Blind Prophecy

Sheesh, I take a week off from politics and the whole world goes ka-boom. Let me see if I’ve got the last week wrapped up in my head:

• The economy is collapsing. So far John McCain has: suggested that the fundamentals are still strong, threatened to fire the chair of the SEC, realized he couldn’t fire the SEC chair and said he would request the resignation of the FEC chair, opposed a bailout, supported a bailout, announced opposition to golden parachutes for executives, claimed ignorance about his campaign adviser Carly Fiorina’s golden parachute – one of the most stunning and well-known examples of such, invented the blackberry, bought 13 foreign-made cars, tricked a wealthy aristocrat supporter of his into calling the working class “rednecks”, kept the cash donation he got from the former Manhunt CEO, has made no comment about how his anti-gay politics work with his openly gay chief-of-staff Mark Buse, dissed more newspapers and blogs as being “in the tank” for Obama, has been the subject of a very rare nearly industry-wide boycott from the press for threatening to take away editorial access to Palin’s foreign head-of-state meetings, suspended his campaign (without actually suspending anything), dashed off to Washington (but not before pissing off David Letterman in a huge way), interrupted the progress of an economic bill with a useless White House photo op, announced he would delay the first debate, and put himself in the path of about a zillion quality zingers from America’s top homo Barney Frank. How is this not working in his favor?
• Back in California, polls are showing a 55-41 split in the gay marriage bill (with 55% opposed to the bill, and so keeping gay marriage legal) despite the pro-Prop-8 groups (okay, mostly Mormons) having more funding. Also, the “Yes on 8″ campaign lost a million yard signs in a transportation snafu. Turns out they couldn’t be bothered to find a good California union shop… so they exported that job to China. Now their signs will arrive three weeks late – giving them only 3-4 weeks of effectiveness at most. Brad Pitt and Stephen Spielberg love the gays.
• Sarah Palin is a lying liar from liarsville, witchcraft-proofed (hey Wiccan buddies, are you on top of this? I want to know what spells are aimed at her right now), uses a stupid yahoo password to hide her dealings from the public, and a babbling idiot when faced with reporters who aren’t going to ask her only easy questions.
• Clay Aiken is gay. Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian confirmed she is in a same-sex relationship, so she may be a lesbian or possibly bisexual. Still no confirmation on Anderson Cooper. Larry Craig is still trying to get off (the list of convicted sex offenders). For the first time, the federal courts have recognized anti-transgender discrimination under existing antidiscrimination law. Gay couples in Florida are adopting.
• WaMu has collapsed. JPMorgan has bought out much of it as the federal government shut down the largest bank failure in US history.
• David Blaine is a tool.

You see what happens? I turn my back for 7 days…

But seriously, knowing the rumors about John McCain’s explosive temper, would you want to be anywhere near him behind-the-scenes this week? I close my eyes and picture him cussing and screaming at the drunken monkeys apparently running his campaign at this point.

I was talking with Jen about this, the only thing that could save his sinking ship campaign right now would be to go so outside the politician playbook and sit down on television and say, “this is not the campaign I want to be running. These are not the policies I wanted to champion, the veep I wanted to choose, the ads I wanted to run, or the deals I wanted to be making. I apologize to you, the American people, for letting this get out of hand. Tomorrow, I’m retaking control of my campaign, I’m sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska, and I’m asking Joe Lieberman to join me on the ticket. What do you say?”

I still wouldn’t vote for him, but I’d believe that he’s a maverick, a straight-talker, and a reasonably honorable man.

Filed under: politics by Jere Keys