Letters by Boz

Obama Crazies and the Spirit of 1776

The September 28, 2009 issue of New York has a good (if somewhat cursory) article about the nuttiness of some anti-Obama activists. A few pictures of the various cretins can be viewed here. (The chubby hick chick giving the middle finger pretty much sums up the class and intellect of these people.) Most of the things throwing the wingnuts into conniptions are lies and mistruths we've all heard countless times already: Obama is a Muslim/Nazi/Socialist/Communist, he wasn't born in the U.S., and so on. 

One small item did catch my attention. One sign at a Scranton, PA teabagging party apparently read, THE ANSWER TO 2009 IS 1776. What, I wonder, was so great about 1776? In 1776, country was involved in a bloody war. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were held in slavery, while countless whites were locked into the virtual slavery of indentured servitude. Participation in politics was pretty much reserved for white, male property owners, leaving huge chunks of the population disenfranchised. Essentially, the U.S. in 1776 was a far more tyrannical place than the U.S. in 2009. Free, libertarian 1776 America never existed except in the fevered minds of some reactionaries, and is just as fanciful as the supposed Marxist dictatorship we live under now.

The Debates

I don't bother watching political debates. Why should I? Really, I think only three types of people waste their time with them:

1. Politicos who are paid to comment on debates, or who are so in to the elections they actually find the whole circus entertaining;

2. The bland masses who believe that watching the candidates drone on at each other is part of their civic duty;

3. The clueless 15 percent or so of voters who are still undecided and are hoping for some sort of debate-inspired epiphany.

None of the above applies to me. That being said, I did catch a bit of the Biden-Palin debate on NPR. Goshdarnit golly-gee... she really does answer questions as if she's in another beauty pageant. She's also either rather dumb or rather deceitful (probably both) as illustrated by this exchange:

 BIDEN: Two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George -- we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies.... Nine o'clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis....

PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamentals of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce.... That's a positive. That's encouragement. And that's what John McCain meant.

So McCain and Palin just happen to have a totally different definition of economic fundamentals than the one used by analysts, investors, and, yes, economists. Darntootin', they're mavericks even in their use of the English language!

Animal Lovers for Obama

The Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF), a non-partisan organization dedicated to animal welfare, has for the first time in its history endorsed a presidential ticket: Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They explain the endorsement here.

In a nutshell, John McCain's selection of animal-slaughtering snowbilly Sarah Palin as his VP pick is what pushed the HSLF to endorse Obama-Biden:

While McCain’s positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska’s wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it—in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

What’s more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it’s the “wrong move” to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.

The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.

I wholeheartedly concur. I supported Dole in '96, and Bush in '00 and '04. Largely because of McCain's pandering choice of hick-magnet Palin as his running-mate, I will not be supporting the GOP this time around.