Remember TNR's "Clinton Suck-Up Watch as a tool for driving the media herd against Clinton?
We need a "Palin Suck-up watch" to list everyone who capitulates to the Republican's "softballs or nothing" policy about "Sarah Who?".
OT, as always...
I think it's time for Digby to revisit her concept of kabuki and the Village, in a major way. It's still one of the best metaphors for what's been going on during these dark times.
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And now Olbermann's been pushed out of covering the campaigns, as MSNBC creeps rightward. I've never been a KO fan, really--yes, he has provided some voice for the left, but it's been leavened with notable problems, like his shoddy treatment of Hillary and his approval of Obama's FISA stance. I think he's in the end just another Village opportunist, sensing a need and filling it because he could get a paycheck out of it.
I seriously hope, however, that his removal would pique him enough that he has some response. (Hell, *I* seriously hope that he steels his nerve with the better part of a bottle of Bushmills and goes on air and tells a few Tales Of The Corporate Media Überpolitik.)
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Avedon, *you're* all powerpoppy lately, what with the 'Oo and now Cheap Trick...been spending time at Simels' again? 
A McClatchy article this weekend on John McCain and his potential inability to control his temper raises serious concerns about his fitness to be President with a finger on the nuclear button.
Whether in negotiations over Senate legislation with his own party members or in confrontation with Democrats, McCain often shows himself to be, at the least, confrontational. For instance, in a behind the scenes committee meeting on immigration reform with Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R):
McCain called Cornyn's claim "chicken-s---," according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations.And this is added to frequent outbursts (some, as it turns out, physical) over a couple of decades.
"F--- you," McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses.
It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance where, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, "It's his way or no way."
Another set of incidents documented by McClatchy occurred in the 90s and involved physical contact with concerned citizens... including one in a wheelchair:
In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond, the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, at a Senate hearing. McCain's prosecutor-like questioning of Alfond — available on YouTube [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-CazKanlYDg] — left her in tears.Scary, isn't it?
Four years later, at her group's Washington conference, about 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by.
Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.
As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.
"McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.
As Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., told The Boston Globe in January: "the thought of (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." (Cochran has since endorsed McCain.)
Other incidents are described in the article:
Stories abound on Capitol Hill: How McCain told Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., how "only an a-hole" would craft a budget like
affair with Sarah Palin, just filed an emergency motion to seal his divorce records
But funny how, when it's abortion, there's "no constitutional right to privacy"
Looks like Palin will spend this week exhaustively researching why Charles Gibson's goddamn taxes are so high.
Dan--well, Gibson and the rest of the Village have been great at giving sloppy blowjobs over the last eight years--let's see how they do with sloppy cunnilingus. (Bet she'll still haveta give him a little direction..."slower...a little to the right...")
I'm sure they'll all have their red wings in no time. When it matters to them they are quick learners.
Being a native-born son of the State that sent Helen Chenoweth to Congress, I'm a little reluctant to let Westmoreland run off with the "Stupidest In The History Of Congress" award, though I suppose he could claim some share to the title if one really leans on the term "guy".
To me, not knowing the 10 Commandments doesn't rise to the level of claiming that we can't claim salmon are endangered if we are selling salmon in cans at the grocery store...
Libertarian Ron Paul at LewRockwell dot com, no less, says:
My own pro-life views were strengthened by my experiences as an obstetrician. I believe beyond a doubt that a fetus is a human life deserving of legal protection, and that the right to life is the foundation of any moral society. The abortion issue forged my belief that law and morality must intersect to protect the most vulnerable among us. The proper role of government, namely the protection of natural and constitutional rights, flows from the pro-life perspective. ...
This federalization of social issues, often championed by conservatives, has not created a pro-life culture, however. It simply has prevented the 50 states from enacting laws that more closely reflect the views of their citizens.
This states' rights fetish, pro-life position, and certain tidbits I had picked up made me think Gov. Palin might buy into some of what Rep. Paul sells. On the earmark thing, a lot of Alaskans feel that the federal government owes them because of restrictions it places on the development of natural resources. With Rachel Maddow being designated as a host for a MSNBC show which will begin during the general election season and the recent convention coverage by the cable outlet, I thought GE was having some second thoughts about the McCain candidacy.
I guess I was wrong, looks like General Electric is going with Plan A. Gov. Palin must be responding to her her national security briefing sessions with the right kind of enthusiasm.
It's been my observation that when Repugnicans are in power, they sound like fascists, and when they're out of power (or going out), they do their best to sound like libertarians. It's about time less-observant people quit being fooled by that crap.
Mark Kernes,
You're not saying that were it true and not a pose that out of power Republicans were libertarians that would be a good thing are you?
I have to reach across the canyon and embrace the sentiments of Whittaker Chambers who said in a 1957 issue of National Review during his days as a politically born again right-wing wing nut:
From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example.
At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.
Of course there are those who say that the Randians are not true libertarians. Catholic, Protestant or Godless; I don't trust a one of them.
CMike: You're not saying that were it true and not a pose that out of power Republicans were libertarians that would be a good thing are you?
Nope ... and I say this as a former libertarian. And it is a pose.
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