The Republican National Convention wound to a close last night with Senator John McCain's official acceptance of the GOP nomination for president and the final stretch to the White House begins. As fictional detective Sherlock Holmes oft proclaimed, "The game is afoot."McCain's speech was big on rhetoric-filled generalities and short on original ideas of any kind. My personal favorite? "I'll keep taxes low and cut them where I can." That's about as specific as it got.
After voting with George Bush for 8 years he didn't even mention the embattled lame-duck president. To the delight of the thousands of petroleum-happy GOP delegates whipped into a bizarre frenzy of "Drill! Drill! Drill!" chants, the former fighter pilot completely flipped on his opposition to drilling for oil offshore - which he promised he wouldn't do as recently as June 19th according to an article in the New York Times.
McFlip also invoked the worn GOP battle-cry by railing against the "left wing media" - Media Matters reports that MSNBC, CNN and Fox all gave MORE prime-time television coverage to the Republican convention than they did the Democratic convention. Fair & balanced, uh huh.
It's simply mind-boggling how Republicans seem to get free reign from the mainstream media to level hollow charges against Senator Obama and the Democratic Party and accuse THEM of doing exactly what Republicans have done and are doing! Need proof? Let's look at one of many examples, shall we?
Taxes. Media Matters reports that many mainstream news outlets including Reuters, ABC's Good Morning America and the LA Times simply repeated McCain's claim that Senator Obama will "raise taxes." That's simply not true. Obama's economic proposal includes TAX CUTS for lower and middle income Americans earning under $200,000 per year. Last week in a Time Magazine interview McCain's OWN economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said Obama's plan is a net tax cut!
Why do these "news outlets" keep repeating distorted political assertions without offering any clarification? Left-wing media? These blatant distortions weren't limited to "real journalists" either, let's look at a sampling of the editorial pages.
The last time I blogged about bizarre conservative columnist Michelle Malkin was in the midst of her delusional right-wing campaign against Duncan Donuts for using an online ad campaign that pictured Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that Malkin INCORRECTLY identified as being a kefiyeh - a traditional scarf-headgear worn in desert regions that is often worn by Palestinian men. Rachel Ray & Duncan Donuts, Islamic terrorists? Okaaay....
Malkin's paranoid mind-set likely stems from her Filipino upbringing, many Filipinos are virulent anti-terrorists and her grandfather supposedly fought against the Japanese under Douglas MacArthur in WWII - perhaps she's projecting her grandfather's experiences onto people she clearly despises to pander to the right-wing audiences she longs to please.
Malkin outraged Asian-Americans when she published a book that defended racial profiling and the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, In Defense of Internment.
Today her column tore into Obama's community activism with a slew of unsubstantiated accusations about ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) the community group Obama worked for - Malkin, who couldn't find the South Side of Chicago with Mapquest, opened the column by sharing the fact that she laughed out loud at former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's disjointed rambling attacks against Obama during his speech on Wednesday night. Rudy, still desperately clinging to his "role" in 911, sounded like he was heavily medicated during his speech and looked like he wanted to shoot someone. The fact that Malkin found him funny says all you really need to know about this self-hating minority-Ann Coulter-wannabe.
Fox News regular and National Review editor Rich Lowry's Thursday September 4th puff-piece on Sarah Palin's idea-deprived, low-ball speech ("Barack, Meet Your Nightmare") took the Republican 'just keep repeating it until it becomes truth!' hypocracy to new heights. In the same piece in which he asserted "She may have given the best speech of either political convention", he opined that she was "merciless on Obama's elitism.." - bear in mind she said that line to the LEAST culturally diverse and WEALTHIEST Republican delegation in history. The same people chanting for oil drilling; and he calls Obama an elitist? Laughable.
Check out John Ridley's hysterical blog- The Guide to conservative 'Palinguage' Vol 2 -- The People's Edition.
For the moment the Democratic brain trust are patiently biding their time as they let the dust settle in St. Paul. Expect Hillary Clinton to take on Palin and start schooling this political lightweight when she visits Florida to campaign for Obama. This thing is just getting started and the Democrats are actually talking about real issues and proposing solutions; which is what this nation desperately needs rather than empty rhetoric, divisive language and petty personal attacks.
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