Friday, October 31, 2008

The Ministry of Truthiness Strikes

Uh-oh

Someone from the McCain camp must have hard a pretty stern talk with former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. He just went on Fox with a bracingly abject apology for saying that Sarah Palin wasn't qualified to be vice president. So abject in fact that I must say that it had something of the feel of one of the Maoist self-criticism sessions or perhaps one of the public apologies during the Moscow show trials.

For the original story, see here.

Voices in their heads

Michael Moore, this morning, on Democracy Now:

People on our side usually aren’t as driven to involve themselves in a political process that they view, somewhat cynically, as not having operated in the best interests of the people. And so, they’re not often as—often—not as much as the other side is motivated to go to the polls, whereas the other side, under, you know, strict orders from, they believe, the voice of God that’s in their head telling them that they must go to the polls and vote for these good people or remove the heathens that are in violation of whatever it is they’re listening to in their head. So, I’m telling you, I think that’s pretty powerful. They’ve been very successful at it. They’ve always been well funded. They’re very smart about it. They are committed. They are up at the crack of dawn, and they will be on Tuesday. Trust me. We have not lived under the Republicans for twenty of the last twenty-eight years by their side being a bunch of slackers. That’s not the case. So they will be out in full force. And I don’t think we need to wake up on Wednesday with that feeling that we all know too well, that—you know, “Woah, what happened? What happened?” I just—I think that’s happened one too many times.

Life and Times at Wingnut U

There are just so many levels of precious in this (front page) Washington Post article on Liberty University (the late Jerry Falwell's creation), but I'll just single out this julicious nugget of gobbledygook:

Metallo takes the class through Britain's government structure, at one point explaining how voting rights were gradually widened, and not always for good. "The expansion of the electoral franchise led to the growth of the welfare state," the professor says. "People are able to vote money out of your pocket and into their own."

Well, bless their Jesus-loving hearts. Too many people vote. Or vote the wrong way. Yes, by all means, let's roll back the clock on voting rights, maybe throw in a poll tax or two, just to make sure that if the gubmit is going to be working for anyone, it will continue to be rich, right-wing evangelicals and not for the unwashed masses.