Today’s economic lesson
So remember kids:
Federal government spending a single dime on infrastructure, health care, national parks, wildlife protection, arts or education: EVIL SOCIALISM!
Federal government spending $85 billion to purchase badly-mismanaged insurance company: AWESOME REPUBLICAN PHILOSOPHY FTW!
Campaign update
Faced with the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, one that shows no signs of miraculously getting better, John McCain yesterday nevertheless insisted "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."
(Actually, what he said was "The fundamentals are, of our economy are strong," stammering and gasping through what he knew to be a pathetic, desperate lie: watch the video and you can see the terror in his expression as he uncorks this whopper. He honestly looks like he’s worried that the collective audience is about to laugh him off stage.)
Since McCain knows he cannot possibly win on his record or his policies, his campaign has no choice but to hurl meaningless distractions and lies, commonly known as "bullshit," into the media manure-spreader. To distract voters from his current inarguable position (oh, wait, did you hear? When he said "the fundamentals of our economy" he didn’t mean things like stock trading, housing starts, inflation, food prices, real estate prices or consumer spending — he meant the proud souls of the American workers, and how DARE you suggest that he meant anything else, how DARE you suggest that the souls of the American workers are not stronger than ever!) he know he’ll have to come up with a lie so big, so outrageous, so patently untrue that it cannot help but dominate the news cycle. Let’s see, he already lied about his VP pick being a reformer, and he’s already tried to tar his opponent as a child molester, hmm, it doesn’t seem like he could push it any further than that, but —
Aha! I know, he’ll claim that he invented the Blackberry! That’s right, John McCain, who claims that he cannot use a computer, cannot send an email, cannot open a website, does not know about the internet, nevertheless invented the Blackberry. Bravo!
So, check this out. A few days ago, the National Review, a dead-end conservative rag, defends McCain’s technological impairment from those mean, mean Democrats by claiming, you know what, John McCain can’t use a Blackberry because — yes, that’s right — he was a POW. How DARE the Democrats pick on a POW for being unable to use a Blackberry, how DARE they! He can’t type with his fingers or lift a Blackberry to his ear because of the terrible, terrible wounds he received as a POW.
Oh — except that he does. All the time.
Next, we will hear that he invented the telephone — why not? He was alive back then.
UPDATE: McCain, not even kidding, now claims to have invented cell phones and wifi as well.
A financial note
A few years back, I took a substantial chunk of money to Merrill Lynch. My previous financial guy, at Paine Webber, had wantonly discarded my money and I wanted to take great care to make sure that didn’t happen again. I was very stern and commanding in my meeting with the woman from Merrill, who was a slick, expensively-dressed, well-coiffed young blonde in designer eyewear. I wasn’t going to get taken again and I asked her many probing questions about her day-to-day duties, her business, and the market in general. She blithely dismissed all doubts I put forth and cheerfully presented mountains of evidence to show how safe my money would be at Merrill.
At one point I asked her "Well, but what happens if Merrill goes out of business?" She laughed as though I had asked "Well, what if water flows uphill?" and, all but patting me on the head, said "Todd, if Merrill goes out of business, I promise you, your money will be the least of your worries, because if Merrill goes out of business it will mean the world is ending." Merrill, she told me, was too gigantic an institution with far too much money and roots far too deep to ever be so much as tickled by the worst economic storms imaginable. To elucidate, she added "Todd, I promise you, if Merrill goes out of business it will mean that giant, flaming rocks are falling from the sky."
So, this might be a good indication of how bad things are right now.
UPDATE: Not to worry, John McCain assures us "The fundamentals of our economy are still strong." Thank goodness! And here I thought McCain was just a cynical Republican tool willing to say anything to get elected.
On the anniversary of 9/11…
Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that – you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 –
PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.
Problem solved. Done and done. Make up a lie, declare victory and move on. Just another day in the most deplorable, most corrupt, most cynical, most shameless, most hateful administration in US history. How anyone could possibly vote Republican after this is utterly beyond me.
Two related questions
pirateman asks —
"How do you think that the movie industry, based upon the last 8 years of movies, have reacted to the Bush Administration and everything that’s come along with it? I only ask because I feel like there were a bunch of movies in Bush’s first term (3 Kings comes readily to mind) which really talked about or dwelt upon the fact that the country’s leadership was a bit fucked. Do you think that the last 8 years have had an influence? And if so, what?"
destroyerzooey asks —
Show business has an effect on politics and politics has an effect on show business and here are two examples:
Election roundup
My apologies to my readers who are anxious to read my analysis of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. I’m getting to it. In the meantime, these three articles on the McCain campaign caught my eye and express my feelings much better than I could. All three are worth clicking through to.
All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let’s face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we’ve become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House … John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.
So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country … McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement … McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain – no one else – has proved it.
Crooks. That’s the only word for it. There’s no noble or higher purpose here, there’s nothing admirable about it, not even in the most brutal, Machiavellian sense. They’re liars. They’re crooks. It is taken as a Republican given that anything that can gain power is justifiable, regardless of how loathsome it is or how depraved the fabrication … If we welcome open, direct lies into our political discourse, it’s not political discourse anymore — just the oratorical equivalent of an organized crime ring. McCain knows he can lie through his teeth and almost nobody will truly call him out on it — at least, not compared to all the people who will hear the lie. That’s been the strategy for every election involving the old Nixonites, from then until now, and there’s no chance it’s going to go away until there is a price to be paid for being a nationally televised liar. So when’s that going to be?
An idealist, but also a realist
MILFs and fishes.
A few days ago, I posted a snarky little piece on Sarah Palin. In it, I suggested that McCain, in giving Palin the VP slot on the GOP ticket, was rallying the far-right base by dangling the very real possibility of his imminent death in front of their hateful, blood-thirsty little eyes. To the left, I suggested, Palin is a veiled threat, but to the right she’s a coded promise.
Some further thoughts on Sarah Palin
I realize now that I’ve misinterpreted the nomination of Sarah Palin. When the story first broke, I was horrified and insulted that McCain would think so little of his honor and his country to nominate someone so vastly unqualified for the job. The idea that McCain, 72, feeble and approaching senility, would put this coarse, dim-witted monster a heartbeat away from the presidency was the final blow to my respect for him.
At the time, it seemed like Sarah Palin was McCain’s attempt to gather votes from disaffected Clinton supporters, and in that regard she was an insult of the highest degree, the notion that Clinton supporters would be so stupid as to vote for any woman, regardless of her neanderthal policies. Since then, partly though the courtesy of some of my readers here, I’ve learned that the purpose of nominating Palin was not primarily to lure Clintonites but to energize the Republican base, the evangelicals and fundamentalists, the anti-choice, anti-science, anti-compassion hard-liners whose only argument with Bush/Cheney is that they didn’t pursue their agenda strongly enough.
I now understand that, to a liberal, Sarah Palin is a crippling nightmare because she stands an excellent chance of becoming president, but to the Republican base, she’s an electrifying dream — because she stands an excellent chance of becoming president. McCain isn’t "throwing the base a bone" by nominating one of them to a powerless office, he’s extending hope to the base, who strongly disliked him before but will now come out and vote for him in droves in the hope that McCain will, in fact, die and office and give them the president they really want. To the majority of the country, McCain’s message is "You better hope I stay alive in office," but his message to "the crazies" (Rove’s term, not mine) is "Hey, you never know, I’m an old, old man."