The Palin Pick and the Plot to End America

The Alaskan Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Even right-leaning pundits like "Morning Joe" were taken aback by Sarah Palin's apparent inability to name a single magazine or newspaper that informed her worldview. The assumption of most is that she must not read anything noteworthy. I doubt that is the case. She may indeed read Time or People on occasion but that is not what shapes her opinions, at least not the opinions of those who have propelled her to national prominence.

By in large, the forces behind Governor Palin view their roles through the prism of the Great Commission. They seek power not to represent the interests of those who elect them but to convert the country and then the entire world to Corporate Christendom. They have their own schools, businesses, radio and T.V. networks and news publications all dedicated to "the mission"--as described by the Sky/Angel Corporation

Our Vision:
To provide a global communications platform as an instrument of unity to equip the Body of Christ to fulfill the Great Commission.

Our Mission: To build and operate a global communications system as the most effective means of assuring that the Gospel will penetrate every nation, culture and people.

That is not to say they are merely Bible-thumping fanatics. They are much more dangerous than that because their ethics begin and end with that purpose. They feel no compunction against lying, cheating or stealing and those who disagree are conveniently dismissed as "non-Christians."

Ultimately, the Palinites see themselves as keepers of both the Christian heritage of the first century and our 17th century Puritans. They offer faint praise for the nation's Founders. For them democracy is the cause of all world problems because humans must be ruled solely by the "natural" laws of God. Palin Puritans see themselves as having been betrayed by the Bill of Rights and a Constitution flawed by a loophole created by America's original "liberals".

Pat Robertson: "The Constitution of the United States is a marvelous document for self- government by Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christians and atheistic people, they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society."

This is where we get to the really scary part. Remember how Sarah Palin winked at Charlie Gibson when she spoke about "why we hold elections"? The ascendancy of the Christian Right has coincided with their control of our voting machinery. As I have harped on for the last five years- the key executives in charge of the three largest voting machine companies in America are ardent supporters of radical Reconstructionism and right wing Christian Fundamentalism.

But it gets worse: Among the Palinites are those pushing for the destruction of the U.S. economy. "Reconstructionists celebrate economic and constitutional crises as opportunity. Howard Phillips, founder of the U.S. Taxpayers-turned-American Constitution Party, has anticipated that U.S. economic distress could eventually trigger a right-wing Christian revolution and takeover of government." See “Power Preying,” Adele M. Stain, Mother Jones, Nov/Dec 1995. Phillips observed that “The death of the Weimar Republic, the opportunity for the National Socialists to come up in the ‘20s, was the result of the fact that the people were hurt economically.”

Yesterday John McCain appeared to divulge what the right-wing Xtians have promised him with the Palin pick:



Do not laugh at Sarah Palin. She's as funny as the Spanish Inquisition. Here is what she told her Republican opponent after their debate for governor: "Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, 'Does any of this really matter?' "

We're about to find out.

Oh- and about what Palin reads... apparently "The New American", a magazine put out by the John Birch Society.

(courtesy of the Associated Press)

The End of Free Candy

P.J.O'Rourke, the conservative writer, once remarked: “The Republicans are a party that says government doesn't work - and then get elected and prove it.”

The American experiment, by which I mean its stumbling, often contrary, lunge towards a functioning representative democracy, has been at once a triumph and a failure. It has triumphed in terms of its wide influence and material possessions but failed in providing steadiness and harmony for its polity. In short it has succeeded to large extent by investing in the current whims of fashion. The country's economy, beginning with Henry Ford and his goal of planned obsolescence, has always depended upon an addiction to consumption-- a need for instant gratification that eviscerates stability and opposes reflection and prudent conservation. The current financial crisis is the result of a culture that both literally and metaphorically "eats without thinking".

As Rachel Maddow, our most brilliant political pundit so humorously described it: Our Wall Street titans are like six-year-olds unable to keep themselves from secretly gorging on the Halloween candy. Meanwhile our representatives in Congress instead of keeping a watchful eye grab their own fistfuls, leaving the public to clean up the six-year-old's vomit.

Victims of Greed

As Anatole Kaletsky asks: How did this disaster come to pass? And how can it be that the U.S. Treasury Secretary is such a financial dunce? One might as well ask how George W. Bush emerged from Harvard with a masters degree in business.

The genesis of the giant multi-national was spawned in the post-World-War-II impulse for unified markets and the American public's demand for ever-increasing quarterly profits. One didn't need to have knowledge to reach the corporate table, just a good enough gimmick to con the bankers long enough for sufficient cash to be raised before the next sure bet.

When Paulson announced his $700 billion “plan” the financial world heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, there would be a white knight to cover all our losses. Sadly, it quickly became clear that while Mssrs Paulson and Bernanke could construct a sophisticated model for the market function of a 12 to 1 leveraged reinsurance derivative, they had no clue how their theoretically-sound, computer-generated product would behave once that six-year-old was finished gobbling up all the candy. So what I first mistook as arrogance was actually sheer bluster. The swaggering demand at the end of Paulson's "mighty" three page paper that: "decisions by the Secretary pursuant to this Act are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency” was merely a bluff trying to fake real confidence.

Not So Sweet Irony

Were it not for the potential tragedy we all face because of their hubris we would be delighting in the deregulators' comeuppance. Remember this from the Republican Party Platform?

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself."

What Bush and Hank were saying just last week:


Well chaps you may pout and stamp your free-market feet but the world has had enough of your childishness. As the Financial Times now reports:

"The Bank of England has moved to inject longer term cash into money markets as part of a co-ordinated effort with the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank. The intervention follows the breakdown late on Thursday of talks over a $700bn bailout for the US financial system.

Money market traders said that interbank lending for terms longer than a day had come to a near standstill as counterparties feared that they may be lending to a bank that could suddenly become insolvent.

The Bank of England said it would extend $30bn in cash for a week against eligible collateral, drawing on currency swap lines put in place earlier this month with the Fed."

The US will lose its role as a global financial “superpower” in the wake of the financial crisis, Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, said on Thursday, blaming Washington for failing to take the regulatory steps that might have averted the crisis.

“The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system. This world will become multi­polar” with the emergence of stronger, better capitalised centres in Asia and Europe, Mr Steinbrück told the German parliament. “The world will never be the same again.”

So there you have it. The world has moved on Mr. Paulson. You may stay in Washington and play more of your games hoping to spare yourself and Senator McCain your due punishment. Neo-liberalism is dead. The only thing left to see now, is whether or not there are enough grown-ups left in the country to give you and your Republican buddies a long-deserved spanking.

Covering (for) John McCain

At least up until yesterday, John McCain has had no greater friend than the NYTimes. Despite its hilarious claim that the Times is cheering for Obama, McCain's own campaign has sent out scores of emails quoting the NYTimes to support their political attacks. Note that this is the same Barack Obama who can't get the Times to whisper the words "Keating Five" even as the S&L scandal redux 'squared' is playing out before our eyes.

Look, I don't blame the NYTimes for secretly backing McCain, knowing his zeal for deregulation... the paper is trying to swim as close as it can down the middle in an age of global-anti-state corporatism. But if you're assuming the mantle as the "Paper of Record" it's hard to keep shying from printing the whole truth while resorting to token jabs and innuendo.

Take this latest brouhaha over the influence of lobbyists. The NYTimes ran the story that mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid @ $345,000 to the lobbying and consulting firm of John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis. In response the McCain camp howled that the NYTimes is in the "tank" for Obama. But the Times had not disclosed the whole story. As Newsweek reports: Davis's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, based in Washington, D.C., continued to receive $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac until last month—long after the Homeownership Alliance had been terminated. One can only hope that, now that they've been slammed for trying to limit the damage, the NYTimes will deign to revisit their own reporting on the "Keating 5":

"to excuse Senators McCain and Glenn now would ignore actions in which all five Senators took part... [ N] otably, all five participated in two extraordinary meetings in April 1987, when four and later all five summoned the Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman and key officials of the board's San Francisco office to Capitol Hill. The Senators cross-examined the regulators about their proposed tough actions against Mr. Keating, who made large campaign contributions to each Senator.

Insiders know how hard it is to get five senators together for any business, sometimes even for hearings. Charles Keating mustered five. This show of force was not lost on the regulators. They backed off, even as Mr. Keating's institution headed toward a collapse that will cost taxpayers $2 billion."

Now we learn that McCain's campaign manager and later that campaign manager's firm were being kept on retainer while Freddie Mac was under an ethics cloud, and being tied to the current financial meltdown. Step back and think about what the "paper of record" would have to say had that campaign manager been representing Barack Obama. But it shouldn't be surprising. Consider how the NYtimes reported on the campaign during the crisis in Georgia.

As "BeyondTimes" points out: "Many of [the Times'] stories seem lifted from the Republican playbook. [ ] on August 15, the Times ran a major story that was so inaccurate, and so counter to the prevailing media frame, that its reporter appeared to have become seriously detached from reality. In “McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes,” reporter Michael Falcone argued that while “Obama’s voice seems muted,” McCain handled the Russia-Georgia crisis with “fluency,” lending the Republican “an aura of commander in chief.”

[In fact] the story makes no mention of the Georgia lobbyist on the McCain payroll. Instead, the paper withheld this critical fact from readers while touting McCain’s alleged “fluency” with which he discussed Georgia.

So tell us, John McCain, what exactly do you have to whine about with the NYTimes?

Or is this the Bush Political Doctrine of a preventive first strike? Hello, FBI?

Proud To Be An American

Barack Obama may be struggling to beat John McCain in our quadrennial presidential sweepstakes but the rest of the world is cheering for him to capture the White House. According to a BBC poll, people in all 22 of the countries surveyed prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of John McCain by a 4-1 margin.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

So what does this say about the overall image of the United States? I would argue that it shows that after 7 and a half years of George W. Bush the world sees America as more insular and indifferent towards the rest of humanity than ever before.

History suggests this antipathy for the "ugly American" has been well earned.

"[I] know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems to be the truth"
--H.L. Mencken

People across the world understand that the United States is the Unrivaled Empire with the military might to exert its will and pursue its interests wherever it pleases. And yet they seem convinced that this hegemonic power can be employed benevolently -- or at the very least, less dangerously at a time when human beings as a whole are facing existential challenges. Climate Change, resource depletion, pollution, HIV-Aids, just to name the most pressing, should be of utmost priority yet here we are, roughly 50 days from electing the most powerful leader on earth and these issues are mostly absent from our political discussions.

Rather than being pressed to articulate, exactly how, he as president will go about tackling these problems Barack Obama is being constantly forced to explain:
a)--who he never was and b)--things he never said.

A report by Dan Hoyle on voters in small-town America bears the first point out:

"Obama, he's not our kind of people," said Middleton in a gruff, bitten-off speaking style, taking a break from canning green beans at the couple's double-wide mobile home. As a retired coal miner and a die-hard union man he should be a Democratic candidates natural supporter. He won't vote for Obama: "He don't believe in the hereafter, and the Lord, the way I look at it ... he's Muslim."

Such views are common in what the corporate media tenderly refer to as America's heartland. Polls taken in Canada and Australia show that citizens in those countries know Senator Obama to be a devout Christian (he spent his early twenties working on behalf of Catholic Charities), so when similar polls in rural USA indicate that over 19% agree with Mr. Middleton is it ignorance or simple excuse-making cussedness?
I'd say probably a little of both.

"[Our]ecclesiastics are responsible for all the turmoils and black hatreds that now rage in the bleak regions... they are to blame for every witches' pot that now brews in the backwoods of the Union."

Mencken penned those words for the American Mercury in 1924. His fear was that the Ku Klan Klan's infiltration of the Baptists and Methodists had inspired their ministers to oppose "every attempt to meet ignorance and prejudice with enlightenment." He charged religious zealots with preaching "not only the most bitter, savage morality of the Old Testament," but its "contempt of obvious facts."

And there you have it. In Mr. Middleton's America facts are malleable not concrete. Knowledge must first be filtered through prejudice. As for taking on the great ills of the day: Belief not Action confers Redemption. It is a way of viewing life, as well as others, that is necessarily both self-referential and self-reverent.

The ugly truth for Obama may simply be this. He might impress those foreign non-believers who offend God with their atheistic modern notions, he will never be what good Christians folks in our faithful hinterland think of as devoutly and proudly American.

I think Gary Ball, a former coal miner and editor of the firebrand Mountain Citizen newspaper in Inez, Kentucky said it best: "We know Obama's plenty book-smart ... but I liked Harry Truman, the last president to have a simple high school education."

I don't believe John McCain needs to worry about not understanding much about the "internets". He may have a millionaire wife and more homes than he can count, but he likes us Americans just the way we are. Just the way we've always been.

Barack Obama: Presumer-in-Chief?

After a victorious jaunt from Kabul to Downing Street Barack Obama has discovered that laurels won abroad shrink to a thorny crown on American soil. To prove the trip they had all begged to join was no more than a meaningless fling, our celebrities in the press now assure us that no matter the strength of his vision nor the breadth of his charm, the young senator had, in fact, accomplished nothing. Nothing, that is, beyond convincing the rest of the world that, but for the voting, he's already the president.

Ah, the recklessness of youth wasting its time courting Old Europe.

It appears the dashing senator, after managing to nimbly avoid every political IED in his path, has been undone by the ultimate misstep: he outran his own success. And just so we appreciate its deeper implications, here are the garlands our infatuated newsmen were kind enough to wrap around Obama's neck as they greeted him by the finishing line:


Washington Post: "Whether by the end of this week he will be seen as presumptuous or overly cocky..."

TIME Magazine: "capable to become the Commander in Chief of a superpower -- without seeming presumptuous..."

AP: ".. a speech that risked being seen as presumptuous..."

The National Journal: "He is well aware voters here at home might see that as presumptuous..."

Chicago Tribune: "That means walking the fine line between looking presidential and appearing arrogant and presumptuous..."

Boston Globe: "plus the growing sense in some quarters that the presumptive Democratic nominee is getting a little presumptuous..."

One can be forgiven for suspecting that these great bards think remarkably alike... one should never imagine they might all be working off of Karl Rove's talking points ... no, that would be far too presumptuous... and we know our corporate-owned media has a liberal bias...right...? Wrong!

Instead, we are to overlook the fact that Obama's opponent offers such presumption by the day, if not the hour. John McCain brays that he is "ready-from-before-day-one" and has the gonads to coyly assume it. We must forget that his presumptuous goofs-- like his dewy-eyed support for Bush's ill-conceived war typify his misjudgments. Disregard the chills running down the spines of a few million of us as we picture "bomb, bomb" McCain in command of a nuclear arsenal. Such fears are folly our fawning pundits insist. Never mind that their septuagenarian hero's one great accomplishment came forty years ago as a prisoner-of-war under doubtful circumstances. And even if every word of McCain's autobiography is true, is it unseemly to ask whether such an ordeal might be responsible for his frequent mental lapses and mercurial temper?

Such questions, judging from the near silence on the subject, I can only presume are out of bounds- unlike the coarse whispers of a jealous surrogate which become instant front page news subject to weeks of biting analysis and great tomes of indignation. And while the sins of Reverend Wright were wholly rhetorical, our supposed watch-dog press does not apparently care a whit that the man we may elect as president admits to having had a quick-rage-trigger and views military force as an act of diplomacy.

With that in mind, is it impolitic to think there were a few old Germans among Berlin's 200,000 thrall hoping that before America's next president goes hunting another war someone in our universally "liberal" news media summons the nerve to ask a few hard questions? Or would that be presumptuous?