No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Geezer rage

Sorry for being AWOL the last couple of weeks. No, I didn't get stuck in another Los Angeles traffic jam and starve to death, but I've been busy at work and without internet access in my very limited spare time. However, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a laptop - it currently runs the execrable Windows Vista, a thousand plagues be upon it, but it's getting Linuxed the first chance I get - and I will try to post a few words whenever I can get in range of a wireless hotspot.

Anyway, I missed the last Obama-McCain debate and only saw the last few minutes of Biden-Palin. But my overwhelming impression is that the rethugs are melting down before our very eyes, and it's not a pretty sight. Every time Palin opens her mouth, she confirms that she is nothing but a talking doll with no thoughts or ideas of her own. During her debate with Joe Biden, it could not have been more obvious that she was reading from a set of talking points written for her by someone else. She just cycled through half a dozen or so pre-recorded messages - McCain is a maverick, I have executive experience, I'm ready to lead the Free World, blah blah blah - regardless of the question. Pull the string and you hear then next message in the sequence, with Palin showing no more understanding of the question or the answer than a talking Barbie would.

Palin is exactly what she calls herself - an attack pit bull with lipstick, nothing more. No real experience, no ideas, no policies, no substance, no ability to work with anyone who isn't on the extreme right, and no business being in the same time zone as the White House.

Anyone remember, many months ago when John McCain was kicking off his presidential bid, how he promised to run a campaign of honor and integrity, and focus on the issues? Now he's "proud" to be running the sleaziest and most dishonest and divisive campaign ever, making even the Swift-Boat campaign of 2004 look like a campfire rendition of Kumbaya. What a lying, hypocritical asshole.

And it's not just McCain and Palin - the entire lunatic extreme right is going apeshit at the prospect of losing this election. Of course, even when it had a monopoly on political, judicial and media power, the extreme right has always played on the inverted snobbery of Idiot America and its resentment against anyone who is halfway intelligent or educated. But the current extreme levels of mouth-foaming rage can only be explained as stemming from a deep, visceral fear. They've screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday, they have no-one to blame except themselves, so their infinite reality-avoidance superpowers kick in and convert their latent self-loathing into berserk rage against their hated non-extremist fellow Americans.

Picking Palin as McCain's running mate was a huge and desperate gamble in the first place. For a while it looked like it might actually work, against all reason. But as the novelty factor wore off and people saw what a lightweight but thoroughly nasty piece of work Palin is, the backlash set in and McCain's poll figures plummeted. So now he's going for broke, working up his base to unprecedented levels of frenzy and hatred against his Senate colleagues. It might have worked four years ago, but somehow I am optimistic that it will backfire badly this time round. Ordinary people are sick of rethug corruption and incompetence, and of politicians who can only perpetuate the failed and disastrous policies of the past.

Rant on, McCain. I'll see your William Ayers and raise you a Kemper Marley! Rage, rage against the dying of the right!