Obama & Hamilton

First of all, Happy 59th Birthday to President Barack Obama.

What better way to celebrate than with one of the greatest cultural events in White House history from the first spring of the Obama presidency. On May 12, 2009, 'An Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word' gave us a sneak peak at a song from a proposed hip-hop album that would become the Broadway classic 'Hamilton' six years later.

Will we ever have a White House that has such cultural highlights again?

Who, for example, visited the current president for a photo op (there are no musical or poetry performances there since 2017) during his first spring in the office?

Donald Trump Finally Interviewed by Someone With Real Questions

As an interviewer, Sarah Palin may have set a new standard for the definition of softball sycophantic questions in this broadcast on something called "One America News" last night:



Is she looking for a spot as Secretary of State in the Trump Administration?

Sarah Palin & Donald Trump must be pissed at The New York Times (again)

In this chart on the Times website today, those pointy-headed eastern liberals list the following twelve potential candidates as expected to compete for places on the stage of the 2016 GOP Clown Circus: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson.
No Donald?
No Sarah?
How can they not take this woman seriously as a candidate for the clown college?

WOO HOO! We may have ourselves a full-fledged Clown Circus for the ages in 2016!

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016.

“You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a possible presidential bid.

Seriously.

Cyber Monday Has Scrambled Amazon Dot Com's Brain

Why else would they be recommending that I buy books by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck? Amazon has obviously been spending more time developing its drone air force than perfecting its famous algorithms.

This is just one more reason to continue fighting our Annual Liberal War On Christmas by buying nothing.

I Can't Wait Any Longer for the Clowns to Come to Town.

Joining us today for this first fictional preview of the 2016 Traveling Clown Circus here on the campus of Liberty University, presented by Fox News and sponsored by Mountain Dew are, in alphabetical order, Michele Bachmann, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Allen West. Hopefully the other ten candidates will be able to join us next week under the big circus tent being set up at Oral Roberts University. I'm your Master of Ceremonies and Ringmaster, Mike Huckabee. Please stand for the Invocation, Pledge of Allegiance, and Star Spangled Banner...

 [fifteen minutes later, with the crowd in a frenzy of patriotic tears] 

Huckabee: The first question goes to Michele Bachmann.
Cruz: And I really thought we had agreed to have only one token woman this year. This is going to get confusing to some of our viewers with two of them.
 Bachmann: Wait your turn! I thought there was only going to be one token Latino or Hispanic or Mexican here too, but we've got you and Rubio. Talk about confusing.
Huckabee: Didn't we agree in our pre-fight briefing that there would be no bashing of ladies or Mexiamericans this year? That's the only reason we lost those two key voting blocks in 2012.
Palin: That and nominating a lamestream Massachusetts moderate who had some very serious RINOplasty issues. I hope you see there how my air quotes while I was saying RINO mean that Romney was a Republican In Name Only.
Huckabee: Thank you for that clever clarification, but still we've got to pretend to be PC here, so no name calling about the wetbacks and members of the weaker sex. Only Dumb-o-crats and San Francisco Liberals can be  freely abused without consequences on this stage. Governor Palin, the first question goes to you... 
Bachmann: Wha..?
Huckabee: What have you done to combat universal healthcare Governor Palin?
Palin: First of all, while I want to thank the good folks at Mountain Dew for providing these pitchers of Dew -- real sugary Dew, not the diet stuff -- I just wish they had given us glasses larger than 16 ounces to pour it into... [raucous applause and laughter and an audible 'Fuck Bloomberg' followed by scattered rebel yells] ... That's good Dew. But seriously, I did more than anyone to stop Obamacare. Do you remember who warned you all about the Death Panels that were gonna kill your grandmas? Me.
Cruz: But I was the Tea Party champion who single-handedly shut down the government in 2013 to stop Obamacare!
Palin: And did you stop it?
Rubio: And has the province of Calgary released your birth certificate yet?
Cruz: Did you get your family's Cuban story rewritten yet?

[Loudly crosstalking candidates become unintelligible under a lengthy chorus of boos, or it could be that some sizable proportion of them are screaming 'Cruuuuuuuz'.] 

Huckabee [for the umpteenth time]: Order please. Please wait for your questions, you'll all get a turn.
Bachmann: Even me?
Huckabee: The next question goes to Rand Paul. What have you done to make sure the uninsured stay that way?
Paul: It's not enough to make sure that we take insurance away from all the victims of Obamacare, but we need to reexamine those earlier Socialist intrusions on our liberty, Medicare and Medicaid. This is about freedom and liberty to die like Americans, penniless and uninsured, if that's what we choose. Without Big Brother Nanny State telling us we need to go to the doctor.
Palin: Isn't your Daddy a doctor? [Governor Palin leans close in to her microphone to take another long audible sip on her soda straw, earning more laughter and applause]
Paul: Not only is he a doctor, but I'm a doctor too. We can do well enough with people who care enough to EARN the money to seek our services. And you can stop pretending you're the only one who cares about Americans getting enough junk food. Who was there to defend trans fats and America's donuts against the freedom-hating bureaucrats of the FDA back in 2013? I was.
Christie: Look at me. Look at me!
Huckabee: We're looking.
Christie: Look at me. Don't I look like someone who would fight harder than anyone for the freedom to eat donuts and drink large corn-syrup-enhanced American beverages?
Huckabee: You know, I was an overweight governor who learned to eat better.
Christie: I'm not gonna frickin mess with the chemistry that got me here.
Huckabee: Allen West, do you have anything to add to this discussion?
West: Is that a question?
Huckabee: I'm not really in control here right now, so say anything you want.
West: After we evict and convict the 80 Communist Party members of the Democrat Congress, then we need to deal with Iran with a few tactical nukes.
Huckabee: Anything else?
West: We're not executing enough prisoners fast enough...

[Interrupted by cheers]

West: If we run out of murderers, rapists, kidnappers, pirates, and traitors, maybe we can impose capital punishment for liberals and atheists or people who burn the Gadsden flag, or...

[foot-stomping, applause, whistles and a few pistol shots into the ceiling tiles fill the next ten minutes]

Huckabee: Because of tonight's spirited discussion and lively audience participation, we don't have time for more questions or closing statements...
Bachmann: Dafuq?!
Huckabee: We barely have enough time left for the closing prayers and the group singing of Lee Greenwood's 'I'm Proud to Be an American' featuring my extended bass solo.
Bachmann: I fought for junk food too!!
Huckabee: Cut her mike please.
Bachmann: ...where would traditional EasyBake ovens get their juice without my Light Bulb Freedom of Choice bill??
Crowd: INCANDESCENTS FOREVER!
Huckabee: Are we done here? Let Us Pray.

The 2016 Clown Circus Casting Couch is Open!

Before any of them actually arrive for their first auditions, here are the very early TrueBlueLiberal.org front runners for the 2016 GOP Clown Circus:

• In the role of Michele Bachmann, we'll see the return of Sarah Palin.
• In the role of Herman Cain, we'll have the inimitable Allen West.
• In the role of boring Jon Huntsman, we will see boring Tim Pawlenty.
• In the role of boring Tim Pawlenty, we will see boring Jon Huntsman.
• In place of Rick Perry, Texas will be represented by Ted "Tail Gunner" Cruz.
• In the role of Mitt Romney, we will have the sixth Romney son, Paul Ryan (but only if Tagg, Trigg, Tugg, Tigger, and Craig Romney refuse the honor of defending the honor of car elevators and the beleaguered 1%).
• In the role of Newt Gingrich, we'll have the even more corpulent and egotistical Chris Christie.
• In the role of Rick Santorum, John Bolton will be the one to inject a frisson of real fear into the race.
• In the role of Game Show Host Donald Trump, we will see Game Show Host Chuck Woolery (unfortunately dropping out before the first debate to the chagrin of true aficionados of world-class slapstick clownfoolery).
• In the role of Ron Paul, we will see Rand Paul.

And stepping in to pick up the royal family banner with a minimum of effort after the inevitable entertaining clownpocalypse, the statesmanlike pandering flip flopper John Ellis "Jeb" Bush.

Language Matters: What adjective do you put before "Capitalism"?

If you answered that question with anything other than the word "Crony" you haven't been paying attention to the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary (a.k.a., Clown Circus).

Newt Gingrich today is quoted as saying that "Crony Capitalism is not Free Enterprise" when talking about Willard "Mitt" Romney's brand of vulture capitalism.  (LA Times)

Michele Bachmann (how we miss you!!) invoked crony capitalism as a charge against Rick Perry in late December when talking about his campaign contributors and favor seekers in Texas (National Journal)

Mitt Romney jumped on the CroCap bandwagon a few days ago when talking about President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB, stating: "This president is a crony capitalist. He's a job killer." I'm not sure how the "socialist" President or the socialist Unions he was serving could also be capitalists, but you'll have to go to Mitt for clarification. (CBS News)

Jon Huntsman worries about how "we have crony capitalism in Congress" because of the lack of term limits and the revolving door between K Street and Capitol Hill. (Investors.com)

Herman Cain jumped on the anti-crony capitalism express back in September when leaping onto the pile of conservatives gleefully swarming over the corpse of Solyndra. (ThinkProgress)

Ron Paul calls lots of people crony capitalists and he made it clear what CroCap isn't in early November: "Crony capitalism isn't when somebody makes money and they produce a product." I don't think anyone's accusing either Mitt Romney or Rick Perry of producing a product. (Politico)

It all seems to have started back in early September when their intellectual leader, Sarah Palin, first starting trotting out the Crony Capitalism label in association with Rick Perry. (firedoglake)

I personally can't think of a better adjective to be inextricably linked with  the word "Capitalism", but why is the GOP doing our work for us?  Did they check with Frank Luntz first before making "Crony Capitalism" (which always reminds me of Bushie and Brownie and Katrina) the unforgettable alliterative enunciation of the year?

Rick Perry, the original target of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann's "crony capitalism" jibes, went one step further in an interview with Fox today, accusing Mitt Romney of being a "vulture capitalist: "There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. I don’t believe that capitalism is making a buck under any circumstances." (FoxNewsInsider)

If they keep this up, "Capitalist" will be a worse insult than "Socialist" in their political lexicon (just as it always has been in mine).

I'm sorry, but somehow I seem to have forgotten Rick Santorum.

This Week in the GOP Clown Circus

The "GOP Clown Circus" has officially folded its tent and left town.  Calling the remaining travesty a clown circus after Paul Romtorum won Iowa is an insult to its star buffoons, Perry, Bachmann, and Cain.

• Michele Bachmann has just admitted that god made a mistake in telling her to run. (New York Times)

• Rick Perry seemed to be gone, but with Crazy Eyes out of it, he may not be dropping out. (Huffington Post)

• Herman Cain and his wife are doing fine in political retirement, and he promises, when he does endorse someone, to make it "unconventional."  (Politico)

Here's hoping that Herman's unconventional endorsement will be awarded to Sarah Palin or Donald Trump.  Then the Presidential race would be a full-blown clown circus again, something worthy of a painting by John Wayne Gacy, (Iowa's favorite Hollywood cowboy star).

Wedge Issue Update: #9 Dirty Filthy Hippies (with a bullet)

Back in mid-October I mused about which wedge issue might ultimately pop up as the centerpiece of the 2012 Republican attacks. Down near the bottom of my possibilities I placed "9) Dirty Filthy Hippies Occupying Wall Street (and elsewhere)".
A month later, I would place this wedge issue right at the very top. On Fox News this exchange between Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin on November 17th described an Occupy Wall Street movement that bore no relation to any reality outside the Fox News studios:

HANNITY: All right. We see the violence there, one police officer I think had 20 stitches and a gash, things thrown in their face. You see the violence. This is really just a culmination, though. We have seen rape, we have seen arson, destruction of property, sex, masturbation in public, defecating in public, anti-Semitism, anti-American rhetoric, drugs, open-air drugs markets. Well, what do you make of this and the Democratic Party support for this?
PALIN: It is amazing that President Obama, Vice President Biden and former Speaker Pelosi along with many other Democrats have actually embraced this movement and actually, you know, patted these folks on their back as they have engaged in these -- some really atrocious activities. I think it speaks to what part of that mission is on the left, and that is disruption, it is distraction. It's very misguided and these are folks who are ill-informed, not understanding really who and what it is that they should be protesting. If they truly want free men and free markets in this country, then they should be, you know, making their voices known at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and letting Barack Obama know that they disagree with the crony capitalism that he has been so engaged in and allowed to perpetuate. These folks are misguided and I think it's just atrocious what is going on.

Read or watch the whole segment here if you're feeling a little masochistic.

On November 19th Newt Gingrich got rousing applause in Iowa with his instructions to Occupy Wall Street delivered to Frank Luntz and a pumpkin centerpiece: "Go get a job right after you take a bath." It could have been Nixon rousing the Silent Majority against the hippies.


Continuing in the old strategy to rouse the Silent Majority, we have Americans for Tax Reform President Grover "Rat Head in a Koch Bottle" Norquist, the most powerful man in America according the Alan Simpson, the strategist who has tied up the entire Congress with his no-tax pledge, giving us the final proof that #OWS will be used as a wedge in 2012 when he said, “The Occupy Wall Street is a tremendous asset and it’s a movement that I think will be very helpful [to his GOP clients and paymasters] in the 2012 elections, and I think it’s a mistake to interfere with them continuing to annoy middle class Americans." An annoyed middle class can then be manipulated to vote against their own economic interests.

"There ya go baby!" or Sarah Palin alienates the vegetarian vote

What will Sarah kill next week?

By the way, this rugged-individualist self-sufficient hunting junket to kill a wild animal cost over $42,000, but image is everything and the people who like guns and death and camouflage will love this unrealistic reality-show image as much as they love her brainless flag-waving books.

Support The Right to Arm Bears!

Who knew that Sarah Palin was one of us?

Should we send her a True Blue Alaska Liberal mug and button, or lift a toast of commie vodka in her honor now that a blogger for a New Jersey newspaper that hasn't totally gone out of business yet has written a piece titled "Sarah Palin: Just another whiny liberal claiming victimization"?
Of course this writer, this Paul Mulshine fella -- "the sole genuinely conservative columnist on any major American newspaper" in his own words -- doesn't seem to admit that most of the whining and whinging (I love the Brit version, which seems more onomatopoeically correct) has been pouring from people on the right claiming victimization by godless public schools, the IRS, non-whites & have-nots, ObamaPelosi&Reid, the mean liberals who call the teabaggers on their racism, and the gays & lesbians who are attacking their holy unhappy marriages (and the Newark Star Ledger is a "major American newspaper"?).
The fine White Whine of victimization has become the background noise of our culture, but it's so much easier to take one of Sarah Palin's most common and unattractive features and attribute it -- without any evidence of any liberal feelings or thoughts on her part -- to her "liberalism". And, as we know from Glen Beck, Liberal = Communism = Fascism = Nazism. The conservatives have learned that their second greatest weapon (after an unrelenting appeal to irrational fears of those feeling victimized) is to treat words as if they have no meaning grounded in facts or history. After the success of the Swift Boat lies about John Kerry and the WMD lies of the Bush Regime, they've obviously come to the conclusion that the most effective way to win any argument is to simply destroy the meaning of our common language.

Breaking the Eleventh Commandment, or GOP Fratricide Anyone?

"Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

--repeated regularly by Ronald Reagan but created by
California GOP Chairman Gaylord "Moses" Parkinson

Republicans have had no trouble breaking the other ten commandments in recent years, so it probably shouldn't come as any surprise that they have decided to ignore the eleventh too. "The Eleventh Commandment" was created to silence liberal Republican (yes, Virginia, there once was such an animal) criticism of Ronald Reagan in his run for Governor of California to avoid a repeat of the liberal Republican criticism of Barry Goldwater that had exposed him as a dangerous joke in the 1964 presidential election. The liberals, of course, shut their mouths and a grade-B moviestar and host of "Borax Death Valley Days" began his improbable rise to the chief executive offices in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

Patti & Ronald Reagan Only Two Years Before Moving from Boraxo Commercials to the Governor's Mansion.

Luckily for us though, the conservatives in the Republican Party in 2010 do not seem as anxious to shut their mouths for the sake of party unity (unless the party unifies behind their own very particular brand of wingnuttiness).
Here are a few promising signs of the coming GOP fratricide just in the last two days:

• Raw Story: "Palin’s snub of conservative conference raises many questions" tells the story of the tensions between the CPAC convention and the even nuttier Tea Party Convention (guess which one Sarah Palin has decided to appear at?)
• PoliticsUSA.com: "The Political Apocalypse is Coming As the GOP Guns for Palin" in which the coming attacks on Palin by McCain strategist Steve Schmidt are outlined.
• politicalwire.com: "Republicans Furious at Steele" in which Republican House and Senate aides are described as furious at their own party chairman Michael Steele.
• Phoenix New Times: "John McCain's Not Airing New Radio Ads on J.D. Hayworth's Radio Show -- Yet" in which McCain is being challenged from his right, so "the Maverick" is turning, predictably, righter.
• Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine: "The First Senator from the Tea Party" in which ultraconservative wunderkind Marco Rubio's challenge to the merely conservative Charlie Crist is described in great detail.
  

So, are there any Republicans still observing the Eleventh Commandment? Of course there are. You don't hear Republican moderates in Maine or elsewhere in the Northeast speaking ill of their fellow GOPpers, do you?

What a Rush! or, the soon to be ExAKGovSarahPalin will soon be twittering without fetters!

If you can't see the image of Governor Palin's tweet from very early this morning up above, the text from @AKGovSarahPalin reads "elected is replaceable;Ak WILL progress! + side benefit=10 dys til less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside State site" It sounds to me like she wants to provide some competition for Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter when she steps down in a few days. I can't wait to see what her new Twitter handle is after the "AKGov" is removed. I vote for "@ExAKGovSarahPalin" or "@THESarahPalin," if those names are not already taken.

She must love a format like Twitter that requires neither grammar nor correct spelling. And I love the way that there is no room for vowels in her tweet, but there is room for an exclamation mark!

The Quote of the Day about the "defectively imagined future" (and a primary difference between conservatives and liberals?)

"... Sooner or later Holytail [marijuana-growing area in Vineland County] was due for the full treatment [from the federal marijuana eradicators of CAMP], from which it would emerge, like most of the old Emerald Triangle, pacified territory -- reclaimed by the enemy for a timeless, defectively imagined future of zero-tolerance drug-free Americans all pulling their weight and all locked in to the official economy, inoffensive music, endless family specials on the Tube, church all week long, and, on special days, for extra-good behavior, maybe a cookie."

--Thomas Pynchon, Vineland, pp.221-222

The passage published in 1990 up above was one of the last I read on the train from work this evening. And while I wasn't going to write at all about Sarah Palin's July 3rd resignation (feeling that commenting on Palin, Sanford, Ensign, Boehner, Cheney, and all the other Republicans right now is like piling insults on the mentally challenged), I couldn't help thinking that this paragraph pointed out a key difference between liberals and conservatives. That picture of church-going Tube-watching Stepford families is a dystopic nightmare in Pynchon's universe, and in mine, but I can't help thinking that it's Sarah Palin's and Dick Cheney's dream, and even the dream of those like Sanford and Ensign who have recently slipped from their ideal straight and narrow and are now praying to regain their footing on that correct path with the promise, after confessing their "sins" to the world, of "maybe a cookie."

These are not views of the world that are ever going to be fundamentally reconciled by political compromises (or by any political means). Like it or not, there will always be people who feel they know the one correct way for all of us to behave (even when they don't behave that way themselves).

Maybe she thinks she's Little Red Riding Hood and needs protection from big bad wolves

Or maybe Sarah Palin is simply trying to protect that most important group of dyed-in-the-wool Republican voters, a.k.a. the Sheeple:

It's not just a coincidence that her name is an anagram for Sharia Plan

If the typical American voter were to read one article about the unknown governor from Alaska, I would recommend one that appeared in Salon today, "What's the Difference Between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists? Lipstick: A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian" by Juan Cole.

On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts.

For another frightening religious angle today, here's a blog entry over at The Nation, "Sarah Palin and the Jews," by Jon Weiner, drawing parallels between Miss Congeniality Sarah and Queen Esther. Time to wipe out Persia again?

CNN is reporting poll results today showing that men are the backbone of Sarah Palin's support. At the risk of sounding sexist, I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say, Men are Fucking Idiots!

Is the Hockey Mom in this video running for V.P. of the U!S!A! U!S!A! ?

CLICK HERE to hear a "Pit Bull with Lipstick" in full-throated roar, but turn it down if you're at work!

And be sure to check out Sarah Palin's new blog, The PalinDrome.

Governor Sarah Palin's Modest Secret Proposal for American Energy Independence

God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
--Genesis 1:28

The Governor of Alaska, who this week has been anointed by God and God's Republican Servants to be John McCain's running mate and successor, has not only shown by her fruitful multiplication that she is a true servant of the one True American God, but also that she is an original thinker when it comes to expanding human dominion over the earth and its soulless creatures. Why stop with drilling under the habitat of endangered caribou and polar bears in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fuel our pickup trucks and SUVs? Why not examine all the ways that we can add biofuels to the mix -- including those efficient biofuels in the abundant fat of the bodies of caribou, walruses, seals, whales, and polar bears of her home state? They're not doing anything productive, like posing for German zoo visitors or working to pull plows, and they're just going to die anyway when their ice melts and their tundra defrosts, so why shouldn't they share the burden of driving our families of seven to the mall?
If we had Siberia or India as a colony, we could also put a tiger in our tank, but until that inevitable day, we'll work with what we have.

Children Are Sacred. Quotes from our Presidential Contenders

“Let me be as clear as possible. I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.”

--Barack Obama, September 2008

“This is a very personal matter for the family. We should all respect the love they have for the child and the desire all parents would have for their children’s privacy. The media should respect Bristol’s privacy. That’s always been the tradition and practice when it comes to the children of candidates.”

--John McCain, September 2008

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."

--John McCain, June 1998

David Corn's short article in Salon from June 25, 1998 about this "joke" is interesting in that it shows how ingrained the media bias in favor of John McCain has been for at least a decade.

"But the joke revealed more than a mean streak in a man who would be president. It also exposed how the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times play favorites when reporting the foibles of our leading politicians."