"Listening to McCain, you'd think it was the Democrats who occupied the White House the last seven-plus years and it was time to throw the bastards out.

"Given that 82 percent of voters believe we are heading in the wrong direction, it's a logical position to take. But for the American people to buy into the notion that McCain, who has raced to Bush's side on tax cuts, on off shore drilling -- even on torture -- is this campaign's agent of change, it's going to require an incredible suspension of disbelief. Or a serious case of amnesia.

"And this is clearly McCain's campaign strategy: inducing amnesia about the past and confusion about the future, attempting to hoodwink the American people about what he has become. Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. As a major distraction. In the effort to divert attention from the matter at hand -- McCain's embrace of all things Bush -- Palin is the perfect storm...

"Forget worrying about the economy or health care or the housing crisis -- think about how many people live in Wasilla, whether Bristol and Levi will live happily ever after, and if Sarah and her 'First Dude' really want Alaska to secede from the union."

"It seems like only yesterday that the Republican Party was complaining about Barack Obama's lack of foreign policy 'experience.' (As a matter of fact, when I started writing this, it actually was yesterday.) Even now, the Republican National Committee's main anti-Obama Web site has the witty address http://www.notready08.com. The contrast in experience, especially foreign policy experience, between John McCain and Obama was supposed to be the central focus of McCain's campaign.

"But that's so five minutes ago, before Sarah Palin. Already, conservative pundits have come up with creative explanations for McCain's choice of a vice presidential running mate with essentially no foreign policy experience. First prize (so far) goes to Michael Barone, who notes on the U.S. News and World Report blog that 'Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II.' I think we need to know what Sarah Palin has done, in her year and change as governor of Alaska, to protect the freedom of the Aleutian Islands before deciding how many foreign policy experience credits she deserves on their account."


Somehow, the Republicans seem to think that the American people will just forget all about the past eight years.

No.  Let me rephrase that.

They think they can MAKE the American people forget all about the past eight years.

In fact, in McCain's speech last night, when he got to the part about foreign policy, I stared gape-mouthed as he completely failed to even MENTION Afghanistan, where the Taliban has regained a foothold, they are encroaching in power and territory into Pakistan as we speak, (which DOES have nuclear weapons and a very shaky brand-new government), and where more American troops have died in recent months than in Iraq, which was the FAKE war on terror they started six years ago.

He did not mention Afghanistan, but he went on and on about big bad Russia kicking the ass of poor little struggling Georgia (who he also failed to mention, started the fight in the first place by dropping cluster bombs on Ossetia)--and IRAN.

What the hell?

Those Republicans--they throw around all kinds of glory-words in relation to Iraq, words like VICTORY WITH HONOR.

I remember vividly when Richard Nixon got himself elected president by using those exact same words in relation to Vietnam.

But just as with Tricky Dick, there was no explanation as to just exactly what the hell any of that MEANS.

McCain spent literally HALF of his speech touting his own heroism in Vietnam, but FAILED TO EVEN BRING UP veterans returning from multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with horrific injuries and post traumatic stress--only to be shipped back AGAIN before even a year is out.

As the New York Times put it in an editorial:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/opinion/04thu1.html?_r=1&ei=5070&oref=slogin&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print


"The difficulty for the Republican ticket in talking about change and reform and acting like insurgents is that they have been running Washington — the White House and Congress — for most of the last eight years...

"As hard as he tries, Mr. McCain cannot escape the burdensome shadow of President Bush because his policies offer no real change. On the all-important issue of the economy, Mr. McCain has no prescription for ending the mortgage-driven crisis or for fixing the huge fiscal problems Mr. Bush has bequeathed the nation. He wants to make even deeper cuts in corporate taxes, eliminate the alternative minimum income tax and make permanent the Bush tax cuts that vastly favor the wealthy and that he once correctly opposed.

"His only idea for balancing the budget seems to be controlling earmarks, which Republicans now denounce with the sort of single-minded fervor they used to reserve for Democratic-appointed judges.

"Permanently extending the tax cuts would reduce tax revenue by $1 trillion over four years. If Mr. McCain eliminated every earmark (including money for the gas pipeline that Ms. Palin wants to build in Alaska), the savings would total about $18 billion a year. He hasn’t offered any idea of where he’ll get the rest of the money.

"He has not explained how he plans to rein in out-of-control financial firms and avoid a repeat of the mortgage disaster. Mr. Bush’s ideological opposition to sound government regulation is in large measure to blame for the economic crisis, but when Mr. McCain talks about fixing Washington, that subject never comes up.

"Mr. McCain also has yet to explain to voters how he intends to go on paying for the war in Iraq — and also fix a dangerously stretched and overburdened military. Mr. McCain talks about energy independence. But his primary solution is not a solution: drilling and more drilling.

"Mr. McCain says he is the candidate who will better protect the country from terrorism. But about all he has to offer is his pledge to continue the war in Iraq. We have yet to hear an explanation for how he plans to do that while also salvaging the war in Afghanistan — the real front line in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban."


Watching McCain's speech last night--and Palin's before it--I felt as though I had entered Jerry Seinfeld's "Bizarro World."

In the episode, "Bizarro World," Elaine gets mixed up with a group of friends who eerily resemble her usual gang of Seinfeld, Kramer, and George.  One of the guys is a laid-back wise-cracker, one is tall and clumsy, and one is short and bald with glasses.

For a while, it looks as though Elaine has found a whole new gang that is just like her last one, only somehow better.  They are nicer to her, she thinks, and for a while, she toys with the idea that she might just REPLACE the old gang with the Bizarro World gang.

But things begin to unravel for Elaine when she starts to treat the new gang in the same way she had the last.  When the Kramer-replacement guy says something outrageous, she says her usual, "Get OUT!" and shoves his chest with her hands--a funny little habit she'd developed with Kramer that always made him smile.

Instead, the guy stumbles and falls, crying out, "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?" and whining that she hurt him.  The others race to his side, help him up, and turn on Elaine, accusing her of being crazy and irresponsible for attacking their friend.

And that spells the end of the Bizarro World friendship.

This past week, we have witnessed a Republican Bizarro World.

Don't be fooled.

For one thing, everything out of their mouths is a lie.

If you want to know the truth about how Sarah Palin actually EMBRACED earmarks, squandered a surplus as mayor and left a deficit after first building huge projects the town didn't need and neglecting sewage treatment and other projects they did; if you want to read her REAL record of Alaska, and if you would like a primer on just how UNreal a state government Alaska is compared to other states, (huge oil revenues due to the high prices on the marketplace right now have given it a big surplus when most states can barely function), check these out:

"About Sarah Palin: An E-Mail from Wasilla," by Anne Kilkenny in the Seattle Crosscut:

http://www.crosscut.com/2008-election/17341

and, "The Unusual Challenges Palin Faced in Alaska," by Kirk Johnson, New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/us/politics/04alaska.html?adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1220619913-D/wo38r3FSRX9wZigbtPIA&pagewanted=print


But I don't want to talk about Sarah Palin.  As Obama said in a press conference yesterday, http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/  (scroll down to find it):

"I'm not running against Sarah Palin.  I'm running against John McCain."

And John McCain is not change.

If my mind didn't already know this last night, my body informed me, when I got so upset at McCain's speech that I burst into tears and then threw up.

Before watching the speech, my moderate Republican-turned Obama supporter husband had told me that when I posted my blog later about the speech, "Don't get emotional."

He said that journalists had to deal only in FACTS and that I should present only facts in my blogpost and that, furthermore, I should not get emotional watching the speech.

"Before battle," he said, "one of the most important things you have to do is get to know your enemy."

To that end, I was to stuff down any emotional reaction I was having and concentrate on what was going on on the screen.

And I knew my husband was right.  I knew he was saying that if I wanted people to listen, really listen, to what I had to say, I had to present it in such a way that was non-emotional and therefore non-threatening.

But almost as soon as the Republicans cued up their own powerful emotional video of McCain's POW experience, I found myself screaming at the TV screen.

Even my cat jumped up in my lap, checking to make sure I was all right.

It kind of went downhill from there.

And I knew, once the speech was over and I had burst into tears and finally gotten sick, that this was way over the top, that something was WRONG with me, and what the hell was it?

Why couldn't I just sit down and calmly analyze the speech like everybody else?

And then it dawned on me.

I thought, "It's post traumatic stress."

You see, it's not just soldiers and Marines who suffer the trauma of war, it is also their families who must endure endless ongoing agonies of anxiety, fear, and anguish every day for months on end, and then, go through it all over again.

It changes us, we combat moms and dads.  It does something to our minds.  All that stress rewires something in the brain, and we can get triggered into over-the-top emotional reactions by things as surely as our boys and girls can by, say, sitting through fireworks demonstrations on the Fourth of July.

Even when they are home now and safe, as is my own son.

And for me, all those rippling flags...all that stirring patriotic talk about VICTORY and HONOR and WAR-HERO...it brought back to me my own dismal despair as I had watched them do the same damn thing in 2000 and in 2004--perverting patriotism into some twisted political pandering--twisting suffering into sloganism, and attacking anyone, anywhere who DARED to question their party line.

Let me put it as bluntly as I know:

WHEN REPUBLICANS LIE, PEOPLE DIE.

It is that simple.

They sent fine young men and women off to DIE for their LIE that was Iraq, and they did it year after year, and they manipulated their way into power by waving flags and draping troops across the stage like props--much the same way the Palin children are being handled today. 

In 2004, my son and thousands of other Marines were forced to congregate and wait outside Fallujah before the biggest urban combat battle since World War II.  They had to wait until AFTER the elections that year, because it would have reflected badly on the Republican incumbent when hundreds of those Marines fell in the bloody, horrific battle.

And three days after George W. Bush was re-elected, to the backdrop of many rippling flags, the battle began.  It lasted the better part of a week, and the casualties were awful, but that was okay, because the Republicans had held the White House, so it didn't matter anymore.

Politics is personal when it can get you or your loved one killed.

So I don't give a flying damn how big of a war hero John McCain might have been 40 years ago, not if he uses that experience as a springboard to keep sending American troops into more meaningless wars with no end.

In his nomination speech, McCain said, "I hate war."

We were supposed to believe him because he's been a POW in another war, but at the same time, we are supposed to trust him that it's okay to drag this moderan war on for DECADES.

I don't care how red white and blue their soundstage is if they are going to ignore the soldiers and Marines when they come home exhausted and broken, as McCain has done numerous times,  http://deaniemills.com/2008/08/06/bikers-may-love-mccain-but-veterans-do-not.aspx  or if an entire war on another front is going to be completely left out of a nomination speech before the American people, as though they're not dying there right now.

Why would they leave out Afghanistan? 

Because it's not a "good war" for the Republicans. 

Because they blew it by pulling out troops and materiel that was desperately needed there.  Because now we're in trouble in Afghanistan and we HAVE to draw down in Iraq in order to FIX YET ANOTHER MESS THE REPUBLICANS GOT US INTO.

But that's okay.  In Republican Bizarro World, we just pretend it never happened.

In Republican Bizarro World, we are asked to believe the foxes when they say, "Who better to protect the helpless little chickies from big bad foxes?  Let US guard the hen house!"

You know what I say to that?

Get OUT.