I think that the GOP has thrown in the towel: Palin is a nightmare who appeals only to a narrow base of inbred racist mean people.

Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican Convention was (and is) an obnoxious, mean-spirited, hollow, divisive self-parody. Her voice is unbearable: it's screechy and self-congratulatory. Her opinions are repugnant and also stupid. Not to mention that she's a thinly veiled racist. "But small-town America will love her!!" some idiot on Charlie Rose says. No they won't, I respond. The only ones who will love her are the ones who already are inclined to love her. She does nothing to increase the number of votes that McCain will get, and in fact, one of the myriad ways in which she hurts McCain is that she makes him appear even more irrelevant that he already is.

Let's face it, people: the Republicans are sitting this one out. Just as when George H.W. failed to get his second turn, the GOP knows that it's not going to win this election, and so instead, it's concentrating on galvanizing the solidarity of its base. It's leaving a huge deficit that will be sure to cripple Obama's ability to push through his domestic agenda, and the Sarah Palinites will remain true to the cause, and they're have abortion, guns and "the liberal media" on their mind.

By the way: WHO ACTUALLY STILL USES THE PHRASE "THE LIBERAL MEDIA??" Answer: nobody. Not anybody who knows what they're talking about. But the GOP is playing the game it's played in one way or another since Nixon. It's going to feed on the weepy, self-centered "victimization" and "marginalization" of white, unsophisticated, lower- and lower-middle-class white people. Particularly born-again Christians. That is the only group of people in the world who think the media are "liberal" after the Iraq War. And that's because they're basically fascists: uneducated and confused about the world. And they are precisely the people for whom the low-rent spectacle of this year's Republican Convention has been staged.

They're not trying to win this thing. They're setting their sights on future elections.

Further bric-a-brac upon which I rest my thesis:

Sarah Palin has chosen to exploit her own daughter's pregnancy: and when "family values" types do this kind of thing, we have the right, my friends, to point and to laugh our little Left-liberal-blogosphere-asses off. So take that, Rudy "Looks, Sounds and Thinks Like A Dumber and Meaner Benito Mussolini" Giuliani. But beyond that, whatever bullshit sympathy accrues to the Stupid Alaskan Bitch from an understanding, partner-in-white-born-again-Christian-victimization Christian Right, it's simply not going to be durable enough to carry her and much less to carry McCain to a general election victory. I mean, could you actually picture this freak show in the White House/VP mansion? I just don't fucking think so.

Also, thanks to Gypsy Sun & Rainbows for first bringing my attention to this tasty little morsel, which I think gives us a pretty good idea of what Republicans across the country are saying behind closed doors, even as they churn out bullshit lies in their columns about how very earthy Sarah "I BURN BOOKS, WHICH IS ALSO WHAT ADOLF HITLER (A NAZI) DID" Palin is.

This really is a new low for politics in my lifetime. I mean like, for real. It's just so cynical and full of hate. And we have the Republicans to thank for wasting our time with it.

Sarah Palin: not just dumb, but evil. And the embodiment of a lunatic fringe fringier & more lunatic than known previously to exist.

• When she was mayor of Alaska, Sarah Palin attempted to BAN LIBRARY BOOKS, Time, "Mayor Palin: A Rough Record":

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

• Did you hear that? I said that Sarah Palin attempted to BAN LIBRARY BOOKS, New York Times, "Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual":

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

• And, in addition to attempting to BAN BOOKS -- you know, like what they did in NAZI FUCKING GERMANY? -- Sarah Palin is a mean-spirited, vindictive, ideologically rapacious nightmarish RNC-funded opportunist who refuses to accept the idea of Christians assuming public office if they are not born-again Christians (New York Times, "Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual"):

The traditional turning points that had decided municipal elections in this town of less than 7,000 people — Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? — seemed all but obsolete the year Ms. Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C. Stein.

Anti-abortion fliers circulated. Ms. Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved before because city elections are nonpartisan, ran advertisements on Ms. Palin’s behalf.....Ms. Palin and her passion for Republican ideology and religious faith overtook a town known for a wide libertarian streak and for helping start the Iditarod dog sled race.

“Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” said Mr. Stein, who lost the election. “But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I’m not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: ‘We will have our first Christian mayor.’ ”

“I thought: ‘Holy cow, what’s happening here? Does that mean she thinks I’m Jewish or Islamic?’ ” recalled Mr. Stein, who was raised Lutheran, and later went to work as the administrator for the city of Sitka in southeast Alaska. “The point was that she was a born-again Christian.”

Dear Reader: I beg of you: don't let the Republicans pull this country back into a never-ending fascistic culture-war hell.

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA TO PUT AN END TO ALL OF THIS NONSENSE. AND CONVINCE YOUR FRIENDS TO DO SO TOO. If we don't win this one for the Constitution, the rule of law, a respect for reason, the sciences and the humanities, an understanding of the primacy of quality education as a moral and economic necessity, we are going to endure decades of listening to idiots like Sarah Palin. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY! DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOUR AND MY CHILDREN. VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA.

McCain campaign, in bid to more closely resemble reality TV show, chooses airline stewardess as would-be VP.

Are you fucking

kidding me?

Reasons why McCain's selection of a quasi-Canook cocktail waitress as his running mate is either an act of desperation or cry for help:

• She's a cocktail waitress.
• Or a airline stewardess, or whatever.
• She's dumb.
• Her political career -- such as it is (and it isn't!) -- consists of mayoral offices in towns with populations equal to the number of people currently standing at the Belmont El stop, and having done so at the behest of oil companies that use her as their little doe-eyed puppet to screw the American people out of their own natural resources.
• Her husband looks like a child molester:
  
  
• Not only that, but he works for BP.
• She has no qualifications and in fact has never set foot outside the United States. Check out this -- sorry, it's difficult to type because I'm laughing so hard -- time line in the The New York Times, which documents her lifetime of formidable achievements -- which include graduating from journalism school at the University of Idaho, playing Division 3 basketball at some piece of shit Alaskan college, and apparently (winning I'm not kidding about this) some kind of local beauty contest. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
• The number of disgruntled Hilary-supporters who would actually vote for this woman, who's rabidly "pro-life" (and even though she's not hypocritical about it -- what with the five babies or whatever, and the baby recently born with Down's syndrome -- she's still pro-life which is hella-NOT what Hilary supporters are). Plus any women with even a vague feminist impulse can't support this biatch. Why? Because she's obviously dumb as a goddamn brick!
  
• They look terrible together. As if McCain's fucking Botoxy socialite bitch of a wife didn't make him look bad enough, now he looks even more like some creepy old man, collecting young girls to stand next to him (and make him look old, which doesn't help him). Observe:
  
  Say NO to this, America! It's so fucking creepy!
  
• She's .... uh ... not qualified to be president. And as Rahm Emanuel pointed out, it's not like ol' Johnny's not #1 in the most likely to die while in office category.
• I mean, seriously, could you imagine if this bimbo became president? And no, I'm not equating "looks" (which she supposedly has? says somebody, not sure who) with stupidity. I'm equating stupidity with stupidity.
• And I'm not equating inexperience with unsuitability for office. I'm equating the combination of inexperience and stupidity with unsuitability for office.
• And, you see, Barack Obama -- to the extent he's "inexperienced" -- is also smart, inspiring, on-the-ball, the galvanizer of a nationwide movement....I mean, he's Barack Fucking Obama, and this chick is just some dumb cheerleader from butt-fuck nowhere, with a dumbass husband who looks like he's inbred or something. I don't want that motherfucker anywhere near the White House. He would stain the furniture just by looking at it.
• Isn't America sick of all of this fucking Conservative Christian bullshit? Can't all of the Fascists-For-Jesus people just go away?
  
• She's into hunting and NASCAR and all that other redneck bullshit. Isn't America sick of all the redneck shit yet? I mean, come on.
• And also the fucking oil people? Aren't we sick of having motherfuckers who work for oil companies setting our fucking foreign policy? Examples in the current Administration of people who RECENTLY WORKED for oil companies (off the top of my head): Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush. AREN'T PEOPLE SICK OF THESE FUCKING ASSHOLES? You want more of this shit, Conservative Christian America? Need more oil CEOs setting your policy for you?? We are a country of dumbass masochistic assholes, and we seem to get what we deserve.
• Apparently John and Sarah hadn't spoken to one another until like a couple of days ago, and then, only briefly. No surprise.
• Just no.
• Were the two of them to win the presidency, satire as a form of humor and communication would cease entirely to be distinguishable from reality. It's already close enough now, with Bush and his cowboy hats and his "Mission Accomplished" airplane stunt.
  
• She's Dan Quayle in drag.*

* Not my joke. I can't remember where it came from. But it's good, no?