A clarification on GOP voters and McCain's latest strategy

I mentioned, in my last note on McCain's luck, how democratic voters are less prejudiced than republican voters. Before republicans lose their head over the remark, let me offer an elaboration, one to clarify AND to further develop why McCain's campaign is so despicable.

First, the clarification:

Movement conservatism, the radical fringe of the GOP that has dominated the party's policy for the last 30 years, is a movement grounded in racism (1).

While it is a strange idea for modern democrats like myself to consider, the south used to be a reliably democratic region. The logic was simple: FDR's New Deal offered showers of public aid to the impoverished regions of the South, areas that remained devastated from the evaporating manufacturing markets from the Civil War. While the area was still ripe with prejudice, it was short on ignorance, as southern voters were smart enough to vote for the hand that so generously fed them.

This continued until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed. LBJ knew what he was doing. By supporting African-Americans in an unprecedented legislative effort, he was single-handedly offering the South to the GOP. And boy, did they exploit it.

Crazy as he was, Richard Nixon was a brilliant manager of campaigns. He knew what the people wanted to hear, but even more was his ability to run on raw emotion. Along with scare-tactics of communism, Nixon ran on racism, gathering strong southern support by matching their ugly ideology. It didn't matter that Nixon essentially governed as a liberal, raising taxes and pushing for universal healthcare. He ran on pure emotion, and that strategy left a strong impression on budding movement conservatives(2), who would use the campaigning excessively.

To be fair, I cannot credit the success of movement conservatism to racism alone. The movement was heavily financed by rich corporations that despised the high taxes of the New Deal, and the movement ran in equal hatred of such counter-culture themes as drugs, homosexuality, and promiscuous sex (I recommend finding a speech Ronald Reagan gave during his campaign for governorship of California, where he described "vile orgies" and a student dance that had descended into an orgy!).

The fruits of these early campaigns have flourished, as the GOP has held a thorough stranglehold over the South for a solid 30 years. Most recently, George W. Bush and Karl Rove composed a campaign of such cultural misogyny that Nixon would have wept a tear in pride. In 2000, they famously leaked a rumor that John McCain had an illegitimate black child--and during the South Carolina Primary, of all times (and I did mention the baby was black, right?). And during his 2004 re-election, Bush ran on constitutionally banning gay marriage.

These are two of the more egregious examples, but you get the point. Republicans have played on prejudice and raw emotion to win elections.

Now, the elaboration on why McCain is such a scumbag:

John McCain has, essentially, nothing to run on as president. His record as a maverick is laughable upon further inspection. His recent activities, from confusing Sunni and Shia tribes to making so many gaffes on the campaign trail that a campaign manager announced he did not speak for his own campaign, have raised more than eyebrows. And his latest flip flops, on key issues like taxes and immigration, make him progressive politics' worst nightmare.

It is not surprising, then, that McCain would demolish his alleged integrity and run on fear; after all, he is running against a black man with a frightening name. These actions alone are scumbag-worthy, as anybody with a stable internet connection can deduce that Barack Obama is not raising taxes on the middle class, is not a freedom fighter from the middle east, and is not good buddies with Bill Ayers. But again, McCain is a movement conservative candidate, so this was expected.

What I never anticipated, though, was McCain of the swastika. Watching the McCain rallies last week was like being transported to a Nuremberg rally. McCain practically bated the audience, asking rhetorical questions like "Who is Barack Obama?" just begging the crowd to should out words like "A Terrorist!" Sarah Palin was just the same, questioning the crowd at her rally on why a presidential candidate would buddy-up with former terrorists? prompting a crowd member to bellow "KILL HIM!"

This is unacceptable. In an unstable time, where a member of one of the most discriminated minorities in human history is running to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling, your campaign is whipping the uneducated, prejudice base you call "supporters" into a drunken, hate-filled frenzy.

Maybe they'll get lucky and someone will finally shoot Obama.

Despicable. Manipulative. Low. This is the dirtiest political campaign I have ever seen, and I can only hope that Obama wins in a route on November 4 and McCain is forever known as the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short man whose grisly politics cost him the election.






1. Indeed: William Buckley, the creator of the movement, defended the Southern States rights to prohibit African-Americans, or, lesser humans, from voting.

2. And Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, the fattest piece of journalistic excrement ever spat upon this earth. And yeah, he did graduate from Ohio University...

A time when Rod Stewart was cool

Rod Stewart has become a whipping post among rock music circles today, and for good reason. As if his disco-inspired heyday in the 80s were not bad enough, with his spiked hair, leather pants, and leopard-skin jackets, Rod has made a comeback recently by killing American standards like “It Had To Be You” and “Blue Skies.” And yes, even in his ripe old age of 63, he’s still trying to be sexy.

Imagine the shock, then, that the man once fronted a serious and vital rock n’ roll band. And he was cool while doing it.

Faces, a group that also included Ronnie Wood of Rolling Stones fame and Ronnie Lane, rocked a hard, boozy rock that grooved like a motha and stung like a bee. Think of a bar-band type sound, one that is so aggressive, so sloppy, and so darn fun that it could internally combust at any moment.

The group released a number of strong albums during their brief time together (“Long Player” and “A Smile is a Good as a Wink” are the ones to look into), but to fully appreciate the group’s rockin’ talents and their (gulp) diversity, the true purchase must be “Five Guys Walk into a Bar,” a four-disc box set that is simply one of the finest box set releases in the history of rock n’ roll.
There have been better bands than Faces, but as far as the purpose of a box set is concerned—to provide an ultimate showcase of a group while offering music for beginners and music for diehards—“Five Guys…” exceeds on a gargantuan scale. Assembled by group keyboardist Ian McLagan, the set features a whopping 31 unreleased tracks, which include many wild live performances. While I was aware of the hard rock side of Faces when I purchased the set, it was the featured ballads that left me stunned. Yes, ballads! While a bar-band is not the typical benchmark for emotional songs of love and loss, Faces performs a striking series of ballads that all but defy their hard rock roots.

With beautiful melodies and glistening harmonies, songs like “Debris,” “Glad and Sorry,” and especially “If I’m on the Late Side” are as fine as rock balladry gets, offering a wonderful icy cool to the heated rock numbers. This is due in no small part to Lane’s influence, a wonderful and underappreciated songwriter.

A final note is worth being made about the musicianship. Fans of the Rolling Stones will recognize Wood, but his playing throughout the set is still a revelation. Aggressively hoisting his slide guitar to the front of the group, Wood harkens back to the blues with his rendition of “Around the Plynth,” and grooves like the devil in the white city during a live recording of “You’re my Girl.” And then there’s Rod Stewart.

I began this post with Stewart, so I might as well end it with him for the sake of bookends. Stewart is great on these numbers, almost making you forget of his recent dreck. He yelps and hollers with glee during the rock numbers, but sings with feeling and sensitivity during the ballads. He adds a potent charisma to each number, displaying that he had the goods to be a great rock n’ roll vocalist; and during the early part of the 70s, he was. It’s just a crying shame that he had to sell out.

Bottom line, Faces is a band well worth investigating, as they offer harder rock than the Rolling Stones while the sensitive balladry of any folk group. Give ‘em a chance, as I am sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

McCain want's somebody...to hold his hand

Poor John McCain. He had so much going for him! Aside from the fact that his campaign reeks of movement conservative politics, aside from his repeated gaffes on policy, aside from selling his soul to the radical lunatic fringe of the GOP, and aside from making the most irresponsible VP choice in modern political times, John has been hanging in there(1).

I find it exceedingly difficult, however, to imagine how his campaign can survive what has transpired the last 24 hours.

1. The stock market finished a horrendous week, dropping over 18% of its value. How bad is this? It's the worst week in the history of the stock exchange (yeah, worse than 1933). Any bad economic news is bad news for the McCain campaign, as the kind of policies he supports have directly influenced this melt down.

2. Earlier today, McCain defended the honor of Barack Obama, answering angry cries of Obama's religion and character at a Minnesota rally. After McCain made the statement, which was a basic declaration of what a decent family man Obama is, his supporters booed him for the gesture.

3. The bipartisan investigation into Sarah Palin's troopergate scandal was made public today, and it overwhelmingly concludes that Palin DID abuse her power as governor by firing Commissioner Walter Monegan, allegedly because Monegan would not fire Tim Wooten, a state trooper who was embroiled in a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister.

These developments are quite catastrophic, and they are the last thing McCain needed at this point in the campaign. His credibility slipping, his consistency nonexistence, and his integrity all but a mirage, McCain has nothing to run on. By deciding to avoid the issues, and purely run on the "controversies" and "scandals" of Barack Obama's character, McCain was playing on thin ice. These were the same strategies that Hillary Clinton employed during her own campaign battle with Obama, and obviously, Clinton lost that battle. By nature, however, democrats are less prejudiced voters than republicans, and by campaigning in such a fashion, McCain unleashed an electoral monster that he could have NEVER hoped to control, one united in racism and bound by their absolute hatred of variety. What did he expect to happen? Now that McCain has backed off on this approach, he has angered these supporters, and with them the powerful right-wing talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Idiots they are, but powerful they are as well, and their wrath will be swift.

The Palin is self-explanatory: the kind of scandal and abuse of power that we have come to expect as protocol during the Bush years. And she managed this during her first year as governor. Not only does it undermine the entire argument for her nomination--that Washington needs a new, fresh kind of politician--but it is the most blatant example of Palin's prevarication, as she was a staunch opponent to the investigation from the start, refusing to answer to subpoenas and hiding behind the McCain campaign's clout to crush the investigation. She failed, and the information is now out.

As I finish writing this, I'm listening to Otis Redding's rendition of "A Woman, a Lover, a Friend," and in the song, Otis sings:

"I want me somebody, to hold my hand. Somebody to love me, and understand."

Oh John, how Otis feels your pain.


1. With a practical tongue-bath by the press, mind you.

Leave it to Hustler: A Sarah Palin Porn Flick

How could I make this up?

Larry Flint's Hustler has made a Sarah Palin-themed porno film, and copies of the script have been leaked to the press.

I'll admit--it sure seems folksy!

P.S. While some have disagreed on the outcomes, we can all admit that this has been the zaniest, most unpredictable, and flat out wild presidential election in recent memory. Though I am still making up my mind on whether that's a good thing or not...

A Wink is better than a Nod...to a Horny Conservative

Richy Lowry has always been somewhat of a toad. Aside from editing the National Review, the biggest piece of garbage to every be printed on glossy paper, Lowry has also penned a book entitled "Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years," where he sticks every crisis of the George W. Bush presidency on Clinton while attributing all of Clinton's success to Reagan's reign.

His latest jaw-dropper, though, exceeds my wildest expectations for what idiotic conservatives are capable of. Get a load of this, his column following the Vice Presidential debate that was posted on the National Review website (emphasis mine):

"A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."

Have you ever read anything so creepy? so fundamentally...icky? Rich Lowry gets his juices flowing by watching stunt doubles from "Fargo" mangle the English language. Aim...fire!

The VP Debate--Hyper Corkiness and Foreign Policy Smackdowns

Reflections

The only Vice Presidential debate has come and gone, and I have several observations regarding the content and substance of the evening (hint: it's not complimentary to Palin).

The game plan tonight for Palin was obvious: increase her folksy charm to hyperventilating levels, bypassing substance all together and blatantly ignoring the prompts by the moderator. On more than one occasion, Palin completely ignored the topic in discussion, answering with "yes" or "no" questions and then barreling into something unrelated, or, on one occasion earlier in the debate, literally telling the moderator she was not going to focus on her question.

Why would she avoid these questions? because her note cards did not provide answers. There is no bias involved in charging that Palin did considerable cramming for this debate, as her focus on international affairs, both economically and politically, was slim to none while Governor of Alaska. Her interviews the last two weeks display this in spades. In cramming for this debate, however, she pigeon-holed her performance. She was so reliant on the note cards and on her pre-set answers that any maneuvering--such as when she tried to explain the tax and health care policies of McCain, or when she was asked to differentiate McCain and Dubya--and her answers came off as awkward as a result. And for the record, she never once gave a substantive answer on how McCain is different from Bush.

Consider, for instance, the most moving part of the debate, where Biden made reference to the horrific car accident that took the lives of his first wife and infant daughter. Biden was noticeably chocked up over mentioning the incident, and it tied in quite well with his argument. Palin's response? Talking points, and cliche ones at that. As Chris Matthew said following the debate in regards to her scripted responses, "I felt like I was listening to a spelling bee."

She didn't burn the barn down, so in that respect, she succeeded. But did she provide any substance? any indicator that she has the capacity to be the most powerful person in the world? NO.

Biden, however, was more sluggish in the opening. It seemed he was caught off guard by the pit-bull methods of Palin, and he struggled through the first half of the debate to find a clear voice. That all changed, though, once foreign policy was introduced, a topic that has always remained the piece-de-resistance of Biden's platform. Mr. Foreign Policy, as he is called, Biden plowed over questions regarding Israel, Iran, and Pakistan, where Palin, surprise surprise, lacked serious substance, even getting facts such as the commanding general of the Afghanistan regime wrong, calling him "McClellan."

After the foreign policy segment ended, Biden charged ahead, clearly feeling more comfortable with his forceful stance against Palin. I felt that he tried to play it down the center when the debate started, over-relying on facts and tone and letting Palin win on personality. Once international affairs became the topic, however, and the true Biden came out to play, he seemed remarkably cozy in attacking the platforms of McCain and Palin.

The News

Every debate, in one form or another, creates news, and for tonight's sparing it was Palin's jaw-dropping, outrageous comment that as Vice President, she would seek to constitutionally increase the power of her position.

WHAT?!?

This is clearly an issue that Palin will be clarifying in the coming weeks. The last eight years, we have been subjected to the most blatant assault on constitutional rights in United States history, and who was the man in the center of all this? DICK CHENEY. Here is a man who increased his own power and influence to unspeakable levels as vice president, leading the nation into an unnecessary war while dominating the president's ear on particulars. For Palin to suggest, after eight years of blatant fascism, that she would attempt to bring MORE power to the VP slot is maddening. Check that: it's inexcusable, and it proves my point that she is useless without her talking points note cards.

Press Conference--NOW

Which brings me to the most important issue now, for me at least: Palin in an unrehearsed press conference. The debate tonight appealed to her strengths. It was fast, it was frantic, and it allotted Biden limited time to question her lies on health care, taxes, and her record as Governor; additionally, it removed any time for follow ups by the moderator, as Palin's biggest lie of the night, that she supports rights for gay couples, went all but unchallenged by moderator Gwen Ifill. In a real press conference, with multiple journalists asking a multitude of questions, Palin will have to stand up for these sort of things. Maybe that's why she discouraged the idea of meeting with any more "mainstream media" reporters at the closing of tonight's debate...

P.S. Independent voter reactions are overwhelmingly in Biden's favor. We won't know the full impact of this debate until late Saturday/early Sunday, as those poll results will be post-debate, but the early news seems promising for Biden.