I mean, it’s not like the U.S. has turned Iraq over to the puppet government we installed there after invading the country for lies in the last administration, as if Saddam Hussein (who got hanged years ago) was responsible for 9-11 or was any threat after years of embargo that had hundreds of thousands of Iraqis starving after Daddy’s bullshit mercenary war in the early ’90s. Last I checked, which was this morning, ridiculously overstretched U.S. troops and well-paid mercenaries were still there and still dying.

Nor is it like the U.S. isn’t still negotiating with warlords and drug kingpins in Afghanistan, or that the puppet government we installed there is in charge of anything other than the pallets of cash passed out to those drug lords. And yes, our troops and mercenaries are still dying every day there too. Why, last I checked – again this morning – Obama was still trying to get a troop surge there, despite not having any troops to work with after 8 years of decimating our vaunted “All-Volunteer” force.

Oh… and civilians by the multi-thousands in both countries are still being slaughtered wholesale, while our overstretched troops play the old game of “take this hill today, abandon it to the enemy tomorrow” that lost us Korea and Vietnam. Then there’s Pakistan, which Obama is bombing regularly with drones and slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians we’re not even at war with. And of course there’s Iran, which Obama is threatening daily with carpet-nukes because he doesn’t like their diminutive not-really leader’s rhetoric as our troops surround his nation. Oh, and then there’s Columbia, and Obama’s troop build-up there to ostensibly take on the drug cartels he’s supporting out in the open in Opium-Land.

The whole world is topsy-turvy crazy, and the Nobel committee is leading the pack. Wow. Just… wow.

Wake me up when Barack Obama does anything real in this world to end and/or prevent war. Until then, I’ve just got to consider this as being just what it is. The Nobel Hope-Against-Hope Prize.

Last week we (or “current resident”) received a slick 4-color 6×10 card stock mailer that looks at first glance to have come from our NC-11 congressional rep, Heath Shuler. At the top the reverse-on-blue header reads:

“Congressman Shuler Is Fighting To Make Medicare Prescription Coverage Even Better”

and on the bottom reverse-on-red the italicized message reads:

“Call Congressman Health Shuler today at 202-224-3121. Tell him thanks for fighting to improve Medicare without making seniors pay more, and ask him to keep on fighting until we get the job done.”

The wording struck me a little odd. Why would Heath tell me to thank him for his notably atrocious Blue Dog position on health care reform? I mean, it’s not like he cares what Democrats in his district have to say about the issue. So I flipped the mailer over and read on the bottom of the address/postage space:

“Paid for by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.”

Whoa. Billy Tauzin’s notorious PhRMA lobby. The one that got a secret back-room deal with Obama before this issue ever got to committees in the House and Senate. And who are now sending deceptive mailers like this all over the country as part of a $150 million PR campaign to promote their continued obscene profits on the backs of senior citizens, while the mandate to force all citizens to purchase junk policies from the for-profit insurance industry amounts to a ~$12,000 per year (plus steep annual hikes at four or more times the rate of inflation) tax increase on the middle class. Earmarked directly to the Murder-by-Spreadsheet crime syndicate, this porker is uglier than Hogzilla.

FACT: According to an analysis of the proposed Part D changes by the Wall Street Journal, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that any decrease in average spending on prescriptions by seniors will more than be made up for by an increase in premiums seniors must pay for Part D. CBS News reported that CBO has confirmed seniors will be paying 20% more for Part D coverage by 2019 under this giveaway to Big Pharma.

FACT: The Baucus plan also abets another huge giveaway to insurers by allowing them to charge older people (age 50-64) up to five times as much as younger people for the insurance policies everyone will be required to purchase.

FACT: The per capita (per person) cost of ALL health care in the U.S. per year comes to right about $3,750. That is all care, for all people, insured and uninsured, Medicare, VA, Medicaid, SCHIP and charity. Why would anyone want to pay $12,000 a year for what actually costs $3,750? A government-run single-payer system could be paid for by graduated taxation based on actual costs and those taxes would be far cheaper even to the richest of the rich than the cost of a single for-profit insurance policy.

Links:

NYT: Drug Makers to Back Baucus Plan With Ad Dollars

NYT: How Much Should Older Americans Pay for Insurance?

WSJ: Part-D Offsets

CBS: 20% increase in Part-D premiums

According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics Shuler has received the following contributions from shady players:

$195,262 from the health sector employees and PACs.
$13,750 from health insurance companies.
$74,800 from Big Pharma.
$77,062 from health professionals.
$27,900 from hospitals.
$10,500 from the nursing home industry.

$399,274 in total. Now, the figures from CRP are what the Blue Dogs (individually) have received since 1989 from the PACs and pools of various health related industries, but Shuler’s only been in office since 2007. So that’s quite the hefty haul over less than three years!

Below is the letter I have written in response to this blatant insult from the Drug Pusher’s Union Propaganda Squad…

__________

Dear Congressman Shuler;

The four registered voters in our NC-11 household were appalled by a slick mailer we received last week from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America urging us to “thank” you for working for them instead of us in the matter of health care reform. This letter is to lodge formal complaint and explain once again why we do NOT want either the insurers or the drug companies writing this necessary legislation.

Our formal complaint is to the information provided in this mailer that you work for Big Pharma and not for us, the constituents you were elected – by us – to represent. This lobby group actually expects us to congratulate you for serving out-of-state corporate donors instead of us. We most certainly do not congratulate you for succumbing to rampant D.C. corruption in record time.

The mailer talks about how Big Pharma’s contribution to the reform effort will help close the Medicare Part D “donut hole” they themselves wrote into the original bill to ensure obscene profits and force American seniors on fixed incomes to pay more for necessary drugs than anyone else in the world. As well as prevent Medicare by law from negotiating lower drug prices, as all other first world nations (with universal, single-payer health care) do and have done so successfully for so long.

In fact, according to an analysis of the proposed Part D changes under HR 3200 by the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that any decrease in average spending on prescriptions by drug-dependent seniors will more than be made up for by an increase in premiums seniors must pay for Part D. CBS News reports that CBO determined seniors will be paying 20% more for coverage by 2019. 20% is very significant to a great many seniors in your district, Mr. Shuler.

Two of the voters in this household – myself and my husband – will be 68 years old in 2019. Thanks to the recent destruction of the nation’s economy by greedy bankers and insurers (whom we and our children and grandchildren were forced to bail out to the tune of trillions in completely unaccountable dollars), our only income will be Social Security, and our only access to health care will be Medicare. So you are going to deliberately rob us further on orders from your corporate masters? That is completely unacceptable.

As proud long-time residents of WNC, registered Democratic voters and active participants in Democratic politics, we will be lobbying hard and very publicly beginning immediately in favor of a primary challenge to you next year from a candidate more committed to both the people of this district and the Democratic Party. You brought this on yourself, as we were all delighted when you were willing to run against Charles Taylor. We would have supported you for a very long career in politics if you’d just been less willing to sell us out in favor of corporations who do NOT vote in this district and cannot keep you in power.

Though they probably can make you rich, so you may wish to go ahead and apply for that post-Congress Big Pharma lobbying job now.

In Sincerely Sad Disappointment,

[the four of us registered voters, address in NC-11]
__________

Wanted: Dedicated public servant and Democrat with an understanding of policy issues that impact the residents of Western North Carolina, to vie for Heath Shuler’s seat in Congress in the 2010 primary.

1. “American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant and affordable energy.”

Actually, it was not until the rural electrification efforts of the 1930s – which were financed largely by the government as part of the infrastructure make-work provisions of the New Deal – that electricity became available outside major cities. In many states of the west-southwest, the CCC and Army Corps of Engineers worked in tandem with the rural electrification programs building dams and hydroelectric power plants to supply energy to those rural grids. Most of these RECs were cooperatives, owned by the customers who purchased the power, and governed by boards drawn from those small communities.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: This is Socialism in action.

2. “There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!” + something about destroying the economy.

Actually, as so graphically demonstrated last summer when the price of gasoline was arbitrarily jacked up to nearly $5 a gallon so oil companies and traders could make a literal killing, a reasonably high cost of energy that reflects its serious environmental effects, the expensive wars we are fighting to secure it, etc. leads directly to conservation efforts instigated by the people themselves rather than imposed by the government. Consumption of gasoline suddenly got cut in half as people stopped driving two blocks to the bar or convenient store, car-pooled to work, learned how to walk again, etc. It’s good for people to pay the actual costs.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The economy is already destroyed. Did you not notice? We did. These legs are made for walking. Or riding a bike. A truly reflective cost of gasoline – which other countries have been paying for decades – will spur investment in alternatives that will be more environmentally friendly, will bring much-needed crop price relief to farmers, and will generate jobs as more and more people are out of work with no chance of ever going back to the old ones.

3. “In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.”

Massive unemployment in the energy sector began just weeks after Saint Ronnie the Reagan took the oath of office. He ordered the wells in the booming oil and gas industry in Texas and Oklahoma (where I was at the time) immediately capped. Then he dramatically increased our dependence on imported Middle Eastern oil, no doubt to justify foreign policy adjustments that have led to current illegal oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s under those caps is now “reserve,” as we struggle to use up as much of the ME’s supplies as possible.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The increased cost of doing things the old way will spur investment in new ways. Those acre-size factories dotting the landscape can install solar panels on their huge roofs to offset their costs. Wind and water storage systems can help provide night supply, but most such factories don’t run at night anyway. That’s jobs in the factories, jobs in support industries (like installation and maintenance), jobs in production, and electricity in the grid. This won’t be done so long as energy is artificially cheap. Real costs will lead to real changes.

4. “Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.”

Again, America’s producing oil and gas fields expanded dramatically during Jimmy Carter’s “energy crisis” and ordered capped the moment Reagan got into office. They’ve been capped ever since. These are wells already drilled, were already producing. In order to increase our dependence on foreign supply so we could use it up and make vassals of those nations later on. Obviously, home-grown energy independence is NOT a Republican value or a “supply-side” tenet.

I live in Appalachia. I was in southeastern Kentucky last weekend and Mountaintop Removal is the absolute ultimate in environmental rape for fewer jobs and more poverty. I’m big into making a law through NC’s legislature that would forbid Duke and others from using coal mined in this way. In Tennessee there are once-beautiful communities still devastated by the massive fly ash spill, and increasing nasty health effects nobody’s attending to. There’s no such thing as “Clean Coal” – those scrubbers have been required by law since the 1970s and are STILL not installed because all coal plants get a waiver!

As for the most expensive and dangerous form of boiling water ever conceived, don’t get me started… I can go on for months. All those “secret” scram failures, failed fuel incidents and big ass dumps that have been going on since the early 1950s have killed and injured generations of Americans and are STILL not being adequately addressed. NO NUCLEAR, and I mean that most sincerely as a one-time health physicist who has seen it up close and ugly. We will NEVER be able to afford it, in any possible way.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: Name the forum, baby. I’ll bring my real cost-benefit analyses, my technical details, and some very sick survivors. You bring your ignorance, your propaganda and your lies. Then we’ll let the People decide, m’kay?

The way we do energy in this country must change. The change will indeed cause some trade-offs, that’s why the government is going to have to subsidize some things. Like offsets for the poor, low-cost financing to the low end of the middle class (that still own homes) to refit with supplemental power generation capacity and backwards meters, revamping the grid to recover some of the 30% of generation capacity we now lose to inefficiencies of transmission, etc., etc., etc.

Putting it off another decade or two won’t help, as more and more cities find themselves under water and massive population relocation kicks in due to increased global warming. Eventually it’s just time to pay the piper, and now is our time. Go back to Alaska and take care of your kids. They need you, we do not.

Despite beauty queen-like blustering, circular speech patterns full of airhead nonsense, and empty threats against bloggers (like me), Sarah Palin’s hilarious family soap opera got even funnier over the past week. It’s not “Troopergate” that finally ended her quest for national prominence and the highest office in the land – from whence she could dictate how the rest of America’s families should be just as dysfunctional as her own – it was that lovely free house she got in exchange for a cushy construction permit way back when she was just the Mayor of Wasilla.

Seems that fancy big sports complex and hockey rink built with ample taxpayer Pork looks suspiciously like the lake house hubby Todd says he built with his own two secessionist hands (with a little help from some ‘builder buddies’) used building materials ordered at the same time from the same suppliers by the same company that ‘won’ the contract for the complex. Same siding, same windows, same roofing, etc.

And while my grandson who voted for the first time last election thinks that’s rather a nifty perk for being a politician, we did have to explain to him that it qualifies as a bribe – quid pro quo – and is illegal and always has been illegal. As in breaking the law, even in Alaska.

Thus did Sarah hold a hastily called press conference on the weekday federal holiday we euphemistically call “Independence Day” and announce that she will not be finishing out her first (and only) term as governor of the Great State of Alaska. Her reasons were several, they are disjointed, they make no reasonable sense, and if the boredom factor is in any way true, she’s got no business ever having gotten into politics in the first place.

Palin struck out at the media as enemies that finally defeated her, but the old adage “if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the fire” comes readily to mind. Nobody gets to be a serious contender for national office in this country without having to run the media gauntlet, since it’s the Fourth Estate’s JOB to vet these people and ask uncomfortable questions. If you can’t handle them, you should remain a private citizen and do something else for a living.

I will admit that I am sorely disappointed, having wished most fondly for a Palin-Limbaugh ticket in 2012. But then again, I’m a clown by trade, and the promise of comedy fodder for years to come was just irresistible. A Sanford-Limbaugh ticket is also off the table due to the South Carolina governor’s love affair with a foreigner and penchant for secretive trysts that had him out of the country for over a week without telling a soul where he was going. For wannabe morality dictators, these Republicans are a sorry bunch, for sure!

Whether or not Palin has to answer criminally for her free house, her political career is now O-V-E-R. Now she can go back to keeping books for Todd’s snowmobile dealership and take care of her kids. I wish her the best of luck with that, and thank her for all the laughs along the way. I never would have been aware of her at all had John McCain not decided – or, his handlers decided – to elevate her to a sickly heartbeat away from the Presidency. At which point she could not have simply called the press and rambled on endlessly about non-reasons for stepping down. Thereby joining the exalted ranks of disgraced executives that includes such luminaries as Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon.

Thanks, John McCain, and thank you Sarah. It’s been fun!

ARGH!!! So now that Democrats will in January have the White House, the House and the Senate, Joe Lieberman (Lieberman for Lieberman Party-CT) gets to keep his Senate committee chairmanships as if he were a Democrat. This after Lieberman campaigned for Republican John McCain and several other Republicans for Senate.

Now, far be it from me to try and define regular, ordinary words for politicians, who don’t seem to understand the meaning of regular, ordinary words. Words like “Party” and “Loyalty” and “Procedure” and “Majority” and “Governance.” Politicians don’t want to know these things, preferring instead to make things up as they go along.

During these past couple of years when Democrats didn’t have an actual majority in the Senate, Lieberman has been allowed to be a Republican mole in the Democratic Caucus, reporting to his puppeteers and financial backers every move planned by members. He has been allowed to hold several committee chairs, including Homeland Security, where he has steadfastly refused to enforce subpoenas, investigate illegalities of the Bush administration, or even to investigate FEMA’s horrendously inadequate response to hurricane Katrina.

So Lieberman has been rewarded with a pass from the now-actual Democratic majority, encouraged to do more of the same obstructionism that has made him so immensely unpopular outside of Israel.

One day soon, as the public wakes up to realize the Republicans are now a fringe party of right-wing wackos and religious nuts and the Democrats are what the Republicans were before they purged everyone with any sense, there will be a new Progressive Party for the “rest of us.” And it will, within 8-12 years, be electing more than a handful of representatives and Senators, way more than the fringe Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Communists and Nazis can ever manage.

Sigh. The more things “Change,” it seems, the more they remain the same.

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

The news from the Alaska State Legislature on their investigation of governor Sarah Palin’s abuse of power was not good. The Branchflower report [pdf] was released last week with some damning conclusions about the Palin’s personal vendetta against her ex-brother in law and Todd Palin’s immediate misuse of state resources and personnel to further their attempt to get Trooper Wooten fired from his job and denied worker’s compensation for an on the job injury. Beginning the very day after Sarah was elected governor.

Sarah Palin, now John McCain’s vice presidential candidate, spent the weekend expressing how happy she is that the investigation showed that she broke no laws, even though the actual report demonstrates clearly that she did violate ethics regulations – which is illegal. Especially in terms of allowing her husband, who was not elected to any office, to use state resources and personnel to pursue his family feud.

The situation is currently up in the air as to what the Alaskan legislature will do with the findings, state law seemingly requires that Palin be impeached for her violations. That of course cannot be accomplished before November 4th, but on November 5th Palin will be heading back to Wasilla, merely the governor again and not the VP of the United States. I predict she will be impeached by the time Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20, 2009. At which point she will be free to spend more quality time with the family she’s been so eager to exploit for her own personal gain.

Check out DKos front-pager Kagro X’s overview of the report and its findings in Todd Palin, Creepy “First Stalker”. These are not people we want in any position of real power over all of us, even if you happen to be John McCain. Who, despite his desperate desire to be President, was hoodwinked into allowing Dobson & Co. to pick his running mate sans vetting, and is finally coming to realize as their appearances become uglier and uglier that he’s been had big time. I think he’s purposefully throwing the race at this point. Possibly the most honorable thing he as a patriot has ever done for his country.

Now if he could just rein in his gangster-affiliated wife and HER thirst for power… This country absolutely doesn’t need a Cindy-Todd administration!

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. An old adage of folk wisdom akin to not buying a pig in a poke, not happening until pigs fly, and teenager’s bedrooms likened to a pig-sty. It’s been a coon’s age to a gnat’s ass, he needs to buck up and take it like a man, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

Republican John McCain’s campaign flunkies are all over this observation about the situation in Iraq, claiming that Obama called VP hopeful Sarah Palin a “pig” because she likened herself to a “pit bull with lipstick” in her RNC acceptance speech. What a total load of hooey! Looks to me like John McCain’s campaign thinks of Sarah Palin as a pig wearing lipstick, and wants everyone to notice.

When Joe Biden talked about funding for stem cell research in hope of treatments and cures for genetic diseases, the McCain campaign insisted the subject of people with ’special needs’ is off the table because Palin has a baby with Downs Syndrome. Huh!??! That’s like saying the subject of health care is off the table because Sarah Palin flew 2,000 miles and drove an hour across the tundra after her water broke so she could have a baby with Downs Syndrome at her local stitch-em-up. Or…

The subject of sex education is off the table because Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant. The subject of co-mingling church and state is off the table because Sarah Palin’s a dominionist holy-roller. The subject of reproductive rights is off the table because Sarah Palin can’t keep from getting pregnant. The state of the union is off the table because the Palins have secessionist ties. Science education is off the table because Sarah Palin believes Adam and Eve rode to church on a dinosaur. The subject of family law is off the table because Sarah Palin’s in the middle of a blood feud with her ex-in-laws…

Wow. Who’d have thought at the beginning of the summer that the Republicans would succeed in taking all issues of national concern and policy off the table just by picking a whiny, self-described pit bull wearing lipstick as Vice-Presidential running-mate? Thaaaaat’s some clever new 21st century Politics!

There is hope that the Tabloid Press can manage to reach the millions of low-information voters at the grocery checkout lines with lurid details of the Palin family’s dysfunctional soap operas in the not-so frozen northland. But then, those same low-information voters might vote for McCain/Palin just to keep themselves in cheap entertainment for the next four years. There is hope that Americans with 3-digit IQs will wake up and smell the frying bacon… er, mooseburgers, vote the nation’s best interests this fall instead of their own boredom.

You never know… we might be pleasantly surprised.

Well, I was going to report on the St. Paul RNC this week like I did the DNC in Denver last week, but it never quite caught my attention. Hardly anybody went (including the President and Vice-President of the United States, who are the party’s figureheads), Weather was lousy in Louisiana so the first day got put off altogether, and Fred Thompson makes me go to sleep.

But I’ve honestly gotta say, this whole Alaska Momma mooseburger beauty queen thing with Sarah Palin has me utterly and completely befoozled. Bamboozled. Conundrumated. WTF???

First thing out of the gate was that she’s been governator for less than two years, and before that was mayor of a town the same size as Wilburton, Oklahoma (where Granny lives). Then she violated military regulations and operations security by telling everybody her 18-year old son is deploying on September 11. Then she lied about her close relationship with indicted AK senator Ted Stevens and his “bridge to nowhere”, and ‘forgot’ to tell anyone that her own state Senate has her under current investigation for abuse of power. Oops.

Then she threw her pregnant 17-year old daughter under the bus to ‘prove’ the Downs Syndrome baby is really her son and not her grandson, even though just showing his birth certificate would have done the trick fine. Then she denied ever being a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, but only addressed their conventions occasionally as some sort of ‘courtesy’. Before it came out that her hubby indeed was a member of AIP – and its “plastic explosives deal gone bad” characters until 2002. Then… then…

It’s just a scandal a minute, I can’t keep up! Obviously, no one from McCain’s campaign – or the government – ever vetted Ms. Mooseburger. Well, there’s a reason for that too, now that the mainstream media’s awake and paying attention. Turns out she was vetted by James Dobson & Crew, who apparently got carte blanche from the McMansions campaign to pick the V.P. And I’m guessing the only vetting CNP did was to call her hometown preacher. Just… Wow.

So. Since I’m too fascinated by this soap opera to bother with the RNC, here’s the icing on the cake:

Via NRO, Enquirer reporting Palin Adultery

Another incredible allegation emerging from the family war is that Palin, a mother of five, had an affair with a former business associate of her fisherman husband, Todd.

“Todd discovered the affair and quickly dissolved his friendship and his business associations with the guy,” charges an enemy. “Many people in Alaska are talking about the rumor and say Todd swept it under the rug.”

Who knows if that one’s true? It *is* the Enquirer, which isn’t noted for its journalistic standards. But then again, they’re the ones who busted John Edwards, so it might be. I’m not taking any odds at this point, given how completely bizzaro this whole thing is so far.

And it’s been less than a week since we first heard of her. Just… Wow.

Well folks, it’s 8-8-08, which of course means it’s the End of the World. Right on cue, it’s revealed that John Edwards, best-looking Presidential Wannabe in this nation’s history, was revealed today to have enjoyed an extramarital affair. Might even have fathered one of America’s many (a majority these days) “fatherless” bastards. Wow. I’m so not frothing.

No, we don’t use the word “bastard” anymore to talk about REAL fatherless children. We call him or her our “Love Child.” It’s been that way since the 1960s, becomes more popular every year. Yet the leftist Democratic blogosphere goes absolutely ballistic over this non-news, as if the socialist-leaning, populist, progressive population is this country isn’t the exclusive enclave of Hippies who managed to live through those glorious ’60s (and their children, and their grandchildren, many/most of them fatherless or on step-father #4 by now).

Suddenly they’re all strict Old Testament moralists of the Pharisee variety, buying fake beards and arming themselves with stones. It’s just enough hard core, disgusting hypocrisy to make me sick to my stomach. Get a life, people!

1. John Edwards dropped out early. Might have been guilt for the affair, but it’s more likely that he realized he didn’t have a real shot. He is NOT the Democratic nominee.

2. Affairs, especially engaged while the long-suffering wife is in dire straits with cancer or injuries or something, is a regular way of life on the ‘Pug side of the aisle. The actual Republican nominee is rather famous for screwing around on his injured wife with his now-current wife, whom he has publicly called a “cunt” even though he really does like her corporate jet.

3. Apparently John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth, who is in remission from breast cancer, are still together and “working it out.” Whatever that means. In which case, it’s none of our damned business. Really, now. Watch some porn if you’re that hard up for something sexy to excite you.

I can recall when Francois Mitterand’s long-time mistress and their daughter were moved into an annext of the Esysee Palace at state expense. She was just his favorite of many. Both attended his funeral. Jacques Chirac had a penchant for Japanese women. John Kennedy is said to have been ‘partying’ on his yacht with several young women while Jackie was in labor, and then there was the whole Marilyn Monroe birthday cake thing. Then there’s Hillary Clinton, who got a lot closer to the Democratic nomination than John Edwards. She had her wayward hubby – who subjected the entire country to 8 years’ worth of impeachment distraction because he couldn’t keep his fly zipped – out on the campaign trail for her.

This sort of grotesque puritanism and blatant hypocrisy is one of the things I like least about the American public’s so-called “values.” I am flat-out disgusted. Not by John Edwards, or by his and Elizabeth’s private lives, but by all the fickle flirts out there in the blogosphere who once tried so hard to turn him into a sex object, and who are now screaming and raging because they weren’t the ones who got to do the dirty deed. Time to call a waaaaaambulance.

Enough, already.