You Might Be a Nutbag If......; Or, Tip of the Hat to Fox News Online

One of the big questions right now for the Presidential campaign is, will Sarah Palin remain out of the Media's reach until her debate with Biden, or will the McCain campaign let her elaborate on her views for the General Public.

Kudos and Tips of the Hat to media of all political persuasions which are in the process of trying to 'smoke Palin out,' as it were, by discussing her views and posting them online. Certainly Harrogate didn't expect this AP piece to show up on the front page of Fox's Website yesterday. But, there you have it. A blind groundhog really will find an acorn now and then.

The AP Headline reads: "Palin’s Church Promoting Conversion of Gays to Heterosexuals."

It is tongue-talking level scary. Harrogate seems to remember there was a wee bit of discourse surrounding the church that Barack Obama attended. Perhaps stuff like this deserves a bit of attention, Yes?

“You’ll be encouraged by the power of God’s love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality,” according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.

Palin’s conservative Christian views have energized that part of the GOP electorate, which was lukewarm to John McCain’s candidacy before he named her as his vice presidential choice. She is staunchly anti-abortion, opposing exceptions for rape and incest, and opposes gay marriage and spousal rights for gay couples.

Harrogate's favorite part though is the way the AP ends it. This is also why Harrogate was pretty stunned that Fox ran it. For the final paragraph, O Readers, is is one sentence long:

“People are looking at Sarah Palin as someone who might feasibly be in the White House,” he said.

McCain, utterly void of ideas, has decided to turn this election on the Culture Wars. But the Irony is, he and Palin hope to do it without Independents finding out until it is too late. Will it work? Not if Brave Media such as Fox News keep up such brilliant participation in the discourse.

Headline of the Day: "Cinderella, others arrested in Disneyland labor protest"

Some of Harrogate's Readers are going to be shocked at the following effusion, but: WAY TO GO AP! That there's a priceless photograph. (O how Harrogate wishes there was a photograph circulating of WALL-E in handcuffs, too!).

Also, it's always good when labor protests make it into Mainstream News, so Harrogate reluctantly offers a Tip of the Hat to CNN (now he needs a shower)

Linky link

The arrest of the 32 protesters, many of whom wore costumes representing famous Disney characters, came at the end of an hour-long march to Disneyland's gates from one of three Disney-owned hotels at the center of a labor dispute.

Those who were arrested sat in a circle on a busy intersection outside the park holding hands until they were placed in plastic handcuffs and led to two police vans while hundreds of hotel workers cheered and chanted.

And then:

Bewildered tourists in Disney T-shirts and caps, some pushing strollers, filed past the commotion and gawked at the costumed picketers getting hauled away. The protest shut down a major thoroughfare outside Disneyland and California Adventure for nearly an hour.

"It's changing my opinion of Disneyland," said tourist Amanda Kosato, who was visiting from north of Melbourne, Australia. "Taking away entitlements stinks."

The dispute involves about 2,300 maids, bell hops, cooks and dishwashers at three Disney-owned hotels: the Paradise Pier, the Grand Californian and the Disneyland Hotel.

UPDATE: Harrogate must extend his Tip of the Hat to Fox News also. One supposes that the sheer spectacle of the thing makes it an irresistable cover, even though the issue at stake is pretty anathematic to such coverage. How the Fox Pundits treat it is unsurprisingly smug and dismissive. Still, the video is there for viewers to see. Better than no coverage at all.

What's Next for G-dub?

According to Dave-TV (not to be confused with Dave TV), the best post-presidential job for George W. Bush is that of a Motivational Speaker. Here's why:

The president understands what it takes to get somewhere in life. For him, every day is a mission accomplished, and he can swiftly sum up his winning philosophy in a few words. "I hope the ambitious realise they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure."

That, and his ability to shoulder responsibility ("My job is a decision-making job. As a result, I make a lot of decisions"), make him ideally suited to a career as a life coach. We expect he'll be in great demand as a motivational speaker. And let's not forget his wide understanding of how industry works. As he once said: "The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place."

WALL-E Wars The Third: Rod "Crunchy-Con" Dreher and Andrew "Reagan Was Awesome, But Gays Should Have Rights" Sullivan Weigh In

WALL-E, Oh Readers, has clearly pulled off the Cinematic Equivalent of a Hat Trick in Hockey: entertain masses of people, provide an insanely cute robot (the robot is really cute), and touch off a rainbow admix of intellectual, ideological, and political effusions all at the same time.

Saturday, "Crunchy Conservative" Rod Dreher contributed to the WALL-E discourses. If you have never heard of a "Crunchy Conservative" before, he's a good place to start, so they say, although Harrogate wouldn't exactly know, since he's been wondering, as it were, what a "Crunchy Conservative" is for the last several years. Maybe someone else can start with Dreher though, and from there will eventually be able to explain to Harrogate what a "Crunchy Conservative" is. (Surely it's more complicated than, "I support a consolidated media, the elimination of the IRS, the evisceration of public education, and global imperialism--but dude, lay off the trees!"?)

But Harrogate digresses. Dreher's post will be quite interesting to Readers who have been following Harrogate's Pulitzer-Caliber coverage of the WALL-E Wars over the political meanings embedded in the latest Pixar blockbuster. A Snippet from Dreher:

"Wall-E" says that humans have within themselves the freedom to rebel, to overthrow that which dominates and alienates us from our true selves, and our own nature. But you have to question the prime directive; that is, you have to become conscious of how they way you're living is destroying your body and killing your soul, and choose to resist. "Wall-E" contends that real life is hard, real life is struggle, and that we live most meaningfully not by avoiding pain and struggle, but by engaging it creatively, and sharing that struggle in community. It argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom. Nobody is doing this to us; we're doing it to ourselves. It is the endgame of modernity, which began in part with the idea that Nature is the enemy to be subdued -- that man stands outside of Nature, and has nothing to learn about himself from Nature's deep logic.

As for Andrew Sullivan, by now Readers understand that alas, Harrogate subjects himself to Andrew Sullivan fairly regularly. Mostly due to the sacred principle that dictateth: "A Blind Groundhog Will Find an Acorn Every Now and Then."

Whatever shall Readers make of Sully's take on Dreher and, by extension, on WALL-E? Pleased with Dreher's fidelity to "Aristotelian conservatism" (now don't you feel intimidated by the sheer gravity of Dreher's and Sully's intellects, O Readers?) Sully is moved to write:

Like Rod, I keep thinking about the movie. It draws together a lot of amorphous feeling right now - the gnawing sense that modernity has begun to undermine the natural conditions of its flourishing - and focuses it. The two most powerful factors, to my mind, are the confluence of destructive technology and religious terrorism and climate change with highly unpredictable repercussions. It is hard not to feel a Babelian quality about our current moment; and Rod's crunchy conservatism speaks to it powerfully.

Finally, here is one of our own, Amy Reads, pithily encapsulating her WALL-E experience:

Yesterday we went to see Wall-E, which is, in Mr. Reads's words, a movie that will be a favorite for the rest of our lives.

U.S. Government Takes Nelson Mandela off the "Terror-Watch List"

Now after all these years we can finally rest assured that Nelson Mandela is not a ter'ist.

"Today the United States moved closer at last to removing the great shame of dishonouring this great leader by including him on our government's terror watch list," Senator John Kerry said.

A blind groundhog will find an acorn every now and then, and every now and then this political system does something marginally decent. Hell, we cheerfully cede that beautiful Americans are everywhere, and for that matter that even a plastic bag floating in the wind, inviting you to play, is so beautiful one almost can't take it (you love him. you want to have ten thousand of his babies). &c.

But for God's sake. Reagan put him on the list more than twenty-five years ago. Really. You almost have to be a polyanna, not to be totally disgusted by our politics.

A Great Obama Moment, and a Rare Harrogatean 'Tip of the Hat' to Andrew Sullivan

Harrogate's dislike for Andrew Sullivan runs deep, and always has, despite the fact that they agree on a handful of very important issues. All this has been registered on this blog, in the past.

But as the saying goes, a blind groundhog will find an acorn every now and then. Lo about a week ago, Harrogate became immensely indebted to Andrew Sullivan for posting about an awesome Obama moment Harrogate would otherwise have missed.
Here is an excerpt from Obama's speech that Sullivan rightly dubbed "Quote for the Day" on Thursday, June 19th.

Quoth Obama:

I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11.

The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice.

They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors – the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership – the people who murdered 3000 Americans – have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That’s the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism.

One of the most frustrating memes our "liberal media" slavishly replicates is that national security is the strong suit of John McCain. Only if security and perpetual warfare are interchangeable, is this true.

Harrogate is proud of Obama for not ceding ground, for not letting the media dictate that because McCain's vision is the most murderous (the word they would use is "toughest") in the game, it follows that the Arizonan stands to make American safer. Yea, when Obama chooses to, he can hit real, real hard with the Rhetoric.

The Obamas and Gay Rights, the Great Georgia Lie, the Charlie Black fiasco, and "this poor president". Two Reads for Consumption

One of Harrogate's favorite things, if not his favorite thing, about Barack Obama, is that he is the first Presidential candidate to speak openly, loudly, and consistently on behalf of gay rights. Trolling townhall.com this morning, Harrogate is happified by this piece on Michelle Obama.

Nicely played, Mrs. Obama. Keep swinging away on this issue. Harrogate admits, it makes the election less nauseating for him, when you talk like this.

Then there is this piece by the inestimably shameless Matt Towery, a pundit Harrogate regularly experiences, O Readers, so you don't have to.

Towery first of all continues to perpetuate the great Lie that Georgia might fall into the Barack Obama column. While one supposes that anything is possible except for American politics attaining bedrock decency, this has got to be among silliest memes we have seen yet, although if it causes McCain to spend real money there, then it might be a worthy one.

Towery also blasts the media for blasting away at Charlie Black for saying that if there is a terrorist attack on the United States before the election, this would benefit McCain. Towery rightly points out that those attacking Black on this issue refuse to engage the actual comment. But then, that's the way with our great Media, aint it--that Towery gets this right only proves once again the great saying, a blind groundhog will find an acorn every now and then.

Finally, this statement is just so precious, and so unironically delivered, that it must be replicated herein:

First, no one knows how President Bush and Vice President Cheney might react if we were attacked. This poor president, who I now feel is being abused beyond any justifiable level, can hardly take any measure without dropping in the polls. And any perceived mistake on his part would be guilt by association for McCain.

(Note to the nefarious blogger over at rhetoricalsituation.blogspot.com: When Harrogate boldfaces a particular section, that means he is drawing especial attention to it.)

Tis wonderfully hyperbolic of thee, Mr. Towery, to say the fucking least. Poor President Bush indeed. He and the GOP have only gotten some 90% of what they wanted since his inauguration in 2000. Witness the recent wiretapping bill, for example.

Because American Elections are Disgusting, and Get People Killed to Boot; or, a Homage to Pat Buchanan

Everyone's favorite isolationist, nativist, and old-school American exceptionalist. A man especially loved, it turned out, despite decades of criticisms of the United States' alliance with Israel, by really, really old Jewish people living Palm Beach County, Florida.

Worst of all, he works for NBC.

That's right, ladies and gents, Harrogate gives you none other than Patrick J. Buchanan. Harrogate reads his column religiously. This, despite the fact that, to paraphrase Ben Stiller in Dodgeball:

Buchanan loves the red-meat white supremacists, the red-meat white supremacists love the GOP, so ipso facto, Buchanan loves the GOP.

Query: Does Buchanan read the Dictionary to "break a mental sweat"?

But we digress. A blind groundhog will find an acorn every now and then, and Buchanan opposes American military adventurism; on these grounds at least, the man merits commendation. Seeing as how American elections kill people and all.

The current article by Buchanan asks a simple question:

"Who's Planning Our Next War?"


This is a fascinating read, not just for those who, like Harrogate, loathe American politics more and more with each passing day, but also for those who simply think that the question of going to war, the question of mass slaughter, is something of a big deal. Near the beginning of his column Buchanan states:

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.

Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war.

Hmmmmm. At the end of the column Buchanan asks an important question. But all things considered, it is also a pretty laughable question.

Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?