Day: September 12, 2008

The American Idol Candidate

Trish

Roger Ebert:

What defines an “American Idol” finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing. There’s a reason “American Idol” gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could be me up there on that show!

I don’t want a vice president who is darned near good enough. I want a vice president who is better, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq.

…I don’t want a vice president who is darned near good enough. I want a vice president who is better, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn’t repeat bald-faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn’t appoint Alaskan politicians to “study” global warming, because, hello! It has been studied…

I would also want someone who didn’t make a teeny little sneer when referring to “people who go to the Ivy League.” When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, “Boy, we don’t have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town.” So I did, very happily…

And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer’s $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world.

Deepak Chopra Unmasks Palin and Deconstructs Her Appeal

Trish

When one thinks of insightful political commentary, the name Deepak Chopra does not leap to mind. But the Indian medical doctor and New Age leader nailed Sarah Palin’s appeal better than anyone I’ve read so far. See if you don’t think his analysis is right on the money.

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that…

Sarah Palin is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride

[Sarah Palin] is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind…In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:

  • Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
  • Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
  • Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be needed.
  • Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
  • Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.
  • ”Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology.

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What Was John McCain Doing on a Yacht with a Conman, a K Street Lobbyist and a Hollywood Celebrity?

Jon Ponder

On Wednesday night, a little reporting about the real John McCain made it past the McCain campaign’s carpetbombing of lies against Barack Obama. Predictably, the story, which came from The Nation magazine and MSNBC’S “Rachel Maddow Show,” has otherwise been ignored by the corporate media since then:

RACHEL MADDOW: So, we’re on the air three days so far and we’ve already got ourselves an exclusive. It’s a photographic image that appears to undercut the well-crafted focus group-tested image of John McCain being pushed on the American people by his campaign. The next time you hear McCain described as anti-lobbyist reformer, the man fighting against entrenched interests in Washington, who rebuffed celebrity, perhaps this is the photo that should come to mind.

Now, this was obtained exclusively by the “Nation Magazine” … The magazine reports that it was taken on August 29th, 2006 in Montenegro … On the right hand side, that appears to be John McCain in the purple baseball cap. Purple is the color of his beloved Arizona Diamondbacks, I’m just saying.

And you’re probably thinking to yourself, you know, that guy on the left looks kind of familiar and so doest [sic] the woman who’s with him. The woman there is Hollywood star, Ann Hathaway—“Princess Diaries,” “Devil Wears Prada” [and “Brokeback Mountain”]. The guy on the left is her then-boyfriend, Italian entrepreneur, Raffaello Follieri. The reason that Raffaello looks familiar is because he pled guilty today to a conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, and five counts of money laundering. He is headed for the crowbar hotel, the pokey.

The feds busted Mr. Follieri because he posed as the CFO of the Vatican in order to win friends in high places and then take their money. That takes us back to the photo. Why exactly is the senior senator from Arizona apparently boarding this yacht in Montenegro on his 70th birthday with a soon to be busted Italian conman?

Well, despite marketing himself as the anti-lobbyist, John McCain, in fact, has a campaign run by one of the biggest names in Washington lobbying, Rick Davis. And Davis has a rolodex full of high powered friends like Raffaello Follieri, the conman, who—“The Nation” reports—hired Rick Davis’ business partner shortly after this photo on the yacht was taken.

Imagine, dear reader, the brouhaha we’d be hearing if a photo surfaced of Barack Obama boarding a yacht with a conman, a lobbyist and Hollywood star. But why are we surprised that there hasn’t been a peep about this in the MSM since Maddow reported it Wednesday night? There is a reason McCain calls the corporate media his base.

Follieri’s victim was Ron Burkle, the entrepreneur who made a billion dollars by making Ralph’s Supermarkets ubitquious, whose primary residence is Green Acres, the Beverly Hills estate built by Silent film star Harold Lloyd, but who is probably best known as an FOB, friend of Bill Clinton’s. Follieri took Burkle for $50 million:

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