9/11 as an actual campaign video

In case you missed it, I did, the Republicans actually ran a 9/11 "tribute" slash campaign video for John McCain before his speech. Taking away the utter tastelessness, crass commercialization of a tragedy, and trying to appropriate 3,000 dead Americans for a convention hype video, was how hackneyed it was. From the childish intonation to poorly written phrases like "September eleventh..........9!...11!" or "Freedom, the very soul of America" and boiler plate about "America will win" "How our lives changed" and "Bodies falling". Then there was all the graphic imagery, open paeans about how we'll defeat them, and it'll never happen again with John McCain in office. Though they can't actually go as far as to mention McCain by name, I guess that would be one step too far.

But there we are, 9/11 is now overtly a campaign video and an event wholly owned by the RNC. Rudy 9iu11ani sold it to them to pay off his last divorce settlement. Be proud. Vote Republican. 9.................11!

HurriMcCain 08: In Memoriam

Finally it was time.

The lights grew dim, the arena came to a hush, the video started. Well, to call it a video is stretching it. It was a video full of pans over pictures. We finally got to hear them mention that John McCain was a POW! Stop hiding that information, John. Over the five long minutes of this amateurish production, replete with canned synth strings, stock photos of smiling people (half of which were black) and grain blowing in the wind, the narrator from all your favorite Mac & Cheese ads, and hoary old chestnuts like "Somehow John McCain survived.....perhaps he had more to do" we learned about John McCain. If all you wanted to learn about was his grandfather who died, his time as a POW, lying to his second wife about his age (and vice versa) and almost no mention of the fact that he's been a senator for almost 3 decades.

Then the spotlight hit the stage and some stagehand shoved McCain out into it. He toddled around doing his trademark "double thumbs up Frankenstein", and waving and pointing to people in the delegations he pretended to know. He strode to the end of the stage, reconfigured to look like a giant, angled, neon cock. The stage manager struck a donkey, who started turning a wheel, raising the podium from beneath the neon phallus. It was time for John Fuckin' Sidney Fuckin' McCain!

Then they flashed up a picture of a giant mansion for him to speak in front of. Not the best imagery considering the previous two weeks worth of attacks. The added effect had close cropped shots of McCain looking like he was standing in front of a lime green backdrop. Later reports had this put as a mistake by the jumbotron guy. As McCain started to speak he was interrupted by protesters from several different groups including Iraq Veterans Against the War and Code Pink. The audience turned away from their candidate to manically chant USA at them. Which made sense for the Code Pinker, who was probably a communist, but not for the veteran who served our country and didn't like the war or McCain's voting on veterans issues. That would serve as a theme for the rest of the night, the audience randomly chanting USA for anything that could remotely be tied to the US as a positive. But for a man running on security it didn't look good that his own nomination speech got interrupted 4 times because of lax security.

John finally got his speech underway. A disjointed mishmash of sentences, declarations of qualities he possesses, at most three policies he would enact, and no real theme or structure. The media reviews, if you're in to such things, described it as vague, non-specific, repeating the same old GOP ideas in the same way, flat, and was even described by CNN's Jeffery Toobin as "...the worst speech by a nominee that I've heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980." To me it suffered most of the same problems the whole convention faced: the complete failure to recognize it's the past eight years of Republican rule that have people mad, that there are actual economic problems, the complete lack of anything other than biography and attacks, no specifics on policy, and a tone pitched squarely at the base with no regard to how it might play outside the hall. McCain didn't have all these problems, he didn't attack much and he tried to talk more to the independents, but it was still mostly biography and declaration of qualities he feels he possesses. "John McCain was a POW" doesn't solve the housing crisis.

Throughout the speech, McCain was locked in a "to the death" struggle with his vaunted enemy: the teleprompter. He read things wrong, put the wrong stresses on words, and sometimes read the first half of a word with emphasis as if it were the whole word, before scrambling to say the other half so we knew it was a real word and not one he invented. There was a section, the only section, where McCain listed all the evil things Obama wanted to do, from taxing everything you do or own, putting puppies into wood chippers, and surrendering to Islam and setting up a caliphate. This brought the typical insincere "this is where we have to boo" booing from the crowd. It was on display all night whenever a vaguely liberal or foreign idea was mentioned. For both parties and conventions in 2012, can you tell everyone to stop that? It's annoying.

Senator McCain declared his dislike for partisan rancor, the kind that had been broadcast over the air the previous three nights and had taken place up until he took the stage. The kind he made sure his VP choice had and the kind he puts in his ads and campaign press releases. He's against it. He's also willing to work across the aisle with anyone to wants to come together....to pass his right wing conservative agenda. Because that's what compromise means: Democrats compromising to give Republicans 95% of what they want. Hey it's worked so far, why stop a good thing? John also attempted to hump the change pony to death. See, he's the candidate of change now. And the only way to get true change is to keep the same party in power and champion the same policies that have been enacted over the past eight years. That's change, not Obama's sissy ideas of doing things differently.

Finally, mercifully, the speech came to an end with McCain giving the only energized portion of his speech where he shot out descriptions of what America is in a staccato, rapid fire session which the crowd cheered and chanted over....because it was about the USA, USA, USA, USA. He thanked everyone and his theme song played (yes he has an actual "John McCain" theme song, not kidding) Then the Palins walked out and Heart's Barracuda started playing, then the families came out and everybody hugged, then a trillion balloons fell from the ceiling. If you were watching MSNBC, the balloons completely covered floor reporter Andrea Mitchell as she was trying to give a report and interview Tom Ridge. It was aborted (right to life!) and instead Keith Olbermann, Brian Williams, and Tom Brokaw made fun of her for five minutes until Tom Ridge could be moved to a proper set to do a proper interview with Brian and Tom. It was about this time that Obama was belting out the second chorus of "Living On Prayer" during an impromptu karaoke session at Bon Jovi's house. He was feelin' it.

Thus HurriMcCain 08 is over and we scramble to the finish, where the ten percent of the voters who don't really pay attention to this stuff will decide it. The debates are coming soon, God have mercy on our souls. Policies and answers will be ignored, while posture and tone will be analyzed. You will be made to suffer with us.

Image used under a Creative Commons license from Newshour.

Lime Rickety

John, who told you lime green was your color? It isn't, people are just going to photoshop porn into the background tomorrow. Plus, the green being from the grass of a large mansion doesn't help with the houses thing. Also, is that the gardener walking around it in the background?

Stick to red.

Picture of the Day - 9.4.08

This is the face of the Republican Party as it mocks community organizing. "Watch out, Grandma! The black man is coming for yer shit!"

These Bastards guide to HurriMcCain 08: Finale

She did it folks! Sarah Palin came out to give a speech and neither fell off the stage, cursed a blue streak, or spontaneously combusted. That means the speech was a rousing success! Then there was the sideshow in the stands. The Palin family decided to play a game of pass the baby, handing the kid off to another person in between every shot. Support the neck! Also there were all those great awkward shots of the kid that knocked up their daughter and the awkward interactions he had with the family and the McCains. They seemed so glad his penis shenanigans put him in a position to be there. Happyfamilyhappyfamilyhappyfamily. I hope the kid made sure the check cleared first before he flew down.

Then there was Rudy Giuliani, who strode to the stage and set the Reichstag house on fire. Josh Marshall, quoting Molly Ivins, said he preferred this speech in the original German. I'm not sure I'd even give it the credit of being translated. I'm sure I heard a Dussledorf, hinterland, putsch, and gespuckt in there. Also, Rudy hates the fuck out of community organizers. So do the delegates and Palin. Fuck you Obama and all community organizers, how dare that be the only thing you've ever done!

Mittens gave a bizarre speech labeled by David Brooks on PBS as "borderline insane" about Adam Smith, why the word liberal was a synonym of bad, and seemed to think torture, warrantless arrests, secret trials, and habeas corpus suspension were the ideals this country was founded on. Someone get him a history book. Also Mike Huckabee told a story about veterans who stole desks from children.

The thing that stuck out to me is that they are giving almost zero airtime to any of the alleged policy or plans McCain will theoretically enact if he's elected. The closest they get is saying McCain wants to do something about something. It's all McCain biography and attacks. Want a solution to economic problems? Good luck finding a reference to it, but then again, McCain was a POW and Obama is a liberal. Want a plan to create more jobs? McCain can't raise his arms and Obama wants to tax your air breathing. Want some form of health care coverage? Obama was a fucking community organizer! If you tuned into this wondering what the Republicans want to do the next four years if elected, well they'll get to governing later, they have to talk about McCain and evil liberals first. All you have to do is change out the name Obama and the war and any of these speeches could have been given at any Republican convention since the fifties. There is nothing to distinguish that this party even knows what the major problems facing America in 2008. This is a convention pitched entirely to the base, the 20% of people who still believe in Bush and think the country is on the right track. Good luck on that election strategy.

And for the party that wants to demonize the other as suffering some form of deranged celebrity worship of its candidate, they sure are throwing stones in glass houses. Every speech is taken up by about 80% hero worship of John McCain and exultations of him as the ultimate American, nay God. Over and over and over we are told that we aren't good enough to deserve the honor of his mere presence and that the Presidency should be awarded to McCain as a prize for his meritorious service. They certainly aren't suggesting we should hand the Presidency over to him based on his policies. I'm not sure anyone knows what they are.

Tonight, the finale. John McCain hits the stage. The theme is "Barack Obama was a community organizer!" said in an exasperated and disgusted manner.

Speaker
Tim Pawlenty, Governor and Bridge Destroyer
Ahh, the coveted "I'm the governor of this state, you'll sit there and like what I have to say!" spot. I think his slogan for reelection was "A different kind of embarrassing than Jesse Ventura". No, RNC crowd, this man isn't up there to test the mics, he's giving a speech. At this point I don't think there's any new parts of McCain's biography to read from, so just expect a repeat of the greatest hits. If you see him squinting up there its just that he's trying to convince himself that the McCain/Palin signs say McCain/Pawlenty. No Tim, you're still the governor of Minnesota, deal with it.

Speaker
Senator Sam Brownback
Good thing they got all the crazies out of the way before the final ni.....oh shit Sam Brownback. If you want to see a tense standoff over immigration policy wait till Brownback and Tancredo hit the pre-speech buffet. Rolling Stone once said that this is the man Jesus would vote for and was God's Senator. Apparently Jesus only represents about 3% of the vote in Iowa and doesn't live in any other states. I guess they had to let him speak, lest his God be angered. But really, the last night? I guess too many people pulled out, pretended they were sick, or were indicted.

Nominee for President
Senator John McCain
If this is like any other McCain prepared speech it's going to be horrible. A colossally awful mishmash of obvious reading off a teleprompter, bizarre tonal notes, insincere inflection, weird grins, creepy laughing and creepier smiling, delivered in a voice that would make Joe Lieberman wonder where the energy is. Maybe here is where John will finally lay out some idea of what he actually wants to do with the Presidency. Or he'll just mention that he was a POW and that he's not actually questioning Barack Obama's patriotism when he insinuates he's a traitor. Early ratings estimates show that the first three nights weren't nearly as highly watched as the first three nights of the DNC, so I'm not holding out hopes that nearly 40 million people are going to see John-boy speechify. Maybe that's good. I'm hoping for the sort of uncomfortable comedy that shows up in Ricky Gervais' work. But maybe the kid has a good speech in him. We'll see. God help him if he gets 40 million and bombs.

Bonus drinking game: POW! or whining about the media analysis of the horrible VP pick. You are going to leave a whiskey soaked corpse.

These Bastards guide to HurriMcCain 08: Day 3

I know I'm not the target audience, but Christ that was boring last night. That might have had something to do with the excitement twins: Thompson and Lieberman. Those two could drop a tweaking meth addict just with a well timed story about the way things used to be. Thompson spoke for what I estimated was 12 hours, recapping every single thing John McCain ever did, then dropping some aside about "That's what the Romans would have wanted in a leader". In case you didn't know, John McCain is a POW. If you didn't know, you probably haven't listened to any McCain speech or any McCain surrogate for the past eight years. Apparently this was the speech Schwarzenegger was supposed to give before he ran and hid and they retooled it for Fred. I would have loved to see Arnold give this 40 minute speech, interspersed with movie quotes of his.

Joe Lieberman did a nice impression of a Democrat. If you had HD, you could see the look in his eyes that said "God, let John McCain win. If Obama takes this the Dems will stop putting up with all my bullshit." And it's true, the second Obama is elected Lieberman is in deep shit, he's gonna have to sandbag Democrats from outside the party now and do so without his committee chairmanships. Who would have thought that Democrats would get mad about you constantly busting on their leaders since the Clinton days once they had the numbers so that you weren't needed? Joe didn't.

George Bush gave his speech from the White House. Depending on which station you watched it on, it was either hamhandedly cut with crowd reaction shots or presented like a normal Presidential speech with no crowd reaction and all these weird pauses Bush made for applause he couldn't know of or hear. According to Brian Williams, that's the way the RNC wanted it and only provided the one Bush feed and the networks were on their own for crowd shots. It was truly weird.

Tonight the woman no one at the RNC knows, but yet has to virulently defend with the same three lines, even as today we learn she has a crazy reverend problem and wasn't interviewed until the day before she was announced: Sarah Palin! Of note, they decided to fly in the guy who knocked up their daughter to come on stage and play happy family. This after days of saying "Don't politicize this". That's nice, maybe they can have the shotgun wedding right before Palin speaks.

To point out the enthusiasm gap between the two parties would be to belabor an obvious point. The RNC convention arena looks twice as big and 1/4 as full. You see large swathes of empty seats and the biggest outbursts of applause look more like a happy PTA meeting than a major political convention. The official speech schedules are still all messed up, with people being cut, added, and dropped all day. The themes have been dumped and it's basically all "A cause greater than self" and "POW".

Speaker
Mittens
The Mittster is going to get up there and subtly remind everyone exactly how boring his personal life was. There would have been no vetting problems with him. No crazy pastors, knocked up kids, secessionist parties, nothing. But noooooooooo! They had to go with the woman. Then he's gonna rage, saying "Darn it!" before moving on to "Goshdarn it!" and walking briskly off stage. Then he'll come back and apologize for flying into a uncontrollable rage.

Rudy 9iu11iani?
They might have moved him to tonight, reports say. Or they dropped him completely. In any event he's still workin' hard and flogging 9/11 to death. Just today he spoke of Sarah Palin and said "I'd be confident that she'd be able to handle [9/11]. She's been a governor of a state, she's been mayor of a city." The man can't help himself, it's a disease.

Speaker
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
The woman who actually was qualified to be on the ticket and had a record of some sort. She'll walk up, squint her eyes like Clint Eastwood, sigh, shake her head, and deliver her speech defending Sarah Palin. She's been puttin' paper money in the swear jar lately.

Speaker
Tragic Comedy Superstar, Governor Sarah Palin
To say this is it for the McCain campaign is understating it. If she bombs this speech or even more information comes out where they have to drop her from the ticket, John McCain might as well pull out of the race before tomorrow. She has two People/Us Weekly type magazine covers coming out that both use the phrases "Scandals" and "Lies" over her picture, every hour brings some new bizarre revelation about her or one about her lax vetting, every paper and new broadcast is openly questioning her fitness and McCain's sanity, the campaign is hiding her from the press, and polls show Obama finally moving into the 50% range for the first time against McCain. She has to knock it out of the park just to stop the bleeding.

So no pressure.

Picture of the day - 9.2.08

Brendan Smialowski, The New York Times

Up there, sir. That's where you sit. See that fenced off area between the Wyoming delegates and the freight elevator? Yeah, you're behind that. Just head up there, take a left, then a right, then another right, then left, left, right, left, right, down the hall, under the crossbeam, through the walk-in hot dog freezer, around the flammable crosses, just past the goat entrails (mind Mr. Cheney, please), then another right, a left, and two more rights. Now, once you get there...

Place yer bets

InTrade has gotten into the game, offering a contract on the odds of the GOP dropping Sarah Palin from the ticket before November 4:




Maybe this isn't such a far-fetched loony leftist blogger notion, after all. I can almost see it... Headline: Palin, citing concern for family privacy, exits race

Note: Hat-tip to Stephen J. Dubner at the Freakonomics blog.

Amy Goodman: Clearly a security threat

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman should have known better than to confront law enforcement officials about the illegal detention of two co-workers. Asking straightforward questions tends to open up small, unarmed journalists with notebooks instead of sidearms to all sorts of "justice."



The good news: They've since been released.

The bad news: Goodman's colleagues, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, have felony riot charges pending.

These Bastards guide to HurriMcCain 08: Day 2

Well, Gustav wasn't as bad as everyone feared. That means the convention's back on! At least until Hurricane Hanna hits Florida and the East Coast sometime on Thursday. You guys aren't having a good week. I almost feel sorry for you, I do. At least until I saw that video where some of the Republican state bigwigs, moments after saying we needed to take off our Republican hats (trucker cap with a crying eagle on it and the twin towers) and put on our American hats (trucker cap with a regular eagle on it), launched into some harangue about "You're seeing Republican governors and I think in Republican states, taking care of the citizens. That's what we do." I guess it's a sign of progress that you were even able to get the "American hats" line out without snorting. By the way, they're selling "American hats" at the concession stands in Minnesota, $20.08 and all proceeds go to the McCain Campaign.

Subplot to watch: whether the McCain campaign has successfully kept all the people from state Republican parties that churn out stuff like the "Black House" buttons, purple heart band aids, Obama sock monkeys, Obama is a Muslim mailings, and Obama/Osama T-shirts far enough away from podium. Given the way they vetted Sarah Palin, I doubt it.

Today is a day of mishmashed themes as some of yesterday's speakers are crammed into today. Yesterday's theme was supposed to be "Service" but morphed into "Not looking as if we're fiddling while something burns." Today's theme was "Reform", which I guess was going to be their attempt to talk about how we needed to reform this government....after eight years of Republican rule. Actually, they probably won't mention that second part. The theme is "Ser-form".

Speaker
President George W. Bush
They couldn't take their free gift and send him off to 'deal' with the hurricane, never to be seen in Minnesota or on national TV again. Cheney's officially been erased from memory already, a rumor that's told in hushed whispers in the bathroom stalls at the Xcel Energy Center. New Orleans didn't get destroyed this time so I'll imagine there will be preening and strutting on the part of G Dub. Barbara's boy doesn't make the same mistake twice. No official time schedule is out, but I can't imagine they'll be putting President 30% approval and 80% wrong track on in the 10-11 prime time network hour.

Speaker
Joe Lieberman, Independent "Democrat" Senator
The man with the electric personality machine turned all the way up to 11, Joe Lieberman! Oh yeah, the man that wowed as many as 3 Democrats in 2000 as their VP man, is going to allegedly excite the Republican base into a frenzy. Joe says he's only there to talk about why he's supporting McCain and not to attack Obama, but given the frequency this man actually tells the truth and his summer long attacks on Obama's patriotism and desire to see America lose, I wouldn't put any money on it. He should also be speaking in prime time.

Speaker
Fred Thompson, Fake TV Lawyer
The excitement twins: Lieberman and Thompson. Try to stay awake. Still trying to wind down from his alleged campaign for the Republican nomination, Fred Thompson will take the voice and ideas that spawned dozens of primary votes and use them to advocate for John McCain. Expect him to pretend that Law and Order was a documentary and spin folksy, Southern, legalese so hokey John Grisham wouldn't even hork it out. Try to remember that the guy who has starring roles in TV shows and hundreds of supporting roles in big movies isn't a celebrity, Barack Obama is. According to ABC News he is also speaking in the 10-11 hour.

Speaker
Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of 9/11
I'm sure he can shoehorn 9/11 into the speech a couple of times, but can he successfully wield the John McCain "noun, verb, POW" into any and every line? Maybe he can add to that "when 9/11 happened the first think he thought was "Thank God, George Bush is President"" story by cramming John McCain into it somehow. Maybe he thought "Thank God, George Bush is our President and in eight years I hope that John McCain will be our President, because he was a POW and knows how to fight terrorism." It's crass enough for a Giuliani speech. This was supposed to be the keynote address, but whether it was all timeshifted and changed up because of yesterday is uncertain.
EDIT: Now it seems Giuliani has been dropped from tonight's lineup.

All of this is subject to change, since none of this is really official, just pieced together from reports.

These Bastards guide to HurriMcCain 08: Day 1

Crisi-tunity

Ahh today was going to be such a good day for Republicans. They were going to have to acknowledge George Bush and Dick Cheney as active members of their party and then spend three days pretending it never happened. There was even the chance that a crowd would chant "4 more years" at them, all but cutting together an ad for Democrats. But alas, Hurricane Gustav is happening. So they've pretty much scuttled the first day of the convention under the belief that a rockin' party that is celebrating the worst President in modern history and his policies doesn't endear them to the American public while a massive hurricane could potentially destroy large chunks of the gulf coast.

Cheney is free to do what he normally does: wander the Adirondacks, stalking and killing stray cattle. Bushie can't be there because he's apparently needed at hurricane HQ, to make pillow forts and tell spooky ghost stories to Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour as they sleep over. All part of the Republicans plan to not look like they are actively neglectful and complicit in the destruction of a major American city.....y'know like they did for Katrina. Oh New Orleans, if only they cared about you in non-election years.

So the convention is stripped to the bare minimum today, just the bog standard blood rituals and sacrifice that give the Republican party its power...and all the boring party stuff needed to get McCain public matching funds and his nomination as Republican candidate. Oh they'll try to milk the hurricane to their advantage, McCain has already doddered around the relief zone distracting relief workers and law enforcement that are tasked to handle security and deal with and be part of his photo ops instead of handling pre-storm emergency planning.

They also hope to use it as a platform to try and brand Republicans as rising above partisanship and showing competent leadership. After the last eight years, you couldn't do that with the competant handling five hurricanes, an earthquake, and a plague of Islamic locusts. It's called making lemons into lemonade, so they'll try their best. Or taking a jug of warm piss, drinking it, and pretending it's delicious lemonade. Ammonia stinking lemonade.

Probably just should have gone with subdued speeches and pageantry, I doubt canceling one or two days of a convention is going to net you much in the way of positive opinion. Not that holding one and watching a bunch of angry southerners yell about Obama being a celebrity who wants to surrender and pretending that Sarah Palin has some sort of record of achievement probably wasn't going to do it either.

If the hurricane is destructive enough he's planning on holding his acceptance speech from some devastated area, where he'll wander around some knocked over general store musing if we can risk a Barack Obama presidency. Then he'll hear a groan, run over to a collapsed beam, find a kid, pull him out to safety, cradle him, weep, and then scream out "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?" as an overhead shot zooms out on the destroyed town, McCain holding the body in his arms as the tagline "Putting America First" is superimposed on the screen.

Good times.

RNC Convention: Whither Cheney?

With the DNC Convention upon us, it is time to start wondering about what delights will be in store for us from September 1-4 at the RNC Convention. More importantly what is a party that is trying to distance itself from itself going to do about the massively unpopular Bush and Cheney tag team? So far the plan is to have them speak the first day and then spend the next 3 pretending that it never happened.

As to wit, they're even shuffling Cheney out of the country.

BREAKING – White House release: “Vice President Cheney will travel abroad beginning September 2, 2008. President Bush has asked the Vice President to travel to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy for discussions with these key partners on issues of mutual interest. The Vice President will meet with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Saakashvili of Georgia.”

Yes tend to things in Azerbaijan, Dick, we'll handle the party stuff back here. Couldn't they organize a summit meeting with the lavamen and hollow earth reptoids that live miles underground? Azerbaijan is a little out in the open, people might see him and remember that he's a Republican.....and so is John McCain. Connecting dots!

Perhaps it's not to late to reschedule some David Blaine-esque magic trick for him to do. They convince Cheney that they'll bury him underground for four days as a fund raising stunt for destitute oil executives. Then they bury him and never dig him up, leaving his undead wrath to a future society thousands of years hence. That ought to be good for a 10 point bump in the polls.