Well kids, we're fucked; run the Obama-Hates-Babies ad...

I realize this is going to provide aid and comfort to the know-nothing Bob-Barr fringe -- essentially, women in parka vests with coolers of rain water and grain alcohol in their camper-back pickups, busily protecting our precious bodily fluids --but this ad started running in Ohio yesterday, 10/7, night after the debate, during the news hour:

BHO is up 14 in Pennsylvania, up 10 in Wisconsin, up 14 in Minnesota, up 6 in Colorado, up 7 in Nevada and ahead by a couple in Ohio, Florida and Virginia. Obama has a plus 19 favorable. In order to win the election, McCain has to sweep 8 toss-up states (Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida). To repeat: Barry only has to win a state larger than Colorado. Stakes is high.

What's interesting to me is to see what McCain does when cornered, and to figure what that means for his party: it's clear that, in a tough spot, he's decided to swing to the right. Bad debate fixed with abortion ads. Bad VP debate fixed by domestic terrorist smears. Bad economy fixed by accusing FNMA and FMAC of loaning too much money to poor, inner-city black folk. The preconditions-meme, the government-chooses-your-doctor-meme, usw; all the familiar tropes of 1990s AM radio on an eternal-return.

Now, what that means is that McCain has adopted a revolutionary posture. Like the SI said, revolutionary language (or punk rock, for Greil Marcus) brings the unsettled debts of history back into play. 1990s revanchists evidently believe that their concerns remain incompletely addressed. And there's a case for that. But there's no real way to pay them their ransom; when public discourse is held hostage, the price of release escalates every time it is met, (e.g., the NRA radicalized gun ownership in the late 1970s via the specter of government raids on private homes; then by fighting mandatory gun-locks, mandatory gun registration, background checks on purchasers, handgun bans in inner cities. Their demands are now so acute that even Pennsylvania's proposed one-gun-a-month law was treated as a mortal danger and scuttled.) thereby making the tactic profitable so long as the stakes are low, and incremental gains tiny.

If your movement calls for France to reclaim the Ruhr valley, your movement will fail; if your movement calls for the full funding of French-language private schools in Alsace, then you can work your way east. Likewise, no one wants to overturn Roe v. Wade; they want to stop clinics that promote abortion-on-demand, stop spending tax dollars on contraceptives overseas, and protect the babies that survive partial birth abortion.

THUS, the ad above. Barry clearly voted against the Illinois law because he refused to be baited by the fringe right. Let's recall that less than one percent of all abortions in the US occur after 24 weeks; extraction-and-dilation accounts for a fraction of that; what Illinois zealots believe to be botched E&D would account for a fraction of that number. If that number exists at all. The whole intent of the law was to scare providers into no longer providing. If doctors think they'll lose their license for a one in a million mistake made in a one in 10,000 procedure, they'll do the math; if insurers see a risk, no matter how infinitesimal, they will kill said risk.

The capstone in the right's strategy is to gradually push all women wanting abortions into late-term, high-risk procedures: 87 percent of all American counties have no abortion provider; 60 percent of all women delay abortions. If there's no Plan B, if there's abstinence-only education, if there's intense public disapprobation of abortion, women get funnelled into the high-risk procedures. Then, all the right has to do to de facto outlaw abortion is to outlaw the high-risk procedures. Viz. the Guttmacher Institute.

I mean, that's the theory. Again, the whole point of fighting on the fringe is to keep the issue alive. The point is to fight, not to win. The vast majority of women who have abortions do so for economic reasons. To tangle with the main causes of abortion would be to tangle with poverty. This ad is to bring out the base (in both senses of the word). Running this ad, at this time exemplifies the McCain-Palin retreat-to-the-right, and their preparation for the advent of the Hensarling Quasar...
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I didn't say "Bomb, Bomb, Iran," I said "Rock the Casbah"...

Obama had two replies. First, he wasn't calling for an invasion of Pakistan—just for "taking out" Osama Bin Laden if we had him in our sights and the Pakistanis couldn't or wouldn't do it. Then he won the round decisively by remarking, "This is the guy who said 'Bomb, bomb Iran,' " who called for "the annihilation of North Korea," and who, after we ousted the Taliban from Kabul, said, "Next up, Baghdad." That's not talking softly. (McCain's response, that he was just joking with an old veteran friend, was, first, not true—he said it in a public forum—and, second, quite lame.)

Yeah I was wondering about that lame excuse. I mean, for my money, it wasn't the most outlandish, nor the most important/heavyweight misdirection Walnuts used in the town hall, e.g., he will fine you, he will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, (at 02:03)

he was wrong on Russia (btw, we're all wrong on Georgia; are Georgians sniping at Russians as they (the Russians) leave?).
Right, sod all that. Where is this "Bomb Bomb Iran" thing? Murrell's Inlet, SC? Listen to the wackjob fascist asking the question: When do we airmail Tehran? Poor Walnuts had to do something...I actually think the Barbara Ann thing is hilarious, and it's going to be in my head for the rest of the afternoon. We out here at the 'Steer already understand that the Famous Air Pirate is off his gourd, so the joking about nuclear annihilation thing is, we feel, to be taken in stride. Like the man says, get a life; Politics has no real-world application, right?
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If only Lil Chuckie had worked for Blackwater...

Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, founder of the Demon Forces (officially referred to as the Anti-Terrorism Unit) is in the Hague. His son Chuckie McArthur Emmanuel, born in Boston, in in Miami facing prosecution under 18 USC 2340A, the extraterritorial torture statute. In Liberia in the late 90s,

Mr. Emmanuel selected and shot [three men] in the heads [sic]. He then ordered their bodies to be dragged away and displayed two of the heads at the checkpoint posts,

you know, among other counter-terrorist-spring-break activities...

Q: Is his defense attorney smart enough to make use of exemptions to US torture law to get Chuckie off?

(Chuckie's trial in the US, btw, might have been mooted by extraordinary rendition; can't we just call this guy a terrorist and ship his ass to Syria and pull out his fingernails?)

I mean, it's tricky, but this is what the guy is paid for. It all hinges on his status. Emmanuel, clearly considers himself an anti-terrorist operative. It's clear that the USG doesn't want to deport/extradict him, so there's no real loss by his claiming to be a paramilitary fighter, or a civilian contractor working for the Liberian (i.e., his pop's) army. At the time of the atrocities, the nearest thing governing the actions of American civilian contractors was MEJA (Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, 2000), which covers any American employed overseas by Department of Defense. Commit a felony, you're tried in the US. There were, until last year, holes:

The holes in MEJA became especially apparent during the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004, when a civilian interrogator from Titan Corporation and a civilian interpreter from CACI International faced no punishment, despite their implication in the official report.31 These civilians were technically working for the US Department of the Interior, rather than the DOD, thus shielding them from MEJA’s reach. Their military colleagues had no such protection from courts-martial, however.

So, to rephrase the Q: Is there light between being an American torturer abroad and being an American civilian contractor not employed by DoD?
And, Q: Since we've spent so much time cobbling ways (way, way, way, way, way, way) for non-soldier torturers to escape prosecution by a "host country," or indeed, by anyone, where's the sympathy for the Demon?
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The Backwards Way looks forward...discovering the Hensarling Quasar...

Not to refry the VP debate or anything, which in this 49th hour of coverage has finally gelatinized into a tight bolus of conventional wisdom (Palin did not trip over her shoelaces; Biden did not push her face into the mud), but I can't shake my ideological middle-ear back into alignment. There were steeplechase moments on both sides (Biden triangulating on gay marriage, Palin's "darn right it was those predatory lenders,"), but the strategic-level outburst of cognitive dissonance, the peal of feedback in my polisci-lizard brain was in the tandem pronouncements:

"We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce [sic]. Government is going to have to learn to be more efficient and live with less if that's what it takes to reign in the government growth that we've seen today."

and,

"And the rescue plan has got to include that massive oversight that Americans are expecting and deserving."

Or this pair:

"Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper."

and,

"We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings [...]"

If you believe, with John Dickerson, that this debate was about rebranding Sarah Palin for future use, you have to square these statements. This is the Republican VP candidate calling for massive regulation of financial markets alongside massive deregulation. My brain, together with my hair, stood on end! WWMilton Friedman D?

Never mind that Palin is participating in the same overt hypocrisy of Reagan's "Government, you are the problem," pretending that government is something you can be in and not of, something you seek but won't accept, (also, necessarily, presuming that government is something other than the things we choose to do together), etc., the way that diehard evangelicals read the Letter to the Romans' "Be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed," and find free license to run a child-rape cult...Again, never mind all that. Never mind the soggy logical turf her handlers are inhabiting there. What kind of party brand can you build on this?

What I would have given for Biden to have started autistically screeching "Fuzzy Math!" or "Voodoo Economics!" Clearly, we need a shock into awareness. The party brand -- listen up, Mitt! -- that is built when you promise to shrink government while maintaining an open-ended war in Iraq, while increasing non-emergency approprations for defense, USW, is the Bush-Cheney brand. It is deficits don't matter. It's this kind of pigeon shit.

Maybe it's an Eastern thing, like "Spending and tax cuts are the father and mother of the ten-thousand things," but my guess is it's far from it...

IF, on the other hand, you struggle to comprehend why anyone thought this a successful appearance for SP (at 01:19 here, she called Al Qaeda Shiites:

she said the trouble on Main Street was trickling up to Wall Street (which she didn't mean to say, clearly, but is true nonetheless), and this is recalled off the top of my head, God knows what other horrors lie in that transcript), then the above are just parts of a cynical "Sure, you can have your cake and eat it, why not?" gesture.

No Republican president has ever shrunk government and none ever will. We all know this. But the only thing worse than a will-wank-for-coins tactic is a will-wank-for-coins tactic that doesn't work. The tax-cut-spending-increase bait-and-switch will crash the Republican party (and looking very far ahead, the thing I really fear is a hard nut of a latter-day GOP emerging when this party goes -nova, the remaining True Believer fiscal conservatives sloughing off the excess gas of the past 14 years to become a mighty quasar, a radio beacon audible throughout the universe; those guys are more comfortable on AM anyway; the Hensarling Quasar is a metaphor pret a porter).

Either the tune is going to change, or Jeb Hensarling will be the only one standing When the Revolution Come...
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Should the Worst Happen...

Sarah Palin is not a blithering idiot. She is only woefully underprepared to speak on the issues facing our nation. She can speak in broad terms. She can speak in terms of "Protect America" and "Stand With Our Allies" and "Defend Freedom," but, when asked for specifics... for "tactics," if you will, she falls flat. Therefore, Biden shouldn't have to win this debate, for Palin will lose it for him in a manner like unto my beloved Lakers this past summer. Woefully unprepared, green, with potential, but undeveloped.

But, should the worst happen, and she prove herself likeable and not fumbling. Should she come out and shine and not answer questions but still look goll-darned likeable while she's not answering questions... well, the "Liberal Media" will jump all over it. 

• Could she be the comeback kid for McCain?
  
• New Life for the McCain campaign? 
  
• Palin resuscitates the race?
  

Und So Weiter. And the polls may shift a bit, and McCain may gain some in the battleground states, and the talk will shift back to What Can Obama Do to Counter Palin, the Thorn in His Side? etc etc etc. 

Before any of that has the chance of happening, I just want to predict--should Palin do moderately okay--a surge for McCain which will be quashed following the next presidential debate. This is an easy prediction, but I just want it on the record. 

Hitting is timing, Joe...no need to pull the ball...

Dude, I loved that Chris Webber clip so much, here's an analogue:

Man set a breaking ball down and in, where ostensibly no righthanded hitter can do anything with it, and Manolo somehow gets the bat head out in front of that thang and we out. Peace. Folks said he wasn't a team player, that he'd lost the heart to compete, that he was a showboat, that he couldn't play left field, that Youkilis should have messed up his face back in June or whenever...I say he's a consummate veteran who understands the task at hand, that nothing matters until the end of the month when the champion is crowned.

Does any of this sound like Joe Biden? Blowhard, slacking off in the Senate, picking silly fights with people (A noun and verb and 9/11? Isn't 9/11 a noun?), prone to fits of pique. The only lesson of Manny Ramirez' career that Joe needs to learn, really, is to smile...your job is the greatest game in the world, you will go down in history either as a bum or a titan. Choose.

And the baseball metaphor I'm thinking of, I suppose is actually from the West Wing.

Bartlet: You think the strike against me is people don't like the smartest kid in the class.

Ziegler: It's not a strike unless you watch it as it sails by.

Seriously, Joe, you can get the head out in front of a bad-looking slider. Crush 'em...
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Laugh to keep from crying (havoc and letting slip the dogs of war)

This is past absurdity. It's like one of those jokes on Family Guy. You know: Peter hits his knee and then sits on the ground and winces and moans for like two minutes. It goes from being WTF? to being chuckleworthy to being hilarious at how long they're drawing it out to being OK when are they done with this to being Okay, it's funny again.

Yeah, it's like that. Except there's no commercial break. Except it's real. A number of commentators have pointed out that Palin's appeal is that she's "one of us." (oneofus. oneofus. oneofus.) Don't read much beyond the local paper--mostly the funnies. love that Sally Forth--but gosh darnit, if we just got some reg'lar folks in the Oval Office and cut through the horsehocky, by gosh, we could get this country back on the right track-- and get rid of them Messicans while we're at it.

(Me? I'm in the John Stewart camp: I want a president who's Embarrassingly Superior to me. But what do I know? I'm typing this on a Macbook, smoking American Spirits and tabbing between Blogger and The Atlantic.)

Yeah, Palin's for real. Her stunning ignorance as to any matter outside of Alaska and the rearing head of Vladimir is real and very much in line with oneofus status in a nation in which something like half the populace hasn't finished a book in the last year. No laugh track for her, though. The laughs--to keep from crying--should be saved for when she tries to appoint Judge Joe Brown to the Supreme Court in a year and a half after McCain's face falls off.