Free Passes for Republicans (Again?)

What's happening here? Our national elections are become a "game", and Sarah Palin is the newest attack dog-mascot employed by the opposing team.

It's been said that America's elections are decided, not by the candidate's stand on the issues confronting the nation, but on the voter's selection of the candidate that he or she would most like to sit down with and have a beer. Just look where that criteria for choosing our President got us.

And yet, having learned nothing from the last eight years of Republican "Search and Destroy" tactics waged against our Constitution and our citizenry, it appears that the Republicans are once again pursuing their destructive and, sadly, their very successful scorched-earth-character-assassination-style of campaigning; a style that is based upon lies, spin, and the deliberate distortion of facts, and which will, I fear, yet again result in a Republican entering the Oval Office on 01/20/09.

Note that the life and death issues facing our beloved country are utterly ignored by the MSM, which instead of informing and educating the public, colludes with the wealthy Republicans who own the majority of our MSM sources of "news", devotes lines of op-ed columns and pages of supposed "news reporting" to waxing eloquently about the bread and circuses so cynically and hypocritically being dished up for public consumption: see today's op-ed piece by Meghan Daum.

Television viewers are forced to watch McCain gazing lasciviously at her butt; women must hear and read the endless blather about her hair; and men are said to be entranced to hear that she is a lifelong NRA member who promotes herself as an aficionado of hunting and fishing, as she seeks to follow in the footsteps of another famous VP "sportsman". Like Cheney, Sarah thinks nothing of using new fangled weapons to outsmart local wildlife when hunting them. She murders wolves from the air, firing at them from an helicopter. I'd say that such behavior makes her a destroyer of wild life, not a noble and daring huntress. I find nothing admirable in the use of such over whelming violence against the beautiful wild animals living in America's vanishing wilderness.

This gal demands special kid glove treatment by the MSM, and are they ever happy to comply. Refusing to submit to any questioning of her experience; refusing to reveal her positions on issues, foreign and domestic, which currently face our country; refusing to discuss the disconnect between some of her recent decisions and her public statements about family values, abstinence only educational programs and a woman's right to choice in matters concerning her own body; and concerns about the ethics investigation currently underway in Alaska (which the McCain camp is vigorously trying to postpone until after the November election) all mean that Sarah Palin is being given a free pass. She is being allowed to provide very skewed, limited, and inconsistent "tidbits" about herself. It feels like one big titillating seductive ploy to catapult two ideologues into our nation's two highest offices.

Where is the public outcry at this MSM collusion, yet again. with the Republicans? Utterly absent. Remember: when Republicans have no desire to discuss the many complicated issues facing our nation, they consistently turn to their old stand-by strategy: Accuse your opponent of the very things YOU are doing, and go after the individual with your reflexive tactic to slime your way into office: spew forth your politics of personal destruction and chatter as loudly and frequently as possible. And that is exactly what John and Sarah are doing. Where is our nation's MSM? MIA, again. There is no acknowledgment that this is happening again. No outcry at all the issues that are being ignored by the Republicans. Let me just mention a few receiving little or no significant mention:

• of Bush's war and the thousands of dead American sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and friends;
• of the (hundreds of thousands?) of Iraqis maimed and killed;
• of the shredding of our cherished Constitution;
• of the death spiral which is our economy;
• of the growing divisiveness within all governmental bodies and jurisdictions across our nation;
• of the deepening despair about the legislative gridlock rampant across our nation;
• of our nation's broken healthcare system;
• of the questions about the viability of social security;
• of how to truly become energy independent; and finally,
• of what to do to preserve and improve our planet's health.

This is to name but a few of the many pressing problems currently festering just out of sight within our nation's wounded body.

Republicans proudly wear buttons that carry her picture and the words: "Hottest VP from the coldest state". "Sarah Barracuda", who has assumed center stage in the McCain campaign, the third beauty queen (that we know about) after whom McCain visibly lusts (and not just in his heart), has energized the Republican's base with her lipsticked-pit-bull attacks, her misrepresentations of facts, and her slanderous lies about Obama.

What is going on? Have we learned nothing in these last eight years? Truly, the MSM is no friend to the citizens of this country.

The Democratic Vice President Nominee

Forget The Roads Not Taken
It's too late for me to mourn the non-selection of Wes Clark or Hillary Clinton. After the campaign is over we can all assess that. For now, moving on, I have to say Joe Biden is going to prove a helluva good consolation.