(no subject)

Let me put this simply and bluntly. If you, like me are located anywhere near the Seattle area, and unlike me, have the capability to go out tonight, this is where you should be going:



mskoi has been working her ass off on this show, and i'm personally a bit depressed over the fact that I'm not going to be able to get out to see it tonight. So, that said- go to Arcanum. See the show. Buy the art. Drink the kool-aid.

Let's recap the campaign, folks!

In part, you can both blame and thank jedimomma for this, since she not only asked nicely for it, but even went to the extreme of defending the other side, just to get me going. That's right. I'm doing the political post. Essentially, a recap, with minor commentary, about our lovely presidential race so far.  Now realize, I've been doing my best to avoid watching the RNC, mostly because I'll like end up putting a fist through the TV set, so I'm not totally up-to-date on everything from there. Likewise goes for the Daily Show, though that's more due to lack of cable TV and time, so sorry if any of these jokes are old.

Those not interested in reading all this, just unfriend me, wait 24 hours, and put me back on- I'm sure I'll have returned to my normal posts by then, and your friends list will have pushed this back a good distance already.

Now, most, if not all of you watched the fuck out of the DNC, the Democratic Primaries, and all the rest of our lovely liberal pageantry that's surrounded the election this year- therefore, I'm not going to bother with backgrounding Obama- you've likely read just as much as I have on him, if not more.

Instead, let's start off with our lovely incumbent party.

Now, the GOP does one thing really well- serve its own interests. Largely by fighting tooth and claw and using whatever tactic they can to stay in control of "the debate." That's a phrase you're going to hear a lot here- "the debate" or "the nature of the debate," meaning the balance between political right and left. The GOP's pretty much run said debate for years now- they've had tight control of it since Reagan managed to shift the debate itself as far right as he could by equating liberalism with the evil bastard commie reds, and it's been getting steadily pushed farther ever since by every rebuplican president we've had. So long as the GOP controls that playing field, the left is at a large-scale disadvantage, and gets stuck on the defensive more often than not.

The main tactic? Using fear (of an outside enemy, or of a shift to values "we" hold dear, invoking an emotional response) to reach voters at an emotional level rather than an intellectual one. If you can grab voters by the emotional testicles, you can win a campaign with simple, quick statements designed to play off those emotions. Keep the voters from thinking, or from looking deeply at any part of a campaign, and you can run the most slipshod thing past them and still win, so long as you push the right buttons. Bush used the same damn tactics- its how he got re-elected- campaigning on a platform of insecurities, four previous years of failure, and pushing just the right buttons with the public to squeak by with enough votes. (Campaign cheating/ballot issues aside- I'm not going into that load of stuff, as I'm already short on time for all of this.) In this second term though, he started slipping up- too many mistakes being caught by the public, and attempts to push things too far into the Right at once- if he'd taken more time building up to things like defense of the torture going on at Guantanamo, if he got the public truly fearing the terrorists again, it wouldn't have been an issue- no one would have noticed or cared. Either way, Bush pushed issues too far and too fast- and it opens up some things.

The biggest word used this season, the one that's punched everyone's buttons up through the DNC is "change." People on both ends of the spectrum are after political reform. Change is going to be one of the biggest issues in the debates, and it will be one of the deciding factors of the election, unless the GOP manages to eclipse it with other agendas, simply because the last thing they want at this point is large-scale change. Because frankly, their goals are getting fulfilled under the cureent administration- the rich are getting richer. The middle and poor aren't a concern, so long as they keep voting by emotion, which is exactly where the GOP wants them, and they'll keep them there by promoting more and more conservative outlooks. The interests of the corporations are being protected. Everyone that the GOP is really concerned with is being kept happy.

Now, enter our Republican Presidential candidate- John Mccain.

john's had a few hard years behind him- let's not forget that whole POW bit, after all, but he did have one thing going for him at the beginning of the primaries- he promised change to voters- his stance on a large number of issues was a full 180 from Bush's policies. And honestly, it's probably the memory of that that garnerd him a good lead to begin with. Either way, despite his old trends, once he was really in the running as a candidate, he had to pull a reversal and support the party line if he was going to get serious backing. Which he did. Suddenly, McCain's on a rocket to the top of the ticket. His main tactics at this point look to be promising four more years of the same old, and doing his best to tear down Obama, which unfortunately have resulted in a largely weak set of attacks, from calling him inexperienced, to labelling him as a celebrity (Dummy. We live in a country that still WORSHIPS celebrity, regardless of their foibles.), to simply trying to prove that he's an elitist intellectual that's too smart for the common man. Of course, McCain's also managed to prove himself to be more than a bit out of touch- between owning too many houses to remember, and defining "rish" as five million or more, he's pretty well cemented himself as a Rebuplican Good Ol' Boy. The only problem came down to the conventions, and the choice of running mates.


Meet Joe Biden. Long-term Senator, former presidential candidate, snappy hard wit, and general Democratic Hard-Ass. What's he bring to the ticket for Obama? Pretty much everything that Obama was lacking, and then some. Biden pretty much shored up the left's ticket to where it'd be unassailable from the line of attacks McCain had taken thus far. He's a white guy with a bit of a blue-collar background and persona- which may help bring back in some votes that were put off by Obama's background and race.  Biden's also, as has been said many places already, an attack dog- he's there to go all out on the offensive during debates, which lets Obama stay above it and not get his hands dirty. Arguably, a good tactic, provided they actually stay on the attack, and don't start thinking that the American Public is finally close to waking up and slack off- more on that later.

Anyways, Obama's VP choice, coupled with the killer speeches heard during the DNC were apparently enough to give the GOP a full-on panic attack, especially since McCain was due to announce his own running mate that same week. The two top choices out of other Presidential Candidates were no-nos. Aside from being prime targets for Biden's level of rhetoric, they brought nothing new to the ticket, except in Huckabee's case, with the Evangelicals. Lieberman, another top pick was more than likely nixed by the GOP as he'd end up alienating yet more solid Republican voters. I'd imagine that there were other, fully vetted potential candidates on McCain's list as well that had the same issues. Which left McCain sorting through the bottom of the barrel- desperate for someone who could still bring in more people to the ticket, who'd be able to shake up the Obama/Biden ticket enough to make it falter and have to resort back to playing the defense at center, rather than a hard-Left offense. And he found her.

Meet Sarah Palin! Ok. try that again.

What's she bring to the ticket? Why, she's the successful governor of Alaska, and before that, mayor of Wasilla, Alaska- a town known for it's small population, high ratio of meth labs,  and huge financial debts... that were incurred by Palin, after pulling down 27 million in government earmarks? Oh, baby- the Grand Ol' Party just found the new leader of the free world! Let's run through some of the basic high points:

She's female. That's sure to offend raise support from those disenfranchised by Clinton not being nominated.

Fiscally, she doesn't quite do as good a job of spending the taxpayer's money as Bush, but give her credit for just learning the ropes.

On the social agenda, she's everything the bible belt wants- anti-abortion, pro-ID, pro-gun, anti-sex-ed. She actually does bring in some supporters. Of course, they would have voted Rebuplican anyways without her being on the ticket...

Thanks to the media having no warning whatsoever about her, and the GOP having no time to bury, cover up, buy off, or slowly leak any of her background, she's worth a full-on media scandal a day. All the negative press the GOP could want! And none of it actually focused on the campaign.

Caribou Barbie. Need I say more?


The Reality of things is becoming a bit obvious, though it still seems a little bit tinfoil-hat to me- McCain suggested her for two reasons.The first was purely for shock and spit to the GOP- even just a quick bit of fact-finding on Google would have found some of the previous scandals, and there's no way anyone could see that as anything but the tip of the iceberg. The fact that the GOP said yes to her.... well, that proves something about the GOP at this point.

The GOP's giving up for this election. They've kissed it off- there's nobody to field that really stands a solid chance against the Democratic ticket, so they're going to sidestep things for four or eight years. They can actually afford to do it- things are so fucked up right now, that it will take a miracle to significantly fix the internal problems, much less alter the general status quo in just four years time. Even eight years is probably not a significant loss- "the debate" will still be stuck somewhere right of center, unless the Left somehow manages to acheive full-on ownership of all three branches during that time.

But they can't just lie down and give up- it gives too many opportunities to the liberals, and a landslide election would likely shake the GOP into it's death throes. So instead, they're going to poison the well. The campaign has shifted from taking the White house, to doing everything in their power to poison Barack's campaign, tar his running mate, and smear the liberals in general.

So the GOP can take a break, let someone else handle the repairs, and come back even stronger afterwards, laying all the problems of that period directly at Obama's feet, rather than the man who actually started the issues (deficit, war, etc). If Mcain somehow wins at the end of all this, congratulations, back to business as usual. If he loses? No big deal- Obama will have an even harder time cleaning up what's left of his own campaign when re-election comes around. How're they going to do it?

They're going to lay traps. Palin herself being the first one- Biden can't go tough on her in the debates, as she can pull the "A man's beating up on me! Boo-hoo!" defense.  Not that it worked well for Hillary, but with a mouth like Biden's, things worse than what the media said about Hilly are sure to come out at some point. Hopefully there's not a recording device around at the same time. Five bucks says we'll be seeing Palin cry at some point before November, whether it's provoked or not.

As it is, most of the scandal on Palin is going to blow over- the only bad side of things is that right now, she's in center stage, grabbing as much camera time as they can get her without having to answer any questions. Remember kids, even bad press is still press. Even if she still can't get most of her own campaign and past work history correct.

As for Bristol Palin, the only thing I think her uterus is currently full of is a decent sized amount of C4 and a contact trigger set to "liberal attack." The moment anyone other than the press criticizes her for the pregnancy, or uses it as proof that Palin's anti-sex-ed pro-life tendencies may have backfired on her, we're in trouble, because we'll have a good-sized ton of conservative moms, 32-year-old trailer park grandmothers, and more in an uproar over an attack on darling little Bristol. The worst part is, the GOP knows this all too well, and we're going to be seeing a lot of that kid- they'll use every opportunity to push her out as a target. In short, another trap.

I'm sure there's others as well, but hey, it's the beginning of the real election season, and I need to get this tab closed sometime soon before my boss suspects anything. There'll be more of these posts. And links. Etc. It's duck season, even if the duck's stuffed full of cyanide. I may as well take a few potshots.