Spying on the GOP

The Don said it best: keep your enemies closer, so we subscribed to the RNC and McCain email lists, thinking it would be fun to keep tabs on the Evil Empire's increasingly panicked desperation to find a way to stop the enthusiasm and determination of the Democrats and give us four more years of BUSHED!

Turns out this stuff is so entertaining that we decided it would make excellent web content. We GenXers are in the business of saving you time and money, so no need for you to bother wading through all that GOP propaganda – just check back often and we'll keep you abreast of the salient points.

The propaganda never stops, though, and today we decided to wade through it all. Luckily, we also installed a nice, new wireless network so we can take the laptop to the restroom (you know, just in case). Here are the highlights...

{excerpt} John McCain remains steadfast in his commitment to a brand of leadership that promotes neo-con war profiteer principle over politics, and now he needs a commitment from you. With your immediate contribution of $100 or more in support of his presidential campaign, you will be sent an official John McCain 2008 lapel pin to identify you as a key McCain supporter.

We know that the GOP hate-mongers will have no problem using personal attacks on the Democratic candidates' family members to sell their propaganda (i.e. Michelle Obama or Chelsea Clinton), but we had no idea that they would sink as low as to use First Lady Laura Bush for their shamefully desperate pleas for money. We actually like Laura and it saddens us very much that she and her girls will be saddled for life with guilt-by-association to the Criminal Bush Administration – far more egregious than Senator Obama's guilt-by-association to the Rev. Wright. Upside: The RNC hacks have still not cracked the dynamic mail merge function, and are still sending these emails out with non-functional "Donate" links. Can you say: technologically challenged?		click to view

Senator McCain's spin-meisters must have put in some extra hours crafting this email blast. It's a daunting task, trying to make it appear that the Senator's two major policy speeches last week actually contained policy, other than stay the Bush course. The first thing we would do is try a diversion tactic and, sure enough, that's what they did! Topic: First Post-Primary Election Ad McCain Propaganda Today, the campaign released its first television ad, highlighting John McCain's experience, character and optimistic vision for our future.		click to view
McCain Straight Talk: His Optimistic Vision "There's going to be other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars." No need to comment on this one. Click to watch the video if you can stomach it.

McCain Propaganda

John McCain made clear that he is an idealist with a deep understanding of the world's realities.

McCain Straight Talk: His Deep Understanding

"We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact – a League of Democracies – that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests."

Our guess is that the Senator was so busy flying around on lobbyist jets that he missed four years of news about how the "one hundred democratic nations" of which he speaks are so sickened at the criminal policies of the evil Bush & Cheney regime, it is unlikely they will even take a meeting with Bush v2.

We're not sure if it's old age or just a "bury my head in the sand" attitude that has resulted in poor John not realizing that the America that used to be a respected global super-power has, in only eight years, been downgraded to a global laughing stock. We also suspect his hearing might be failing because we can hear the giggles all the way from Europe over this cockamamie "League of Democracies" idea. Oh wait, what's that? The laughter is coming from New York City because all the Europeans are coming to America to shop while the U.S. Dollar is so weak? Oh, OK... no wonder the laughter is so loud from here.

We also think it's going to be a hard sell on that "advancing our values" thing when "our values" have devolved into:

• sacrificing young lives in return for the obscene profits of the private military contractors friends of Dick (So?) Cheney.
• utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution by the Executive Branch and the Justice Department in return for false confessions extracted from tortured prisoners.

McCain Propaganda

John McCain discussed his proposed principles for addressing the housing crisis in the short-term as well as in the long-term to assure it never happens again. He gave a clear explanation of the challenges facing America's economy and a lucid explanation of how we got here.

McCain Straight Talk: His Clear (and Lucid!) Explanation

"What happened was an explosion of complex financial instruments that weren't particularly well understood. To make matters worse, these instruments were mostly off-balance sheets, and hidden from scrutiny. In other words, the housing bubble was made worse by a series of complex, inter-connected financial bets that were not transparent or fully understood."

McCain Straight Talk: His "Principles" For Addressing the Housing Crisis

"I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now. It is time to convene a meeting of the nation's accounting professionals to discuss the current mark to market accounting systems. We should also convene a meeting of the nation's top mortgage lenders."

For those Americans who are facing the reality of losing their homes: Sorry, but the 71 year-old John needs more time to get past his learning curve on all this really confusing economy stuff—Wait! Maybe some hope on the horizon? We just found this quote from later on in this speech:

"When we commit taxpayer dollars as assistance, it should be accompanied by reforms that ensure that we never face this problem again."

Of course we understand that implementing sweeping reforms like this take time—WHAT? This quote is out of context? The Senator was talking about the $30,000,000,000 in taxpayer assistance that has been awarded to Bear Stearns? Oh, OK, never mind. Sorry again, soon to be non-homeowners. John has no plan to help you and thinks your best bet is to go back to throwing your money away on rent because, while he believes in the American Dream for corporate shareholders, he does not believe in the American Dream for Americans.

	Candidate McCain has been busy this week, visiting the Middle East for some photo ops fact funding. Imagine his disappointment when he had to bag that visit to the same market he visited a year ago, complete with body armor and one hundred of America's Finest escorting him. This time around, his on-the-ground security staff nixed the idea because that market is just too darned dangerous since the troop escalation surge. On the bright side, though, the comic relief of President Bush's tap dance on the day he endorsed McCain was nothing when compared to McCain's tap dance about how Iran is supporting and training Al Queda... er... uh... {psssst, no John, that's not right} extremists. Meanwhile, the McCain staff has been busy sending out multiple versions of this gem of an email, the first words of which are: I am not running for president...		click to view (that's right, folks, we're not making this stuff up)
Yes, these words are out of context and, of course, there is more empty rhetoric that completes this sentence, but we remember our English 101 Professors telling us that negative phrasing should always be avoided, especially in marketing communications. We figure the GOP hacks who are writing this stuff either 1) skipped class that day so they could go shoot some varmints or 2) never made it as far as English 101. The next sentence in the paragraph goes like this: I seek the office of the President of the United States because I am as confident today as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party... blah blah blah.... Geez! Enough with the Reagan already! Sure, we GenXers were young and stupid in the 80s and, of course, we empathize with the fact that memory is the first thing to go when you reach old age, but these days our memories are still sharp. This is what we remember about the Ray-guns Era: Just say NO to drugs and sex, but YES to the Mujahideen! (In Ronnie's defense, though, he did give us all a good chuckle over the fact that he was so clueless, he thought Springsteen's Born in the USA was really patriotic. DOH!) One additional note on this one... we actually received this same email twice – once from the McCain Campaign with the Subject: The McCain Pledge and again, a few hours later, from the RNC with the Subject: Sign a Pledge of Support for John McCain. We can only assume that, in addition to their immunity to their candidate's doddering cluelessness, McCain fans are so mired in the last century that they think of Spam only as a slimy canned meat.

Where to start with this one? Besides being personally offended by more bad HTML and non-functional DONATE links in this email, we are also offended by bad writing – so much so that we decided to lend the GOP a hand by red-lining this entire email for them (your welcome, guys )

Perhaps most striking is the photo. We are even more offended by the not-so-subliminal comparison between our current "Commander-in-Chief" to the Five Star General, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during WW II, and 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower. We Like Ike.

On the bright side, though, many have compared George W. Bush to Alfred E. Neuman, and this photo really brings it home:

{excerpt}
Today, Senator McCain met with President Bush at the White House to accept his congratulations for securing the support to claim our party's nomination.

Now, we all know Republicans are a bunch of stiffs, but "securing the support to claim our party's nomination." C'mon, now... maybe a little enthusiasm for the 71 year-old future of your party?

Also, something doesn't seem quite right with the phrase for securing the support to claim. We had to read it three times before we got it, so if there are any English teachers out there, please explain. (and BTW: thanks a lot for your hard work and dedication – unlike the GOP, we get that you are more important to our nation than corporate CEOs.)

We were also hoping for a nice, incriminating photo of Candidate McCain yukking it up with The Prez, but darn it! Foiled again. There was only this photo of Senator McCain and some unidentified suit in a bad rug. We have no clue who this is... anyone? Anyone?

(And who's that lurking in the background? OMG!
It's Ronald Ray-guns! The man who brought you
The Taliban! That's some awesome legacy, Ronnie.)

One other comment on this one, with apologies to non-tech-geeks. We here at GenX for Obama are personally offended by bad HTML and just so you know, this email contained fifteen occurrences of <FONT FACE="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" SIZE="2">. Question for the geeks: When is the last time you saw a FONT tag, let alone fifteen of 'em? What's that? 1999? Yeah, that's what we said. Can you say klugy and inefficient? We prefer one occurrence of <BODY CLASS="NORM">.

One other tidbit... we clicked through on their "Donate" link and here is what we got:

And guess what? The click here link doesn't work either!

Uh-huh, this is who we want running our country....

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