The GOP: Partying like it's 1929!

"Fellow citizens, if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will."

George W. Bush
September 2, 2008

Oh, pahleeeez....

I'll have to admit it. I do get a certain amount of joy watching the professional Republican party in action. There is something indescribably fascinating about watching a gathering of corrupt hacks and hackettes - so completely, morally bankrupt - trying to portray themselves as the Party of Morality. The side-splitting, unintentional comedy emanating last night from the city of St. Paul, Minnesota was truly something wondrous and fun to behold! For instance, when Laura Bush stood up in front of the cheering multitudes and proclaimed that during his eight years in office, her husband, the president, had kept the American people "safe", the first words to come to my mind were the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 5, 2001 - over a month before the hideous attacks of September 11th:

"BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN THE UNITED STATES".

How could any sane person with a sense of history and irony not scream with laughter at such an absurd contention? Oh, Laura! What (if anything) were you thinking when you fell in love with that jackass? Goodness gracious, me!
Another thing that struck the funny bone with a vengeance was the old man. After Dubya addressed the convention via satellite from the Oval office, the camera cut to George the elder. It was laughingly apparent that poor old Poppy was just as proud as a peacock at the performance of his half-witted kid. Obviously someone has been hiding the newspapers from the clueless old bastard these past seven-and-a-half years.

The convention got off to a shaky start. The GOP initially found themselves in a damned if they do-damned if they don't situation. Obviously the last thing in the world they needed was for the American people to be reminded of the last eight, nightmare years by having Bush and Cheney physically present at the convention. At the same time, however, the reason for their absence would have been obvious to everyone (even the viewers of FOX and Friends). What to do? Gustav to the rescue! Once it became clear that the hurricane was going to pound the shit out of the gulf coast, Dubya and the Dickster had the perfect excuse to stay away. Thus, they were able to avoid doing further damage to their already crippled party and look like a couple of hands on, in control kind of guys at the same time. It was the first time since Lyndon Johnson forty years ago that an incumbent president failed to show up at his own party's convention.
The theme of last night's festivities I found a mite curious....

"JOHN McCAIN: THE PERSON HE IS"

Interesting. Is that supposed to mean "as opposed to the person he isn't"? What exactly are they trying to tell us here? Certainly they could not have been referring to the man's judgement, could they? That doesn't make a damned bit of sense! What does it say about his "judgement" when the first important decision of his campaign was his selection of a running mate? In the days since he introduced Alaska governor Sarah Palin in Dayton, Ohio, all sorts of juicy tidbits have been revealed about the woman's past.

I think that it is worth noting here that one of the founding fathers of the Republican party was Abraham Lincoln, a man who believed that no state has a constitutional right to secede from the union. What does it say about the Arizona senator's" judgement" when the person he chooses to be a "heartbeat away" from his seat in the Oval Office is a woman who in recent years was involved through her husband with an organization which advocated Alaskan secession?

What does it say about John McCain's "judgement" when one of his running mate's main selling points is that she was opposed to the infamous "bridge to nowhere" - and then we find out that not only was she not opposed to the bridge, she worked overtime to ensure that it would come into being?

What does it say about McCain's "judgement" when we learn that he allowed the person he chose to be the next vice-president (Heaven forbid) to be "vetted" not by responsible and trained investigators (as did Barack Obama in the case of Joe Biden - a man he has known for years), but by a handful of ideologues from the extreme, lunatic fringe of his already demonstrably nutty party? I sound like a comedy writer, don't I?
And forgive me for bringing this up - I'm not going to make an issue out of this but it is something which is just screaming to be addressed: What does it say about the "judgement" of John McCain when we learn that Sarah Palin's unmarried, seventeen-year-old daughter is expecting a child - and yet she still supports "abstinence only" sex education?

Don't you think at this point in time that it's gut-wrenchingly obvious that John McCain's "judgement" leaves just a tad to be desired? I sure do! All his life, the one thing McCain's peers remembered about him was his recklessness. His inexplicable choice of Sarah "Pale in Comparison" Palin to be on the ticket is but another example of that recklessness.

There were all sorts of moments last night that will linger in one's memory. I'm glad I thought to tape the whole thing. Fred Thompson's hate-filled tirade against Barach Obama was one for the history books. Joe Lieberman had his "Zell Miller moment". Although he refrained from challenging Chris Matthews to a duel immediately afterwards, his very presence there was enough of a reminder what a dreadful mistake it was for Al Gore to choose him as second on the ticket in 2000. His contention that Senator Obama has never worked with the opposition party to reach a consensus was a bald-faced lie and he knows it. Please, If there is a more despicable asshole than Joe Lieberman currently walking the halls of the United States Senate, I'd sure as hell like to know about it. Just drop me an e-mail.
But the absolutely hilarious, highlight of the evening was a stomach-turning, maudlin, sickening and screamingly funny (unintentionally so) tribute to the Gipper. Ronald Reagan is a textbook example as to how dumbed down the people of this doomed country have become in the last thirty years as far as governmental affairs are concerned. Think about it for a minute: The destruction of America's social and economic infrastructure began on that day in January of 1981 when Reagan stood on the steps on the U.S. Capital and said to the comatose American people, "Government isn't the answer to the problem. Government is the problem." Oh, really?

Almost twenty-eight years later, where has the so-called "Reagan Revolution" left us? America's tax burden has been laid on the backs of the poor and middle classes while the people who already had more money than they knew what to do with have had their taxes cut. Our educational system, once the envy of the planet, is in tatters. Bridges all over the country are in serious disrepair and in danger of collapse - I won't even drive on the 59th Street Bridge that connects Queens to the island of Manhattan. Which reminds me, why on earth did they choose to have their convention in St. Paul? Did they really want to remind people of their crumbling infrastructure and the catastrophic collapse last year of the bridge that connected that city with Minneapolis? Again, it's all a question of judgement.

One of the claims made by the narrator of the film was that "the media hated him". Beg pardon? In 1986, you'll remember, Reagan and company were caught red handed supplying arms to the Contras in Nicaragua in direct violation of the Boland Amendment. This little scheme was funded by selling offensive, hi-tech military weapons to the Iranian government of Ayatollah Khomeini - the same guy whose motto was "DEATH TO AMERICA". Nice! In all but a few cases the media gave old Ronnie a free pass. He should have been impeached and sent off to Leavenworth in a padded wagon.

Sooner or later the people are bound to wake up to the fact that Ronald Reagan was a doddering, senile old fool who would have been rendered helpless but for the invention of the teleprompter. It was he who planted the seeds of America's ultimate self-destruction, the bitter harvest of which we are only now starting to taste nearly two decades after his administration mercifully came to an end. And yet the citizens of this once-great nation still worship the dirty old dingbat with a reverence that borders on mental illness. We Americans are funny that way, aren't we?

It is a point of pride with me that I never - for an instant - succumbed to Ronniemania.
The Republican National Convention will continue this evening in all of its absurd and twisted merriment. Of this you may be absolutely certain: I'll be watching. How could I possibly miss such a spectacle? It is - no doubt about it - must see TV for anyone with a sick sense of humor. The "party of Lincoln" (I know! I know! I'm laughing too!) has been taken over not only by organized criminals but by a cabal of fools with the average IQ of a half-eaten box of Milk Duds. Is it any wonder that they're so much fun to watch? I'm sure gonna miss them when they're gone.

Tom Degan
Member in good standing of the "ANGRY LEFT"
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:
Thanks to brother Jeff Degan for suggesting the title of this piece.

Happy Forty-ninth birthday to brother Pete Degan.

If you haven't yet checked out Hugh Scott's excellent new web site, "Unfit McCain", you really ought to. Here's a link:
http://www.unfitmccain.com/
SUGGESTED READING:
Mike's Election Guide
by Michael Moore

There are one-hundred and thirty-eight days until George W. Bush is out of the White House and on his way to federal prison.