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Lipstick on a Pig

Ferny Grover at 491 said:

… you seem to have the impression that Americans are interested in real issues when they are showing every indication of being a nation in complete denial.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. I think most Americans have trouble facing reality. The worse things get, the more they want to escape.

The Republicans know this, so they gave the people Sarah Palin as the ultimate distraction. Now Americans don’t have to confront the hard stuff anymore in this election. They can talk about whether Palin was the right pick for VP. They can dream about the small-town hockey Mum suddenly making the big time. They can debate whether Bristol Palin should have kept her baby or not and what led her to a teen pregnancy. They can wonder whether Palin would be someone they could have a coffee or beer with.

Sure, there are plenty of people hurting in a declining economy, but for those who aren’t, they now have Palin to occupy them rather than having to be concerned for their fellow citizens or the overall decline in their country’s international standing.

This is a country that has lost its way under the Republican leadership as people were continually frightened into voting for the Republicans. Now that the Republicans have made the world seem so scary, they are exploiting American’s desires for escaping that world… no more big issues, no more things to worry about, just a fascination with Sarah Palin. The MSM have complied. The alternative media has complied. And now we are two weeks into this great scam and Americans are still chugging along besotted in some way with Palin, either loving or hating her.

The Republicans will be trying to make the most of this. She has now had one major interview. Expect them to hide her a way for a little, then bring her back out for another, anything to stretch it out until election day, drip feeding the country with bits and pieces of Sarah Palin.

The only way Obama can turn this around is to stir Americans in an emotional way, a DEEP emotional way. If he simply bangs on about the issues, people will keep resorting to the Palin distraction. He needs to reignite his message of hope and change so people can shift from escapism to a future dream. It is still about avoiding the here and now, which many Americans are inclined to do, but at least Obama can take them to a place that can inspire something better in them and in future generations rather than seeking solace in a temporary distraction.

1,030 replies on “Lipstick on a Pig”

Voters souring on GOP.

GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin isn’t giving John McCain much oomph among Oregon voters, enabling Barack Obama to maintain his strong lead in the state presidential race, according to a new Portland Tribune/Fox 12 poll.

Obama leads McCain 50-40 among registered voters, according to a Sept. 11 through Sept. 14 poll by Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall Inc. Obama retains equally strong support among male and female voters.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=122168669575618300

GOP turns on president.

President Bush was under fire Thursday for his response to the crisis on Wall Street — and the criticism was from members of his own party.

House Minority Leader John Boehner joined a growing chorus of Republican leaders criticizing the administration for failing to tell Congress about the bailout of American International Group (AIG). And Republican presidential candidate John McCain said that if he were president, he would fire Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Chris Cox.

Just what we need infighting in the Repug Party. 😈
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-turns-on-president-2008-09-18.html

Hagel hints at who has his ’08 vote.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said Thursday that people could interpret his remarks about Sarah Palin “any way they like,” one day after he excoriated his party’s vice presidential nominee and challenged her ability to lead the nation.

Hagel, the only senator who has not endorsed either of the presidential candidates, has puzzled his colleagues in the Senate all summer with actions that suggest he favors one candidate and it is not Republican John McCain.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/hagel-hints-at-who-has-his-08-vote-2008-09-18.html

Voting in the US election is like driving – To go backward, put it in R. To go forward, put it in D.

Vote McCain/Palin – Bush Lite and Bush Pale

Herr Doktor over at the slimewrestling pit looks like he is about to hop in behind the Kid.

Socrates, I agree. If Obama has committed to reregulation, then I approve. I think I may be about to flip on this election. Neither candidate has any economic credentials, but I think traditional Democrat policies will serve better to clean up this Republican mess, just as they did under FDR. I still think Obama is dangerously underqualified to be president, but we may have to live with that.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2008/09/18/us-election-minus-48-days/comment-page-2/#comments

EC
I just sit back and have a big chuckle as their posts unfold.
I don’t get good quality laughs like your Toons though.

I do recall Kirri mentioning the soup kitchens a few posts back.

Looks like they will be getting a little busier now with the tent cities springing up.

Good hearted Sepos will give them food and shelter and no doubt these are the very persons the Goppers will be going full out to cage their votes.

Officials don’t know how many homeless people are in Reno. “But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember,” said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city’s redevelopment agency director.

Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or real housing. They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26776283/page/2/

If there are any undecided environmentally friendly swinging voters the imbecile should have helped them make up their mind.

Again and again, at agency after agency, government science has been undermined, torqued, twisted, muzzled. For eight years the scandals have just kept coming—so much so that even very high-level appointees like the surgeon general and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have encountered interference with their attempts to convey scientific information. “It is an outcome of the ‘faith based’ presidency, with many decisions made based on instincts rather than facts,” says Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, who’s served as a nasa adviser.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-a-return-to-reason.html

Chris B the messages are a bit like a skattergun approach, as in the latest racism/Limbaugh ad. They should stick with only the economy for a few weeks

That McStupid is going to bring in the changes allright. Wonder how he plans to make redundant and out of the way all the lobbyists working for his campaign. Yeah right!

….former Senator Phil Gramm, McCain’s onetime campaign chairman, used a backroom maneuver in late 2000 to slip into law a bill that kept credit default swaps unregulated. These financial instruments greased the way to the subprime meltdown that has led to today’s economic crisis. Several of McCain’s most senior campaign aides have lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the Democratic National Committee, using publicly available records, has identified 177 lobbyists working for the McCain campaign as either aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers.

Of those 177 lobbyists, according to a Mother Jones review of Senate and House records, at least 83 have in recent years lobbied for the financial industry McCain now attacks.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9753_mccain_campaign_lobbyists_wall_street_aig.html

Don’t forget the two big companies earlier in the Bush years. Enron and Worldcom. More big companies have gone under, in a big business party, the “Republican Party” since the Great Depression.

Gouldie it looks like BO has a strategy in place with his “clever little ruses”.

The alternative to attacking Limbaugh is ignoring him, and the Democrats simply cannot afford to ignore Limbaugh. If they do, they allow too many lies and defamations to go unanswered to too many people who spread the word even further, lending these falsifications an aura of truth. Let’s face it, it’s fun to attack Limbaugh and exciting for the layperson. Limbaugh opens himself up to be legitimately attacked for hypocrisy every five minutes.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Operation-Attack-Limbaugh-by-Dean-Powers-080919-809.html

Kirri
Bet you would like to be a fly on the wall when they open up this Pandoras’

We’ve just witnessed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and we know neither the inciting incident (though there is speculation that sovereign wealth funds decided to stop lending to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.), nor the deep cause. But there’s now a pile of assets and liabilities smoldering in New York awaiting inspection. ……..The entire pile might be benign, but somehow I doubt it. We may well find out that Lehman Brothers, in liquidation, has a negative value of hundreds of billions of dollars. In that case the natural question will be: How much better could things be inside Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, both of which were engaged in the same lines of business?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9xtBHJoZTOw&refer=home

1020
Gaffhook

No doubt there’s a pile of stinking stuff in there Gaffy, which is why no one would touch it.

There’s so much more to come, despite the relief rallies and short covering going on at the moment, it ain’t funny. I’m just surprised how unprepared so many people were to see this house of cards collapse. It’s not like we weren’t being told it was all shonky.

An Empire in decline?
The NYT has an article up titled U.S. Court Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations which is basically addressing the subject of a waning influence of the US moral authority (as related to the ruling and decisions of the supreme court) on the rest of the world. Taking into account an economy showing signs of stress, an population ready willing and able to accept fantasy in preference to science (creationism etc.), and a population ready willing and potentially able to role the dice with candidates like McCain/Palin – isn’t this a little bit like the smell of smoke in the air above the seven hills of Rome?

Chris B at 1026

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