Sarah Palin as Imelda Marcos

Republicans this year are the Gang That Couldn’t Campaign Straight.

The latest major goof: Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe.

Palin was picked because she’s a frumpy, self-described Hockey Mom, with a folksy style and wardrobe from Wal-Mart. She wasn’t corrupted by Washington power, money, and morals.

Then the geniuses running McCain’s campaign dressed her up for a role in the sequel to the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.” (A female friend of mine dragged me to that move and it turns out it was surprisingly good; especially the part after my popcorn ran out and I nodded off.)

I figure it’s because McCain’s advisers are rich boys from Yale and Princeton and Harvard, whose moms and wives sport $150,000 wardrobes. So they figured that was the way to grab voters’ attention.

Now Palin has become the GOP’s Imelda Marcos. You remember Imelda, the Steel Butterfly. When her dictator-husband, Ferdinand, was thrown out of office and exiled during the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines, it was revealed that Imelda owned a vast wardrobe, including “508 floor-length gowns, 888 handbags and 71 pairs of sunglasses” — and the infamous 1,060 pairs of shoes.

Come to think of it, the GOP election geniuses must be consulting with Imelda, who’s over there still in the Philippines, bravely enduring, and winning, corruption trials. McCain’s boys must figure that, as she and Ferdinand squatted in office 20 years, she must know something about staying in power.

Live-blogging Palin/Biden debate (by the way, Palin is the MOST qualified of the 4 candidates)

I’ll be live-blogging the Palin/Biden debate tonight, at 6 pm PST, 9 pm EST. Check me out during the debate, or after it.

The media have been trashing Palin as not being qualified. They’re wrong, as usual.

She’s actually the most qualified. That’s because the other 3 candidates — Biden, McCain, and Obama — yesterday all voted in the Senate for the $700,000,000,000.00 ripoff of taxpayers to bail out Wall Street billionaires. That means each of the three now is disqualified from being president or vice president. Every one of these scam-supporters should quit.

If asked about the bailout tonight, Palin will have to support it, because she’s following McCain’s lead.

But if she were at the top of the ticket, as she ought to be, no doubt she would oppose it. What’s in it for Alaska’s citizens but a huge tax bill to support Wall Street crooks and their bought politicians, including Biden, McCain, and Obama?

See you online tonight.

Questions for the veep candidates

I’ll be live-blogging the veep debate Thursday night. So check me out during or after the debate.

In the meantime, here are the questions moderator Gwen Ifill should ask the veep candidates:

For Gov. Palin:

Q: Your beloved husband, Todd, was a member of the Alaska Independence Party. If Obama-Biden wins in November, would you join the AIP in calling for Alaska to secede from the Union?

Q: How far would you confront Russia over its troubles with Georgia? Would it be worth destroying America in nuclear armageddon?

Q: If a President McCain became erratic in office, or showed signs of insanity, would you recommend that Congress relieve him of his duties?

Q: You’re big supporter of Title IX, the federal program that mandates quotas for women in college sports. Would you support similar programs in other areas of life? For example, should the NFL and NBA mandate that 50% of players be female?

For. Sen. Biden:

Q: As a Catholic, you are required by your faith to be pro-life, as you were earlier in your career. Yet you switched to be pro-abortion when you ran for the presidency back in 1988. Is the state of your immortal soul worth less than your political ambitions?

Q: As someone who has backed the Iraq War, why didn’t you insist that the Congress first declare war, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution?

Q: Follow up: As someone who has never served in the military yourself, do you feel right sending young men to die in unconstitutional wars?

Q: Given Obama’s inexperience and your long experience, would you play a similar role to VP Dick Cheney, who has taken over much of the role of the president, secretly advancing your own agenda?

I hate to tell you this, but Sarah Palin could get us all killed…

As I’ve written in previous blogs, I like Sarah Palin. But it turns out she is dangerously naive, or misinformed, about the most serious matters of foreign policy. Republicans and conservatives are so smitten with her that they don’t want to hear this — or don’t care.

Here’s what she said about Russia and Georgia, reported in the Financial Times:

Sarah Palin, the running mate of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, on Thursday said the US would be obligated to go to war with Russia if it invaded a Nato ally – a status she advocated for Georgia,

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a Nato ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she told ABC’s Charlie Gibson.

“We have got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable.”

Except the Russians have 10,000 nukes.

This must be the party line she’s getting from McCain’s top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, a paid agent of the government of Georgia.

Moreover, Georgia — a country most Americans never even heard about until last month — isn’t “democratic,” but a dictatorship and tyranny:

Ballot-box stuffing, beatings of opposition activists, biased news coverage and government officials campaigning for President Mikheil Saakashvili‘s party tainted Georgia’s parliamentary elections this year, Europe’s main election watchdog said on Tuesday.

And, contra what Sarah said, the war was not “unprovoked,” but provoked by Georgia invading South Ossetia.

McCain, a mentally unstable hothead, also wants to get us nuked by Russia.

So, here’s how it works, America:

Scheunemann gets rich on Georgia’s cash (which comes, ultimately, from U.S. taxpayers). He, McCain, and Palin are sitting in a bunker while a nuclear bomb drops on your home.

Palin still believes Iraq lie

One of the biggest lies of the Iraq War was how, early on, the Bush regime tried to pin the 9/11 attack on Saddam. After a while, even Bush stopped maintaining that lie, and admitted there was no connection — five years ago.

But Palin still believes it.

The question now is whether Obama, lately Candidate Klutz, and sidekick Biden can take advantage of the nuttiness of McCain and Palin.

It’s amazing, but Democrats have found the two worst candidates possible to run for these offices — except for the two Republicans.

Palin, Romney, GOP vs. the Bill of Rights

I watched the GOP convention tonight and was not surprised, but still dismayed, at the attacks by the speakers on America liberties. Romney and Palin both attacked the rights of “terrorists” to constitutional protections.

Romney blabbed:

Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights?

Palin chirped of Obama:

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?

Both times, I noticed the crowd at Nuremberg — excuse me, St. Paul — rabidly cheering these attacks on American liberties.

What Palin and Romney did not note is that a “terrorist” is anyone the president says is a terrorist. Although this possibly was slightly reduced by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, anyone in the world, including American citizens, could be branded a “terrorist” and held, possibly indefinitely, in detention. Even Romney and Palin might be held that way, never to be heard from again.

And as H.L. Mencken pointed out, the test cases of liberty seldom involve the top people, but those at the margins, or even at the bottom. If everyone deserves the same rights, then everyone’s rights must be defended. And “everyone” includes even real terrorists.

It’s not surprising that, under Bush, first “terrorists,” real and imagined, had their rights abridged, then everybody else did, too. As Glenn Greenwald has reported on the scene from Minneapolis — here, and here, and here — even peaceful protesters’ houses have been raided before the convention  even began, and reporters were arrested.

Palin: Nice lady, bad company

Palin gave a great speech. But her foreign policy and civil rights sections clearly were written by the anti-American Neocons who run McCain’s campaign, and who hate our liberties with a passion. She’s a nice lady who’s put in with a bad crowd, as Lew Rockwell pointed out.

Palin’s nickname is “the Barracuda.” But even a barracuda would be devoured by a gang of killer sharks — in this case, Bush, Cheney, McCain, Lieberman, and the Neocons.

If America is about anything, it’s liberty protected by the Bill of Rights. Bush, Cheney, McCain and the others have spent the past 8 years assaulting the Bill of Rights as it never has been in our history.

Romney’s ambition

The oleagenous Romney also said:

John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it!

That’s rich coming from a Mormon. Like Islam, it has a history of polygyny (although Muslims can have only 4 wives), bans booze, and has some terrorism in its past.  And a lot of Republicans consider Mormonism a cult (see comments section here).

I don’t have anything against Mormons myself, I’m just pointing out that, if Mormons were judged by Romney’s rhetoric, he might end up at Guantanamo just for that.

Most of his speech was a preparation for a presidential run in 2012 by continually saying conservatism is better than the liberalism of Obama. But just 2 years ago he was a liberal himself.

What a night

Republicans at the convention must be feeling so giddy tonight they could float up to the moon.

But if you believe in America’s principles and tradition of liberty, it was a night to despair.

Sarah Palin for president!

Let me be the first to say this, too: Republicans need to flip their ticket: Sarah Palin for president, McCain for VP. Put Sarah on the top and they’ll win big.

LewRockwell.com’s blog has been running some items showing she’s a kindred spirit to Ron Paul (except on war, of course). Lew writes:

From a February MTV interview: “He’s a good guy,” she added. “He’s so independent. He’s independent of the party machine. I’m like, ‘Right on, so am I.'”

Thomas DiLorenzo writes:

Ron Paul supporters advocated that Ron pick her as his vice presidential running mate eleven months ago, stressing her libertarian policy stances and her family values.

James Ostrowski writes:

Are they reading LRC?

McCain skipped over several neocons to pick someone who I am hearing from all over is a “libertarian.” Maybe they realize the importance of the libertarian swing vote after all.

I’m not saying she’s a libertarian but Andrea Mitchell is.

Once again, Ron Paul was ahead of the game. Come to think of it, how about nominating Sarah Palin for president — and Ron Paul for VP? That would carry every state.

Sarah Palin as VP candidate: Pretty choice

The most positive factor in John McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for VP — and I’m the only one with the guts to say it in these politically correct times — is that she’s the prettiest major-party candidate ever to run for vice-president. Do you want to spend the next 4-8 years looking at Biden or Sarah?

Heck, if the next VP eventually becomes president, that could be 16 years we’re talking about looking at this person. If Biden wins, I’m going to throw away my 21-year old Mitsubishi even before it becomes obsolete next February.

For McCain’s campaign, the negative is that her inexperience — two years as Alaska’s governor — negates the charge that Obama is inexperienced. Nobody knows much about her. And her home state already is solidly Republican.

But on the positive side for his campaign, she solidifies his Republican base by being pro-life and anti-tax. She’s the Mom of 5 kids, the youngest born just 4 months ago; so pro-aborts can’t say to her, as they do to pro-life men, “What do you know about being pregnant?”

She also was a reformer in Alaska politics and knows a lot about the energy business, a big issue in the campaign. And no doubt the McCain camp is expecting her to win the “Hillary vote,” supposedly women who want a woman in a high office, and don’t care about anything else. I wonder how many voters actually are like that.

What’s unknown so far is exactly how much she supports McCain’s belligerent, anti-American foreign policy, and his endorsement of the anti-American police state at home (the “Patriot” Act — really the Traitors’ Act — etc.). She probably endorses them quite a bit.

Unlike Cheney in 2000 and Biden in 2008, she has no decades-long experience in the federal government, so she will not, like them, act as a Rasputin to the standard-bearer. She will let McCain be McCain.

Now that’s scary.

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Update 11:10 a.m., PST: In her speech this morning, Palin took the Neocon/McCain line on Iraq, Iran, Georgia, etc. She has a son in the Army who soon will be posted to Iraq. She pronounces nuclear “nu-cu-lear,” like Bush. And she praised Hillary’s “determination.” Palin promised that she would carry Hillary’s mission to “shatter the glass ceiling, once and for all!”

Her speech: