McPalin & McMaverick

As an old friend says, "It seems this election is about the intelligent and dopey versus the stoopid and cunning. Quelle choix!"

Herewith a short roundup about that appalling "stoopid and cunning" mush team, McPalin & McMaverick (aka the Dashboard Jesus and the Hood Ornament) ...

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is "Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean"

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N'-Fetch-It, "darkie musical" swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska's aboriginal people as "Artic Arabs" -- how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description -- as well as the more colourful "mukluks" along with the totally unimaginative "fucking Eskimo's," according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

Palin's Churches and the Third Wave

The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.

And the video that goes with it: Sarah Palin's Demon-Haunted Churches

Also, here's the deal on Sarah Palin's Faux Populism.

"Populist" is not an empty political buzzword that can be attached to someone like Palin, whose campaigns (lieutenant governor, governor and now Veep) are financed and even run by the lobbyists and executives of Big Oil, Wall Street bankers, drug companies, telecom giants and other entrenched economic interests.

Populists don't support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does. Populists favor a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing consumers at the pump while milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies. Palin doesn't. Populists don't hire corporate lobbyists to deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists favor shifting more of America's tax burden from the middle class to the superwealthy, while opposing another huge tax giveaway for corporations. Palin doesn't and doesn't.

Another thing populists don't do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin did in her nationally televised coming-out party.

But just in case you didn't know Why Rednecks May Rule the World.

[R]ednecks have never had so many friends or so much attention as in 2008. Contrary to the stereotype, we are not all tobacco chawing, guffawing Southerners, but are scattered from coast to coast. Over 50% of us live in the "cultural south", which is to say places with white Southern Scots-Irish values -- redneck values.

They include western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, upstate Michigan and Minnesota, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire ...

So when you look at what pundits call the red state heartland, you are looking at the Republic of Redneckia.

Now for the petty stuff: The McCain-Follieri Love Boat

John McCain has been hammering rival Barack Obama for being little more than a vapid "celebrity" and "elitist." But The Nation has obtained a photo revealing just how star-struck a straight-talking maverick can become when offered the chance to celebrate his birthday aboard a yacht filled with celebrities--even if one of those celebrity types turns out to be an A-list con man.

Finally, John McCain's ads are LIES. Here's the video proof.

... with thanks to George Mattingly, Hammond Guthrie, Richard Kostelanetz, Alan Edelson and the rest of Straight Up's staff of thousands for pointing out these and other tips, and hats off to Josh Brown.

Postscript: Sept. 13 -- The Times gets it right this morning with McPalin's McWorldview. Garrison Keillor slayed the Dashboard Jesus earlier this week .

[A] former mayor of Wasilla, a town of about 8,500, who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla.

Stunning.

And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hard-working people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle-ax you."

Keillor slayed the Hood Ornament last month.

[I]t's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were.

The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.

Good luck with that, sir.

Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It's like admitting that you've never clipped your own toenails because your valet always did that for you. It's like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world doesMcCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail.

A marketing friend of mine keeps repeating: "Obama's gonna win. Obama's gonna win." When I asked him if he truly believed that, he said, "Of course. But you have to say it -- everyone has to say it -- to make it happen. Believe me, repetition works."