BottleOfBlog

In A Weird Way, I Wish This Could Somehow Go On Forever

After being ambushed with the "gotcha!" question of "what magazines and newspapers do you read" left Alaskan Governor Einstein looking like a moose in the headlights, she gave it a couple of weeks of hard thought, spent $150,000 of RNC money on a crack team of College Republican periodical researchers, and then took a second shot at a question so impossible to answer it should only be asked by holy men in the Himalayas.

Palin told FOX News on Friday that she reads the same newspapers and magazines as everyone else, "including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and The Economist."  

And so, of course, you know what happens next:

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly... 

The New York Times, as well, endorsed Mr. Obama.

As expected, the editors of the Wall Street Journal went with Mussolini, for the nineteenth consecutive election.

It was a grotesque lie to throw The Economist in there.  Nobody reads The Economist.  Not even its copy editors.  The thing is so boring it has to be proof read by robots.  

But the moron who thinks health care reform falls under The Umbrella Of Job Creation totally enjoys reading articles about what we can still learn from medieval English landholding and Sahelian nomadism. 

It doesn't really mean anything that she ridiculously lied about reading a magazine that endorsed Obama--I mean, maybe Obama reads the Wall Street Journal.  He probably does.  Because it's a pretty good paper. Except for its Editorial pages, which are insane.

It just made me laugh that she said such a stupid thing.  For no reason at all.  Because not only doesn't anyone read The Economist, hardly anyone has ever even heard of The Economist.  But then, since she stupidly brought it up, now a whole bunch of people have heard about The Economist.

And now a whole bunch of people who never even heard of The Economist are interested in what The Economist has to say.

And what The Economist has to say is:  Vote For Obama!

So Sarah Palin has helped bring yet another Obama endorsement to all kinds of people who never would have heard it otherwise.

If she hadn't lied about what magazines she reads and instead just said, "Um, People. Some porn. That's pretty much it."

She's a nightmare and an idiot.  But she's almost too much fun to send back to Alaska.

Maybe when Barack's president, he can expand the federal government to include a jester.  And he can hire Katy Couric as Secretary of the Jester, and she can, once a week, gather the Washington Press corps to watch her feed Sarah Palin questions, like a Marine World trainer throwing fish to a seal.  Couric could ask her questions like: "Name a whole movie you've seen" or "Is your closet scary at night" or "How many shoes would it take to leave none of your feet without a shoe?"

And then Sarah Palin could answer.

And we could all laugh, and laugh, and laugh!  We'd laugh at the silly things Sarah Palin says!  Every week!

I think that would be good for the nation.  To laugh like that.

Gee Oh Pee Muppet Show, Starring Sarah The Stupid!

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. – With days still to go in the White House race, backers of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin are talking her up as a possible contender in 2012, speculation that irritates other Republicans who contend she's a drag on the ticket and that her lightweight image — unfair or not — will be hard to shed.
 
The Alaska governor has done little to quiet the talk. In fact, she fueled the discussion this week when she signaled that she will remain on the national political scene no matter what happens Tuesday. "I'm not doing this for naught," she said in an interview with ABC News.
 

She'll never be the Gee Oh Pee candidate for President.  

But, as I said in the comments, if she were, Vic the Vice President will be her running mate.  Paul the Pollster will tell her how she's doing.  And Oscar the Orderly will administer her meds.

It's been, and hopefully will be again, a campaign directed at the reading and comprehension and emotional level of its target audience--ages 3 to 8.

And, if successful, it's sure to bring us the kind of America I know we all want to live in.  

The kind where who you know in your neighborhood, who you work with, who your kids go to school with, who your friends are, how your friends feel about Israel(which, in case you're Joe Lieberman or you only watch Fox News, is a foreign country and not actually part of the United States), and where you go to church all becomes part of your "record".

Oh, Please Let This Happen!

The Gee Oh Pee wouldn't recover from this for fifty years.

Also, would someone please ask Governor Palin:  if McCain should lose the election and she returns to Alaska as its governor, when will she begin dismantling Alaska's oil investment royalty program and supplemental payments to all Alaskan citizens from the state treasury?

Since she has, on the campaign trail, repeatedly expressed her contempt for the kind of "socialism" that takes tax dollars and money from corporations to "spread the wealth around", she most certainly will be saying "Thanks, but no thanks" to the collective ownership of natural resources that "shares" the wealth, as well as giving hard earned tax dollars to people for nothing.

It's not a trick question or a game of "gotcha", like asking her what newspapers and magazines she reads.

What steps does she plan to take to put an end to the destructive socialism, that she's gone on record as despising, in Alaska?

What Fresh New Stupid Is This?

(CNN) -- Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said Sen. Barack Obama has ties to a Columbia University professor who she said is "a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."

The Obama campaign said on its Web site that "ugly insinuations about Barack Obama's relationship with a former neighbor and university colleague ... are completely false." The professor has denied he was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization.

Palin said her assertion "is not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record."

"It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years," Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.  

One, knowing someone who lives in your neighborhood and works at the same place you do is not "your record", unless you're a character in a Milan Kundera novel involving oppressive Stalinist thugs and morons.

Two, being married for twenty years to a guy who was a registered member of a political party whose members are devoted to seceding from the United States because they hate it is an excellent reason to shut the fuck up about other people's relationships.

Three, McCain has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Khalidi.

Four, is this woman a nightmarish cocktail of stupidity, nastiness, and hypocrisy or what?

Five, yes.  Yes, she is.

It really is time for the Obama campaign to start responding to her with confusion and concern and sympathy. When she says these things, they really need to start honestly saying, "What is she talking about?  Does anybody even know?  Is she okay?"

She's so stupid.  She thinks that because she's having great success at getting the craziest dingbats in our society so fired up at her rallies that they shout "traitor" and "kill him" and "he's a nigger" that she's really tapped into some mainline to the heart of "real" America.  What she doesn't get is that these fucking loonies would shout this garbage at Bill Cosby selling Jello.

The other thing she doesn't get is that the crazier and more disgusting she acts, the closer she gets to early retirement.  In the Gee Oh Pee, the angry, ignorant nuts might be the base, but the money men will always call the shots.  And the money men didn't get stupid rich by betting on "whack jobs".

Don't get me wrong--they'll back dumbasses, and losers,  and empty suits, like Bush and Bush and Bush, as long as they can be managed.  But if you're nasty, stupid, and liable to go "rogue", well, forget it.

The Gee Oh Pee money men are more afraid of their base than ours.  By a long shot.

I'm almost sorry that her bizarre and embarrassing behavior will not make her the Gee Oh Pee presidential candidate in 2012.  It'd actually be really fun to watch her run a campaign, in a weird and disturbing way.

Capitalists Share While Socialists Spread

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

Yes, the Sarah Palin, who just two months ago was proudly bragging to a journalist about how the people in the state she governs collectively own the resources and share the wealth, has been running around the country calling Barack Obama a socialist.

I don't recall the Obama speech or policy wherein he proposed that under his presidency all Americans, including children, would collectively own the resources of this great land and share in the wealth.

I heard Barack say he'd like policies that spread the wealth around, which, really, isn't much more radical than when corporations pay dividends, or give their employees bonuses.  It's certainly not a departure from the income taxation policy we, Americans, have had since we, Americans, have had an income tax.

And Obama's tax proposals are nowhere near as redistributive as that total communist--and last honest Republican President--Dwight David Eisenhower.  

Seriously, you can look it up.

And while I'm too lazy to look it up, I'll bet you Barack Obama's tax proposals are less redistributive than, yep, Ronald Reagan's.

Okay, I'll look it up.  

Oh, gee!  In seven out of eight years of Reagan's presidency taxes were higher than what Obama proposes! What a surprise!  

Not really.  Since Reagan was such a fervent communist.

At least, according to the proud and popular governor of America's only socialist state.

What do you call a person like Sarah Palin?

I mean, I know she's stupid.  And I call her that.  And I know I'm not alone:

I’m sympathetic to Eskew and Wallace, and not just because they’re decent people. They’ve held their tongue from leaking what a couple of McCain higher-ups have told me—namely, that Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues. Which meant, as one such adviser said to me: “Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing.” It’s a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus.

Apparently, the people who put her on the ticket and worked closely with her and tried and failed to coach her on how to answer such hardball questions as, "What newspapers or magazines do you read?" also think she's a total moron.

And, of course, that begs the question, "What kind of political party puts an idiot like this on their ticket again and again and again and then does its best to hide it from Americans so that our country can be governed by a moron?"

Whatever.

But what's truly abhorrent about Palin is not her stupidity.  Her loose grasp of facts and history, total disinterest in policy, and complete lack of curiosity or understanding about economics, our government, or the world have been pretty much a job requirement for a Republican presidential candidate in my lifetime. 

No, what's grotesque about Palin is that she is a person who believes in nothing and can bring herself to say anything.  And whatever she's saying, even if she knows it's untrue, even if she doesn't personally agree with it, she says it with total, visibly emotional conviction.

She gets fired up!  About just goin' on out there!  And saying things!  She knows aren't true!  You betcha!

And that's a dangerous person.  

I guess that's what you'd call her.

Though, if we, Americans, know what's good for us and our grand democracy, what we'll call her for a few more years is "Governor".  

And then, if we really do right by ourselves, "trivia".

Please Pick One, You Insane Demented Douchebags

We also hear a lot of squeaking from rats deserting the McCain ship about Barack Obama's exemplary temperament. So what? If he'd had his way, Obama would have lost the war in Iraq--with equanimity. He would have been calm, cool, and collected as U.S. interests were sacrificed and U.S. honor besmirched. Neville Chamberlain also had a fine temperament and a good intellect.

Never mind the insane drivel about how Obama would have sacrificed the American interests of putting Iraq in the hands of the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Iraqi Islamic Party.

But, honestly, Obama can't be both Neville Chamberlain and Hitler at the same fucking time.

It Makes It All Worthwhile In So Many Hundreds Of Billions Of Ways

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's largest Sunni party said Saturday that it has suspended official contacts with American military personnel and civilians after the killing of a man near Fallujah.

 The Iraqi Islamic Party accused the raid of having a "hidden political motive" in an indication of rising tensions in Anbar province ahead of provincial elections, due to be held by the end of January.

Iraq's largest Sunni party is the Iraqi Islamic Party?  That's great.  Because the Sunni's are the secular Iraqis.  Iraq's largest Shiite party is The Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

While I think theocracy anywhere, including the kind the nutballs at the Heritage Foundation or the AEI and many other right wing organizations would like to establish here in America, is a sign of insanity, I personally couldn't care less if people in far away countries want to be governed by Zeus or Thor or whatever other crazy Super Hero they think is peering down on us from a Cloud Castle and casting curses and lightning bolts and magically making things happen here on Earth.

If you'd like to think that pouring over the ancient scriptures and prophesies or speaking in tongues or picking through bird entrails or seeking the blessings of Holy Men in super huge stupid looking hats is a better method of coming up with a tax code than, say, using math, have at it.  

It's silly and it's stupid, but normally, as long as you keep your primitive superstitions on the other side of the world, I don't care.

Unless I have to pay for it.

Over twenty thousand American soldiers have been wounded, over three thousand of them have been killed, and about a trillion dollars of taxpayers' hard earned money has been spent so that the Iranian friendly Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq can govern the country, while the minority Iraqi Islamic Party can hold anti-American demonstrations.

And we're paying for this.

And what's worse, the Americans who brought us this mess that empowered the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Iraqi Islamic Party and who continue to be this war's most enthusiastic supporters, did and do so because they feared the spread of radical Islamic governments in the Mid-East.

It's insane.

The people who support and continue this war are insane.

Blah, Blah, Blah

The second-ranked Crimson Tide cruised to a 29-9 win over the Volunteers on Saturday night for its first back-to-back victories since 1991-92.

Moreno's long score late in the third quarter gave seventh-ranked Georgia a three-touchdown lead, and the Bulldogs held on for a 52-38 victory over No. 13 LSU on Saturday that sent many Tigers fans to the exits early. 

Tim Tebow threw two touchdown passes, ran for two scores and Florida used two blocked punts to jump-start a 63-5 rout of the injury-riddled Wildcats. 

Clearly, Tennessee, LSU, and Kentucky can not deal with the speed of the SEC.

Everything I'll Never Know I Didn't Learn In Kindergarten

Facing a firing line of questions from Washington lawmakers, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman once considered the infallible maestro of the financial system, admitted on Thursday that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves without government oversight…

Although he defended the use of derivatives in general, Mr. Greenspan, who left his post in 2006, told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he was “partially” wrong in not having tried to regulate the market for credit-default swaps.

But in a tense exchange with Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee and America's Greatest Congressman, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Yes, you made a mistake that any three year old could understandably make.

 Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

It's astonishing how delusional "libertarians" can be.

One, before those 40 years, there was even more considerable evidence that well regulated markets were working even more exceptionally well.

Two, yes, there was 40 years of considerable evidence that the self interests of organizations and the magic of unfettered free markets were much more capable of protecting shareholders and taxpayers than dreaded regulations, as long as you willfully ignored Drexel Burnham Lambert, the S&L bailout, the tech bubble, the summer long rolling black outs of California, Enron, and WorldCom.

As long as you went out of your way to ignore the Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, any and everything even the most naive and gullible person might know about human nature, and the entire recorded history of commerce, there was considerable evidence that the self-interest of organizations would prevail over the selfishness of the individual.

Organizations don't have any "self interests".  They don't have any self.  They are made up of people.  And if the self interests of the people--such as making $100 million dollars, or buying a Maybach, or a Park Avenue apartment--conflict with interests of the organizations, the organizations always lose.

Always.  They always have.  They always will.

That's why we have all these awful regulations.  It's not because the people of the past were really bored without Dish On Demand or the XBox and had so much time on their hands that they couldn't think of anything better to do than sit around under the old gaslight and play "Let's Make A Regulation".  It's not because they hated prosperity.  It's not because they just liked regulating.

It's because, at some time in the past, the lack of regulation of the Amazing, Miracle Free Market caused such a colossal fuck up that United States Congressmen were forced at pitchfork and torch point to actually pass laws to regulate the corporations they worked for.

Before the mob beat down their doors.

Why don't people understand this?  Regulations are not your enemy.  They are your national inheritance.  They are a gift from the Americans of the past, who lost their life savings, who got cancer from drinking their tap water, who burned up with their children in the family car.

Their gift to you is a regulation that says, "Hope you don't have to suffer the shitty thing that the magical unfettered free market did to me!"  

And you know what your chances of enjoying that gift are?

But he still gestured toward his faith in free markets, however shaky it may have become. “It is important to remember, however, that whatever regulatory changes are made, they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today’s markets,” he said. Those markets for an indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime.  

About zero.

The Island of Lost Vice Idiots

ROSWELL, New Mexico (CNN) — Sarah Palin on Sunday levied some of her toughest attacks to date against Barack Obama, accusing him of experimenting with socialism and charging ACORN, the embattled community organizing group to which Obama has been linked, with attempting to undermine the sacrifices of United States troops abroad…

 “Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth,” she said. “Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic. But Joe the plumber and Ed the dairy man, I believe that they think that it sounds more like socialism. Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism.”

Spreading the wealth is socialism.  Sharing the wealth is socialism.  And Sarah Palin would never be a part of any kind of socialistic system of gubment that shares the wealth!  She is appalled by sharing the wealth!  She attacks it where ever she sees it!

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - It's the season for Alaskans to be rewarded just for living here and this year's take is extra sweet: $3,269, a record share of the state's oil wealth combined with a special cash payout to help with stratospheric energy prices.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell announced Friday that every eligible man, woman and child will receive $2,069, thanks to dividend payments from the state's oil royalty investment program distributed annually. On top of that, the checks will include another $1,200 from the state treasury to help offset soaring fuel prices.

The one-time energy boost was proposed by Gov. Sarah Palin and approved by state lawmakers last month. Palin has since been tapped as the running mate of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain.
 
"The royalty dollars that flow through the state are the people's wealth," said Parnell. "The $1,200 resource rebate goes to that philosophy."  

That's right!  When the Palins--family of seven--stand to make $14,500 a year before anyone even gets out of bed on January 2nd, Sarah Palin is not only for sharing "the people's wealth"--she's actually proposing that the state treasury give each and every man, woman and child another $1200 a year!

Total Palin family haul:  $22,883 tax free dollars just from sharing the wealth of the great state of Alaska!  Just for living there!

Sarah Palin's family will take in nearly twenty three thousand dollars for doing nothing!  Just because the state of Alaska spreads the people's wealth around in Alaska.

Any of you getting $23,000 a year just for living in the state you live in?  Have any of you ever received a check in a single year from your state government for $23,000?  Do any of you live in a state wherein the resources of that state are considered to be "the people's wealth"?  And you all get a cut?

And this idiot, with her gubment provided job, and her gubment provided health care, and her gubment provided pension, and her gubment provided "per diem" for living in her own home,  is taking $23,000 a year from federal and state taxes and corporate "royalties" and then running around the country talking about the evils of socialism???

Did I say Shrub In a Dress?  I should've said this total fraud is more like Rudy in a dress--except Rudy is actually Rudy in a dress.

Where does the fucking Gee Oh Pee find these people?  Some great secret junkyard of humanity, where the bodies and big mouths of human beings get dumped after their brains get stripped down for their valuable and recyclable parts, like intelligence, honesty, and shame?