McCAIN-PALIN ADMINISTRATION COULD HAVE US LOOKING BACK FONDLY AT BUSH-CHENEY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Too many of us are taking these Sarah Palin revelations too seriously. Instead we should all sit back and appreciate the entertainment value of the McCain-Palin ticket. This is like being fed the very best reruns of the fabulous Jerry Springer Show.
And I don't believe McCain made his running-mate decision at all hastily. He used every bit as much care as the Palins did choosing their self-described redneck of a future husband and in-law. Seriously, I feel sorry for both those kids. It's bad enough having to deal with an unplanned teen pregnancy without having the facts splashed around the world media.

As for other revelations, the facts that have come out on Troopergate so far are not terribly flattering to Palin and may involve lawbreaking. Her husband's very old driving mishap is of no consequence. Was she supposed to dump him because he had a DUI conviction 20 years ago?

But Governor Palin, we've recently learned, says the war in Iraq is our mission from God. That strikes me as being more germane to our elective choices than her husband's driving record. Some of these characters drawn from the Springer show apparently aren't terribly thoughtful in the foreign policy department. We already know McCain's mission: victory. Victory over who or what remains vague.

Let's look carefully at the substance of what McCain and Palin have to say at their Twin Cities convention. Then let's cut their bullshit campaign to pieces and save America from the kind of trouble that could have us looking back fondly at the Bush-Cheney era.

DAILY KOS, REPUTEDLY TOP-NOTCH, PLACES PALIN STORY ON SITE WITHOUT VERIFICATION, AND THIS BLOGGER WAS SUCKED INTO SAME MISINFORMATION MORASS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

The Daily Kos placed an utterly strange story on its well-regarded site Saturday claiming that Sarah Palin's latest child was actually born to her teen-age daughter. Then it proceeded to ignore its own story, leading me to believe it was phony, but not before I'd leaped down the same hole of unverified information. This does not excuse me, but we have been so slammed around over the last several years by under-reported news and non-reported news from the standard media, that we've been led to believe we can get superior workmanship out of media outlets such as Daily Kos and HuffingtonPost. But these sites are run on a shoestring, often by people who are poorly paid and not terribly well-acquainted with professional standards. I apologize for mimicking their behavior, but I'd actually come to think of the Daily Kos as a legitimate information source and paid the price for it. Even if this story were to prove true, the Kos's odd lack of follow-up is evidence that the people there just put the story out there without checking it. Governor Palin's teen-age daughter is in fact five months pregnant, which the family announced today. But assuming Governor Palin bore her own child, her daughter's pregnancy of course has no bearing on the governor's suitability for office.

McCAIN CANDIDACY AN ACCIDENT OF HISTORY, GIVING OBAMA, RIGHT MAN AT RIGHT TIME, A SHOT AT VICTORY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
As a presidential candidate, John McCain is an accident of history, just as Hubert Humphrey was in 1968. Back then the Democratic candidate would have been California primary victor Bobby Kennedy had not Sirhan Sirhan changed history in the kitchen of Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel.

And in 2008 the Republican candidate would have been Virginia’s George Allen, if not for his videotaped “macaca” remark. He had the contributors, the babbling-right-wing editorialists, and pretty much the whole world primed. But after Allen allowed us a quick look into his ugly mind, there weren't many GOP alternates ready to go for the prize. McCain, who’s too old and too ornery to be nominated under ordinary conditions, just happened to be the last man standing. Republican voters weren’t about to pull the switch for Mitt Romney, who’d abruptly switched virtually every political stand he’d ever taken as Massachusetts governor in order to sign off on all the hard-core positions a candidate must take to win GOP primaries.

McCain had also re-tailored most of his positions in order to pass muster with Mr. and Mrs. Right-Wing, but his switch had been a gradual one over approximately eight years. McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for the No. 2 spot is an interesting one, but not likely to peel off nearly as many Hillary supporters as he’d hoped.

I’m not going to claim relatively untested Palin couldn’t possibly fill the role of president because if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last eight years it’s that the country can stumble along with virtually anybody in the Oval Office, even a lazy little bastard who can’t put six grammatical words together and never asks any questions because he already knows everything.

But Barack Obama is not an accident of history. He’s the logical president for a country weary of a government that cares for the interests of only the very, very rich and their natural allies, the big global corporations out to buy favors.

Obama’s the logical president for a country that wants to get past its crazy concern over race. But of course not everyone in this country wants to get past race. When voters tell interviewers they don’t know enough about Obama, they’re basically saying they’d need to know an awful lot more about a black man in order to vote for him and they don’t really want to know too much because then they might want to vote for him. This is a man who wrote his own informative, revealing autobiography, writes his own speeches (as did Lincoln), and who told us in his acceptance speech exactly what he plans to do, who he is, and where he comes from. And they don’t know enough about him? Where do they live? Saddam’s old spider hole?

After what we’ve been through the last eight years either Al Gore or John Edwards --- both white Southern men with brains and decent instincts --- would have won this general election 58-52 percent. But Gore lost the fire in his belly and Edwards couldn’t get through to enough Democratic primary voters and ultimately self-destructed.

Naturally it’s going to be more difficult for an African-American with a funny name, particularly since a black man, as Jesse Jackson noted, isn’t allowed to get angry. And when the McCain-Rove machine really starts throwing mud, he’s going to have to be our new Jackie Robinson, the university-educated black man who promised Branch Rickey he would remain composed when taunted by racist ball players and fans. Robinson pledged to just play his best and pave the way for others. That’s what Barack is going to do for all of us.

OBAMA'S FOREMOST MISSION IN DENVER SHOULD BE TO RUB McCAIN'S NOSE IN BUSH'S STINK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Even John McCain would have to agree that Michelle Obama was extremely poised for a Muslim, America-hating bomb-thrower from the Weather Underground. And those two daughters are triple-adorable. Trouble is, when the Republicans come to bat in Minnesota they will unleash TV sharpies like Fox’s Roger Ailes who will fill their precious time slot with vicious, anti-Obama venom that will take its toll. That’s why Fox News doubles the viewership of tamer CNN. It knows how to get eyeballs fastened on what it's doing.

The first night in Denver avoided disaster. Teddy was quite moving, and Michelle proved to be one of the finest public speakers in memory. Very few members of Congress can come close to her in terms of intellect and communications skills. But we now suffer under the worst president in American history running the most inept, venal, corrupt administration since Nero. Obama and his people must rub McCain’s nose in Bush’s stink. They must remind us over and over, using McCain's very own statements, asides, voting record, and senior moments as supporting evidence, why his administration would be a continuation of our present nightmare.

Positive campaigning is great, but Americans' hatred and distrust of the Bush administration are fantastic gifts to Obama. In Denver we should be hearing about McCain and Bush every fourth or fifth sentence. Cheney is hated from sea to sea, but I didn't hear one prime-time word about him. Also, that ex-GOP congressman from Iowa is one of the ten most boring people in America. He had to drive off millions of viewers with his dull, nearly pointless history lecture. Didn't anyone bother to check up on this guy? Listening to him was like tuning in to golf on your radio dial.

Democrats have all sorts of media experts they could call on – Rob Reiner, Spielberg, etc., etc. But whoever ran this show for Obama was far from first-rate. That may not be fatal, but it can’t help. There’s a saying in boxing: if you don’t train hard, remember your opponent will. It’s a concept Obama’s people clearly didn’t understand when they put together their first night in Denver.

COLD WAR PART II -- A LOOK BACK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
No one gave it much thought when Prince George marched into the Rose Garden in December 2001 and announced, "Today I am giving formal notice to Russia that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty." He was referring to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Why was this country unilaterally pulling out of one of the most successful peace initiatives in world history?

Nobody really asked. In December 2001, three months after 9-11, Bush was America's darling, a "hero." So if he was pulling the plug on this hugely significant pact, it was assumed he must have a good reason. He'd even gotten away with running away in Air Force One on Nine-Eleven, making a panicked, circular flight around much of the nation that lasted several hours, then journeying three days later to Ground Zero to take up a bullhorn and cheer the workers who were (unbeknownst to them) being poisoned by toiling day after day in the killer dust. The media played down and mostly ignored his retreat from responsibility and played up his cautious, long-overdue foray to New York as somehow being courageous. And when he declared a “crusade” against (Muslim) enemies, he was forgiven for being an ignoramus who ratcheted up the rhetoric to make new enemies of those Muslims that had been sympathetic to the U.S. after the Twin Towers came down.

But in November 2001, Vladimir Putin, on his first visit to America, had said through an interpreter that Russia intended "to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War." He meant the thousands of Soviet-era nuclear warheads. Then when Bush double-crossed him only one month later and made him look like a fool, the KGB alumnus took another look at his policy and pronouncements. Members of the Russian Duma immediately called for an end to the country’s then-ongoing destruction of the old warheads.

To execute intelligent foreign policy, you have to use empathy. After Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 and subsequently hanged its leader, Russia saw that the U.S. was capable of attacking a country just to show it could, and that the U.S. media, Congress, and public would swallow it too. The president could even keep his troops in that country after his stated war aims – knocking out WMD and crippling an Al Qaeda supporter – were proved bogus. Meanwhile, Bush-Cheney had pulled out of the ABM treaty and were encircling Russia with new NATO allies from the old Soviet Empire. What were the Russians to think?

Of course the U.S. “defense” industry was merrily proceeding on its dubious Star Wars mission. Its biggest players, including big-time Pentagon contractor G.E., owner of NBC and, let's face it, the late Tim Russert, saw that the end of the Cold War was very, very bad for them, and that this war on “terror” might not consume enough advanced military hardware to keep top defense executives in eight figures. The science behind Star Wars involves trying to shoot down a bullet with a bullet. Once you figure out how to do it, the enemy can change the nature of its bullets much more easily and inexpensively than you can alter your anti-bullets. Doesn't it make more sense to get rid of nukes using careful, mutual inspections?

Make no mistake. Al Qaeda is a beast. Putin is a cold-eyed dictator whose agents murder pesty journalists. But there are better ways to handle them than to place moronic chicken hawks in charge of U.S. policy. McCain might not know how many houses he owns, but he does know that any opportunity for war makes him look strong. If chicken hawks like Bush and Cheney can look heroic for sending other people to their death just for laughs, how much better can he look by pursuing the same policy? Because despite his many disqualifications for office, McCain is no chicken hawk. So now he's taken time off from snarling at Arabs to snarl at Russians. If he's lucky, maybe before Election Day Cheney and his Little Bush sidekick will manufacture even newer enemies for McCain to snarl at. Oh happy day.

STAR WARS PERSISTS; REMEMBER IKE'S WARNING ABOUT MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Have any of our corporate media outlets bothered to ask just why it’s so important to place an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic? Of course not. They’re too busy checking to see who is or isn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin. But plenty hangs on the answer to this unasked question.

Ever since the Reagan administration the government has been slicing billions upon billions out of the defense budget to develop Star Wars missiles. Though the program has always rested on shaky scientific ground, it survived Daddy Bush, Clinton, and Little Bush administrations plus all those Democratic- and Republican-led congresses. But after the military industrial complex finally put together some dwarf models, it looked around to discover there was no more Cold War.

No problem. All we have to do is start a new one. Why not ignite one with the rotting rump of the old Soviet Empire - gangster Russia? Because Bush-Cheney managed to triple the price of petroleum, they’ve made oil-rich Russia wealthy enough to stand in as a credible threat.

Bush-Cheney tell us repeatedly that the ten anti-missiles to be deployed in Poland are aimed at “rogue states,” not Russia. When Putin invaded Georgia, (Georgia initiated hostilities by sending troops into its two breakaway provinces) he was angry at the West for quite a number of insults, but chief among them was the plan to place Star Wars in Poland, with radar installations in the Czech Republic.

Anyway, as soon as Putin sent tanks rolling into Georgia, first somebody had to explain to Prince George about the existence of this other Georgia. Then the newly informed Little Prince retaliated by getting Poland’s quick okay, after years of resistance, to accept the system. Another question our media never asked: If the missiles are aimed at rogue states not to include Russia, how could their deployment be a tit-for-tat tactic to punish Russia?

More questions: Does this incremental Star Wars shield work? Does it make us safer? It's not designed to stop ABM’s, by the way, only shorter-range missiles. Poland never thought it would be made safer by this Strangelovian system, which is why it refused to accept the thing on its soil all this time. It requires only a few pennies to beef up offensive capability in relation to the dollars it takes to develop defensive missile capabilities. In simple terms, it’s much cheaper to develop a gun that shoots bullets than a gun that shoots bullets designed to stop bullets.

Bin Laden is a maniac in a cave with no air force. Putin commands thousands of nukes that Russia was once eager to destroy. But that was before Bush unilaterally pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty (another barely noticed event that had huge repercussions)

What's going on is a classic enactment of precisely what Eisenhower warned against in his 1960 farewell speech, when he coined the term “military-industrial complex.” When this complex gets big and powerful enough, it drives U.S. policy away from its true interests. Now it's feeding on itself to grow even bigger. And feeding on us.

OBAMA'S PATRIOTISM -- IS THAT REAL ISSUE?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

The Karl Rove attack dogs that have taken over the McCain campaign have already managed to choose the chief topic of the 2008 presidential race: Why does Barack Obama hate America?

Republicans aren’t much good at governing, but they know how to run an election campaign in a nation that loves simple, ugly scandals even if they're untrue.

McCain and his creatures can’t say out loud what their two-part program is for this country, which is to make the rich richer and screw everyone else, paying particular attention to punishing the downtrodden. Consequently, they stay away from issues of substance or skulk up to them with tangential asides that pose as issues. The thrust of their election strategy is to replace the topics that matter by substituting personal attacks, often leveling charges that are totally invented and repeating them even after they're proved false.

The media, trained to look for the sensational, rather like this sort of campaign and reflexively become its tools. A few of their members question why they do things they way they do, but for the most part they fall obediently into line rather than focus on what the campaign should be about. The global corporations that employ them naturally lean right, and they’re pleased they don’t even have to put out directives to get the kind of election coverage they hanker for.

Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC (Disney, Inc.) knew their work would be applauded in the executive suites, when, for example, they spent much of a nationally televised “debate” blaming Obama for violent attacks made by the Weather People when he was ten years old.

It’s not that Obama doesn’t try to press forward on the issues; it’s just that almost no one pays attention. His statements on reforming Social Security, health care, energy, and ecology policies fall unheard in the forest, as does his determination to at least modify America’s expanded role as Soldier of Oil.

Instead he has to explain he’d never intended to bring in cameras while he visited with wounded service people, as McCain, Inc. claimed. In this case McCain didn't twist the truth a bit but just made something up. Once you start answering such charges, you’re sunk. The charges stick. But the real indictment is broader – that he’s a non-white, secret Muslim agent seeking to destroy America. The New Yorker cartoon cover was only kidding, but McCain and his people aren’t. They’ll keep hammering out the Big Lie, a strategy perfected by Joseph Goebbels when he and his boss came to power in Germany 75 years ago.

Somehow Obama has to figure out a way to push the issues into the spotlight – not easy in dumbed-down America, where so many voters can’t name their congressional representative but will readily tell you about the latest loser on "So You Think You Can Dance".

DO VOTERS NOTICE McCAIN'S POLICIES?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

John McCain’s domestic and foreign policies are opposed by an overwhelming majority of Americans.

His economic policy is to soak everyone but the very, very rich, whose tax cuts he favors preserving and extending into perpetuity.

His health care plan? He has none, other than to preserve socialized medicine for him and his family and to leave as many people as possible at the mercy of insurers and drug companies, who paid him and his Senate colleagues handsomely for that privilege.

Now he says he wants to rip up the coasts for more oil so when we run out we’ll not only have no oil, but dead beaches.

He wants to send police after women who choose abortion even when pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. He also wants to criminalize the doctors who treat them. To ensure this he will dig through the sludge to find more people like Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, etc. and get them lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court.

He intends to maintain Iraq as a colony even though the elected government there wants us out. At the same time he claims he wants to foster democracy there.

He equates military duty in Iraq to the occupations of Germany and Japan, where G.I.s were treated, for the most part, decently, and could walk the streets alone without being harmed. Despite his military heritage he doesn’t identify with the enlisted men who must carry out mad edicts from above. A good officer looks after his men and women, but this grandson and son of four-star admirals has other ideas.

Bush and Cheney have succeeded in arranging sweet deals for pet oil companies to move into Iraq. And they've also succeeded in quadrupling petroleum's world price. But even if McCain were to get at all the oil in and around Iraq through Exxon-Mobil and other global corporations, you have to ask whether they would share it with Americans. Of course the answer is they would sell it to Americans at the same world price anyone else would pay. The oil companies, through the special tax breaks arranged by their lobbyists, don’t even pay their fair share of the ten billion a month we pay to occupy Iraq for them. But McCain does favor giving us a gas-tax holiday, which would save the average family a couple dollars a month and further deprive our broken-down insfrastructure.

But our hopelessly inept and corrupted corporate media don’t even try to get at such issues. They consider it more important to corner politicians into wearing American flag pins.

Americans, who for the most part are able to see the Bush administration as a gang of law-breaking, lying incompetents, are almost evenly split when they’re asked to choose between a candidate who will continue the Bush-Cheney policies and one who won’t. That’s quite a disconnect.

But ignorance reigns during this perfect storm of failing education and failing media. An increasingly ill-educated public doesn’t notice the failures of the news media so much as long as new “American Idol” segments are provided each week.

BUSH QUOTE OF THE WEEK: There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal.

EVERY WELL-INTENTIONED HILLARY VOTER CONSIDERING McCAIN NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT DEBBIE SHANK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Debbie Shank is the reason I would have voted for Hillary had she been the Democratic nominee. Yes, I who have railed against this devious royalist for reasons I won’t repeat now, would have pulled the Hillary lever. And Hillary backers should pull that Obama lever for the same reason -- Debbie Shank.

Mrs. Shank was the Wal-Mart employee from Jackson, Mo. who was brain-injured by a truck that collided with her vehicle. She and her husband got $417,000 from a lawsuit against the trucker’s insurance company (all that was left after legal fees, etc. from a $1 million judgment). But then Wal-Mart demanded back the $470,000 its health insurance had paid toward Mrs. Shank’s hospitalization.

Mrs. Shank is permanently brain-injured, and her husband works two jobs. Like most Wal-Mart employees, they’re perilously clinging to their low place on the economic ladder. In fact, they're broke. Oh, and their son was killed in Iraq.

When they protested the Wal-Mart demand they lost in court, and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. But the high court, five of whose members were appointed by the Bush family, refused to even hear the case. The court concluded justice had been done.

That’s what Hillary and Barack supporters have in common. We don’t even want to think about what will happen to the country if John McCain fills the next life-time vacancies. John Paul Stevens, one of the last of the liberal justices, is 88. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had health problems. McCain has already said he’d nominate the same sort of justices that George Junior did. That would be Roberts and Alito, two justices that never saw a ruling in favor of a global corporation against actual people that they didn’t like.

Next time a friend tells you he/she is too upset over Hillary's loss to pull the Obama lever, tell them about Debbie Shank. Ask them to look her up on the Internet. It’s all there. I wish I’d made her up. But unfortunately, I didn’t.

HILLARY TO OBAMA: CHOOSE ME OR I'LL BURY YOU

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

When it comes to a spot on the Democratic ticket, that’s no signal Hillary is sending to this upstart who dared to defeat her. It’s a Mafiosa-style message. Put me on the ticket or your presidential campaign will sleep with the fishes.
A signal is something you send out privately. But Hillary broadcast her demand in a conference call with a group of congressional Democrats, which is like shouting it out on the Larry King show. The purpose was to communicate with her supporters, especially the zombies who'll follow her across the River Styx. Now they know what she wants, so she can drive them into further fits of rage when she doesn’t get it. If Hillary can keep them from pulling the Obama lever in November, she can set herself up for 2012.

But here’s the clinker, the true Clinton-esque twist. If Obama gives in, he’ll appear weak to the independents and wavering Republicans he must have to beat McCain, which also sets Obama up for defeat this November and gives Hillary a boost for 2012. The mantra would then be, Well sure we lost. That 2008 ticket was upside down. Obama’s too black, too untested, and worst of all, he’s not even a Clinton.

Meanwhile, Bill has already signaled he’s going to stick to his foundation from now on. The implied promise to Obama is that if he gives Hillary the Number Two spot he won’t have to worry any of those red-faced Bill outbursts will soil the campaign. But anyone who believes that is naive enough to believe Hillary really wants an Obama victory in November. Narcissist Bill never saw a TV camera or a microphone he didn't love.

Obama and his strategists understand all this. The question now is, what to do about it. What they have going for them is they've grown used to figuring out the Clintons, who've succeeded in making themselves the biggest impediment to a Democratic victory in the fall. That's been their purpose ever since they realized months ago that their 2008 campaign was a walking corpse. Defeating a 71-year-old mini-Bush ought to be relatively easy for Barack, but not when a couple of Doberman Clintons have their teeth sunk in his ankles.

FORMER BUSH SPOKESMAN CASHES IN, SEEKING CREDIT, BIG BUCKS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Prince George's former press secretary Scott McClellan, who now proclaims himself a truth-teller in his soon-to-be-released, tell-all book, ought to have his head placed in one of those eighteenth-century stocks so passers-by could throw apples at it.
"Bush is plenty smart enough to be president.” McClellan wrote in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, according to the Washington Post. McClellan, in his capacity as White House press secretary, was supposed to be a word wizard. The fact that he defends a man’s intelligence with an ungrammatical splotch of junk English that closely resembles the way his boss murders syntax, language, and reason tells us just how reliable his judgment is in such matters.

But McClellan also writes that the Iraq war didn’t need to be fought and that the administration used propaganda rather than facts to justify it, and of course that's what the general news media are jumping on, thereby giving McClellan a jump in sales. In his media marketing blitz, McClellan, unused to dabbling in the truth, often contradicts himself within a single sentence, telling us Prince George is an honorable and intelligent leader served by honorable and intelligent people and that all of them routinely lied and deceived to get what they wanted.

Now here’s the problem: wasn’t he obliged to share this hugely important inside information about the war with his employer the American public before the tanks went in? Now, more than five years later, after several hundred thousand people are dead, millions are terribly wounded, homeless, and in exile, McClellan cashes in with a multi-million-dollar book deal to reveal what he knows.

Somebody pass me an apple, a really rotten one.

CLINTONS FORM THIRD PARTY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," Hillary Clinton said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, she cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There's a pattern emerging here."

WASHINGTON -- Hillary and Bill Clinton shocked the world yesterday when they mounted the steps of the Capitol and declared Mrs. Clinton will run for president in November on the newly formed Hard-Working White Americans ticket.

Asked whether they were implying blacks don’t work hard, Bill’s face turned redder than a radish as he proclaimed, ‘I was America’s first black president and I've worked hard all my life. That’s why I’ve got so many damn houses I can’t even remember all the addresses. I’m rich, see? Richer than you."

Hillary patted him on the hand as she nodded to his handlers to take him somewhere he wouldn’t hurt himself.

"Look,” she continued, “the name of our ticket has nothing to do with whether we believe black people work hard or whether Obama is a Muslim, which he isn’t, as far as I know. We’re just saying white Americans who work hard now have a place to go in November, a party that will be working every day for them, from Day One. But we still count Barack Obama as a dear friend even though everybody knows an untested black person can't possibly win in November.

“Also, the new Hard-Working White Americans Party, which was formed in response to the Democratic Party's unwillingness to give hard-working white Americans in Michigan and Florida a voice in the process, won't like certain parties I'm too polite to name, ignore the votes of hard-working white Americans in Michigan and Florida."

At this point she paused to bite off a huge chunk of a Krispy Kreme doughnut that she washed down with a swig of Bud, after which she wiped her mouth with her sleeve, nearly scratching her face with her $80,000 wristwatch. "And," she continued, "you won’t see anybody on our ticket who attended a terrorist madrasa, either."

Exactly, what, she was asked by George Stephanapolous, was she trying to imply? She leaned down from her makeshift podium, petted him like a spaniel and said,“I’m implying nothing. I’m just saying, is all. You didn’t see me planting terrorist bombs with the Weathermen either. At the same time, notice that our party is inclusive. We welcome the support of white Americans who've been to college so perhaps aren't as receptive to our message as hard-working white Americans. "

“But Senator Clinton," said Miss Alabama 2007, CBS’ new news anchor, “aren’t you afraid your new message is explicitly racist and that you’re also helping John McCain by trying to drive Democrats apart?” Miss Alabama 2007 read this from a script placed in her hand by another dumpy woman who'd attended Wellesley.

“Let me explain it to you,” Bill said to Miss Alabama 2007 as he broke away from his handlers and led her toward his limo. At that point Hillary let loose a fake smile that cracked several camera lenses, but news people weren't paying attention because they scurried after Bill and his new friend so they wouldn't be cut out of the new sex scoop.

“Wait,” Hillary hollered. “I haven’t finished my statement! . . . Damnit, I’m still a big story!!!”

GAMES VS. LITERATURE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
The newest version of video game "Grand Theft Auto" comes out Tuesday, and experts say it should sell at least 6 million copies the first week. Amazon lists the game at $49.99. Most copies will be purchased by young adult men, some of whom will line up outside stores Monday night.
If they decide to vote, their vote is as good as yours. So is the vote of the 10 percent of Americans who think Barack Obama is a Muslim and the millions of Americans who voted to re-elect The Decider in 2004.

Fact: If you can sell thirty thousand copies of a novel within a few weeks -- that's one-half of one percent of 6 million -- you'll almost certainly hit the best-seller list. Hardbacks sell for about $25. Find the right literature and it can change your life forever. You'll relive that awakening over and over with delight and understanding. Did you know that back in Dickens' time thousands of readers waited at the New York docks for the latest installment of his novels?

Short stories are dead, buried alongside poetry, and literate novels are expiring. The stuff is being written and sometimes even published, but readers are dying off and younger minds prefer to anesthetize themselves with video games, sitcoms, and sequels to films written for the least aware minds in the Western world..

The link between literacy and clear thinking was mapped out precisely by George Orwell in his great essay "Politics and the English Language." The spike in the games industry, the ascendancy of moronic political ideas, the American Idolization of the news media, and the deterioration of schools well serves global corporations that buy what they want from our politicians without being asked too many questions.

TAKE CLOSE LOOK AT CLINTON DYNASTY ISSUE

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HILLARY'S FOUND CLEVER WAY TO GET NOMINATED AFTER ALL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Anyone else notice in the last Pennsylvania debate that Hillary's angling to be McCain's running mate? How else do you explain her strategy of trying to spray Obama's candidacy with such heavy toxic poisons that no one will ever touch him again?
Who'da guessed that Barack's a Weatherman who hates America, white people, and especially White Americans? Served on a board with a Weather guy? Gimme a break. Anyone ever check out who served on the union-busting, small-business-destroying, Communist China-loving Wal-Mart board with Hillary for 15 years? She stepped down only when hubby ran for President in '92.
ABC even assigned one of the Clintons' favorite pooches, George Hairball Stephanopolous, to chew up the black man along with one of George's hyena friends. While they're at it, why not resurrect one of Bull Connor's police dogs? You can't let major news media "moderate" these debates. They're deeply entangled in Medici politics and peculiar corporate angles. They're out to create phony explosions, not explore real issues. Did they ever examine the fact that an oil guy and a defense industry guy ran on the same ticket and started a war that benefited nobody but the oil and defense industries (plus al Qaeda and Iran, but whose counting?)?
I used to think Hillary's running her '12 campaign against old man McCain now, figuring that even though everyone will hate her for wrecking the Democrats' chances in '08, she can make them all forget that in '12 by completely distancing herself from the '08 Hillary the same way she's distanced herself from the 2003-06 Hillary that was crazy about invading Iraq. Now I see the truth. She's looking to run on McCain's ticket against Commie Mau Mau Obama who's gonna hand us over to the Muslims.

DISSEMINATING THE TRUTH: SO WHAT?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
I used to think it was vital to communicate to the public just how much harm our Iraq adventure is doing to this country, not to mention Iraq. But after five years of madness seventy percent of Americans and seventy percent of Iraqis want our forces out fast. So changing attitudes doesn’t appear to have any effect on the lack of any policy because the “surge,” at least in a mutated form, goes on even though the Army is having a nervous breakdown and all the generals minus Patraeus say this just can't go on. Clearly there’s a systemic failure within our democracy.
Multi-millionaire John McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, married to a beer heiress, and working hard to destroy the middle class while making the rich richer, calls self-made Barack Obama elitist. Corporate news media, failing to notice the irony, act as though there’s some substance to Bittergate. What about McCain's Let-Them-Eat Cake-Gate?
And it’s pretty clear that neither Obama nor Clinton would pull out of Iraq, not really. Try to pin them down and they talk about “trainers,” use the word “residual,” and recite a “withdrawal” rate, that, if pursued, would leave many thousands of U.S. troops there for many years to come.
Meanwhile, the dollar has collapsed, and Americans failed to notice.
Our educational and news-presentation processes are so broken that politicians and their corporate employers can get away with just about anything they want. The immigrants that Lou Dobbs and his ignorant legions scream about are actually key gears that keep our wheels turning.

CATCHING UP

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
No, I don't mean I think Hillary will catch up. I'm talking about what's going on in my life. But as long as people are actually for some reason asking my opinion on some of what's going on in these politically tumultuous times, it's this:

Hillary knows she has almost no chance to win the nomination but hopes to damage Obama to such an extent that he'll lose to McCain and she can run against the 100-year warrior in 2012. A dangerous strategy, because it will increase the number of Hillary-haters, but she figures she has nothing to lose because if she can't be president then what does anything matter? So what if the Republicans put a few more crazies on the Supreme Court who won't even hear the case of the lady brain-damaged by a truck accident who has to pay Wal-Mart back its $400K for her medical bills? It's of no consequence compared to achieving the dream of restoring the Clinton dynasty to the throne.

And while I'm rambling, allow me to point out that I'm in Costa Rica for 2 weeks and like lots of turistas I sometimes turn to CNN in my hotel room, where I see it repeats the story over and over of Hillary uttering a line written by her handlers that likens her to Rocky Balboa. Plus we learn -- wow! -- 2 people and counting have asked Princess Chelsea about Monica!

Meanwhile there's nothing on, for instance, the terrible descent of the Republican Party into right-wing lunacy thanks to crippled campaign reform laws that have put Republicans officeholders on the side of their paymasters -- the minute slice of Americans who can grab $100 million parachutes and bid for Picassos. And screw health care and the more humane practices of the Western democracies minus our schizo-monarchy that loops around from Bushes to Clintons and back again. The rabble can wait in emergency rooms if they need help with their ongoing illnesses. If they need pharmaceuticals, they can always turn to Christian Science. And CNN is supposed to be the moderate 24-all-day-and-night news channel. Hey, in all those 24 hours can't they dig up and interview the political scientists who have no doubt researched what's really going on in the world and why our republic is crumbling as we speak?

I heard Lou Dobbs pronounce the domestic policies of Clinton, Obama, and McCain as practically identical. The man's out of his fucking mind. Don't they have executives over at CNN who can at least demand he read a book once in a while? He spoke with a maddening combination of ignorance and assertiveness. Where did they get this sonofabitch? Kick his ample butt over the border with nothing but ten bucks and a serape. Maybe it would educate him.

Anyway, back to catching up. I haven't been around my own blog because I'm concentrating on writing fiction. My novel The Barfighter will be out from Permanent Press in April '09. It will be followed around December or January by my novel Exit Blue from Black Heron. They're both small but respected publishers. The first deals with Vietnam, boxing, remorse, the power of love, and of course other issues. The second is a political satire set in the near future. Both these novels make excellent presents. Send them instead of Christmas cards.

Meanwhile, I haven't forgotten the cheated families tossed out of their homes, the hopelessly indebted unemployed who are no longer able to declare true bankruptcy, the disabled veterans who go home to nothing, the service people who get stop-lossed into the funeral pyre of our Iraq policy, the hungry semi-employed citizens who aren't eligible for food stamps because they've managed to hang on to their homes or cars. I know you haven't forgotten them either.

Peace.

LAURA BUSH CALLS FOR DEMOCRACY -- OH BOY

BULLETIN: Laura Bush Calls on Burmese Junta to Allow Democracy

As Channukah comes to a close, it appears our darling First Lady has been eating LSD-laced latkes. As First Lady of all the people she has developed Chutzpah, and now if she and her hubby will step down and stop stealing elections, maybe we can return to some form of democracy in the U.S. too.

Also, take notice that Venezuela's sanity-challenged Hugo Chavez nevertheless obeys the voters when he loses a close one, as opposed to some people who call up their daddy's pals to put in the final fix.

WHEN WE GET TO MARS MAYBE WE CAN FORGET ALL ABOUT IRAQ

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Maybe you're wondering why all those members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats both, are preparing to give Bush the funding he needs to continue the war. Well they just might feel everybody's being too demanding of a President who's been forced to spend much of his energy putting together the glorious trip to Mars he promised us in 2004. Did you forget all about that? Well, he didn't. He's just not that kind of guy, and Congress knows it, even if the rest of us don't.

So Congress must figure that as soon as he gets the space thing out of the way, he'll solve these little Iraq glitches with his usual flair and incisiveness because the fact that we have no mission there and Iraqi citizens overwhelmingly say it's OK to kill U.S. troops and our people are dying and being maimed and crippled for nothing and the average Baghdad family is sitting each night in the dark without running water or a working sewer system, and gangs of freaked-out gunmen are running around outside abducting and torturing people and this Maliki government we're supposed to root for is closely tied to the murderous, psychotic Mahdi Army that's been bombing and shooting our troops for year is dwarfed by our glorious leader's ability to take care of the whole mess as soon as our astronauts set up a Martian golf course.

I guess it turns out when they voted Bush permission to go into Iraq and seize the WMDs these people in Congress also voted to garrison the place forever, all of which apparently makes terrific sense to Democrats like Diane Feinstein who routinely give Bush everything he asks for in Iraq and then complain about his policy. I'm growing a bit weary of the Feinsteins of this world, but I'll just try to focus on how great everything's going to be when we get to Mars.

BEYOND THE SURGE -- A TIDE OF BULLSHIT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Reality Weather Service put out a bulletin today warning of a surge of bullshit sweeping out of Washington. Residents around the globe were told to wear raingear, particularly when digesting media interpretations of this astonishing weather pattern, which had conventional meteorologists baffled.
CBS, CNN, et al were preparing to inform us the bullshit surge smells like a rose, making it terribly dangerous for anyone who still hasn’t developed some kind of bullshit detector.
Don’t panic. Stay in your homes unless you have the gumption to take to the streets because enough is fucking enough.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress already slavishly accepting the surge as a successful strategy even though the doctoring of the statistics have already been unmasked, were preparing to surrender to this bullshit without a fight. Bush’s’ revived threat to withhold supplies from troops in the field gave them their clearest path to his impeachment and removal from office, but they lacked the brains, imagination, and guts to make the journey.
If Congress refuses to fund the war and our chicken hawk-in-chief leaves our troops out there without supplies, Congress should of course exercise its constitutional authority to send him packing within 24 hours. So Congress would lose a little sleep. Big deal. The seven U.S. troops killed in Anbar during one day last week gave up more than that. Then it would be Deferement Dick’s turn to pull the same crazy bullshit, and then Speaker of the House Pelosi would be president. She’s a craven Pelosi, but at least she knows the difference between Australia and Austria, making her a big improvement over what we’ve got. Besides, impeaching and jailing her predecessors just might light enough of a fire under her ass to prompt her to do what’s right.

I know the accompanying photo is upsetting. It upset me too. But we should all understand what they're doing with our tax dollars as we continue to let the same people who got us into this mess -- the same people who've never been right about this war -- tell us what to do next.