By now, we’ve all heard John McCain tout “Joe the Plumber” (an unlicensed plumber) as his poster child for the middle-class American, but what many Americans don’t know is that John McCain went through a lengthy selection process (even longer than the selection process for Sarah Palin) to find the right poster child to exploit.

Here are the top 10 Runners-Up that John McCain had been considering:

#1- Sam the Eagle
John McCain was really enthusiastic about the possibilities of recruiting Sam the Eagle; he was a stoic speaker and an iconic representation of American Values. Sadly, John was crushed when he learned that Sam the Eagle had previously been employed by Jim Henson, a flagrant liberal.

#2- Del tha Funkee Homosapian:
Del was a preferred mascot until his association with a group called the “Gorilaz” came to light. Despite repeated assertions that they are a music group, the McCain campaign was convinced that the Gorilaz might be publicly perceived as an Afro-centric domestic terrorist organization.

#3- Harry the Demolition Expert:
John McCain was initially excited about Harry’s potential, but was disappointed to discover that his nickname was “Crazy Harry” and that focus groups frequently mistook him for Castro.

#4- Shelly the Nurse:
John McCain was really excited about Shelly’s potential as a token middle-class mascot, but backed down after intense pressure from his female staffers. He couldn’t understand why they were so upset, but he just assumed that they had better insight into American’s public perceptions of Asian people.

#5- Mike the Autoworker
Mike was dropped from consideration as soon as word came out that General Motors closed the plant where he worked and outsourced his job to India. Awkward.

#6- Dilbert the Engineer:
Dilbert was under consideration until Dilbert’s perpetual bachelorhood raised questions about his sexual identity.

#7- Cletus the Minstrel:
Cletus was under consideration until John McCain realized that questions about Cletus’ racial identity might be misconstrued as a “race card” attack on Barack Obama and his mixed etnicity.

#8- José the Strawberry Picker
Jose was under consideration until staffers suggested that his public image might negatively affected by the discomfort that Americans feel towards men with mustaches.

#9- Bob the Builder:
Bob the builder was under consideration until one of John McCain’s staffers alerted him that Bob the Builder’s union credentials might come into question.

#10- Larry the Cable Guy:
John McCain had considered recruiting Larry the Cable Guy, but after seeing Delta Farce, he decided that Larry the Cable Guy’s military service record might come into question.

The Republican Party has spent the last few days in an awkward spiral of jingoism, as evidenced by a slew of controversial statements. Let’s review the events of the last few days:

Friday, 10/17:

Representative Michele Bachman (R-Minnesota) states that she is “very concerned that [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views”

Saturday, 10/18

Representative Robin Hayes (R- North Carolina) tells a crowd that “liberals hate real Americans that …believe in God.”

Sunday, 10/19

Sarah Palin levies a new line of attack against Barack Obama by implying that an Obama Presidency would be an “experiment with socialism”.

Tuesday, 10/21:

Sarah Palin is forced to apologize for earlier suggestions that some areas of the United States are “Pro-America”; and that, by association, other areas of the country are less patriotic.

My fellow Americans, this is NOT an isolated series of unrelated Gaffs. These gaffes are the embarrassing side-effect of the Republican Party’s mindset; that it can successfully use the tactics of Joseph McCarthy, a politician who gained power by publicly targeting individuals and groups as Anti-American, Communists, and Atheists.

Yes, these statements are evidence that the Republican Party is returning to the values of McCarthyism to help them win this election. They do, in fact, want to paint Barack Obama as a communist, but they can’t because they wouldn’t be taken seriously.

Instead, the Republican Party is exploiting politically convenient semantics; “socialism” is closely enough associated with “communism” to concern Americans.

What the Republican Party has risked by playing by Joseph McCarthy’s rules is the possibility of redefining the concept of the “Red Scare”.

According to The Hill, Susan Bruce, a campaign blogger for New Hampshire Representative Carol Shea-Porter, was recently forced to resign after she raised the legitimate concern about Sarah Palin’s abysmal public treatment of her children, including her down syndrome afflicted son, Trig:

“I don’t think that putting a scarlet letter on your own teenager and throwing her to the wolves in front of the whole world is something to be proud of [and] I don’t think that using a special needs baby as a prop on late night TV appearances is a value to crow about.”

Since being selected to the Republican Ticket, Sarah Palin has made a continuous spectacle of appearing at public speaking events with Trig. Likewise, Sarah Palin has cast her unwed, pregnant, teenage daughter Bristol into the spotlight in an attempt to emphasise her “traditional family” values.

There is a gratuitous example of misplaced outrage. The GOP’s complaint was that such comments wouldn’t be permissible against Barack Obama. And they’re right.

Complaints about Barack Obama aren’t permissible because Barack Obama is a responsible parent who keeps his children in school, where they belong.

The LAST thing that a pregnant teenager and a mentally challenged infant deserve is the agenda-driven overexposure to the stress of a political campaign. If the Palin Family was being investigated by Social Services, the Palin children would have been placed in protective custody by now.

Susan Bruce was forced to resign because, in the absence of social services, somebody had to raise these legitimate concerns about Sarah Palin’s parenting skills. And in the abscense of the GOPs family values, somebody had to be martyred for doing so.

According to The Washington Post George W. Bush explicitly endorsed the CIA’s use of torture interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects, despite his repeated assertions that “The United States Doesn’t Torture”.

Even though it’s common knowledge, “George W. Bush is a liar” is really becoming a boring explanation for why the credibility of his statements doesn’t hold up.

So here’s a new explanation: George Bush was telling the truth, in a manner of speaking. The reason that President Bush’s explicit endorsement of waterboarding doesn’t contradict his assertion that the “United States Doesn’t Torture” is that he misunderstood what “waterboarding” meant when he approved of it.

This is what George W. Bush imagined when he approved of “Waterboarding”:

According to The New York Times, a recent Republican fund raising reception managed to suck more than a million dollars out of the hands of hundreds of Hillary Clinton’s fair-weather supporters, some of whom traitorously contributed more than twenty five thousand dollars of their blood money to John McCain.

This disgusting display of misplaced activism is evident that there continues to be a serious problem with self-professed Hillary Clinton “supporters” naively backstabbing her and her feminist values in order to support Sarah Palin.

In flocking to Sarah Palin, they seem unable to imagine what rights women would have achieved had the womens’ suffrage movement had been led by a beauty pageant contestant instead of Susan B. Anthony.

They also seem unable to see see how this same standard applies to modern feminism. They are convinced that a woman whom John McCain chose as his running mate solely for her beauty is more qualified to carry the Feminist Torch than women who have dedicated their entire lives to advancing women’s rights.

Many of these women chose to betray Hillary Clinton because Barack Obama, the candidate she has endorsed and who most closely supports her legacy, defeated her in the Democratic Primary race.

In a spiteful and naive attempt to hurt Barack Obama, these women are putting their energy and resources behind a candidate with a legacy of regressing, not advancing, womens’ rights.

If women take offense to their gender being the butt of jokes, then I am saddened that the profound irony of their stupidity is lost on these women.

John McCain has recently complained about YouTube’s policy of removing campaign videos that infringe upon copyright protection laws is unfair.

As John McCain sees it, removing these videos (which frequently use televised debate footage and pop songs before negotiating the rights to them) ’stifles free speech’.

John McCain has no right to cry about the fair usage in the Media. He didn’t see any problem in using songs by The Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, Frankie Valli, Van Halen, and Heart without their permission.

In fact, the McCain Campaign continued to use Heart’s song “Barracuda” after they expressly asked him to stop, and Jackson Brown even had to sue the Republican Party to stop John McCain from using his song.

If John McCain wants to cry to youtube, perhaps he should listen to the pleas of the musicians he’s tried to exploit first.

In a move that is sure to rattle Republicans more than Barack Obama’s misinterpreted “lipstick on a pig” comment, conservative columnist David Brooks decried Sarah Palin as a “fatal cancer to the Republican party”. He went on to say that, like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin prejudicially scorns not only liberal ideas, but ideas entirely. Continuing his criticism, he also added that Sarah Palin is “absolutely not ready to be president or vice president”.

Conversely, David Brooks praised Barack Obama as a “dazzling” intellectual with “tremendous powers of social perception”. Furthermore, Mr. Brooks admitted to being highly impressed by Barack Obama’s phenomenal ability to build a team of “the most impressive people in the Democratic party”, adding that the people Barack Obama has chosen are “exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose”.

Mr. Brooks also predicts a 9-Point Obama Victory this November.

It’s a powerful statement about the stability and the electability of the Republican Party when its former mouthpieces are abandoning The SS. GOP. Perhaps they know something that the rest of the Party doesn’t.

In talking about the economy at a rally in Pennsylvania today, John McCain had a rather amusing gaff:

“Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners.“

As I see it, there are five possible explanations for this gaff:

1) He had been hoping to invoke his experience as a Prisoner of War (yet again) as one his credentials sometime during this speech.

2) This gaff is the result of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The traumatic experience of campaigning, especially after last night’s rhetorical beat-down at the hands of Barack Obama, has been stressful enough to trigger random flashbacks. These flashbacks, in turn, are the subconcious basis for his Freudian Slip.

3) John McCain shares Ronald Reagan’s senility in addition to his values.

4) This is the latent result of Brain Damage that John McCain suffered during the Vietnam War.

5) This is a desperate cry for help, because Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin have secretly conspired to hold him hostage and force him to run for President.

According to the Los Angelas Times, Sarah Palin has seduced another proselyte, this time Shelly Mandell, president of the Los Angelas chapter of the National Organization for Women.

In introducing Sarah Palin, Mandelll, a theoretical lifelong Democrat, suggested that Sarah Palin is “what a feminist looks like”.

If I were asked what a Feminist looks like, I would think of women like Harriet Tubman, Hillary Clinton, and Joan of Arc; women who struggled to advance the liberty and dignity of women.

Sarah Palin’s irresponsible motherhood, marital infidelity, and opposition to birth control, sex education, and a woman’s right to choose sabotage the liberty and dignity of women.

As the one-term governor of America’s least populous state, Sarah Palin is unprepared to run the country. Yet, she is a former Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant finalist who was chosen over a surplus of experienced, qualified men.

Maybe having a legacy reminiscent of so many Fairy Tale Princesses and Corporate Sexual Harassment Plaintiffs IS enough to make Sarah Palin a Feminist.

If a high-ranking NOW official says that Sarah Palin is a feminist, it must be true. After all, I’m just a man, and what do men know about Feminism?

Trauma Bonding is the sociological effect where, in traumatic times, victims of that trauma will cling to the most convenient source of authority as a means of protection, regardless of that entity’s connection to the source of that trauma. This is the root cause of Stockholm Syndrome.

9/11 is perhaps the most evident example of this. By constantly reminding people of 9/11 in the run up to the 2004 election, the GOP was able to remind Americans of the trauma that the threat of terrorism causes them to feel. Out of a misplaced sense of desperation, Americans (or at least, the gullible ones) clung to perceived authority of the Bush Administration, even thought it was ultimately responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the first place.

The GOP is doing it again, but this time to women. After centuries of striving for empowerment, Hillary Clinton narrowly failed to grasp the Democratic Nomination. This feeling of being snubbed has been so traumatic to many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters that, out of desperation, they’re clinging to Sarah Palin as a feminism-related authority figure.

This is just what the GOP hoped for. The GOP is using trauma bonding (and the prospect of a female Vice President) to seduce women into supporting a misogynist Presidential candidate, his pied-piping running mate, and the historically anti-feminist political party that they serve.