Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Please join me in wishing my friends Eric and Lourdes well as they plunge into matrimony today. And I'll be sure to let you know if lightning bolts hurled by an angry God strike when this atheist walks into church to see them take the plunge.

And now, on with the political fuckery.

I know this will not be news to most of you, but the McCain campaign seems to have a serious reality perception problem:

The Washington Post had a widely-read item yesterday about the McCain campaign's intention to drag the campaign even deeper into the gutter. According to McCain aides, the goal is to shift the public's attention away from substantive issues, most notably the economy, which have put McCain on the defensive. Greg Strimple, one of McCain's top advisers, said the campaign is "looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." Another senior Republican operative said, "There's no question that we have to change the subject here."

Today, the New York Times has another good item, summarizing the political landscape, and noted that the McCain campaign really seems to believe they can change the subject.

Mr. McCain's advisers said their hope was that the issue of the economy would recede somewhat from the public consciousness, now that Congress has passed a bailout plan, and open the way to try to turn the contest back into a referendum on Mr. Obama's credentials.

Maybe I'm misreading public opinion, but this notion that economic concerns might "recede" over the next 30 days seems wildly unrealistic, if not fanciful. Before the crisis on Wall Street began in earnest, the economy was easily considered the top issue on the minds of voters. That hasn't changed. For that matter, the crisis hasn't gone away.

You know, I've been talking politics with my stepmother over the last twenty-four hours, and I'm somehow getting the impression that substantive issues like, oh, say, the crappy economy aren't going to vanish just because Johnny waves his magic smear wand. Call it a hunch.

Speaking of reality perception problems, this one's kinda huge:

Yesterday, Vice President Cheney spoke at the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy in Reno, NV, claiming that the Bush administration has championed wildlife preservation:

As all of you know very well, President Bush made wildlife conservation an early and a high priority of his administration. We’ve carried out that commitment in these eight years — and we’ve been proud to have people like you as partners in the enterprise.

The men and women in this room understand what conservation is all about. It means reverence toward creation, and a commitment to faithful stewardship. It means guarding our spectacular wildlife populations — not just for our own time, but for all time.

In fact, the League of Conservation Voters concludes that the Bush administration “has arguably been the most anti-environmental in our nation’s history.”

There's divorced from reality, but I don't know any cons currently who are merely divorced - they've bludgeoned it about the head and shoulders and stuffed it in a freezer in their garage. Then there's Cheney, who just dropped a thermonuclear bomb on reality, then shot the remnants into space where they'll be mutated by naked cosmic radiation.

Holy fucking shit, these people are insane.

And I don't even know what to say about this little gem:

ABC News reports that the State Department has hired the private firm U.S. Investigations Services “to fill positions in the newly created Force Investigation Unit (FIU),” which was created after last year’s deadly Blackwater shooting to investigate possible crimes committed by contractors in Iraq. However, it is illegal to hire contractors for jobs “considered to be inherently governmental functions” including “the direct conduct of criminal investigations.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has written to the State Department about these “highly troubling” hires but has yet to receive a response.

So. They've hired a contractor to investigate the crimes their other contractors committed, even though it's illegal to hire contractors to investigate the fuckery of contractors... for fuck's sake, can these motherfucking assclowns get any more ridiculous?

There's one good way to express our disinclination to accept their constant abuse of our law and our lives: we can vote every single one of these assholes, and every single one of the people who enabled them, out of office. If we don't give them power, they will no longer have the power to sodomize our country. Get the word out.

Finally, your complimentary Palin word salad for the day:

Sarah Palin was, if memory serves, a journalism major in college, and even worked a bit in broadcast journalism before becoming a mayor. She hasn't demonstrated any real understanding of any issue since joining the Republican ticket, but presumably she knows something about the freedom of the press.

And with that in mind, Palin told Fox News yesterday a little bit about her perspective on the subject.

"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press**, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."

I haven't the foggiest idea what this means. Does anyone here speak Palin? Can someone translate it for me?

I think if I worked for the McCain campaign, I'd be investing in some duct tape and applying it liberally just about now. Since I don't work for the McCain campaign, I think I'm just going to go to the wedding reception and try to drink the Palin pain away.

Hasta.