change you can count on

I believe I've figured out the republican strategy this year.

I'm beginning to think that they really don't have high expectations of winning although I feel they have a near-even chance of it, but they are instead playing for tactical advantages in the future and financial gains in the present as well as covering the possibility that they may yet beat the Democratic ticket.

It appears that the McCain campaign is primarily targeting the "corruption" of government as what has been the big problem the last eight years. In keeping with the Norquistian policy of starving it, painting government as the problem in this manner permits McCain to build an enormous straw man and then armor himself to do battle with it even as he furthers his carefully-crafted "maverick" image. He's giving us "straight talk" about how he's going to save the American economy by eliminating "wasteful" government spending via earmarks and pork projects rather than shutting down the enormously profitable business venture of our "war" in Iraq which is the real money pit.

There has been little real talk about eternal wars, the economy, the threat of climate change, the energy crisis, the lack of health care for a huge number of Americans, the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a small segment of the population, the incremental destruction of our Constitution, the encroachment of religion in government, or any of the serious crises that we face, the McCain campaign has instead been entirely focused on earmarks and offshore drilling on the few occasions it has strayed from derisive and scornful ad hominem attacks on the fictitious liberal media and the "angry left."

By focusing the campaign on government corruption the right is setting the stage for another round of witch-hunts against a Democratic executive and legislative branch. If Obama wins and the Democrats achieve fully effective majorities in both Houses of Congress the Republican slime machine will already have been primed to start obstructing progress and crowing about government corruption as they point their fingers at the majority party, even though the vast majority of corruption in our ruling class is associated with those very people.

By forcing McCain to take Sarah Palin as his running mate the republicans are cynically gambling on his dying in office and if I were him, I would not go hunting with Dick Cheney. If McCain is elected, he will be a willing and obsequious servant to the right-wing masters who knocked down his competitors in return for him selling what little honor he had left in order to become president.

If McCain is elected and dies in office, in comes Sarah Palin. While her primary purpose right now seems to be to be a provider of that raw meat that the right's religious rank-and-file thrives on and gets them to fund the current campaign and future efforts, she is also waiting in the wings to potentially be the most dangerous, belligerent, religious, conservative lunatic ever to hold the office and she will eagerly follow whatever orders those masters previously mentioned will give her. If nothing else, it puts her in the automatic candidate seat for the 2012 elections if a President McCain were to retire after one term. Why else would the right be suddenly lowering the expectations for a vice-presidential candidate than to be able to sneak her into office and make her a stealth candidate for the presidential figurehead they really seek?

So, while they may not be expecting to win this election, they are using it to raise funds, to rile up their base, to set the stage for the next stage of tactics they will use, to possibly elect a willing servant, and also to install an even more willing, more dishonest, and more vicious servant if their nominee-by-default happens to succumb to his age and diminishing health.


That's our modern right-wing Americans, with no scruples, no ethics, no boundaries they will not step over, nothing but a willingness to use whatever means and methods they find in their relentless quest for power and dominance. They are honest, although it seems that nobody listens closely enough.

John McCain says that if he is President there will be peace in the world. He doesn't tell you that when he says "peace" he's not using the definition of peace that most of us think of, where everyone lives and lets live, he means using force to make others knuckle under and do what they are told.

When he says that there will be a "new standard for transparency and accountability" in his administration he doesn't say that he means that his administration will be transparent and accountable and that he actually means there will be even less transparency and accountability. It's all about speaking the truth but using linguistic misdirection to make people think they are hearing one thing but have actually not heard anything at all.



They are telling us the truth.
If they win, there will be change.


There will be more war.
There will be more torture.
There will be more poverty.
There will be more inequality.
There will be more propaganda.
There will be more erosion of civil rights.
There will be more damage to our environment.
There will be more surveillance of American citizens.



There will be a lot of change. It just won't be good.