing just that right now, with her much-ballyhooed reality show, appearances on Fox News and her promotional tour for the latest book that she "wrote." She 's building a brand - again, I cite my friend Karen - that's meant to be a vehicle for her political ambitions with her folksy appeal to the vast mainstream (read white) masses in the American heartland (read red states). And like other toxic American brands (McDonald's, for example), the goal of the Palin brand is to take over the world. And you thought this was the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons!

I don't know if Palin ever watched Saturday morning cartoons in the seventies, when she was a little girl named Sarah Heath. But she obviously didn't watch ABC, and so missed "Schoolhouse Rock" - especially "How Bill Becomes a Law."

I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I have to return to my predicting that the Democratic party will die after 2012 the way the Whig party died after 1852 and expand on something I said last week. When Democrat Franklin Pierce was elected President in 1852, he was one of the weakest, most uninspiring candidates the Democrats could have put up. When the news came in that Pierce had won, U.S. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was distraught over the election results, exclaiming, "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!" Campbell's prophecy came true because the Whigs were unable to rise above their numerous shortcomings and differences and defeat the most defeatable presidential candidate of the previous twenty years. Imagine waking up on the morning of Wednesday, November 7, 2012, and learning that Sarah Palin has just been elected the 45th President of the United States. The obvious conclusion would be that the Democratic party is slain . . . dead—dead—dead! The Democrats would be so bewildered and demoralized by Palin's election that they would break up rather quickly. But then, I don't ncessearliy think Palin will be elected President. Therefore, I don't believe a Palin presidential victory is going to kill the Democrats. I think something else will. But if Palin actually wins the 2012 presidential contest, her election will kill the Democratic party before something else does.

Palin has several weaknesses, apart from her obvious lack of intelligence. Democrats hate her, establishment Republicans fear her, and her rating among independents is shockingly low. Also, as a vice presidential candidate who didn't actually get the office, Palin is admittedly swimming against the tide of history; failed vice presidential candidates become bigger footnotes in the history of American politics than actual vice presidents. Geraldine Ferraro and Palin herself will be remembered as being the first female vice presidential nominees of their respective parties, but, so far, not for anything else. As for other vice presidential nominees who never got the job they ran for, the list of those who went on to bigger and better things - President Franklin Roosevelt (Democratic vice presidential nominee, 1920) U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (Republican vice presidential nominee, 1948) Secretary of State Edmund Muskie (Democratic vice presidential nominee, 1968) and Senate leader Robert Dole (Republican vice presidential nominee, 1976) - is pretty short. (I am open, though, to anyone who wants me to put Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, the 1956 Democratic vice presidential nominee, on that short list if they can make a sound case for it.)

The odds of Palin making it onto this list are long, and she could be just as easily forgotten as Republican William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's running mate in 1964. But then, Miller didn't have a reality show. All he had was an American Express card commercial.

I Have a Nightmare

Noted schizophrenic egocentric paranoiac prima donna Glenn Beck has parlayed his success at Fox News into a lucrative reality TV special, which is what his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial this coming Saturday actually is. The rally, Beck explains, is meant to bring honor and dignity back to the civil rights movement and "reclaim" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream. What? Reclaim it from what? From whom? And when did the civil rights movement ever lose its honor? When King spoke out against the war in Vietnam? When George McGovern was nominated for President? When Al Sharpton appointed himself as a family advisor to too many victims of racism at one time and couldn't manage his overloaded schedule?

Beck's interpretation of civil rights is a scary libertarianism in which people live for and care about themselves rather than for each other. Now, if I were asked to define civil rights, I couldn't recite the Webster's definition verbatim, but I know that grievances on Beck's agenda are not part of civil rights. Civil rights are essentially the rights to be a part of the community; the selfish individualism Beck espouses has nothing to do with that.

Guns, incidentally, are a part of Beck's agenda. Beck apparently plans to make Second Amendment rights a focal point of his rally, a point of fact underscored by the appearance of Sarah Palin and her known use of firearms metaphors. What do you expect from the woman who brought you aerial animal shooting? And by the way, isn't it in bad taste to talk about guns when talking about "reclaiming" the dream of a man who was shot to death?

Beck and Palin were both four years old (they were born a day apart in February 1964 - coincidence or supernatural phenomenon?) when Dr. King was assassinated, so they have no direct memory of the civil rights movement in its salad days. Which would be fine if they hadn't fallen asleep in high school history class back in the eighties when they were being taught about it.

If there's any good news about Beck's rally (and I'm stretching it here), it's that most residents of Washington, D.C., the majority of whom are black, won't be affected by it because organizers have distributed a map of the District showing in red the part where it's considered "unsafe" for these macho suburban white guys to travel through (i.e., most of it). Still, what's left (shown in blue) is the most recognizable and more tourist-friendly area of the District, and Beck is guaranteed a good deal of TV coverage by TV news outlets other than his own Fox News. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton is holding a counter-rally at a Washington high school at which Ed Schultz will appear. A high school? Bad PR mistake. I'm sure a lot of Americans, even in this age of ignorance, can still find the Lincoln Memorial on a Washington, D.C. map. But how many of them can find Dunbar High School?

Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial, by the way, is taking place forty-seven years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the same spot at the civil rights march on Washington. Because August 28 is a Saturday this year, Beck can count on a large gathering for his own rally. But would he be getting many participants, or so much attention from the media, if he were still holding the rally on the civil rights march anniversary and August 28 fell on a Wednesday this year, as it did when the march on Washington took place in 1963? Doubtful. Beck's fans wouldn't take a Wednesday off to attend a rally when they have jobs to hold onto in a recession.

And we all know what Beck and his fans think of the long-term unemployed.

Sandbagging From Teabaggers

It finally happened. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People finally demanded that the Tea Party movement address the growing racism among its ranks, though the NAACP wouldn't accuse the Tea Party movement itself of being racist.

This of course, is exactly what the Tea Partiers said the civil rights group did. Sarah Palin - no stranger to overreacting - took a page out of Rush Limbaugh's playbook in insisting that supporters of her ideology are average people concerned about the country. The Tea Partiers, she said, are normal, everyday folks who work hard, raise families, and support smaller government. She completely overlooked the butchers, doctors, and insurance salesmen who carry around sings depicting President Obama as Hitler and spit on black congressmen. Palin also added that the Tea Party is a "DY-verse" group.

And it is. Ask Rick Santelli - it happens to include a few Italians!

And at least one South Asian.

No, I'm not saying Nikki Haley is racist. Of course she doesn't have anything against white people! Sorry, I couldn't resist. No, seriously, I don't think she's bigoted toward blacks, but as a woman of South Asian decent - and as someone who was on the receiving end of a racial slur during the gubernatorial primary in South Carolina - she should be among those to take the first step to condemn the bigotry in the movement that helped get her the Republican gubernatorial nomination in her state. If she has Palin's personal contact information, she should call Alaska's most famous book-banning wolf killer and tell her to do the same.

Nikki, don't lose that number.

Street Fighting Men

I can't help but be fearful of the nasty and malicious acts of violence taking place in light of the passage of the health care reform bill. Some members of Congress have had bricks thrown through the windows of their offices, and one congressman had the gas line to his barbecue disconnected. Don't expect Republican leaders to condemn the violent protests, because cretins like Sarah Palin are joining in the protests and egging them on. Palin's Facebook page shows House of Representatives members who represent districts carried by John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and suggests that they be "targeted" in the midterm elections this November as if they were the wolves she might shoot at from a helicopter.

If this were some other country, these right-wing protests mean a military coup in a week.

Most of the Republicans' energy has been spent in the Senate trying to add enough amendments to the health care reconciliation bill to neuter it. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid thinks he can get the bill through without their obstructionist tactics. Arizona senator John McCain has complained that trying to fix it is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Hey, Senator McCain - stop talking about your former running mate like that! :-D

This is not healthy, but as long as the Republicans look even more unreasonable, let them go ahead and make themselves look like bigger fools than they already are.

The Mark On the Beast

It's official: Sarah Palin is the Madonna of politics. Just when I think the former Alaska governor has done everything possible to make my jaw drop, I find it on the floor again.

Palin made a speech to the tea party convention in Nashville that hit new lows in snarkiness and churlishness. Her ridicule of President Obama's supporters, delivered whole addressing them in the second person, said it all: "How's that hopey, changey stuff working out for ya?"

Her lowest point was when she chided Obama for being little more than a charismatic speaker who knows how to use a TelePrompter. So, what were those marks on her hand?

Apparently Sarah Palin - whose name, remember, is an anagram for "a plain rash" - had something on her skin that turned out to be more than an a case of eczema. She wrote crib notes on the palm of her left hand to remind her of her talking points. They were: "Energy," "Tax Cuts" (originally "Budget Cuts," but changed to "Tax"with the word "Budget" crossed out) and "Lift America's Spirits." She's so dumb, she can't even remember the bedrock principles Republicans have chanted like a mantra for thirty years. I could compare this to Ronald Reagan's handlers positioning him by marking places for him to stand with taped squares, but Reagan at least not only knew how to articulate his beliefs, but, more importantly, he knew what his beliefs were.

Even worse was how obvious it was. I mean, photographers actually got a shot of Palin's palm while she was at the lectern, and afterwards, as she took questions while seated on what appeared to be a throne, she proceeded to read her palm . . .

. . . literally!

Yeah, yeah, I know, was that even her own handwriting? :-D

Why would we want to elect as President someone nearly forty-six years old (her birthday is Thursday) who still uses something you could get detention for in third grade if you used it there?

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's an imposturous politician.

(Imposturous? ;-) )

Palin: Evil Or Stupid?

My British ladyfriend Therisa, whom you already know about, hates Sarah Palin with a cold passion. Citing Palin's atrocious animal welfare record as governor of Alaska, Therisa threatened on her MySpace page (which is not private, so I'm not giving anything away here) that she would leave the U.S. if John McCain were to be elected President and the evil Palin were a heartbeat away from ultimate power.

Well, that never happened, and so Therisa stayed in America. But the comments on Palin in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new book "Game Change" reveal more facts about Palin that seem to suggest that her biggest problem is not an evil heart but an empty head. Palin was always known to be something of a dim bulb, but Halperin and Heilemann show that she's far more stupid than even her most ferocious critics realized; she makes George Walker Bush look like Aristotle. Among the the revelations in this book about the woman Rush Limbaugh holds in such high regard:

Palin had to be schooled into understanding what both world wars were about, and how they started;

She didn't know the difference between North Korea and South Korea, or even that Korea was divided into two independent states (I'm only a year or so younger than Palin, and I learned about Korea simply by watching "M*A*S*H!");

She didn't know what the Federal Reserve does;

She believed Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, and when she saw her son off to military service in post-Saddam Iraq, she couldn't explain who we were fighting there, and;

She asked Senator Joseph Biden at their 2008 vice presidential debate if she could call him "Joe" not to disarm him with charm but to avoid conflating his and Barack Obama's surnames and calling him "O'Biden," which she'd been doing in practicing for the debate. Or maybe she was conflating it with Conan O'Brien, who might have been a better interviewer for her than Katie Couric. Well, Joe Biden is Irish, so it must be an Irish thing. In any event, she referred to Biden as "O'Biden" once during the debate, but the slip pretty much went unnoticed.

So, when Sarah Palin went about trying to ban books from libraries as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska or permit wolves to be shot in cold blood from helicopters as governor of Alaska, it was possibly more out of ignorance than malice. I'll be happy to forgive her if she knows not what she does, but do we really want someone who doesn't know what she's doing to run the country?

What could Palin, who turns 46 next month, possibly do with her life at this point? How about being a commentator for Fox News, a gig she just started? Yes, she's an idiot, but that's what qualifies her to be on Fox News. And the handsome paycheck she'll get from that may dissuade her to run for President in 2012. After all, the President of the United States only makes $400,000 a year.

Scary Palinistas

Sarah Palin scares me, but her fans scare me more. She appeared in Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday to promote her book, and the overwhelmingly white fans who showed up praised for her for standing up against big government and the assault on the Constitution. She showed up the Barnes and Noble store waving on a balcony floor, as if she were some wise guru acknowledging her cult. The vibe of utter ignorance could have caused the book store to levitate. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com found that she's statistically in a good position to win the Republican presidential nomination, making her dangerous. Although a majority of Americans give her an unfavorable rating, a large minority - 38 percent, in some polls - still support her. How many of those who don't may be open to persuasion, especially if the economy sinks even lower (as if that were possible)?

Meanwhile, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) celebrated his length of service in both houses of Congress yesterday. Byrd served a total of 56 years and 320 days in the House and the Senate combined, a new record. How long can Byrd, who turns 92 tomorrow, last in the Senate? Right now, I think Harry Reid would be happy to see Byrd last long enough to vote on the health care bill.

Every vote does count.

Pains In the Neck

Rush Limbaugh revealed the depth of his compassion for the unemployed. Speaking with and unemployed 49-year-old male caller about the severity of the man's employment situation, Limbaugh was so touched by his story - after he learned that he didn't vote for Obama - that he gave him information for getting a free massage from one of Limbaugh's sponsors to relieve his stress.

I would have preferred a fruit basket. At least then I'd have something to eat.

Meanwhile, someone suggested to Sarah Palin that Glenn Beck should be her vice presidential running mate if she is nominated to run for President in 2012. Palin praised Beck in response.

This story has given me something no masseur can relieve. :-O

Sarah Palin Can Write?

The Palinistas are out in full force, getting ready to rally to Sarah Palin's stops on the tour for her book, which, after so much Sturm und Drang, finally came out today. The noted book-banning wolf killer, who's read no more books than she's "written," has pumped a lot of excitement in Republican circles for a possible presidential bid in 2012 even as only 24 percent of Americans opposed the very idea of her candidacy in a recent poll. Although polls consistently show hostility to Palin and her views, she doesn't need a large base of support in the Republican nomination process in a crowded field of candidates where you only need a small plurality for momentum.

Meanwhile, details involving Palin's outlook on life demonstrate how unfit she is for the Presidency. Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has described Palin in her columns as vindictive and spiteful. She compared her viciousness toward opponents to that of Richard Nixon, though I can't recall Nixon ever accusing John F. Kennedy or even George McGovern of palling around with terrorists (even Nixon himself palled around with Communists like Mao and Brezhnev), as Palin did against Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign. Palin has complained about political correctness, and not the kind of loopy political correctness that encourages us to accept the legitimacy of Kwanzaa but the kind of political correctness that encourages sensitivity towards racial and ethnic minorities. Never mind her intolerance for criticism against her.

Her lack of sensitivity toward urban blacks, like the President, was displayed not by her accusations that Obama was bosom buddies with a former Weather Underground member but her desire to push his connection (since severed with Jeremiah Wright, to push the connection to the black urban population and strike fear into hearts in the heartland. John McCain, to his credit, refused to exploit the Wright association.)

The success (well, box office success, anyway) of the movie 2012 has given more popularity to the idea that the world will end on December 21 of that year due to the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar. (So much for Christmas.) Just as scary, however, is another date on the 2012 calendar - November 6, the date of the next presidential election. If Sarah Palin is elected the next President of the United States in three years, Armageddon is going to look preferable . . . and attractive.

John W. Who?

Does anyone remember John W. Kern?

John Worth Kern was a Democratic politician from Indiana who was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He had a scant record in Hoosier politics; he was elected to the Indiana Senate in 1893, where he served for four years, and he simultaneously served assistant - assistant - U.S. Attorney for Indiana. Kern also served as city solicitor of Indianapolis from 1897 to 1901 and ran unsuccessfully for governor of Indiana twice, in 1900 and 1904. I read all of this on Wikipedia.

Why am I telling you this? Because Kern has another distinction in his political career, and a rather dubious one at that; he was the losing vice presidential candidate in 1908, the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. (They lost to William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman. Sherman was the last Vice President to die in office.) Kern was the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate who ran exactly one hundred years before Sarah Palin.

You knew I had a valid point, didn't you?

History may be unkind to most Vice Presidents of the United States, but it's even crueler to most of those who vie for the office and don't get it. Unsuccessful vice presidential candidates tend to be forgotten rather quickly, especially after they retire from politics or die. No one remembers New Jersey's William L Dayton, the first Republican vice presidential candidate (he ran with John C. Frémont in 1856), John A. Logan (a Republican who ran with James G. Blaine in 1884), Joseph T. Robinson (a Democrat who ran with Alfred E. Smith in 1928) or Charles L. McNary (a Republican who ran with Wendell Willkie in 1940). The only reason we may remember William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's 1964 running mate, is because of his American Express card commercial. "Do you know me? No, I don't.

I'd like to suggest that Sarah Palin is trying to buck the trend of history by turning her loss into an opportunity to position herself for greater things, but if I did that, I'd have to grant that the noted book-banning wolf killer is a student of history. But Palin is indeed trying to make herself the future of the Republican party by "writing" her "memoirs" (actually a screed against media figures and aides in John McCain's presidential campaign), going on a book tour to the "heartland" (cities to small to even have a minor league baseball team) and appearing on Oprah Winfrey's talk show (well, that was smart, I'll give her that). She thinks that her personal magnetism and her alleged sex appeal (she still has that annoying speaking voice that reminds me of eighties sitcom actress Edie McClurg, who was at least intentionally funny) will make her a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

And she may be right. She has the power of persuasion; look how she persuaded me to write sentences with parenthetical thoughts! Despite her lack of interest in policy, she gets crowds fired up and generates excitement in a way that GOP presidential contenders like Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, or Mike Huckabee can't. Plus, she has the support of Rush Limbuagh. Chris Matthews seems to think this will help her among Republican primary and caucus voters in 2012. When Chris Matthews suggests that she may be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, we can't afford to laugh her off.

After all, back in the nineties, we all laughed at the notion of "President George Walker Bush." Some of us still do.

But, of course, Palin has to overcome the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate syndrome. We all know the joke; a woman had two sons, one of whom went to sea while the other was elected Vice President of the United States, and neither was heard from again. Well, she had a third son who ran for Vice President and lost, and he was never heard from again either. Very few unsuccessful vice presidential candidates survived the indignity of their loss. The exceptions include Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat, 1920) and Earl Warren (Republican, 1948). Geraldine Ferraro (Democrat, 1984) also has escaped this curse simply by being the first woman and the first Italian-American to be nominated for the vice presidency by a major party. Sarah Palin only has the distinction being the first female Republican vice presidential nominee. She ain't even Italian.

Oh yeah, John W. Kern. Although Kern lost, he redeemed himself as a member of the United States Senate, where he became a staunch progressive and supported the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and enactment of antitrust laws. Nevertheless, he faded into history, just as I'm sure more recent unsuccessful vice presidential candidates will. (RIP, Lloyd Bentsen.) Palin’s political record in 2008 was as weak as Kern’s was in 1908, but Kern at least did his homework and went on to better things. Palin, who can’t even name a magazine she regularly looks at pictures in, is too lazy to bother. She seems to think she can become a political superstar on charisma alone.

But she could still break the curse of the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate, because the awful truth is . . . it’s possible that she could pull it off.

After all, she has a star quality that John W. Kern obviously did not have. :-O

Serious Political Jokes

Did you hear the one about the politicians from New Jersey, including three mayors - one of which was in office for only a month - and several Assembly members who took bribes and kickbacks for sweetheart deals and contributions, while a bunch of New Jersey rabbis laundered money through Jewish charities? And how a human kidney purchase was arranged in the process? Which led to a member of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's Cabinet to resign when his office was raided as part of the investigation? And how this all started with only one informant?

I wish this were a joke . . ..

Meanwhile, noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin, under suspicion for ethically dubious transactions of her own, served her eagerly awaited last day as governor of Alaska today. Corzine's last day as governor of New Jersey - due to the fact that this latest scandal is the kind of corruption he hoped to rid the Garden State of - could come as early as January.