BLAGAROON

ROOTIN' TOOTIN' HUNTIN'

SHOOTIN' MOMMA PICKED

AS McCAIN PARDNER ON

WAGON TRAIN TO WHITE HOUSE:

The US election gained a new character last week as the Republican (what a misnomer for the most reactionary party in America) McCain campaign announced the selection of recent arrival to national politics, Sarah Palin, Governor of off-the-edge rambunctious frontier state Alaska, as the nominee for Vice-President in the most expensive and longest lasting election campaign in US history.

SALLY GET YER GUN

Ma Pain-in-the-face, a gun-toting, reactionary representative of the worst elements of that benighted country, appears more like a character from satirical cartoon TV show “The Simpsons” than a serious politician. The Alaskan airhead, former beauty queen and college basketball player, with a clutch of children whom she shamelessly abuses in public by dragging them around as an entourage to display as a political statement of her so-called “family values”, was hailed by all the usual suspects in the gaggle of right-wing head-bangers which has been attached to the Republican party since the Reagan era. The 44-year old virtual ad-mans bimbo, who only took out a US passport last year and has visited only 2 countries outside the US, Kuwait and a brief stop at Shannon Airport, would of course, be next in line for the White House in a McCain presidency if such a disaster would befall the Demented Household which is the USA today. “Merciful Hour and Gaw between us an’ all haarrm” me Granny would have said.

It seems the Republicans, in their current insanity, are assuming that having a tick-box woman “Howdy pard!” for McCain would somehow leach votes from the bloc which gave Democrat contender, Hilary Rodham Clinton, 18 Million votes during the primary contests. Of course, the Republicans left out of the equation that only intelligent women and men voters cast their ballots for Hilary! Such a constituency is out of reach for a walking gobshite like Ma Pain-in-the-face. I mean, why would anyone who opposed the War in Iraq vote for this termagant? Aren’t a million dead Iraqis enough? Why would anyone who supports Universal Health Care vote against their own interests in this election? Women in America won’t get what the majority want as expressed in numerous opinion polls; the right to control their own fertility, the right to equality in the workforce, the right to decent housing, health-care and education for themselves and their entire families; from this jumped-up Barbie-doll ersatz politician. Ma Pain-in-the-face is politically opposed to such rights being established by statute and is against their application in practice as well.

When the Clintons were in office, the Republicans, backed by billionaire insurance companies, fought tooth and claw to sabotage Hilary Clinton’s efforts to get the Congress to support a national system of basic Health Care in the USA. Outside the Convention centre in St Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the Republicans were gathering, an Anti-War demo of more than 10,000 took place and an encampment of Health Care supporters is positioned in the street opposite the centre; not much support for Ma Pain-in-the-face there. Further up the street, other demonstrators were attacked, gassed and batoned by Robocop dressed riot police in another example of the Compassionate Conservatism of the Republican Party.

The character of Ma Pain-in-the face’s political allegiances show her preference for divisive, prejudicial, religious based fanaticism which fails to recognise social and individual difference and condemns and tries to stigmatise other human beings for their perceived faults and deviations from the fairytale “holy scriptures” peddled by herself and her regular companions and associates. She promotes the ludicrous superstition of “Creationism” and seeks to have it imposed on schoolchildren everywhere in the country with books describing Evolution Theory removed from public libraries as well, despite the US having a secular state constitution which she would be obliged to “preserve, protect and defend” on oath if she and McCain were elected. How could this woman give a credible oath on such occasion when a main plank of her political allegiance is to undermine the Constitution as it stands?

Up until last year she didn’t even have a US passport; rather odd for someone who now wants to be Vice-President of the country. One reason why she only recently took out a US passport might have been due to her long-time membership of the “Alaska Independence Party” a pressure group pushing for a vote to allow oil-rich Alaska to secede from the USA. At the same time she cheer-leads McCain in his reactionary stance on the recent conflict in the Caucasus which opposes the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. So, what’s ok for palefaces in Alaska isn’t good enough for the inhabitants of southeast Europe. No doubt, further questions will arise in short order about Ma Pain-in-the face’s past record and actual suitability for high office.

When she finally appeared on the Convention stage Tuesday night, 02.09.08, to make her keynote speech, she delivered a rambling, fragmented, incoherent fudge of warmed-up Reaganite vomit, heavy on all the standard threadbare clichés of distorted “family values” but, devoid of any clear analysis of the problems facing the American people with their crumbling economy and disastrous military adventurism of their Government. She trotted out the usual audience baiting cracks at “Washington” as if it were some foreign regime occupying the USA and she was the leader of the rebels trying to overthrow it; when in fact it is HER government which has been installed in Washington for the past eight years and HER government which has created the problems which she pretends to complain about and gives false promises as to the supposed remedies.

It is just another exercise in unsubtlety from the “Kill a Commie for Christ” party of the 1950’s & ‘60’s to the “Pro-life” party slogans of today. “Pro-life”, in its essence being a delusional, psychopathic obsession with human egg-cells and embryos but, not extending to actually born, living, human beings as the families of the million dead Iraqis could testify to if they ever got the chance to express their opinions in the “free press” of the “Land of the Free”. Likewise, the unfortunate wildlife of Alaska on the receiving end of Ma Pain-in-the-face’s “killing animals for fun” sport weekends.

As well as all this, she backs McCain’s “Hundred Years” war in Iraq and Afghanistan, sends one of her own “pro-life” children to join in the bloodshed, supports the torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the Israeli oppression of the men, women and children of Palestine and Lebanon. “Pro-life”? Not on your NATO Nellie! Representative of Women in the world today or in history? Not bloody likely! A snake-haired Gorgon or a Screeching Harpy more like.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn

Áth Cliath/DUBLIN, 08 Meán Fomhair/September 2008.