Calhouns Can(n)ons

Quick, Maudie, Hide The Children!

So, ACORN, a voter registration outfit that hires folks to go stand in front of supermarkets and other places to get people registered to vote, was cheated by some of their employees who just made up phony names on their forms and turned them in. ACORN spotted many of those phony forms, turned them in to the proper authorties to be purged and helped prosecute the phony fillers-in for fraud.

Here’s what John McCain had to say about his minor scam: We’re “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country.”

AW, MAH GAWD! We’re doomed. The greatest fraud in voter history!!!

Scary? Yes. It is, knowing the nuclear codes might end up in the hands of a guy who launched from a minor scam into full blown terror alert, based on . . . ?? What facts, exactly? Did his campaign crew do NO fact-checking before launching this piece of national silliness? Now, imagine this guy in the Oval Office when an ill-informed staffer rushes in with some garbled account of some minor tiff in Horsepuckistan. LAUNCH! LAUNCH! IT’S THE MOST DANGEROUS SIUATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

George Orwell Woulda Loved It!

According to a new film documentary on the late Lee Atwater, he was afraid of going to hell for what his political campaign techniques and philosophy had done to this country. He was right to fear God’s righteous wrath. His legacy is not only a win-at-all-cost mentality, but a conscious corruption of the language until the citizens cannot believe anything since words no longer mean anything. Lee’s spawn are to be found alive and well in Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC classes and is alive and well in his most appalling protégé – Karl Rove.

The infection showed up in the last Presidential Debate when John McCain (some of his campaign folks are the same folks who Bush used to trash him when he previously ran for Prez. McCain hired ‘em for his own campaign, which speaks volumes about “character.”) used the term “pro-abortion.” As in, you know, those pro-abortionist people over there in Planned Parenthood and etc?

Pro-Abortion? Is there a new national group only John McCain knows about? A group now running a national campaign encouraging women to get pregnant so they can abort their fetuses? Maybe offering premiums and prizes for those who go get the most abortions – after all, if you’re a Pro Abortionist, you can’t have too many of ‘em. Like this group is out giving toasters or a free month’s subscription to “US” magazine with every abortion? Like there’s billboards scattered around the country saying, “Have You Had Your Abortion Today? Why Not? It’s Good For You and Good For The Country!”

THAT “Pro-Abortion” group?

You see the problem? Pure Lee Atwater, pure Karl Rove. Change the frame slightly and the entire picture goes all phony while appearing real. It’s a technique that stops thought, eliminates anything so complex as nuance, turns meaning to mush and corrupts every “fact” until public discourse turns into jibberish and people just end up yelling pre-packaged mantras at each other – each incomprehensible to the other because they’re speaking in corrupted foreign tongues in a language that no longer has any objective meaning.

Joe! Joe! Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

But the worst thing to come out of the debates was Joe the Plumber, who, it turns out, isn’t a real, certified plumber, isn’t making $250,000 a year, which means his claims that Obama’s tax plan would cost him big bucks are pure hockey-puckey. And now the poor guy stands convicted in the public square, thanks to the media frenzy, as a deadbeat property tax shirker, a liar, and maybe even a “criminal” for working without the proper plumbing licenses and certifications & etc.

Aw, Joe, Joe, Joe. That’s what happens when you get served up as a Poster Boy, to be used as a national political tool for a phony populist ploy, instead a real human being.

The weird thing is Obama originally talked to Joe. But Obama wasn’t the one who dragged poor old Joe onto the national stage for this pony dog and pony show. McCain did that.

Thanks, Mr. Atwater. Thanks Karl. Thanks a lot!