Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

"'Change is coming, change is coming, and with her there, we will restore our strength and the prosperity of this great nation,'" McCain, with Palin at his side, told a roaring crowd of thousands in Cedarburg, Wis., a small town in a solidly Republican swath outside Milwaukee.

"An even larger and more raucous crowed, highly unusual for McCain, jammed an outdoor amphitheater at a rally in Sterling Heights, Mich., outside Detroit, here in one of this year's most crucial battleground states.  Palin was greeted like an international celebrity as rock music blared and the crowd chanted:  'Sar-ah!  Sar-ah!  Sar-ah!'"

There is one big problem with all this center-stage, rock star celebrity and Republican excitement.  This ordinary, folksy All-American mom who declares, "I'm just your average hockey mom," is a calculating politician.

While the entire Republican campaign closely resembles the Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" starring Jimmy Stewart, is all glossy, orchestrated illusion.

The only way McCain could legitimately boast of "change coming" would be to apologize for voting with the Bush Republican robot regime 90% of the time.

To celebrate the Republican Convention in light of the grave and tragic 8-year run has all the absurdity of staging a celebration in a graveyard full of dead Iraqis and U.S. service personnel.  

Instead of facing one stark reminder the Republican hierarchy acted as if someone else and not the Republicans had made all the events of the past 8 years happen.

First off, international laws, Geneva Convention rules regarding conducting a legitimate war were totally ignored by the most unpopular president in U.S. history, White House resident George Bush, when he declared that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and was hastily developing nuclear power in his State of the Union message.

Republican robots cheered, leaping to their feet just like they are cheering now in rock star celebrity worship for Ms. Sarah Palin.

So, lest we forget, jumping up and down doesn't have to mean anymore than misguided, brainwashed worshippers of a tarnished political party.  Where are the lofty principles?  Has it degenerated to whatever party leaders say, not what their track records prove that they have really done?

There she is -- Ms. Sarah Palin, who can kill a caribou and dress it in the field, just like Teddy Roosevelt, as Fred Thompson chortled with delight.  Sarah ranted dramatically about changing how Washington works, referring of course to "earmarks," shorthand for the federal government funding local projects.

The ironic humor of this phony political pitch is the reality.  Sarah Palin has been "queen of earmarks" with proposals for $197 million, with her 35 submitted earmarks.  With a family of five she is of course kept busy.

Another irony is Sarah Palin opposes sex education in the schools.  She feels apparently that sex education should exist only in the home.

The fact of the matter is that there is the possibility her 17-year-old daughter might not be 5 months along in her pregnancy if she had had some vital sex education at school.

Sarah boasts about how conservative she is with spending taxpayers' money, citing selling Alaska's government jet, which had been used to transport prisoners to jails in the U.S. when the state's prisons were filled.

She proudly, almost boastingly, recounted how she had sold the jet on E-Bay at a profit.  But she doesn't mention that it did not sell on E-Bay.  Later she sold it to an Alaskan businessman at a $600,000 loss.  That is the rest of the story.

Palin boasts of being against Senator Ted Stevens' "Bridge to Nowhere".  When the government turned down this notorious proposal, Palin then turned against it.  How very brave!  The federal government did give Alaska around $400 million to spend on something else, and so ambitious "soccer mom Sarah" found other places to spend that windfall.

As for creationism, she is a believer in the Adam, Eve and God interaction as depicted in the Old Testament.

As for global warming, Sarah will have none of it.  Those hifallutin' 57 Nobel Prize winning scientists who don't know what they are talking about when they insist man made global warming is threatening planet earth should realize that Sarah knows best.  All this scientific research is just one big "hoax" to Sarah, to use a real soccer mom's down to earth analysis and language.

To my way of thinking, and to the judicially accepted way of thinking, ever since the M'Naghten Rules were established defining what constitutes legal insanity you can only be judged fairly if, at the time of commission of an alleged crime, you can distinguish the difference between right and wrong.

Geneva Convention rules only allow nations to legitimately go to war if they have been invaded or a clear and present danger exists that invasion is imminent.

The "hoax" factor that Palin likes to attribute to global warming should have been applied to Bush's Iraq War debacle.

Films of the demolition of Iraq's infrastructure, Iraqi homes being decimated, Iraqi civilians being bombed to death by the U.S. military's so-called "smart bombs" designed to hit only those designated as the enemy, are factors so shocking they are almost beyond human comprehension.

So-called patriotic Republicans want more of this kind of leadership?

What about all the U.S. service personnel killed and wounded that were called to war based on misrepresentations about alleged "weapons of mass destruction"? If you really want John McCain you are voting for much more of the same.