Well, so much for the funeral. Because it’s now a high school prom! And guess who’s the queen?

Sarah Palin, come on down, don the crown, get that nose wrinkle thing going and kick the living shit out of Obama. Yikes. Anyone else want to dance? I didn’t think so.

As you all know by now, I don’t play nicely with either major party. I’m old school. And for the 20-plus years I’ve been writing I’ve had two quotes hanging near my writing space. The first is from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” And, the second, is from Joseph Pulitzer: “Newspapers should have no friends.” Ah, mission accomplished.

But I do have readers. So let me tell you want you don’t want to hear: The Democrats and the Republicans are taking all of us for fools. They’re co-conspirators in a grotesque fleecing of a nation, where the goal is to dumb-down the political process to the point of irrelevancy. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not a democracy. It’s a fucking sitcom.

The people talking issues were kicked to the side a long, long time ago. Worse, they were treated like lepers. You do, in fact, remember Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Ralph Nader, don’t you? Silly men. They thought this was about ideas, ideals, proposals, vision and – sit down for this one – follow through and commitment.

Nope. Not in the sitcom nation.

Because the script for this election has already been submitted. And it goes like this: Obama equals hope. McCain equals security. Biden equals change (huh? Oh yeah, he took the train home every night). And Palin equals Hillary. Now shut up and debate those names and those terms only. Or else we’ll condemn you to a lifetime of snarky blogging.

But if it’s a sitcom they want, let’s analyze it like a sitcom.

Sarah Palin kicked ass last night. Yep, kicked ass. She single-handedly resuscitated the dying elephant in the room and did what every liberal pundit had convinced themselves she couldn’t do: deliver a speech. Better yet (for the Republicans), she largely avoided the issues, keeping the soft-focused lens on her family and her verbal Uzi trained on Obama more effectively than anyone else this campaign season.

Imagine, for example, if Hillary Clinton came out swinging like that against Obama? But she can’t, because she’s bound by the unspoken code of political correctness that, interestingly enough, forbids such discourse. Instead of putting a spotlight on Obama’s inexperience and stadium-sized sense of entitlement like Palin effectively did, Hillary played her own politically correct card – yeah, the one with two “x” chromosomes. Oh, the liberal dilemma!

It is amazing that Obama has been flirting with and outright running for the presidency for almost four solid years and yet this is the first time that I can remember that an opponent undressed and exposed his flimsy resume. And the sitcom crowd roared at the irony that it was finally being done by the woman with the flimsy resume. Oh please, will you two get a room and show each other your resumes and settle this once and for all.

And I love it how the Dem faithful are now demanding that we talk about the issues. Well, now that the helium balloons from their halcyon convention have floated away. But let’s take them up on it for a second. The war? Well, what’s the difference between McCain voting to fund the war and Obama voting to fund the war? Oh yeah, Obama did it while holding his nose. The economy? Well, what’s the difference between Biden bending over backwards for the credit card thugs and McCain bending over for the same? The environment? Well, what’s the difference between Obama’s support of nuclear power and McCain’s support of nuclear power? You get my point.

Hang in there America, because this sitcom ends on November 4th. Or, better yet, tune into candidates like Nader, Paul and McKinney who are actually saying something – and meaning it.

Well, that was creepy. The Republican Convention, that is. Was it me, or did it feel more like a funeral than the party they were trying oh-so-hard to make it? Because this Grand Old Party looked and felt like nothing more than a fatally wounded elephant making a slow fall to the ground. I was half expecting to see the tusk-poachers come crashing in.

Rule number one for political convention organizers has got to be that they make sure to fill the auditorium. You know, kind of like the Dems did in Denver. Because there’s nothing as ineffective as seeing old, white people with really stupid hats standing around in a half-filled arena while trying to pretend that the place is rockin’. Sorry, but the cameras didn’t lie. And I’ve seen more excitement in the windows of Montpelier’s VFW Hall.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we should all begin to understand John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin. I mean, what the hell else did he have to spice up the party? And, no, Cindy’s ridiculous dress doesn’t count.

McCain saw the Dem Fest in Denver, looked over the notes for his own upcoming convention, and realized that Lieberman, Romney and Pawlenty didn’t offer squat to the ticket or the party. So Palin it was. And the McCain folks are certainly hoping that the Palin intoxication that the left, right and middle are in the midst of – good or bad – will help hide the carcass of the dying elephant in the room.

Last night’s convention agenda was just weird. First of all, how lame is that they think we believe that George Bush “couldn’t get to Minnesota” in order to speak live to the delegates? It’s a two-hour flight – and the guy’s got his own plane. Besides, it had been a good twelve hours since the Hurricane Gustav excuse was removed from the equation.

The result was a terribly awkward and typically disjointed speech by Bush, who looked like a pained school kid trying to muster some enthusiasm for a report he didn’t give two shits about. Worse, Bush obviously wasn’t getting the audio from the convention center, thus abruptly cutting off the obligatory moments of applause – sleepy as they were. It was a disconnected Bush at his best, rushing through his allotted seven minutes and thrown off the stage by the McCain folks before the network coverage began.

And what was the rush to get a sitting, two-term Republican president off the stage at the party’s convention? Well, to make sure the Democrat-turned-Independent-turned-one-slimy-bastard known as Joe Lieberman occupied the primetime slot. That, my friends, is what Texans would call putting a boot up the president’s ass. Time’s up, Mr. President, because we’ve got to save the good slot for your one-time electoral opponent.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any creepier, up stepped Lieberman who I’m convinced was only there to audition for Don Knotts’ role in the remake of The Andy Griffith Show. Well, that and to prove that he still has no tact or political morals because he actually tried to praise Bill Clinton in his speech. Huh? Yeah, that’ll certainly win him over to a bunch of red-meat Republicans. The guy’s just goofy.

Yep, Palin’s all they’ve got. Unless you’re old enough and senile enough to dance in a three-foot tall American-flag hat to the tunes of Lawrence Welk and find yourself getting (politically) aroused by images of Reagan, Fred Thompson and Lieberman. Ew.

Let’s do Sarah Palin. Wait. That didn’t sound right. So, make that: Let’s consider Sarah Palin. I’ve been pondering words about Palin all weekend but every time I tore myself away from the unbearable relaxation of the holiday weekend and thought I was going to string two or three thoughts together, the terms of the discussion would change. I mean, how fast did the discussion morph from Palin’s “fake birth” to her daughter’s real birth? Nanoseconds.

And, of course, we only have the Internet and the self-important liberal bloggers to blame for the whiplash-like speed to which the Palin story has been changing.

If, as they like to declare, the Denver Dem-lovefest was their “finest hour,” the Palin coverage in the days that followed has certainly been the liberal blogosphere’s darkest hour. No sooner than they were able to unpack and frame their “official” passes to the Dem Party in Denver, the lib-blogs snarled at the gentle rain on their parade that the McCain campaign provided by picking—say what?! – a goddamn woman.

Ouch. There’s nothing that pisses a liberal off more than having a politically-correct trump card played before they’ve even had time to clean up from the mess of their premature victory ejaculation. Dude!

But the Palin card was played and the response was u.g.l.y. – just as the McCain folks were certainly hoping. Sure, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the Republicans, but I’ll bet the upper-tiers of the McCain campaign are happy that the initial Palin attacks were largely blown away by the coverage of Hurricane Gustav.

There is, after all, nothing more ugly than liberals beating up a woman, a mother of five, an elected (and popular) governor, and, by all accounts, a hyperkinetic outsider who has reached the top in what is certainly considered to be a real man’s state. Good luck with that.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to attack when it comes to attacking Palin. You know, things like THE ISSUES. But the lib-dips have taken the McCain bait and, instead, decided to run with breathless (and untrue) stories about her “fake pregnancy,” her faux-scandals (trooper-gate, snore), flying while pregnant, and her connection with an Alaska independence party that believed in localism and – yes – independence. Gasp! The silliest aspect to the lib-dip coverage was its use of rightwing Alaska Republicans’ quotes about Palin. Yo, fellas – because, they are mostly fellas – the rightwing Republicans hate her because she pulled the rug out from under the self-proclaimed “good ole boys” that ruled the roost before she chased them from office.

Like I said, stick to the issues. You know, things like her anti-choice position, her pro-drilling position (no pun intended – hey, she IS a mother of five), and her disastrous environmental record that can be summed up by three words: Fuck the bears. Well, not literally. But you get my point.

And, please, stop with the “experience” nonsense. Do the Dems know how many women and thinking men that the “no experience” argument is totally and completely pissing off – especially in an election cycle that has been monopolized by Barack Obama’s helium-filled balloons of “change”? Warning: Palin will eat the wine glass lib-dips alive with that accusation if she ever gets the chance.

Speaking of experience, here’s a fun little snippet from Dennis Perrin, one of my newly found favorite writers:

Watching the libsphere in hysterics over Sarah Palin has been entertaining, and no attack on her is considered too low or too coarse to post in a comments section. Apart from her reactionary positions, the main lib beef, as I recently noted, is with her inexperience. Liberals demand seasoned insiders like Joe Biden to help guide the empire, someone who can properly manage the machinery of state, bomb the right countries, spy on the right people, and above all, normalize imperial matters after eight years of “wrong” turns. Palin is an affront to their sense of professionalism. Thus the constant abuse.

Bingo.

Damn, I miss the issues. But, unfortunately, we’re all stuck in some kind of nightmarish sitcom-like presidential campaign, whereby the issues are damned while we take thoughtless swims in the varnish that will – hopefully – fend the scuff of meaning away for at least another four years.