Sheila Casey

Sarah Palin debate flowchart

Guilty as charged:  even though I said that Sarah Palin only exists to distract us from the "how many pockets did Paulson pick?" question, this was just too fun to ignore.

courtesy of http://adennak.com/blog/wordpress/?p=92

My bad: miniskirt photo of Palin is a fake

I know because I found the photo where they grabbed her head.  Perhaps photoshopping should have occurred to me, and maybe it happens all the time with candidates, but this is the first time I've seen it. 

For example, for all her years in the limelight, I've never seen any headshots of Hillary pasted onto bodies of mini-skirted vixens.  But then maybe I'm just out of the loop. 

Satan to Speak at Republican Convention

by Ian Gurvitz

The horned one's speech will lay out the Republican Party platform, which includes:

Continuing the Iraq war for 100 years, bombing Iran, re-igniting Cold War fear of Russia, plunging the nation further into debt, buggering the Earth until it bleeds oil into the oceans, not fixing McCain's teeth so that his smile frightens newborn infants back into their mothers' wombs, fucking the poor and middle class until they're jobless, homeless, and hopeless, passing a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as something that may only occur between a man and a woman, or a woman and a closeted gay Republican, renaming Gitmo "Motel 666" and generally continuing the Bush administration's march toward Armageddon...

read the rest

Halberstam: TV ignores issues

published September 25, 1984 in the Boulder Daily Camera
By Sheila Casey

Television networks have turned this year's presidential election into a media event that ignores real issues at a critical moment in history, author David Halberstam said Monday at the University of Colorado. 

Halberstam, who wrote "The Powers That Be," and "The Rise of Modern Media," said the nation is making a permanent shift from the easy affluence of the post-World War II era.  He "fears for the country" because candidates are not adequately discussing economic concerns.

"The political process is now a TV process," Halberstam told about 500 people at Macky Auditorium.  "National issues have been trivialized because they have to fit on the evening news, and how do you explain the Salt Talks in a minute and ten seconds?"

He likened the television news process to an Old Testament writer saying:  "Famous Hebrew leader Moses came down from the mountain today with ten commandments, of which the first two are..."

He called President Ronald Reagan "Dr. Feel-Good...not since Eisenhower has anyone done so much to make so many feel so good."

He referred to Mondale as "The Incredible Shrinking Man," but noted that he has done much to promote fishing and boating in northern Minnesota. 

And he called the campaign "a disaster."  He said citizens should be ashamed for treating the election as "the selling of Coca-Cola."

"These feely-good ads have that smell that came from the Olympics -- the smell of false patriotism.  Do you know how shabby we looked waving all those flags?" 

He senses a nation that is nervous and scared -- one that knows the critical problems are not being addressed, but settled instead for politicians who will make them simply "feel better."

If the right Democratic challenger had been able to voice the true concerns of Americans, they would have listened, Halberstam said.

"But Mondale campaigns like this is 1948," he said.

In the 1988 election, voters will demand answers to the dilemmas of the future, Halberstam said.

Al Gore running? Music to my ears.

Bill Robinson blogs at the Huffington Post that of course Al Gore is running:

Let's get real. Of course he's running.

Are we to believe that a man who has spent most of his life in public office, like his father before him, is happy to turn away at the very moment the country -- nay, the world -- is clamoring for him to step into the breach?

Are we to believe that such a man is perfectly content to walk away from the table, with his last campaign forever emblazoned in textbooks as the biggest miscarriage of justice in electoral history?

Are we to believe that this man, with his Oscar nominated documentary, his Time magazine cover, his # 1 Bestselling book, his tv network, and, oh yeah, a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nomination, would rather not rule the most powerful nation on earth?

Al is running the smartest campaign we've ever seen: the anti-campaign. As long as he's not a candidate, he gets to be a stateman. As long as he hasn't announced, we're begging for it. He's in the driver's seat and enjoying every moment. He's not gonna blow it this time. After what he went through, what he lost so cruelly back in 2000, he's not taking any chances.

The nation is smarter now, too. Hopefully we won't hear any blather this time about whether a candidate seems like a "great guy to have a beer with." Since 99.99% of us will never have a beer with POTUS, let's focus on something that does matter, like can said candidate actually run a country?

Al got knocked down last time for seeming too nerdy and bookish. Now, after eight years of Bush, we're longing for a prez who knows a few things. (Things that can be verified by the reality-based community.)

Run Al run!

Why the GOP loves having an open border

A friend wrote me today, apoplectic with rage over the swelling numbers of illegal immigrants in the US. My reply:

More than anything, this gives the lie to the idea that the GOP protects us best from terrorists. They care nothing for cutting off the cheap labor which flows over the open border, cause business owners LOVE having a pool of virtual slaves who will never complain, never file a sexual harrassment suit or any other kind of suit, and work for nothing. And big business put the GOP in office. So ultimately that trumps all the hot air about protecting us from the evil doers.

These people don't come here for our scenery-- they come here for jobs. If we made sure you had to be here legally to get a job, it would all be over in an instant, with no need for a fence. But that will never happen, cause business just doesn't want it.

And, I might add (to you, not to him) in George Bush's America, what business wants, business gets.

Michael Moore's indictment of the US healthcare industry: Sicko

Here's the trailer. Coming June 29, I can't wait.

Wasn't me, say Goodling, Gonzales, McNulty, Sampson

Who actually compiled the list of the eight fired US attorneys?  Weeks of Congressional testimony have us only marginally closer to the truth.  All we know is what we don't know:  that it wasn't Gonzales, Goodling, Sampson, or McNulty.  Jon Stewart concludes that it must have been an Immaculate Termination, a mystery beyond human comprehension. 

Why did the Judiciary Committee let Monica Goodling get away with taking the Fifth and refusing to say who compiled the list?  She had already been granted immunity from prosecution.  Aren't there any lawyers over there?

Time now to haul Rove, Miers and yes, POTUS (President Of The United States) before Congress for some questions. Maybe all on the same day so they can't endlessly blame someone who isn't present to defend themselves.

I have an atty friend who works in the Justice Dept and insists that none of this matters. I can see where that is a pragmatic position to hold, career-wise. But for those of us not blinded by a big salary, and more concerned with the fate of the nation, it is abundantly clear that Bush et al care only for maintaining power.

Power can be used for many things: power to bring peace, power to make a more just world, but these uses of power don't interest our current POTUS. His legacy is to make the poor poorer, the super-rich much richer, the world more violent and dangerous, Mother Earth running scared, and many, many tears shed for untimely and unnecessary deaths.

Jon Stewart almost abandons the pretense of doing a comedy show and just gives us some straight journalism in this clip about Goodling's squeeky-voiced, rusty-brained testimony:

Jon Stewart, I hope you have a good bodyguard

Remember the old TV spot, "Is it soup yet?"  We ask a similar question these days of our government, "Is it fascism yet?"  Fortunately, no.  I know we don't have fascism yet cause Jon Stewart is still on the air.  Jon, I hope you never travel anywhere alone.  You are a thorn in the side of this administration, hallelujah!

Jon was in top form last night, this clip is genius.  The best part is when CA Rep. (D) Maxine Waters asks Gonzales to turn over the documents the investigators have requested.  He replied that he has nothing to do with "production," that's not his area.  Rep. Waters calmly asks him to direct his subordinates to turn over the requested documents.  He replies that he can't do that, he's recused.  Why are you recused?  she asks.  With zero awareness of the irony, he replies:  "Because I'm being investigated."

So he cannot assist with the investigation into his own conduct...because he is being investigated.  This idiocy sounds vaguely familiar, where have I heard this before?  "All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others," from George Orwell's Animal Farm, a great satire of the double-talk politicians resort to, to keep the underlings down under and the goodies for themselves.

Bill Richardson as a job applicant in new TV ad

Give him credit for doing something different and being willing to look, gasp, unpresidential.