Charity Begins At Nome

I am heartened by the news that Sarah Palin will be donating the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in clothes, shoes and accessories the Republican National Committee purchased for her and her family to "charity" after the election is over.

It will sort of be like when sports apparel manufacturers send the gear of the losing Super Bowl team to third world countries - leading to the incongruous sight of normadic tribesmen and women transversing the desert in New England Patriots 2008 Super Bowl Champions t-shirts and hats.

Which conjures up the thought of homeless women pushing grocery carts full of all their worldly possessions while wearing pencil skirts and hooker heels.

McCain fails to Rejoin his campaign; Obama awarded Presidency

In a stunning decision, the United States Electoral Commission has awarded the Presidency of the United States to Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Citing an obscure provision in the Electoral Count Act of 1877, the Commission disqualified Senator John McCain for “failing to rejoin his campaign” after suspending it on the 25th of September.

The McCain Campaign vehemently objected to the Commission awarding Senator Obama the Presidency. While admitting they were unaware of the provision, the McCain campaign declared Senator McCain’s failure to restart his campaign after suspending it was “a very big misunderstanding.”

“There was a mistake, an inadvertent mistake," McCain spokesperson said. “and it should not disqualify a patriot and war hero from the highest office in the land.”

The Obama Campaign stated that the rules stating a candidate must rejoin his campaign after suspending it were unequivocal. “The rules are clear, direct, obvious, unmistakable and were fully understood by our candidate.”

“I am vigorously going to fight this," Senator McCain vowed. "I will not let down the people of America who want real change. I believe the people want to elect me [and] want me to do a good job and I am going to do a good job for them by finishing this race. This is an ugly and unpleasant situation that has been thrust upon me and my family. This situation is not fair, it is inaccurate and therefore [it] must not be allowed to stand."

Commission officials, while sympathetic, said the rejoin rule is at the heart of the honor system that underpins the United States electoral process.

"Bottom line, running for President of the United States is a gentleman’s contest and candidates for that office are held accountable for sustaining their campaigns,” a Commission spokesperson said.

Pander Like It's 1984

My sixteen year-old daughter is reading 1984 in her AP Reading class. When I read 1984 in high school the premise and promise of George Orwell’s novel was still out there, somewhere, near but still unseen. Now the year 1984 has come and gone and is quickly receding in the rear view mirror. Yet, even as the title of the novel becomes more and more passé, a relic of the last millennium, the literary warning Orwell sounded is resounding loud and clear.

NEWSPEAK new•speak ('nü-"spEk, 'nyü-), noun, Usage: often capitalized. : propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings. Etymology: Newspeak, a language "designed to diminish the range of thought," in the novel 1984 (1949) by George Orwell.

Newspeak is the language of the McCain campaign. When Obama uses the metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” to describe McCain’s justification of failed Republican policies, McCain calls Obama “sexist” because he has insulted McCain’s running mate, a self-proclaimed lipstick wearing pit bull.

Ergo, Barack Obama, the son of a single mother, raised on food stamps, is the “elitist” while John McCain, the ultimate legacy kid who got into Annapolis not on his merits but because his father and his grandfather went there and who owes his current career to the political clout of his rich father-in-law, is the “populist.”

DOUBLESPEAK double•speak language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of bald euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity. Doublespeak is a disparaging label for any euphemistic term perceived to be uttered in bad faith.

McCain employs doublespeak at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin where he gives his cheering supporters a simple choice: AMERICA FIRST or OBAMA FIRST. Hmmm. Either you are for America and against Obama (the black guy for those of you scoring at home) or if you are for Obama (the black guy) you are against America.

Yet, this very morning, in response to Obama questioning his economic IQ, the McCain campaign charges the Obama campaign is “trying to scare voters into voting for him (Obama).” Really? The Obama campaign is trying to scare voters. Right.

Winston Smith, the nominal hero of 1984, is a bureaucrat in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, revising historical records to match The Party's contemporaneous, official version of the past. The revisionism is required so that the past reflect the shifts of the day in the Party's orthodoxy.

So, caught in the headlights of Hurricane Gustav, the Republican convention reinvents George W. Bush as the Hero of Katrina.

Smith's job is perpetual; he re-writes the official record, re-touches official photographs, deleting people officially rendered as unpersons.

So McCain is running as if the last eight years of Republican administration did not happen. George Bush and Dick Cheney were officially deleted unpersons at the Republican Convention.

At the Ministry of Truth, the original or older document is dropped into a "memory hole" chute leading to an incinerator.

So McCain’s past as a carouser and womanizer has been removed from his biography, conveniently dropped down a memory hole with the ex-wife he dumped and the number of houses he owns.

Orwell’s Smith eventually learns that the motivation of the ruling Inner Party is not to achieve some future paradise but to retain power, which has become an end in itself. For those of you grazing at home, “the inner party” is the top 2% of the population – “my base” as current unperson George the Second once gloated at a Republican fundraiser.

From the low, dank trenches of his own “Ministry of Truth,” John McCain, the current standard bearer of the Inner Party, has proven willing and able to use all the Orwellian tools at his disposal to retain power.