Sarah Palin is going to be grandmother of an illegitimate child. Here’s the immediate fallout, as I see it:

First, McCain went with his gut, and his staff did not override him. It must have been emotional. They hadn’t even bothered to check the stories in her local paper. He looks impulsive, and doesn’t seem to respond to sober voices around him. They must be going nuts.

Second, there will be a rebellion at the convention, and a movement to dump her. It could result in a Romney pick, but it will make McCain look very bad. There are no good outcomes at this point.

It’s a little bit like McGovern/Eagleton. Pardon me for citing a great poet of my era: Everyway you look at it you lose.

The wife is out of town, so I took the opportunity to see a movie that she didn’t want to see. It just shows how much better her judgment is than mine. The movie is Tropic Thunder.

Just a few impressions from what turned out to be wasted time and wasted money.

1. It’s a very fast-paced movie, with quick cuts and rapid dialogue. I think this might have to do with younger kids and media. Everything moves fast for them. I’ve noticed this with my own kids – they are very quick and I have a hard time keeping up with them. In the movies there’s hardly time to catch one’s breath. It’s too fast for me. I’m much more into plot and character development, and this movie has little of either.

2. The humor is edgy and crude, often absent – maybe one of three jokes work. The f-bomb is used so much that it isn’t even offensive. Jerry Seinfeld said once in a magazine interview that if a comic has to resort to vulgarity to get a laugh, he’s either not funny or he hasn’t worked his material hard enough. In movies and on premium channels there are no restrictions on language, and it brings out the low-talent in today’s set of comic ‘geniuses’. The New Yorker, in reviewing this movie, called it a lack of elegance.

3. There are special effects galore. Yawn.

4. Tom Cruise is getting high praise for playing a balding overweight Hollywood executive. I knew it was him going in, and wonder if I would have figured it out without advance notice. He brings intensity to the scenes he’s in, and took a real risk doing this. He’s pretty good.

5. There is really, really low and vile humor about mentally challenged people – retarded people, we used to call them. The movie mocks them.

I know – I should stick to my own demographic. I think back to comedy movies I enjoyed when I was in my twenties – Airplane, Blazing Saddles, for instance. David Zucker and Mel Brooks had a whole lot more talent going for them than the current crop, in my humble opinion. Maybe I’m just dating myself. I sound old.

Come to think of it, Blazing Saddles did have a fart scene.

Organizers estimate that there will be 50,000 protesters at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities this coming week. We will be treated to the spectacle of the unwashed and unshaven madly objecting to the clean and conservative – from a television standpoint, it’s exactly the opposite of what the protesters seek to accomplish.

But they ought to know this by now. They ought to know that the media will spotlight the seediest among them, and it will make the Republicans inside look very reasonable by contrast. And the Republicans will get a bump in the polls.

It’s only happened a hundred times before. Even the Daily Show makes fun of them. They ought to know this. But they don’t. They’re idiots.

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As noted below, Democrats in Denver sought to confine their protesters to Orwellian “Free Speech Zones”. Republicans are going to let them wander freely. And now we know why.

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Interesting conclusion – the American intelligentsia is overwhelmingly agnostic or atheist, but the public is overwhelmingly religious. Therefore, our smartest potential leaders are unelectable unless they lie about their religious beliefs. Which means that we cannot have a leader who is both smart and honest.

I have said many times before that most of our presidents were probably closet atheists. I include the current resident in that category too.

I don’t normally watch conventions – they can be frightfully staged and boring. But I’ve been following the Democrats, watching on MSNBC. Keith Olbermann and Chris Mathews have been gaga over the speakers. Last night we were also treated to the ‘A Team’ – Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw, a professional suckup who seems to be perpetually drunk. Not much insight from any of them, but Olbermann and Williams mixed it up a little but – I could see that Williams is no one to mess with while on camera. He is quick on his feet.

Michelle Obama is a neat lady – it’s too bad the Democrats have to tone her down, take away her spontaneity. She’s refreshing, smart, and real. But now they’ve got her saying all the right things, so she’s not so much fun anymore. Is there anything more dehumanizing than being a prominent Democrat?

What is the big deal about the Clinton’s? I was a little pissed as I listened to Hillary – her followers are so intent on inflicting her on us that they would punish us with McCain before voting for the black dude. She’s nothing special – doesn’t care about ordinary people they way Democrats are supposed to care. Her voice is shrill, inflections staged. She’s a little bit robotic as she reads her lines, her punches anticipated and poorly delivered. And don’t talk about Hillary and health care – she’s taken more money from the insurance companies than any other candidate. C’mon folks – just as in 1992, she was the one whose job it was to turn our health care system over the the insurance corporations. She didn’t set out to help us or fix anything. She’s not one of us.

Get over this woman, please and soon. She’s poison.

Then there’s Bill – a half million Iraqi kids would have refused to applaud for him last night if they were alive to not applaud. This is the USA – we can’t say certain things, and one thing we are not allowed to talk about is how Bill Clinton enforced murderous sanctions on Iraq for eight years, and how all those kids perished as he looked on and blamed Saddam. What a butcher, what a phony, what a Machivellian manipulator. No – he would not personally kill a child. That’s not how it works. When powerful people like Clinton kill people, they wear tailored suits and attend lavish parties and make decisions in the abstract. They don’t have to personally witness the deaths. That’s why Bill to this day thinks he’s not responsible for all that suffering. But he is.

And don’t tell me he’s not still chasing other women. I can forgive him that – look who he is married to. But not the kids. Now they talk about him like he was some sort of compassionate liberal while he was in office, how he “put people first” – good grief. I’ll grant that he was a liberal if the Democratic Party will take responsibility for all the liberals who got us into Vietnam. Bill follows in their foot path. He’s that kind of liberal.

Bill Clinton’s speech sounded genuinely insincere to me. He’s lost his touch – he’s not faking sincerity like he once did. Maybe he’s been out of the circuit too long.

Brian Schweitzer could have given his speech at the Republican convention and pulled it off. He’s a right-leaning centrist, but these Democrats – they aren’t exactly policy wonks. They just want to be in power, and will make any philosophical concession to get those D’s elected. Schweitzer is genuine and folksy and likable, though.

Joe Biden was pretty good – I mean, I want to see Obama elected for one reason only – I think he’ll give us better judges. There’s not much else in the pipeline from these Democrats. I thought Obama really helped himself when he nominated Joe, who comes across as human and fallible, a guy who might cry a real tear instead of a politically staged one. And he has fire in his belly – he gives good speech. But I was wondering last night why he didn’t go after Dick Cheney or mention wiretapping. The Vice President is, as Rachel Maddow said, “low hanging fruit”. He chimes in at around 18% popularity, but Biden tippy-toed around him, not even mentioning him by name, and for sure didn’t talk about all of the laws that have been openly violated these last eight years.

If Obama is elected, he will very quickly close the book on the Bush/Cheney years – there’ll be no punishment for all the wrongs that have been done. That’s a shame – many of them belong in prison, and Bush and Cheney need to be twitching at the end of a rope. They are that bad.

I get the impression that Cheney has been in charge during the Bush presidency and that he runs an enforcement racket. He’s been tapping all the phones, and extracts his pound of flesh. People are genuinely afraid of him. That would explain why a man so despised is so untouchable, why even firebrands like Biden won’t cross him. He knows what’s in all the closets.

Anyway, that’s Democrats for you – our ‘alternative’ party. There’s not much to get excited about. Republicans make change, Democrats adapt. Amy Goodman did a good piece on the so-called “Blue Dogs” – they were at a party staged by AT&T, who wanted to thank them for FISA, letting them off the hook for wiretapping us since February of 2001. Goodman stood outside the door while maybe 25 of the dogs walked by – each one refused to talk or even look at her. These are arrogant pricks. But they’re Democrats.

By the way, I think the sheen has worn off Obama. He’s not new or exciting anymore, his charisma is waning. That might have something to do with his sagging popularity – that, and the fact that Democrats don’t know how to work the media. McCain’s people have been pummeling them and they don’t know how to respond, and they sure don’t know how to dish it out themselves. They’re all about respect and talking up McCain’s good points, afraid to mess with the phony war hero. It doesn’t hurt that the media will take these 15 second McCain spots and run them for free ad nauseum, but the Obama campaign desperately needs some creative force behind it. Bob Schrum – where are you?

Kudos to those who have gone to Denver to protest – they have abandoned the “freedom cage” and simply gone elsewhere to do their business. The guarded enclave sits empty. (One person wrote in the book where protesters were supposed to log in, “MLK ‘I have a dream, that one day, all free speech will be done in cages.”) Meanwhile, helicopters churn overhead and the Democrat Party has expanded its reach to two blocks beyond the Pepsi Center. They take protesters very seriously, working hard to make sure they are out of sight and ear shot.

I’m conflicted about protesting. I have two objections: For one, it’s a sign of powerlessness. People who have power don’t have to take to the streets in order to engage other powerful people. They go through normal channels. Secondly, the news media has always been drawn to the weirdest hairdo and teeshirt – smart people with solid ideas are cast with nut cases, and all are painted as extremists. It’s how we marginalize discontent.

On the other hand, I like to see a good time spoiled. The riot in Chicago in 1968 contrasted very nicely with the staid liberals inside going on about their business of nominating a war candidate. The contrast was the message. If that is the objective of the protesters in 2008, it is worthy.

But I don’t get that. I don’t see unity. I see a fractured and powerless left doing the only thing it knows how to do. The right has nothing to fear from the left until the left finds leaders and learns how to organize effectively.

Still, Democrats should not have an easy time of it. The liberals are at it again, nominating another war candidate, and that fact needs to be broadcast. But the left needs to be careful – the Democrats never did address the issues raised by Ralph Nader in 2000 – the rightward pitch of the party, its abandonment of progressive causes. They merely spat on him and disowned any who followed him. The Democrat Party has power, and those who dare hold them accountable will pay a price. They will be ostracized.

It’s a choice. Be inside, be wrong. Be right, be gone. Catch 22. That’s all.

All of that said, the left really needs to reinvent itself. Protests and signs and mace and billy clubs are the symbols of a time when there was no 24 hour news cycle or Internet. Taking to the street with a megaphone is reflexive – I don’t know the answer, but I know that is not it.

Creativity, dude. Creativity. Get some.

As an avid reader of both Orwell and Jacques Ellul, I’m used to the idea of thought control in our society. But it’s always fun and entertaining to see how public opinion is formed, and how people keep their real attitudes cloaked. Fear of being out of the mainstream is a powerful motivating force.

We’ll now be subject to a TV gala called the Democratic National Convention. There will be speeches and floor shows, and the party will attempt to show the country how it is unified now. The leaders will parade about spouting empty phrases, and journalists will duly record them. There might be a “gaffe” or two (as when John McCain didn’t know how many houses Cindy owns). Someone might say something that is true. Don’t count on it. The stage production we call a convention is a professionally designed lap dance. It titillates us but leave us wanting. It’s an unfulfilled dream. Barack Obama is long on hope, short on delivery.

If we want to be mainstream, we must submerge our clearest thoughts into the abyss. We push them off into barb-wired free speech zones somewhere deep in our subconscious.

“Free speech zone” – that’s an Orwellism if ever there was one. The phrase speaks volumes – it says that we can only exercise our right to speak freely away from the mainstream and out of earshot. But it says even more than that – if the chained and heavily guarded area in Denver where they allow protests is where we exercise free speech, then everywhere else is where we don’t.

Oh, I hear all the fluttering of journalistic wings as practitioners of the once honorable profession dissect the horse race and analyze every aspect of the presidential contest except the actual issues. They are forbidden to go there, they know it, they have internalized it. They must know on some level that they are frauds and impostors. Otherwise they would not react with such anger and hostility when someone points out the obvious – their lips are surgically stitched to the butts of the powerful. Their eyebrows have been shaved so as never to arch in surprise or express disbelief. If they were to really do journalism, burrow and investigate, ask hard questions and write hard-hitting pieces on real issues, they’d wind up in a free speech zone.

We don’t outlaw free speech in this country. That would be too obvious. We’re much smarter than that. We merely marginalize it.

Mainstream media and bloggers (those who are allowed in have been vetted and screened) will be in Denver’s Pepsi Center these coming few days. There’ll be floods of words, but none so interesting as the drowned out voices of the protesters kept far away, the ones who really know what free speech means. The people behind those chain link fences are doing what respectable journalists would never think of doing: they are taking risks.

In China they don’t have to be coy. They merely outlaw protests. What we do is grotesque – a far cry from the freedom we once experienced in the 50’s and 60’s. Democrats, poised to take power, are asleep at the wheel again. Much better for us if our leaders laid their cards on the table, and if we behaved as people in dictatorships everywhere behave, looking down at our shoes, knowing the truth but too smart to speak it. Much better that than somnambulism.

Just for the record, according to Open Secrets, to date John McCain has taken in $19,560,538 from the financial sector – Wall Street investment banks, mortgage, savings and loan and insurance companies. That’s something we ought to be concerned about – that sector obviously wants special legislation (Social Security privatization?) and freedom from regulation. Those contributions are really a large collection of bribes from industry executives and PAC’s. McCain needs to be watched closely.

Which is why we have two parties. One keeps an eye on the other. Obama is watching McCain and will pounce on something like this. Influence peddling will be an iss ….. oh, hold on here. Strike that. Maybe not. Obama has taken in $22,501,165 from that sector. Guess he won’t be watchdogging.

Well, at least there’s Ralph Nader. At $30,071 he’s either cheaply bought or independent. He’ll use that money now to buy advertising on CNN … oh, wait. Probably not. CNN is not cheaply bought either.

As I have noted before, if the vote count in November is at all close, McCain will win. The reason is simple – the Republicans have the ability to flip enough of the vote using electronic voting machines to tip the election in his favor. In 2004, it appears that they flipped as many as four million votes, creating an eight million vote swing to Bush. (Democrats don’t think to do this sort of thing as they have usually led in the polls and haven’t needed to. But in years past, they have done election fraud too.)

The gold standard for elections, exit polls, have now been (predictably) dismissed as an accurate gauge of how voters really voted. Even though the United Nations uses them and the Carter Center relies on them, even though the Bush Administration used them in disparaging the outcome of Ukraine’s 2004 presidential elections, in the U.S. they are thought not to be accurate. At least after 1998. Up until that time exit polls were quite reliable (except in 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, primaries in New Hampshire in 1992 and Arizona in 1996 – all vote counts oddly involving a candidate named “George Bush”. It’s a family tradition.)

Pollsters said that the discrepancies that showed Kerry the winner in 2004 and the Democrats even bigger winners in 2006 than they were were due to “Reluctant Republican Respondents.” In theory, though never borne out by research, Republican voters in Kerry districts were hesitant to open up to pollsters about their true vote due to intimidation by Democrats around them. It’s a little bizarre and ridiculous, but when there has to be something to explain something, that something can often be something invented on the spot.

Well, in 2008 the excuse for failure of exit polls is pre-programmed. It’s the Bradley Effect (not connected to the Brad Blog, where I learned of it.) This theory says that white voters are reluctant to admit that they won’t vote for a black candidate, and hence lie to pollsters. It is even said to affect voter responses to exit pollsters.

Given that our votes are counted in secret and that few people seem to think such a system, common in third world countries like Zambia, is at all odd, we should just get used to it. We’re going to hear a lot about the Bradley Effect as John McCain saunters into the White House to occupy the office that George W. Bush never won either.

Here’s a good article by Michael Neumann breaking down the various legalities involved in the Georgia conflict, and in general exonerating most Russian activities.

This passage caught my eye:

There is also a relationship between war as an immorally disproportionate response, or starting war for the wrong reasons, and all its consequences. When you start a war for the wrong reasons, you are responsible for all that follows, even the other side’s atrocities. Though the other side is to blame for its crimes, so are you. You don’t even have the right to kill in self-defense. If you are wrong to start a war, you don’t suddenly fall into the right just because, contrary to your expectations, it’s you, not the other guy, who has to defend himself.

The U.S., its sycophants and apologists, often scorn the Iraqis for various behaviors in the wake of the March 2003 invasion – looting and suicide bombings and kidnappings. Here’s the bottom line – the invasion was illegal and the U.S. was not defending itself when it invaded. It is therefore responsible for everything that followed – everything. That means all of the destruction of property, all of the hundreds of thousands of deaths, all of the refugees. All of it falls on Bush’s shoulders. How much more damage can one man do?

And Georgia, likewise, is responsbile for all that happened in South Ossetia .