Sarah and Sonia

Is there no limit to the soulless stupidity of the 'publican extremists? Did you watch the bizarre performance of soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin today? How any rational commentator could actually think that this was a strategy to win the presidency is hard to fathom.

Both right and left like to pander to the masses while actually insulting such intelligence as the public, whatever that may be, actually exhibits. But the public would have to be criminally moronic to believe that today's free association madness merited anything more than a quick trip to the loony bin. The nonsensical, non-syntactic stringing of right-wing cliche, the winks and nods, the bizarre thought structures, the grating syncopations of voice ... well ... at this point, anyone who still credits John McCain with a lick of sense is simply not paying attention.

I am one of those who believe that there is a massive scandal licking at her heels. The fact that she has an eternal diabolic optimism should not hide the fact that she is a liar, a thief, a self-centered bitch ... that's a technical term, folks, and we know what it means. She'd eat her children for breakfast if they weren't so unappetizing.

But then again, perhaps she is marginally brighter, at least in the exercise, than the slobbering 'publican-heel-licking median "pundints" ... the "n" is deliberate ... she knows she has no political future, and she also knows that she can make a pot of money from the cynics at Fox. So why wait. Strike while the bones are still warm.

Levi Johnson is looking better all the time ... check out his shirt-free pics at GQ ... you have to watch the slideshow.

Meanwhile, the professional gasbags of 'publican prevarication have unleashed another wave of immodest, feigned-innocent horror at the Nazi-Stalinist, racist-anti-American Justice-in-waiting Sotomayor. Good lord. The real terror is that she, like many liberals, covers her sharp angles with a crypto-conservatism that eventually becomes a lifestyle. What happens if she and Scalia get buddy-buddy and decide that they have a novel "founders'-intent" theory on homosexuality ... something like the recently floated Obama line that the ban on gay marriage is actually the grant of the unboundaried civil right to marry anyone of the opposite sex that you want to. Her conservatism on crime is of the the infamous type that grants that the law, in its majesty, forbids the theft of bread by rich and poor alike.

She doesn't impress me. Obviously she is better than the other of-color Justice who recently opined that there is no constitutional protection against strip-searching 13-year-olds on less than the grounds of reasonable suspicion. But that is not saying much.

Don't get me wrong; I want her confirmed. But we have to face the fact that the 'publicans are so bereft of civic consciousness let alone intelligence in the face of threats to the Republic that they will suicide-bomb every single step taken by any opponent.

Alas, this is the state of the Republic on the eve of the Glorious Fourth.

On that unhappy note ... on to that Glorious Fourth. In our home, we plan to celebrate the revolution against kings and authoritarianism with seared flesh, unusual ales, and Fish-House Punch.


Photos by Arod ... top photo of a San Francisco sidewalk, and bottom photo of a display from last year's July 4 BBQ chez moi; we won't have those flags this year as my wonderful friend June, who supplied them, is unable to attend.