http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cc-goldwater/why-mccain-has-lost-our-v_b_137150.html
Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote
By CC Goldwater
Huffingtonpost: October 23, 2008
Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would
assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am
still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence
this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the
Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what
our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free
from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my
grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on
Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for
constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our
personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin
ticket.
My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose.
My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a
cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about
marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that
love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the
intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka
respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should
conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.
For a while, there were several candidates who aligned themselves with the
Goldwater version of Conservative thought. My grandfather had undying
respect for the U.S. Constitution, and an understanding of its true
meanings.
There always have been a glimmer of hope that someday, someone would "race
through the gate" full steam in Goldwater style. Unfortunately, this hasn't
happened, and the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort
to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain,
except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater
stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and
inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all
financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe.
When you see the candidate's in political ads, you can't help but be
reminded of the 1964 presidential campaign of Johnson/Goldwater, the 'origin
of spin', that twists the truth and obscures what really matters. Nothing
about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it's
standing in the world, that's why we're going to support Barack Obama. I
think that Obama has shown his ability and integrity.
After the last eight years, there's a lot of clean up do. Roll up your
sleeves, Senators Obama and Biden, and we Goldwaters will roll ours up with
you.
***
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Denial" -The Fall Election Musical Comedy
By Saul Landau
Landau's ZSpace Page: Oct 19, 2008
Historians will write of the 2008 election campaign as a bizarre comedy in
which audiences watched the United States morph from the top of its imperial
trajectory into the sick joke of the early 21st Century. It stars not just
the cancerous -- in body, mind and soul - John McCain, the modern would-be
emperor without clothes and Sarah "Pinup" Palin, who sings in "pompom
palaver" (Maureen Dowd), but pious imperialist Democrats who play straight
men in this televised farce.
Unlike typical Gilbert and Sullivan light opera singers, "Denial" actors
croon their lines against a backdrop of world crises - wars, economic
descent, hunger, disease and climate change - but studiously avoid these
obvious and compelling themes.
The comely Alaska Governor threatens to wrest from President George W. Bush
his title as prime public English language torturer. In the play, she
epitomizes "dirty fighting" - wink, wink - the quivalent of what old gym
rats said about talent challenged pugilists who repeatedly punched below the
belt.
The October 4 song of the sex kitten cum Vice Presidential candidate charged
that Obama "sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists
who targeted their own country." This dramatic scene refers to Obama once
attending a fundraiser at William Ayres' home. Ayres reportedly belonged to
the Weather Underground some of whose members detonated bombs in the early
1970s -- including at the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon. Ayers - never
convicted-- told the New York Times (Sept. 11, 2001) that "I don't regret
setting bombs.'"
"Palling around?" sing the Obamaites. "One Ayers fundraiser means palling
around?" Tthe Carson, California Republican chorus cheered Sarah's
incitement. "Upatriotic," she sings of Obama, "My saying it makes it so."
Her chorus sings: "You go girl, go."
The program notes explain that in 2001, University of Illinois (Chicago)
Education Professor Ayers donated $200 to Obama's Illinois State Senate
Campaign and, like Obama, belonged to an anti-poverty charity board (Woods
Fund) from 1999 to 2002. Both had kids at the same school.
Even Karl Rove, master of dirty campaign organizers, appears in the comedy.
The Prince of Darkness scene appears on Fox News (September 28). Some McCain
ads had "gone one step too far sort of attributing to Obama things that are
beyond the '100 percent truth' test. There ought to be an adult who says 'Do
we really need to go that far in this ad?'"
"The notion that somehow as a consequence of knowing somebody who engaged in
detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me
and my values, doesn't make much sense," hummed Obama in a monotone.
"Sense" makes no appearances in McCain's or Palin's script. The writers
offer them light airs on minor subjects like the economy -- regulate and
deregulate and always cut taxes while spending more on the military. Obama
and Biden yodel typical imperialist campaign pap -- the "we fight for
freedom everywhere with our allies" song - McCain and Palin rev up their
base section as if to hint of both their ignorance and dangerous
recklessness.
According to more than 2,768 doctors (Oct. 5 ad in NY Times) McCain faces a
very possible melanoma relapse - and soon. An oncologist friend suggested
McCain's dotty remarks - implying the Prime Minister of Spain, a NATO ally,
was a US enemy, confusing Shia and Sunni and Iran and Iraq-- could derive
from an incipient brain tumor. In any case, one doesn't have to invent the
possibility in 2010, of President Palin addressing the nation. "Golly, ya
know I had to deploy those nukes against Russia," she pauses to smile and
wink at someone in the audience, "because Alaska or Washington, I mean we're
so close I could feel, like all hockey Moms and dads too, the ya know
vibrations from Putin, you betcha."
In her vice presidential debate and in her two news interviews (Charles
Gibson, ABC, and Katie Couric, CBS) Sarah Six Pack began to chant one-line
clich?nswers to questions she wasn't asked and then aggressively defended
her sing-song idiocy while flashing grins at members of the audience, a
reincarnated Liberace mouthing lyrics instead of playing schmaltz on the
piano. She excelled at self-promoting, a vice presidential candidate
"speaking in tongues," wrote Sam Smith. (The Progressive Review, Oct. 4)
Smith described Palin's behavior on TV as possibly a variety of Asperger's
Syndrome: "Meaningless or pointless repetition of words, phrases, ideas, or
actions."
McCain, a self-proclaimed responsible politician, has cast himself as elder
statesman, maverick and self-sacrificing war hero. So, how could he then
choose an empty-headed, flaming rod of ambition as his running partner?
Perhaps, someone should remind McCain: he can enter Walter Reed's Intensive
Care Unit without passing through the White House!
Indeed, the McCain character offers his "recitativo" for those who opened
their their 401 K retirement plans. "My friends," he calls them. They groan
in pain overt their financial losses. Not to worry, he assures them.
Privatizing their social security - placing their pensions in the hands of
those who just brought down Wall Street -- would make their lives better.
"Ha Ha" laughs the chorus.
"Denial" tries to distract a grim world. In Europe, banks and stock markets
have begun their own frightening downslide. In Iraq, the public remains
engulfed in daily bloodshed. Listening to McCain promise longer US military
presence must certainly make them smile - or is that a gas pain? Imagine how
the Taliban propaganda apparatus reviews "Denial!" They emphasize the parts
in which all the actors promise to dispatch more US military forces to
Afghanistan! Well, the Obama and McCain campaign care little about
non-voting audiences, no matter how they pretend to promise things to "those
people."
"Denial" runs every four years, but this year's version has become downright
slapstick. "Time to take the gloves off," Palin sang, although many noticed
she had worn them all along. The media chorus offers endless atonal
chattering and nattering before, during and after campaign events, and we
hear the steady percussion section of pollsters tapping their nervous
rhythms to show anxiety in the public - referring to people off stage who
lost homes and jobs. Cacophonous sounds also emerge to show white people
conflicted about voting for a black as President.
The campaign show has an appropriate backdrop, as stocks slid in early
October, falling below 10,000: A nation that has spent its treasure on war
and militarism and whose candidates all vow to spend more. The political and
media elite still hum tunes about the great republic, not dirges fit for a
collapsing empire.
Obama and Biden sing lines about Bush raising US gross national debt rose
from $5.7 trillion to $10 trillion ("under Clinton we had a surplus," sings
the chorus). In the face of this horrifying figure, McCain without smiling
swears to continue cutting taxes on the rich as Bush did, to pursue endless
war in Iraq as Bush has, and expand the war in Afghanistan and possibly take
it to Pakistan. The Democrats also want more troops in Afghanistan, where
they will build schools and hospitals while sending forces to find and kill
Bin Laden in Pakistan. "Screw borders" is the tile of one of their songs.
Someone cut the line that says "this will cost more than $600 billion."
Democrats also intone about investing hugely in US education. One refrain
that originally appeared in the script was cut: "A fairy from Heaven will
deliver, bagfuls of money forever."
The aging McCain character calls for more military action while advocates
deregulating everything else. The flighty Palin agrees, but wants to also
regulate while deregulating, "ya know what I mean!" (Hockey moms will all
understand.) In another TV show, Katie Couric asked the ingenue about McCain
supposedly advocating regulation of The Street. She couldn't answer, but had
she read in one of the many newspapers she always reads, but whose title she
couldn't recall -- the Wall Street Journal -- she would have seen McCain
prominently denouncing regulation, as he always has. Oh Well! Another song!
In the original script, there appear a historical context for "Denial": "The
United States once possessed (1945) 55% of the world's manufacturing
capacity. It controlled the world's banking system and established the
dollar as world currency. As Europe, including the Soviet Union, licked war
wounds and began massive rebuilding, financed in part by the Marshall Plan
(not including the USSR), rearmament took place, including the buildup of
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and the stationing of troops around the
world. When the "evil empire" collapsed, the "good empire" took no notice,
and continued to maintain a super expensive and world-traveling military.
Indeed, the nation has become so inured to this institutionalized massive
waste that no major political or media figure even dares mention it."
This section was cut from all scripts.
"Denial" plays on through early November amidst growing world ruin. Sarah
and John sing: "Obama's a Muslim with terrorist allies, John and Minnie
Moose As American as apple pies."
The chorus chants: "Drill baby drill. USA USA USA."
Landau, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, once wrote plays for
the SF Mime Troupe.
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3654
To view commentaries online go here:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/
Comment on this commentary:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3654#AddComment
------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
