Sarah Palin and the Good Book

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Being well schooled in scripture, Sarah Palin is certainly familiar with the Book of Kings, Chapter 1, verses 1-4 and I’m sure they have crossed her mind in recent days:

Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.

Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.

So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king.

And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not.

On Thursday night John McCain certainly looked stricken in years, tottering through his interminable speech, and whatever heat now nourishes him in political terms comes from Sarah, not Cindy whose inner thoughts may perhaps be more directed towards the yoga instructor in San Diego reckoned by some in the yoga community in that city to be a source of consolation to the Hensley beer heiress.

McCain’s speech seemed to be me to be pretty much of a dud. It may have been watched by 40 million, but how many were awake by the time McCain reached his surprise ending, namely that in the service of his country he had experienced a terrible ordeal in a prison camp in what was once, in a long forgotten war, known as North Vietnam.
Since his speech was billed as “reaching out to the undecideds”, McCain did not pledge nuclear Armageddon, a prospect the biblethumpers await with equanimity, even enthusiasm. His references to Georgia were cursory and he even dared to insist that he prefers peace to war, which is exactly the sort of outrageous sentiment one would expect to hear from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Particularly hallucinating was McCain’s invective against the corruptions of Washington and Big Government – one of the two big enemies identified by Republican speechwriters in St Paul – the other being the national press which has spent twenty fawning years helping McCain cultivate the myth of his senate career as a maverick.

The very morning of McCain’s speech Bloomberg News was featuring the remarks on his firm’s website of Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund. Gross is co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco) based in Newport Beach, Greater Los Angeles.

Gross wrote that unless Big Government steps in, pronto, the whole show could go over the cliff. As Bloomberg reported him: “The U.S. government needs to start using more of its money to support markets. ‘ Unchecked, it can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami. If we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury.’”

The very next day the government stepped in to bail out Fannie and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants. And on that same Friday Nevada regulators shut down Silver State Bank, crushed by bad loans in the South Nevada real estate market. McCain’s son Andrew had sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, starting in February. He resigned in July citing "personal reasons." Andrew was also a member of the bank's audit committee. He’s the chief financial officer of Hensley & Co., the beer distributorship of which Cindy McCain is chairwoman.

Memo to depositors. Avoid banks on whose boards sit the sons of Republican presidential contenders. Recall Neil Bush, one of George and Barbara’s hellspawn. Neil was a member of the board of directors of Silverado Savings and Loan ,based in Denver. Silverado went belly-up in the S&L collapse in the 1980s, and the collapse cost taxpayers $1 billion. Mismanagement was charged and Neil one of those in the firing line. He was fined $50,000 – a cost of doing business swiftly defrayed by a fundraiser. If Andrew runs into similar problems, no doubt Cindy will step up to the plate.

Continued>>
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09062008.html

mcPenis wants to know palin biblically. he may not be working on full speed in most ways, but his pecker apparently works.

and a nice turnabout on the Bible thumpers.