Brains, offended beyond all reason

[elfs]

Quite possibly the worst magazine cover ever

Andrew Sullivan pointed me to this article about how Bill Kristol remains in the tank for John McCain, but what struck me most about the article is the cover for this week's issue, visible on the right side of the article.

The cover depicts John McCain as a single, lone man standing, carrying two plastic shopping bags, standing in front of a tank driven by a scowling Barack Obama and ridden by a cohort of so-called "Obamacons" who have in recent weeks stated that they cannot support John McCain for congress.

The image is a direct reference to the Tiannamen Square Tank Man who stood in front of a line of tanks heading into Tiannamen Square to crush the pro-democracy protestors standing there.

To compare John McCain's campaign staff to those massacred in Tiannamen Square is beyond the pale, and to try and pass off John McCain as an otherwise helpless lone individual facing down a juggernaut shows the depths to which Bill Kristol's editorial sensibilities have sunk. John McCain is a senior senator with decades of power and authority accreted to his office, and if there's a "juggernaut" coming his way its one in which he was wholly complicit.

And if there's a massacre coming among the McCain campaign staff, it won't be because Democrats came in guns a-blazin'. There's a reason the phrase of the week has been Circular Firing Squad.

The editorial's just as bad.

The article that accompanies that cover is pretty horrible. Kristol goes after Joe Klein's comment that Obama "seems a grown-up, in a nation that badly needs some adult supervision," with this pithy retort:

To the contrary, we are a nation of adults. We don't need the "supervision" of a conventionally liberal and totally untested junior senator whose most impressive lifetime achievement has been the construction of an effective narrative about himself.

These are those adults of whom Kristol speaks. More importantly, it's become clear that we've been in the hands of people unserious about governance, who view government as a problem and therefore pursue governance entirely to its detriment-- and the detriment of those it serves, from George Bush on down. Bush brain-trust leader Grover Norquist irresponsibly depicted a government so small it could be destroyed, forgetting that even the night watchman needs the authority and respect of those he oversees.

We now know beyond any doubt that we have been in the hands of people who have no mature, adult, serious interest in performing the functions of government, and it shows in our economy, in our defense, and in our emergency management.

Mark Levin (Michael Savage's mini-me) pens the most paranoid screed yet

Does it get any crazier than this:

I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way. ...

Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us -- today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich."

His refusal to consider Powell and Fried "conservatives" is rather telling. What I find remarkable most of all is the way his brain simply cannot register what Powell, Fried, and Alderman are saying. I've always considered Levin little more than a parrot and a mouthpiece, shallow beyond words, but this confirms it.

Explanation of tag here.

"She does not have a relationship of trust with her family."

The circular firing squad scene continues with some McCain campaign people publicly airing their complaints about Sarah Palin, who appears to be positioning herself for the 2012 run rather than the 2008 vice presidency, and the one thing that stood out at me was this quote from an unnamed McCain campaign adviser: "She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone. She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else."

WTF? Not even with Todd? The accusation that Bristol and company are just props sounds even more significant. Jon Stewart's observation that Palins are a family of grifters almost sounds believable.

Sarah attacks basic science.

I saw this press conference, but not all of it; mostly I just tuned into it because I heard Jim Ward being catty about Sarah's hair, and I saw her giving a speech about directing Alaska to spend more money on special needs children (oh, now that she's got one the budget becomes important again!) and how the feds need to do the same. I missed the part where she dissed fundamental research "on fruit flies" as being a waste of government money.

This reminds me of the observation that the Republican view of science is essentially based on 50's science fiction. It's about big machines doing big things, and private citizens doing all that. "Basic research" is never in the foreground of these projects, and the idea that there are fundamental aspects of the universe yet to be understood can be conquered by One Great Man thinking about them. The idea that one has to actually get messy and work through thousands of false results never occurs.

Comments

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I've been saying since quite early that part of my reaction to Gov. Palin is how very very much she reminds me of my own ex.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Do you have any comment about the U.S. attack on Syria? Reports are just coming in (and my sources are all in Hebrew, alas, so linking to them is pretty useless), but it seems like there were ground forces as well as helicopters.

Is this the October surprise?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I was just about to ask the same thing.

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

I was able to find this link...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7692153.stm

[shunra.livejournal.com]

When I posted my question, Google News didn't have it on its radar. A few minutes later it had 15 hits (the top three being from the Israeli press, where the story broke earlier).

By now it's right at the top of the news, and there is no difficulty at all in finding corroboration for it.

I wonder what Syria will do. Specifically, I wonder whether Assad, the president, will be able to hold power if he does nothing.

And whether Assad or whoever deposes him (if such a thing happens) attack Israel (on Syria's southern border), I wonder if the U.S. will be able to stay out of it.

And if the U.S. gets into it, I wonder what that will do to the election. Riots in the streets if it's called off? The kind of riots that the new NorthCom units are trained in quelling? Residents for all those empty prison camps we've been hearing about?

Interesting times. Way too interesting.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Oh bloody hell...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've been out most of the afternoon with the kids, away from news and the like, and trying to have a stress-less day. So when I came home I was able to google for this and you probably know as much as I do.

The general consensus among "the decent conservatives" is that the current administration has mistreated Damascus a lot and has no interest in dealing with them. Damascus is basically waiting this out until it can deal with the Obama admin. With no love lost and little chance of political damage to either his legacy or his successor, Bush thinks he can send these little salutes of his middle finger with impunity.

Expect more like this over the coming weeks.

[(Anonymous)]

I was talking to my dad about the election a few weeks ago, and he speculated about just such an attack.

I don't think it's an October surprise, though; or, if it is, I don't think it'll work. For starters, large numbers of people are voting early. In some swing states it looks like 15-20% of registered voters have already voted. If there were a surprise in the works, it would've been weeks ago, when it first became clear that Obama's momentum had been restored. It's too late now.

Second, I don't think even a national security crisis would move anything in McCain's or the GOP's direction anymore. Poll after poll shows that a majority of voters have more confidence in Obama to deal with pretty much any kind of crisis, and the GOP brand hasn't been this tarnished since Nixon.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Elf!

Facts are never the problem with me, but interpretation sometimes eludes me. Syria is a powder keg, and it rather looks like Bush has set his match to it.

"Decent conservatives" - that's a good handle for something I've been trying to grasp for a long while. Good phrase for it.

[scyllacat.livejournal.com]

To the contrary, we are a nation of adults. We don't need the "supervision"...

This is a typical ploy. The word adult in saying that Obama acts like an adult is not the word that means PARENT. The message is, Obama talks like we're equals. Obama talks like he doesn't have to throw a bratty temper tantrum to get our attention.

But change the message to, "Obama is talking down to us" and... um, set the Republican campaign back to three months ago?

*sigh*