Perhaps the list I posted below is a hoax, but as I said in my correction, Palin’s ideology is just fine with banning books. I grew up among Palin’s people, I know them. They are intolerant, aggrived, and deeply anti-intellectual. And homophobic. Now it appers that, while the particular list may have been made up, Palin did attempt to get books taken off the Wasilla Public Library’s selves because she found them personally offensive.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Reginal Shepherd: 1963 – 2008
The poet Reginal Shepherd has died after a heroic battal against cnacer during which he continued to write poems and weblong entries. I only met him once. Both on the page & in person, his commitment to honesty, clarity, & beauty are what I will remember. He was, truly, one of the makers. [See also this, from people who knew him well.]
Fred Clark on John McCain, Friend of NAMBLA
John McCain is a friend of child molesters. He wants to make it harder for parents and the police to protect children from sexual predators.
Kevin Drum on John McCain
What does a McCain presidency hold in store? Kevin Drum has a vision of the future & it isn’t pretty. Here’s the middle of his post, but you should read the rest:
John McCain has obviously decided that he can’t win a straight-up fight, so he’s decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war Armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?
If McCain wins, he’ll face a Democratic congress that’s beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won’t even return McCain’s phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It’ll be four years of all-out war.
And what if Obama wins? The last time a Democrat won after a resurgence of the culture war right, we got eight years of madness, climaxing in an impeachment spectacle unlike anything we’d seen in a century. If it happens again, with the lunatic brigade newly empowered and shrieking for blood, Obama will be another Clinton and we’ll be in for another eight years of near psychotic dementia.
My only problem with this analysis is that the Democratic Congress has shown no signs of fury in the face of recent outrages so it’s hard to imagine them “beyond furious” at any future outrages. I think a McCain victory should be the catalyst for rank & file Dems to throw the double-dealing bastards out & bring in some elected officials from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. Primary challenges for all the leadership. Or maybe we should just all go tend our gardens in the worst of all possible worlds.
Josh Marshall on McCain / Palin
Most people who come by this space probably also read Josh Marshall’s TPM, but if you don’t, then please read this post about John McCain. I wonder if Nancy Pelosi will “take impeachment off the table” when it turns out that Vice President Palin has lied to the grand jury investigating Troopergate, as she inevitably will.
I’m not saying that Obama will not win, but as Marshall notes, it is clearly possible that John McCain will be our next president, as lying, race-baiting, & morally unfit a president as we will have had since Nixon. And if McCain is our next president, speaking personally, I will simply have to give up the last shreds of my liberal American idealism & admit to myself that I live among a jingoistic, shallow, racist, selfish, & stupid citizenry. So, yeah, I’m an elitist — I believe in trying to find the truth, however provisional — while my salt-of-the-earth fellow Americans — at least half of them, those ordinary folk Mrs. Palin is supposed to appeal to — have become the sort of radical moral relativists so long denounced by the culture warriors of the hard right, a deeply ironic turn of events the right itself seems completely unaware of. Allan Bloom & William Bennett where art thou?