At the Heart of the Quasar

The first thing to understand about Jeb Hensarling, head of the RSC, R-TX 5th district, is that he is going to operate as a sleeper for a long while. This is going to allow him to figure out some things, and sleep off others. For instance, he'll be able to figure out how to pay for an undefined committment to Iraq without raising taxes (A: Economic Growth! Like in the 80s!). He'll be able to evade questions about his weirdly specific interest in defending online poker sites. And he'll be able to work out his relationship with Green Mountain Energy, a greenwashing business (selling incinerator-generated electricity as wind-and-solar, among other crimes)that savaged McCain in 2000.

Unless Green Mountain goes Enron, or leaks dioxin into the East Texas atmosphere, Jeb, former VP, is safe. Even a Keating-Fiver can run for president! (DIGRESSIVE, BUT IMPORTANT: Now, whether 'Merkins will trust said Keating-Fiver with their money is another story. And the point there is not whether anyone remembers the old transgression, but whether the transgressor can demonstrate new competence. For McCain, character is the real issue: swayed by his own vanity, he leaned on a regulator on Keating's behalf. Swayed by vanity, he divorced his crippled wife, married a beer-distributionship heiress, picked Palin, dissed Letterman. He's John McCain, (R)-The Media. Vanity is the source of McCain's petulance toward Obama, as if he's mystified that anyone could mistake his hammy quips and tin smile for charisma. It's an illusion: a corpse running in a war-hero's suit. As the authors of Ecclesiastes tell us, hevel hevolim, vehakol hevel, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. END.)

But what I see in Hensarling -- though at this early date, who really can evaluate his character with certainty? -- is not McCainiac. McCain has always been obsessed with his own mythopoesis: thus the image of his body as a reliquary of torture, the arms not lifting, the hair prematurely white, the teeth mangled, the knees crushed. Hensarling, again, at this stage, is a loyal jihadi; one who believes in his body as the vessel for a cause. Witness the selflessness of his "Why I opposed the bailout." This is career-making writing: an even cadence, an appeal to reason. If he were a Back Bay Democrat instead of a SE Dallas Republican, he would need change but one word, probably "subsidize" for "socialize":

"In my heart and in my mind, I believe that this plan was fraught with unintended consequences, would force generations of taxpayers to pick up the tab for Wall Street losses and could permanently and fundamentally change the role of government in the American free enterprise system. [...] Once the government socializes losses, it will soon socialize profits. If we lose our ability to fail, we will soon lose our ability to succeed. If we bail out risky behavior, we will soon see even riskier behavior."

Now, when the bailout passed, he was capable of escaping, because it's the ideas (or, cynically, the soundbites) that are important, not Jeb of the Texas Fifth, and he can fade into the background with a hiss about the "slippery slope to socialism."

The past may hold other road work for his future. Back in 2005, Jeb was on the forefront of financial deregulation; broadly speaking, deregulation is one of the causes of our current situation, n'est-ce pas?. But in effect -- and fact-checkers, please check -- his 2005 bill was written to provide to credit unions, S&Ls and small community banks the same benefits that financial services giants got in the 2004 version of the bill. If we were in the business of spinning for this guy, it would be easy to say that in both these cases, Jeb was on the side of Main Street against Wall Street, was ensuring a level playing field, was for the David-banks against the Goliath-banks, etc.

Again, ideas are paramount, and the RSCers have been busy for a while. In May they could tell their party was going to reap the whirlwind, and called for a restatement of principles. The best part of this little manifesto is the sense of self-awareness buried in there, as if he's saying to his peers: "Fine, go home and run against 'Washington,' just remember you're It." Bring on the self-flagellation:

"And [Americans'] anger boils over as they watch politicians in Washington point fingers at each other, launch politically motivated investigations, waste money on wasteful pork barrel spending, and reward special interests over the national interest — while consistently failing to provide solutions to the real problems that they face each day[...]The time has come to move beyond empty political rhetoric and to revitalize our contract with the American people."

So, Q: Is Hensarling too devout to be successful? That is, when his balanced budget noumenon hits the defense appropriations phenomenon, which one yields? Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp all lost. (A: I don't think so. The man has admitted that reforming the budget process is unsexy. I think he defines success differently than other politicians.)

Q: Is he then unlikely to win hearts and minds even if he wins his ideological turf-war?

Q: Is any of this stuff even plausible in the face of a trillion-dollar deficit and endless war?

Q: And by the time BHO is done remaking government, isn't the Phil-Gramm-budget-hawk-model going to look awfully vestigial?

Q: By the time we've set up a national Infrastructure Investment Bank (whereby gov't subsidies stimulate the production of physical objects that we sell to other people in the World War on Carbon Emissions), isn't the notion of tax-cuts-as-stimulus going to look like what it is, i.e., endlessly dosing a dead heart with atropine?

These are my concerns, Jeb. What I'm hearing on the radio telescope, it's either a faint persistent signal, or just static...
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Jou wanna leef like da'? Like some kinda cheep...Baa Baa

In the aftermath of the rapidly floundering attempt to link BHO to the Weathermen, re which I can't wait to watch Walnuts get all fusty and unhinged tonight as he promised to once more try the Obama-is-a-terrorist waters, there emerges a late entry in the right-wing-counter-terror-as-career-strategy-meme: it turns out that McCain and Lieberman are quislings for Cuban radicals! While campaigning for McCain, he promised to pursue a presidential pardon for Eduardo Arocena:

Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana. His targets included:

Madison Square Garden (he blew up an adjacent store);

JFK airport (Arocena's group planted a suitcase bomb intended for a TWA flight to Los Angeles—in protest of the airline's flights to Cuba. The plane would have exploded if not for the fact that the bomb went off on the tarmac prior to being loaded);

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center (causing damage to three levels of the theater and halting the performance of a music group from Cuba);

the ticket office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot;

and a church.

He also attempted to assassinate the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.

So while McCain is busily denouncing Barry's domestic leftism, Lieberman is getting it on with "freedom fighters," like Furs jou get de money, den jou get the power, den jou get dee weemen...Ileana Ros-Lehtinen beware!
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Save yourselves...

I don't get this. The NYT finds itself duty-bound to vet the McCain campaign's allegations of a nefarious Obama-ACORN connection. This neither-nor criticism effectively grants some right-wing-rant about Those Ones stealing the election equal time with mere facts from Barry's CV. The NYT covers the story about BHO's connections without questioning the legitimacy of the allegation that those connections are themselves dubious. Slate covers the "Q: What's wrong with ACORN?" angle, but sticks to interviewing the people who put a bounty on ACORN's head in the first place.

Okay, so big deal. Small ripple. Never mind that it's this kind of acrobatic accomodation of the far-right that got Judith Miller's Iraq stories printed. Never mind that Ed Murrow figured in the '50s that all opinions are not equal: when covering a lynching, do you make sure to give the local Grand Wizard equal time? Never mind that if so-called bastions of the liberal media have to kowtow to the right fringe now, what lengths will they go to to protest their innocence once Republicans are out of power and spoiling for a fight? Seriously, look at how they savaged Jimmy Carter, for no other reason than to prove they didn't just hate Nixon.

I hate to think that I've become a one-issue bloggist, but the discovery of the Hensarling Quasar (alternately, the incipient Fourth Red Shift in American politics) has become a unifying theory for the McCain Campaign. Why pick Palin? Why harp on Ayers? Why holler about ACORN? In a time of national crisis, the campaign decided to run sludge ads? (The last Ayers ad I saw, btw, was far more savage than the flip-flopping Kerry ad from 2004. See? Isn't that cute?)

The people who are working on his campaign clearly expect to work for someone else: what's their best-case scenario? One term, followed by a Palin 2012 run? The man has lost a 14-point lead in North Dakota; he's clinging to West Virginia by 2 points; there is no future for you, staffers.

Again, at the risk of being prolix, if McCain wanted to win the election, he would have never run the Ayers-meme. Clearly, he has no interest in winning the presidency, as at this point who would? Presumably, he has a crock pot full of Wright-meme ads, ready to rock, so that by 2012, there will be a core of wounded free-marketers with exaggerated senses of entitlement for the Palin-Romney ticket, all shouting about black separatism, reverse discrimination; weeping about how McCain was martyred and how they was robbed.

Running on McCain's corpse is more profitable than running beside it.
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Various adventures of McCan, Famous Air Pirate...once more crashing his own plane...

Whoa. About that debate that Walnuts promised not to go to...also re: which see Letterman on getting stiffed...did McCain actually say that he would veto every spending bill that came across his desk? I was at a party at Skylab, watching it on a 9-inch b/w TV, so I had to check the transcript...

As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I've got a pen. This one's kind of old. I've got a pen, and I'm going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk. I will make them famous. You will know their names.

Ohhh you have to love this week: McCan the Air Pirate (last week I read DFW's essay collection CtL, which has a long-form 2000 campaign piece called "Up, Simba"), hero to the Vietnamese, lies to David Letterman about when he's leaving New York (which is forgivable, because a man has to sleep sometime), flees to Washington in a pale attempt to off the debate (to which BHO said, This is not Nam; here there are rules), plainly realizing that Palin ain't gonna hack it (and what if she doesn't, what if she's a Harriet-Miers-esque smokescreen built to make an unpalatable choice seem palatable just because said choice will actually know you know some things, and if so who is this masked man, and if campaigning in the internet age has sped up the news cycle such that a VP resignation would be destructive for about 48 hours, why not just nominate the obnoxious dude first and let the controversy fade, which brings us to the conclusion that McCan, Air Pirate's real VP is not noxious to the electorate, he's just cranky and boring: he is/will be Joseph Isadore Lieberman), and while negotiators are wringing concessions from Bush (inlcuding caps on executive pay for companies in the New Fund, an equity stake for the American people, extended bankruptcy protection and payouts to homeowners, all of which at week's beginning were poison pills for the WH, all swallowed without complaint by Thursday night), McCan the Air Pirate sweeps in and conjures some far-right Sedona caucus, growing up Rep.s from the ground like Cadmus, whose terroristic threats include the scuttling of all consensus in favor of some far-fetched insurance scheme (Q: If a bank doesn't have the liquidity to lend to another bank because so much of its shit is in credit default swaps, why do you think it has the liquidity to buy insurance from the USG to cover its assets? And a follow-up Q: In the event that the assets covered by this new insurance are unsaleable, isn't the USG more broadly on the hook for covering their full, i.e. original cost? And if not -- assuming we write the coverage to pay companies say 9 cents on the dollar when their swaps hit 0 -- isn't that paltry amount of protection just going to shock the system further? In other words, whose ass-brained idea was this? A: Eric Cantor (R-VA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), et alia. Q: Cantor?! No f'n wonder!), which within hours was scaled back to demanding insurance be only a part of the overall bailout (which is kind of like AQIM capturing a French diplomat, demanding a total retreat of all Algerian gov't forces from the countryside, then settling for a plate of babaghannouj. Send any thoughts on spelling of babbaganoush c/o the Editors, Dark Steer, 1 Terminal Plaza, Cleveland OH); if that didn't constitute an awesome week, then the burgeoning media interest in SP would make it so: Palin got zoning aid, gifts.

If that weren't enough, there are some serious acts of cognitive dissonance in McCan's bran that need to be addressed. For my money the most serious is the one going on between the personal-responsibility-fiscal-probity wing and his maverick-bozo wing. (This is fundamentally a subset of the Big McCain Question: What is it to be a Maverick? Does being a maverick mean making deals with your opponents when your party demands absolute fealty, i.e., is the maverick a pragmatist? Or does it mean bucking the demands of everyone and snarling the works until you get your own way [a la E. Cantor], i.e., is the maverick a fanatic? Seriously, I don't know what you mean by The Original Mavericks. Are we selling jeans?) Witness twice in the debates, McCain's assertion that the system corrupted the people, not (as it is in fact) the other way round:

We Republicans came to power to change government, and government changed us. And the -- the worst symptom on this disease is what my friend, Tom Coburn, calls earmarking as a gateway drug, because it's a gateway. It's a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption.

And we have former members of Congress now residing in federal prison because of the evils of this earmarking and pork-barrel spending.

Okay, first of all, has Tom Coburn ever smoked weed? That's interesting. But what I really like is that "government" and "spending" are entities that exist outside of individual agency. Government changed Republicans. Spending put people in jail! If only Bob Ney had known about that line of defense at his trial! Nevermind the obvious hypocrisy: when Republicans game the system, it's the system's corrupting influence; when Democrats do it, it's "Chicago-style politics." Which I didn't know was a thing; deep dish, sauce on top politics? Second:

Maybe to Senator Obama it's not a lot of money. But the point is that -- you see, I hear this all the time. "It's only $18 billion." Do you know that it's tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it's gone completely out of control to the point where it corrupts people? It corrupts people.

That's why we have, as I said, people under federal indictment and charges. It's a system that's got to be cleaned up.

I have fought against it my career. I have fought against it. I was called the sheriff, by the -- one of the senior members of the Appropriations Committee. I didn't win Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate.

Seriously, who was the last conservative to run on a platform of taking a mulligan on personal responsibility? William Jennings Bryan? Didn't Americans screw themselves to that Cross of Gold? Walnuts sounded like he was reviving the Temperance movement, blaming the ills of Washington not on the people in it, who are of course his friends and neighbors, but on some extra-human miasma, and he might as well be blaming Demon Rum for the evils of our age...dead in the water...
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It's been a cold world, we just getting flurries now?

The recent demise of the Democratic ticket is exaggerated, no? The need-to-attack meme, the loss-of-momentum meme(with us since the primaries!), the failure-to-connect meme are more confused media responses to a good McCain week than they are arguments for course correction or predictions of the future.

I counsel patience. Palin's incoherence on foreign policy isn't really a strike against her; what is a strike is she hasn't read a newspaper. Her willingness to accept federal pork isn't the problem; lying about her past in order to run as a reformer is the problem. Phrasing the issues as matters of competence is a losing strategy, practically and ethically. (Practically, because so few Americans think of themselves as "worthy" of higher office. Ethically, because the point of democracy is that it is, in Jacques Ranciere's formulation, rule by those unequipped to rule.)

Phrase the issues on their terms, and it's a win. Claiming insight into Russia because you can see Kamchatka on a clear day from Alaska is egotistical and disingenuous; risking the nation for your party's benefit is not patriotism. Lying about your past, then repeating the lie; advocating abstinence only education, then concealing your teen daughter's pregnancy; trying to get your sister's ex fired, asking about the "process" for banning books (I love how asking about process is anodyne in this case. If I asked someone about the "process" for blowing up a mall, I would be arrested for conspiracy to commit mass murder, making terroristic threats etc.. Process matters.) these are the actions that speak to character. Character counts, as the man said...

But even if Barry and Joe decide not to waste any moreenergy on this thing, my guess is the Palin will fall of her own weight. Her husband has been subpoenaed, her neighbor Vic is doing time, the tabloids are on dirt patrol, the Debbie Richter-Scott Richter-John Bitney-Sarah Palin love quadrangle has yet to fully flower...the harbingers of the shitstorm are already visible. Bloomberg, for instance, shows a woman who sees herself beneath the law, impunity by insularity:

Palin's office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.

She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police. And she sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla -- conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges.

Ted Stevens is going to blow up, somebody's going to find Palin at a Department of Interior cocaine party...in terms of gossip, this candidacy is a never-ending fountain. All Alaska seems some evil version of Mayberry, small-town venality unseen since Babbitt. There won't be anything of Palin left before the debates.

That, or, Americans will realize that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape, fought big oil to get more oil drilled, und so weiter...wait for it...we're going to find it's a cold world for city-council types
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All roads lead to Hanoi...

I can't believe how easy it is to goad McCain's people into talking about Vietnam.

Earlier this morning, I figured the relevant meme would be "Senility."

I think — I'll have my staff get to you [...] It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you.

Sure. I'm so old and pampered that I have to have my staff get back to you for a one-word answer? That's the senility-meme.

But by now, it's the Vietnam-meme. McCain can't handle his finances himself because he's a POW. Here's Brian Rogers for McCain:

This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison

Oh shit! Ha ha ha! I'm not sure there's anything more to say here...McCain's people now have to explain the intricacies of Illinois property- and campaign-finance law if they want to talk about Rezko. Meanwhile, cheap jokes about McCain losing the keys to his condos abound...
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Quantum static or something...

...is interfering with our ability to confindently assay predictions on the condition of the electorate...in case you couldn't tell, I've given up on calling this election. BHO might be sitting on a natural straight, leading in states that would add up to 273 electoral votes, etc. But we're so close to the event that our instruments distort its shape.

If K and John Dickerson are right, the electorate shouldn't groove on the Paris-Britney ad. Not just because it violates the prohibition on infantilization of Barack. But because it's old hat. BHO has been a celebrity for a while, remember? Here's Dickerson:

The “One” video shows a clip of Obama describing how on Election Day, “a light will shine down … you will experience an epiphany, and you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack.” You could argue that he wasn’t really being self-deprecating, he was actually cloaking his own Messiah complex in a humorous guise. But either way, he was there before McCain.

Except that the attack is paying dividends...let's ignore the wobbly validity of Rasmussen's "Do you trust X to do Y?" formula. (Saying "I trust Richard Nixon to cover his own ass," is not the same as saying "I trust Richard Nixon." But if you listen to Ras, more Americans "trust McCain on the issues." Not deceptive, just an epistemological leap.) When Americans think of the President fulfulling banal duties such as "negotiating trade agreements," they don't want to see Paris Hilton in his plug-in-hybrid Escalade. No Department of the Interior for you either Ms. Spears. Justin Timberlake may still be a dark horse candidate for Treasury...

AdAge helps us stay grounded -- as if the hailstorm of Rasmussen's reminders didn't convince us already that Americans are quasi-Fascist nativist religious freaks. Aghast, we turn the page for the crosstabs, thinking, Who are these rubes? Where do they congregate? -- the ad functions because it has the crack-like properties of all great advertising. You hang on for the kicker: Obama will raise taxes and you will pay more for oil.

Personally, I think this is a blip in the polls. Walnuts is still like a lunar rover, marooned, barely picking up signals from the home base, travelling a desolate landscape with only Rovites to accompany him...Will BHO take the time to remind voters that his opponent is one mescaline hit away from being Mike Gravel? I'm still waiting for the "This isn't the John McCain I had come to respect. I don't know who to trust anymore..."-spiel...

One final note: Presumably the purpose of the bizarre early attacks on Barack was not to damage him directly, but to broaden the scope of possible attacks. Never mind that BHO is not a Muslim, does not wear a turban, sings the anthem, waves the flag, pledges allegiance to the United States of 'Murkka, etc. The mere fact that the slurs got such wide play, and took so long to debunk means that the little lies can just slip in under the radar. I can hear the moderate tone already: "Look, I know he's not a terrorist. But he will raise the price of gas..."
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Welcome to the Fudge Haus...

Once more blurring the line between the campaign as high-meta Kaufmannesque "comedy" and, as Bumiller sees it, the campaign as paean to ineptitude, John McCain was in Columbus, Ohio's German Village yesterday at a place known as Schmidt's Restaurant und Sausage Haus. OMFG. I can't stop peeing my pants.

BHO was in another place, doing something else. Whatever it was, it was not funny.

Walnuts even gave a press conference in front of a sign that apparently said "Fudge Haus." I couldn't read it from the AP video, because of the tacky gold paint and faux-Gothic lettering.

While there, he was able to sample the "Bahama Mama sausage and jumbo cream puffs." Perhaps at the same time.

While Barry unfurled a cosmic vision of brothers and sisters breaking boundaries, John ate a quarter-pound stick of swirly marshmallow fudge, saying, "Here, in my mouth, ebony and ivory live in perfect harmony," and "People, listen. Fudge knows no boundaries."

In reality, McCain was there to woo German-Americans, a key demographic unfortunately alienated by the 1930s crackdown on German-lanugage schools, the elimination of German community groups and sympathizers like the Silver Shirts, the mocking of German cuisine, and the firebombing of Dresden.

Columbus resident Otto Schneemann reflected on this: "Above all, the will of the people, including our demand for living-space (lebensraum), must be met and adhered to!"

Ohh, I can only laugh but so much. The midwest is a crazy Teutonic place, full of hunting lodges, deer heads, red leather. Among the populace, a grim hunger for the apocalypse. Faced with this lala-land, McCain could either walk Lindsey Graham around on a leash with a knife in his own teeth, or suck it up and face the wurst. The awful wurst...
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Wes Clark is still alive!

K: First of all, allow me to congratulate you for predicting the use of Wes Clark as a cudgel to Walnuts' war record...get the stiff to spend so much time reminding us of his glorious service in Vietnam that he can't talk about anything else. Whereupon we remember that he was sent to bomb civilians, never sat ass-deep in swamp water, and it took him seven years to get out...which is faster than McCain would extricate us from Iraq...

I think everyone is heartened by the second half of Obama's "I will not besmirch" sentence...the Party has been saying "No Scrubs" for years...so i like the preemptive strike, the muscular defense, etc.

But I don't think it's a winning plan. The whole artificial controversy actually gave McCain a bump over the last week. On 6/16 we were watching McCain fall of his own weight. The 'nuts had spent months offering babies hot water, touting NAFTA in Canada, hiding his wife's income, and calling for offshore drilling while claiming to have been decades out in front on global warming. And claiming New Jersey would bolt Republican. No longer. Now we're back to hero-worship.

Don't get me wrong, this is the high electoral ground Barry's got here...on some battle of Vicksburg shit...Based on June and July polls, BHO has a 10-point lead or better in 10 states: CA +10, CT +20, MA +20, ME +22, MN +15, NH +11, NJ +16, NY +20, WA +16, WI +10...and a statistically significant lead in six more (PA, MI, NM, IA, OR, and Montana as of 7/1!)...andhe's in a dead heat in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana. Indiana dude.

Walnuts is a dead horse. No reason for Wes to go on whacking it. Indiana should not be in play, and it is, because what did Pat say? Still, if anything can lose it for BHO, it's the numbnut commentariat bringing the conversation back to questions of character...no matter how artificially-plumped it may be...
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Walnuts to college kid: "Your girlfriend wan' ride with me..."

So that's why McCain has to keep firing his campaign staff! He needs them back in the industry drumming up funds!

Regional campaign manager Doug Davenport and Republican convention chief Doug Goodyear departed after acknowledging having represented Burma. Eric Burgeson, who lobbies the federal government on energy issues, left Thursday. GOP consultant Craig Shirley parted ways with the campaign because of his ties to http://www.stophernow.com[...]

Yeah, don't believe the hype about Walnuts' boys working for Idi Amin and Than Shwe; this is strictly business. Doug Goodyear can now go back to directing contributions from Verizon to shadow 527s...ditto Tom Loeffler and EADS.

Loeffler lobbies for the European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., which, with Northrop Grumman Corp., won a lucrative contract to provide air refueling tankers for the Air Force. McCain helped scuttle an earlier contract that would have gone to a competitor, Boeing Co.

Clearly, this is McCain's version of the Gore-China story. Watch for the Pernicious Influence of France stories coming this fall!***UPDATE***The first Pernicious France story of the season! Frogs, Hamas Talk Shop! An admission more pernicious for undercutting Sarko...stay tuned!

So which is more crooked, rigging defense contracts for your buddy, or rigging telecom regulations for your girlfriend? And what's up with all the Verizon people on Walnuts' payroll? Is he on an industry oversight committee or something? Oh yeah...

Now, step two is, if McCain's financing is going to come from unregulated contributions, does that mean Friends of Johm McCain was a clever ruse? My contributions to John McCain for President might be limited; nobody's looking for my contributions to Jon, Jonn, John McCaim, Fats Walnuts, etc...

I'd like to make clear that I don't exactly have enmity for John McCain. He's got a hard row to hoe, having to run against his own party, against his own history, with the dead albatross of the last presidency, with, in all likelihood, some tight-comber born-again from a right-to-work state as his VP. If it were Dark Steer running, Dark Steer would be crankier! With this in mind, I watched, "McCain to student:'Thanks, Jerk!'" and thought, "Damn right, Walnuts! Tell these whippersnappers to get the earbuds out and listen up!" I mean, you can tell how taken aback he is by the sheer assholedom of the question.
Next time, John -- if that is your real name -- use one of our Unsolicited Rejoinders, such as:

"I'll admit, during the primaries I did have to change diapers a couple times. But those were Huckabee's."

"You forget about the privileges we accord the demented. I mean, I could kill your smartass right now and just make up a reason!"

"Well, Beavis, your mom doesn't think I'm too old."

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...none of you nuh better look at me funny....

Just a quick bit on the political future...

NYTimes has got an article on Walnuts' fundraising flaccidity and how BarryHussein could pretty much afford to pay for McCain's campaign and still out spend him by a factor of twelve. Walnuts, of course, then goes to the RNC and Republican machine with hat in hand and hangdog face, seeking some cash and coordination.

But that's all well and known: the old man can't raise any money. Again, my question is: what's up with Mitt Romney?

Mr. McCain is likely to depend upon the party, which finished April with an impressive $40 million in the bank and has significantly higher contribution limits, to an unprecedented degree to power his campaign, Republican officials said.

To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf. They will appear together at a fund-raiser in Phoenix on May 27, and the next day the president will take part in a luncheon with Mitt Romney in Salt Lake City and then an exclusive dinner at Mr. Romney’s vacation home in Park City, Utah.

Now it's generally agreed upon that McCain needs to pick someone who could credibly step in and take his place should he shuffle off this mortal coil to that great tiger cage in the sky. Romney's an okay bet. The veep status takes the Mormonism thing somewhat out of the spotlight. Romney also brings a certain degree of chops on the economy.

But what's Romney get out of it? If Walnuts loses with Mitt as veep, Romney essentially becomes a Mormon John Edwards--nice try, but you've the stink of loser still hanging about you. If Walnuts wins, Romney is first in line after the one term presidency. But the Vice Presidency isn't as much of a straight shot to the presidency as one might think: only five out of forty-three presidents were elected to the office from the position of Vice President.

So Mittens may not take the gamble. But if he plays a good Mittens and holds the requisite fundraisers for the candidate and makes the right connections, he could come out in '12 as the new face and future of conservatism.

My bet is that he's taking the long con. He's young-ish and still very rich. He could write a book or two on the need for a return to moral purity. Decry the cesspool of the internet and cable television and co-ed colleges and automated can-openers and miscegenation. Hit up the Ingraham-Hannity-Limbaugh Circuit for a couple of years. Not rely on it too much, but have them all there as a base. In the mean time, push your competency as your major selling point. Offer yourself as the aspirin and Gatorade cure for those in the party suffering from a Bush hangover. Re-emerge in 2012 with solid grass roots support as the competent front-runner with enough support from the party's soul to carry you to the nomination.

And, of course, still lose in the general because nobody likes the Mormons.

"none of you nuh! better look at me funny
NUH! you know my name, now gimme my money!"
-Old Dirty Bastard, "Baby I Got Your Money"

Take er easy, dude

McCain's anger: a strategy! -- Kaus. Clearly, we Americans are reaping the whirlwind. Back in your youtube clip, when McCain was a reasonable man, willing to acknowledge facts on the ground, he also had no shot at landing the nomination. We like him more the crazier he gets! His Obama=Hamas slur got him an invite to speak to the NRA, which hates him, so...
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McCain forgetting how the hostage release went is conventional wisdom. It's a little bit crazy to talk about it so fast, though! Old Man McCain seems to be taking shit for shinola here, suggesting that the 1979 hostages were released for weapons, then backtracking to explain that Carter and Christopher (not Carter and Brzeszinski?) got them released. The hostages relased for arms came later and were captured by Hezbollah or affiliated groups in Lebanon. Phew! Isn't the conventional wisdom so much easier! Also, dude, I edited that Iran-Contra wiki page a little bit. It's not a good resource. It goes like this: "These guys did bad things. Then they lied about it. Fawn Hall. Imperialism. Oliver North is a fag." for like 7 meg of text...no timeline, no clear causation.

Bringing me to a point of departure for a future screed: can we at this late date foreswear Wikipedia?
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McCain at the NRA:

This is a unique style to say the least. JB starts with a patronly/patronizing soft-pedal voice, like the old folks in the Medicare part D ads, mentions Israel, and suddenly hits the chorus, like in "Say a Little Prayer for You!", screams, stumbles, blood-pressure recedes, and he's back in premature catatonia. Clearly, the strain of being an enlightened elder and a cranky elder at once is exhausting. We here at Dark Steer wish the Senator the best of health for the coming election. Which is six months away.
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Two things this week give us hope here at Dark Steer: one is the third Democrat victory in a special election to the House this year. Two is the passage of a passel of war bills. The former augurs ill for the opposition party this November; the MS-1 district was like a R+10 PVI. There are 25 seats up in November with a R+10 PVI or lower; those are landslide numbers. The war bills' passing, however, is mindbending. Republicans in Congress have finally grown weary of stonewalling every single Congressional attempt to attach some reins to the president's wehrmacht; the plan now is clearly of the "give 'em enough rope" variety. And if a case could be made for indefinitely-funded, indefinitely-long war in Iraq, well, maybe then the Democrats' "abort the troops" policy would become an issue in November. Except one: the GOP can't even get all its members in line for something as simple as abstention; two: solid majorities have wanted the war over within a year since summer 2005.
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Recent visits to Israel by Rice and Bush bode well for my Peace-By-June prediction, right? Even the President's bizarre ranting about "appeasers" backs me up! How, you ask? The only reason to say something that far off the irrelevance chart, something that the speaker has no intention of backing up, is to flak for the opposite position ! Short: Bush's tough talk is cover for the back-channel negotiations with Syria. Paradoxathon! The harder he talks, the closer the negotiations are to peace! It's like Kissinger-Nixon's mad-bomber strategy: in theory, when a nuclear power bout to act the fool, everyone else calms down.

One more time: by the end of the first week of June, Israel will return large portions of the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a non-aggression pact. Only the President can screw this up now, by you know, asking for some extra goodies, like disarming Hezbollah, or paving the Anbar desert...

--
ds

Why you bringing up old shit?

...the Kaiser'd stolen our word for twenty...

Walnuts' spiral into a very public, very ugly dementia continues. Again, if the media quits treating him with the kid gloves, this man's dead in the water. His whole campaign could be one long and painful Stockdale impersonation. We could have five, six months of "Who am I? What am I doing here?" The latest screw-up?

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Now, leaving aside the idiocy of comparing a desire to talk to our enemies to appeasing them, if only for just a second, Walnuts seems to be forgetting a little thing we here at Dark Steer like to call... um... what do we call that again? Tip of my tongue. Something to do with... Contras? Maybe something about "I Ran"? Oh well, must not have been too important.

Dead in the water, dude. The Republicans have to know this, too. Once the Democratic Clusterfuck slouches toward Denver to finally die, the spotlight falls squarely on the two nominees. That's when Walnuts starts to look plain old 'Nuts. I'm seeing two main problems:

1. A shaky grasp on reality, as evidenced by Sunni-Shia confusion, Reagan "negotiations", and the innumerable other slips of mind waiting in the wings.
2. An inability to civilly deal with anyone challenging the aforementioned shakily grasped reality.

He's going to look like an old man. A very old man. I've got the feeling the party put its weight behind him and gave him the nod because they know what's coming in the fall. They've lost three special elections in a row in solid Bush counties. The camel's falling to its knees and more knives are drawn. So you give it to the old curmudgeon, see what he can do. If he wins it, he owes you big for not giving his campaign the Schiavo plugpull. If he loses, ah hell, you were gonna buckle down anyway.

Which makes his veep choice very interesting. Romney's biding his time and waiting for '12, when he can emerge as true conservative come forth to battle after Walnuts' valiant but failed showing. (nb, this would've been Hillary's strategy if she really thought BarryHussein would lose. Instead, she's on the Huckabee "hope for a miracle" plan. natch.)

Continuance later, now for some playoff highlights...

-K

"Now my story begins in Nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say "dickety" because the Kaiser had stolen the wold "twenty". I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles."
-Grandpa Simpson