I find the following, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, an excellent metaphor for the current campaign, or anything else for that matter. I've always held an especial esteem for the Fruminous Bandersnatch and feel to this day that he has gotten short shrift from the liberal media elites.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?"
'Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I hope that this makes as much sense to you as the American political scene makes to me.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Off with her clothes.
The big deal (if it is a big deal) about Sister Sarah’s clothing scandal is how it looks to the little people from her “real America” who are already getting whacked by the pending doom that is our economy. I am not worried that a campaign would spend their donors' hard earned on making the candidate as appealing as possible. Or that they spend their money recklessly. Remember when Hillary had a $95,000 pizza bill back in Iowa? This is just the way they do things. But how does it get out? You don’t hear about overspending and mismanagement with the other side.
I purloined this from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
“Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree)."
Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: "Her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.” However, Stein leaves out that Edwards paid out $114,000 of campaign money for four two and a half minute videos of himself to someone he was boinking at the time.
The McPalin team was quick to point out that the clothes will be given to charity after November 5th. But I think I have a better idea. She should eBay the clothes after she loses. Just the silky stuff could pay back the $150 K and I’m sure a lot guys would like to get hold of one of those red leather Michael Jackson jackets that has become her sartorial signature. Of course that means that Baby Trig will have to give up his designer Dr. Dentons and the First Dude will have to trade in his suits and go back to oil skins and snowmobile outfits.
The tenor of the campaign loves this kind of mud to throw and, even if it is not a big deal, it becomes a red flag for other shenanigans. Because, there’s also too, the business of flying her kids on commercial airlines with her to more than a dozen events to the tune of $22 K at taxpayer expense. Surely the Gov. is entitled to fly first class. This includes a $700 a night flop at the Essex House on Central Park for her and Bristol who was not even invited to the event. You have to say, she’s a good mom. But a pricey Governor. She naturally wants to be with her kids so instead of working out of the capitol in Juneau where the law makers and department heads are, she stays at home. This part doesn’t seem right. She charges the state a per diem for each night spent in her own house. Three hundred and twelve of them! The legality of this move is now under review, by the GOVERNOR’S OFFICE. YGBSHM!
The likeable and smart Lawrence O’Donnel, an MSNBC mouth, who knows a thing or two about campaigns, is certain that all the hoopla “doesn’t matter.” He’s probably right. Even SNL only gave it one line this week. He told his fellow hecklers, “She doesn’t pick out the clothes.” The campaign (in its omniscience) picks out her clothing for the “look” they want to see, just as they put the words in her mouth that they want to us to hear. They seem to have gotten the wardrobe better.
In retrospect, Schmidt and company are going to wish they had let her speak more of her own words. The few times I’ve seen her speak on her own she was a different sounding, much more likable person. I was impressed with her interview when she said she would run things differently [from the campaign] in terms of how she presents herself and that she did not like the current content of the robo calls. It isn’t easy to for someone to have to change their personality on a dime to suit someone else’s idea of what they want you to sound like. She got where she is by Sarah being Sarah. The girl is all personality with an 80 percent favorable rating in her current job. She stands out like a tomato-red leather jacket. And then the campaign says, yeah but let’s tweak it. Let’s have a committee decide what should come out of her mouth. Of course that didn’t work so hot with Katie. Forced to read talking points off her lap she looked foolish. You might say it backfired. But they keep pushing her out there to shout “socialist” and “elite” to people who don’t even know what the words mean.
One other thought. Michelle O went on a TV program called The View in a $148 dress from the GAP and that’s what all the chatterers talked about for a whole news cycle.
I purloined this from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
“Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree)."
Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: "Her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.” However, Stein leaves out that Edwards paid out $114,000 of campaign money for four two and a half minute videos of himself to someone he was boinking at the time.
The McPalin team was quick to point out that the clothes will be given to charity after November 5th. But I think I have a better idea. She should eBay the clothes after she loses. Just the silky stuff could pay back the $150 K and I’m sure a lot guys would like to get hold of one of those red leather Michael Jackson jackets that has become her sartorial signature. Of course that means that Baby Trig will have to give up his designer Dr. Dentons and the First Dude will have to trade in his suits and go back to oil skins and snowmobile outfits.
The tenor of the campaign loves this kind of mud to throw and, even if it is not a big deal, it becomes a red flag for other shenanigans. Because, there’s also too, the business of flying her kids on commercial airlines with her to more than a dozen events to the tune of $22 K at taxpayer expense. Surely the Gov. is entitled to fly first class. This includes a $700 a night flop at the Essex House on Central Park for her and Bristol who was not even invited to the event. You have to say, she’s a good mom. But a pricey Governor. She naturally wants to be with her kids so instead of working out of the capitol in Juneau where the law makers and department heads are, she stays at home. This part doesn’t seem right. She charges the state a per diem for each night spent in her own house. Three hundred and twelve of them! The legality of this move is now under review, by the GOVERNOR’S OFFICE. YGBSHM!
The likeable and smart Lawrence O’Donnel, an MSNBC mouth, who knows a thing or two about campaigns, is certain that all the hoopla “doesn’t matter.” He’s probably right. Even SNL only gave it one line this week. He told his fellow hecklers, “She doesn’t pick out the clothes.” The campaign (in its omniscience) picks out her clothing for the “look” they want to see, just as they put the words in her mouth that they want to us to hear. They seem to have gotten the wardrobe better.
In retrospect, Schmidt and company are going to wish they had let her speak more of her own words. The few times I’ve seen her speak on her own she was a different sounding, much more likable person. I was impressed with her interview when she said she would run things differently [from the campaign] in terms of how she presents herself and that she did not like the current content of the robo calls. It isn’t easy to for someone to have to change their personality on a dime to suit someone else’s idea of what they want you to sound like. She got where she is by Sarah being Sarah. The girl is all personality with an 80 percent favorable rating in her current job. She stands out like a tomato-red leather jacket. And then the campaign says, yeah but let’s tweak it. Let’s have a committee decide what should come out of her mouth. Of course that didn’t work so hot with Katie. Forced to read talking points off her lap she looked foolish. You might say it backfired. But they keep pushing her out there to shout “socialist” and “elite” to people who don’t even know what the words mean.
One other thought. Michelle O went on a TV program called The View in a $148 dress from the GAP and that’s what all the chatterers talked about for a whole news cycle.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
McPain in my ass
McWrinkly Dude has just now and finally pushed me over the edge of a teetering purchase of respectability I had for the old Navy pilot now turned political whore. He is now on the stump saying over and over, “I’ve been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old.” Does he really think that? His 23 sorties dropping bombs from some reasonably safe height amounts to similar number of hours in the air “fighting” for our country. Someone figured out that he got a medal and a half per hour of “combat”— which is the way his deck has been stacked all his life.
His father’s considerable pull got Johnny into the Naval Academy (at age 17) and while he did manage to finish in the allotted time he did so without having applied himself in any way. He was in freakin’ college! Does that mean that everyone who went to college, even William Ayers, was also fighting for their country during those years? “McNasty,” as he was known in his putatively prestigious prep school, although I never heard of it when I was in DC six years, was almost thrown out of Annapolis twice (his Mom got him a reprieve) and spent most of his four years on probation. Then, with almost the worst grades in his class, he got into flight school, a prestigious and highly coveted slot. I have to believe that the Admiral had some-say so for the fair haired scion and future flier.
He distinguished himself as a flier by crashing three planes and getting one shot out from underneath him. One of the planes that he made an unscheduled landing in went short of the mark. He was used to commandeering navy craft to see his soon-to-be-wife up in Philly. After attending an Army-Navy game there and a raucous night of partying, he (again) stalled his plane and had to eject. Fortunately the crash killed no one. Is that part of fighting for one’s country?
A few months before his final flight he was in his plane waiting for take-off on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. His A4 Skyhawk was hit accidentally by a rocket from another plane. Not his fault of course, but would you want to fly with this guy? After the Forrestal incident where he hardly aquitted himself with valor, he told Johnny Apple from The Times, his new buddy, that he wasn’t so sure he “felt too good about dropping napalm on civilians.” Talk about valor; no wonder they gave him 28 medals.
Nobody can say what they would do while being tortured in any situation but according to declassified government documents McCain did receive special treatment at some points during his hideous captivity because Hanoi was anxious to trade in on his famous father who was ordering air strikes on the north. McCain III turned down early release which he could see would be a disastrous public relations ploy and a morale buster for the troops. Excellent judgment, but even he would agree now that an interview he gave to a Cuban psychologist, arranged by his captors, was not a good choice. In it he did not limit himself to name, rank and serial number.
Only the Swiftboaters of the last campaign would try to drag this guy through the mud and I am not doing that here. But there is a record and it is not one of “fighting since I was seventeen” and that’s what he said today at a rally. He was passed over for Admiral with every break on his side except a gift for hard work. He was a notorious philanderer and playboy which buried his chances. An excellent article in the latest Rolling Stone goes into greater detail if you can stomach it.
I think that Johnny’s chances to fly in Air Force One are sinking like so many of his aircraft. And when people are talking about his experience you would think that the guy who has been on the political scene all these years, “fighting” away, would have the clear advantage. But there is no experience that simulates the kind of decision making that takes place in the oval office.
Obama defenders tout his “first class intellect” as the principal qualification they would like to see from the next president. Or any president, really. We don’t get a lot of that in the White House. We do get some pretty smart ones. Some thought the Trickster was a brilliant operative, if just a little too evil. The Slickster wasn’t smart enough to stay out of trouble but his record speaks for itself. What we need is first class intellect and experience. But I suppose, if wishes were fishes we’d lunch on lox.
I’ll tell you what I like for experience: A scrappy, fatherless kid with a funny name that worked hard enough to scholarship into the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii, then get into Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, made president of the law review, made it to the Senate on his first shot and put together an organization and bankroll that beat the Clinton machine and now looks to calmly dispatch with Sen. McSpoiled for the most powerful job in the world and come away from it with people saying he did it with aplomb and his dignity intact. That’s what I’m talking about.
What you gotta ask yourself is: If the experience of hanging in the halls of power is so great, would you vote to keep W in, who’s been “at the helm” for the last eight years?
His father’s considerable pull got Johnny into the Naval Academy (at age 17) and while he did manage to finish in the allotted time he did so without having applied himself in any way. He was in freakin’ college! Does that mean that everyone who went to college, even William Ayers, was also fighting for their country during those years? “McNasty,” as he was known in his putatively prestigious prep school, although I never heard of it when I was in DC six years, was almost thrown out of Annapolis twice (his Mom got him a reprieve) and spent most of his four years on probation. Then, with almost the worst grades in his class, he got into flight school, a prestigious and highly coveted slot. I have to believe that the Admiral had some-say so for the fair haired scion and future flier.
He distinguished himself as a flier by crashing three planes and getting one shot out from underneath him. One of the planes that he made an unscheduled landing in went short of the mark. He was used to commandeering navy craft to see his soon-to-be-wife up in Philly. After attending an Army-Navy game there and a raucous night of partying, he (again) stalled his plane and had to eject. Fortunately the crash killed no one. Is that part of fighting for one’s country?
A few months before his final flight he was in his plane waiting for take-off on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. His A4 Skyhawk was hit accidentally by a rocket from another plane. Not his fault of course, but would you want to fly with this guy? After the Forrestal incident where he hardly aquitted himself with valor, he told Johnny Apple from The Times, his new buddy, that he wasn’t so sure he “felt too good about dropping napalm on civilians.” Talk about valor; no wonder they gave him 28 medals.
Nobody can say what they would do while being tortured in any situation but according to declassified government documents McCain did receive special treatment at some points during his hideous captivity because Hanoi was anxious to trade in on his famous father who was ordering air strikes on the north. McCain III turned down early release which he could see would be a disastrous public relations ploy and a morale buster for the troops. Excellent judgment, but even he would agree now that an interview he gave to a Cuban psychologist, arranged by his captors, was not a good choice. In it he did not limit himself to name, rank and serial number.
Only the Swiftboaters of the last campaign would try to drag this guy through the mud and I am not doing that here. But there is a record and it is not one of “fighting since I was seventeen” and that’s what he said today at a rally. He was passed over for Admiral with every break on his side except a gift for hard work. He was a notorious philanderer and playboy which buried his chances. An excellent article in the latest Rolling Stone goes into greater detail if you can stomach it.
I think that Johnny’s chances to fly in Air Force One are sinking like so many of his aircraft. And when people are talking about his experience you would think that the guy who has been on the political scene all these years, “fighting” away, would have the clear advantage. But there is no experience that simulates the kind of decision making that takes place in the oval office.
Obama defenders tout his “first class intellect” as the principal qualification they would like to see from the next president. Or any president, really. We don’t get a lot of that in the White House. We do get some pretty smart ones. Some thought the Trickster was a brilliant operative, if just a little too evil. The Slickster wasn’t smart enough to stay out of trouble but his record speaks for itself. What we need is first class intellect and experience. But I suppose, if wishes were fishes we’d lunch on lox.
I’ll tell you what I like for experience: A scrappy, fatherless kid with a funny name that worked hard enough to scholarship into the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii, then get into Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, made president of the law review, made it to the Senate on his first shot and put together an organization and bankroll that beat the Clinton machine and now looks to calmly dispatch with Sen. McSpoiled for the most powerful job in the world and come away from it with people saying he did it with aplomb and his dignity intact. That’s what I’m talking about.
What you gotta ask yourself is: If the experience of hanging in the halls of power is so great, would you vote to keep W in, who’s been “at the helm” for the last eight years?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Plumber's crack
The whole country is talking about this guy but there seems to be a little gap between the image of Joe the friggin plumber, the center of the candidates debate on Wednesday, and the actual guy out in OH who doesn’t have a plumber’s license, whose real first name is Samuel and from what I can tell, he’s not even really bald! I think he shaves his head and then uses bees wax to get that reflective sheen.
"I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year," he told Obama in an exchange that showed up on YouTube. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" Keep in mind, he has not yet bought the three man operation.
Here’s the point that seems to be missing from the argument that simply stated is: If Joe buys the plumbing company will he pay higher taxes? No. The company may have sales of up to $280 K but Joe him self is not going to take a salary of $200 thou, which is what would be his “higher taxes” threshold as an individual. The $250K number is for a household. Joe is on crack if he thinks he can pull $199,000 out of his fledgling firm for owner’s compensation, but if he did, he would remain in the 36% bracket as opposed to the egregious, small-business busting 39%.
But Joe’s potential business has two helpers, at least one vehicle, an office, inventory, insurances, an accountant and an occasional lawyer all of whom/which will want to be paid before Joe gets to keep any of the total revenues for himself. Oh, and also too, he’s buying the business which means he will have debt, which is a good thing, because if things don’t work out then he can go chapter 13 and get a Bush bailout.
That is, if he can get a loan at all. Has he not heard that the banks that have received a piece of the $700 B “rescue plan” are still loath to lend? They are said to be hoarding the money because of the riskiness of investing in our country’s solvency. But even as I click and clack, the leader of the free world is saying to the US Chamber of Commerce, and me, that because of the actions of his administration, we are on the road to a better brighter future. In fact his plan sounds damn good. But it is also factual that he is full of shit and none of his big promises have panned out. We haven’t found bin Laden, the war is not nearly over and of course Brownie was a total loser and three years later New Orleanians still struggle for promised relief. So Joe, don’t hold your breath.
I thought BHO was a little snarky in a clip from the campaign trail when he quipped something along the lines of “How many plumbers do you know that are making $250, 000 a year?” But the point is well made. Although that kind of cash is not inconceivable for owners of plumbing companies, it isn’t bloody likely that a guy with his own truck and his wife doing the bookkeeping is pulling down that kind of long green. Certainly not around here.
And yet dissecting the veracities of Joe’s narrative now trumps the most important story in this country since the twin towers vanished. The carnival barkers would rather talk about how many times “Joe the plumber” was mentioned during the candidates debate than they would try to parse the candidates economic proposals for their audiences. SNL should be a hoot this week.
Joe’s fifteen minutes of fame won’t hurt him. It may even help him to get a loan. He certainly won’t have any trouble developing a customer list especially if he has already registered “Joe the Plumber” as a trade name. No, it looks like the worst problem Joe is going to have is making the painful three-point hike into the 39% tax bracket. I would love to share his pain.
"I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year," he told Obama in an exchange that showed up on YouTube. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" Keep in mind, he has not yet bought the three man operation.
Here’s the point that seems to be missing from the argument that simply stated is: If Joe buys the plumbing company will he pay higher taxes? No. The company may have sales of up to $280 K but Joe him self is not going to take a salary of $200 thou, which is what would be his “higher taxes” threshold as an individual. The $250K number is for a household. Joe is on crack if he thinks he can pull $199,000 out of his fledgling firm for owner’s compensation, but if he did, he would remain in the 36% bracket as opposed to the egregious, small-business busting 39%.
But Joe’s potential business has two helpers, at least one vehicle, an office, inventory, insurances, an accountant and an occasional lawyer all of whom/which will want to be paid before Joe gets to keep any of the total revenues for himself. Oh, and also too, he’s buying the business which means he will have debt, which is a good thing, because if things don’t work out then he can go chapter 13 and get a Bush bailout.
That is, if he can get a loan at all. Has he not heard that the banks that have received a piece of the $700 B “rescue plan” are still loath to lend? They are said to be hoarding the money because of the riskiness of investing in our country’s solvency. But even as I click and clack, the leader of the free world is saying to the US Chamber of Commerce, and me, that because of the actions of his administration, we are on the road to a better brighter future. In fact his plan sounds damn good. But it is also factual that he is full of shit and none of his big promises have panned out. We haven’t found bin Laden, the war is not nearly over and of course Brownie was a total loser and three years later New Orleanians still struggle for promised relief. So Joe, don’t hold your breath.
I thought BHO was a little snarky in a clip from the campaign trail when he quipped something along the lines of “How many plumbers do you know that are making $250, 000 a year?” But the point is well made. Although that kind of cash is not inconceivable for owners of plumbing companies, it isn’t bloody likely that a guy with his own truck and his wife doing the bookkeeping is pulling down that kind of long green. Certainly not around here.
And yet dissecting the veracities of Joe’s narrative now trumps the most important story in this country since the twin towers vanished. The carnival barkers would rather talk about how many times “Joe the plumber” was mentioned during the candidates debate than they would try to parse the candidates economic proposals for their audiences. SNL should be a hoot this week.
Joe’s fifteen minutes of fame won’t hurt him. It may even help him to get a loan. He certainly won’t have any trouble developing a customer list especially if he has already registered “Joe the Plumber” as a trade name. No, it looks like the worst problem Joe is going to have is making the painful three-point hike into the 39% tax bracket. I would love to share his pain.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
First amendment.
My old pal and favorite skipper Christo Buckley got whacked from his job writing a column at the magazine his father founded. He had written in the new, and quite good, Tina Brown blog, The Daily Beast, that he was endorsing Barack Obama. This of course was a great get for Tina since Chris’ pop was famous for being one of the loudest architects of the revival of conservatism in the last century. He, WFB, also founded the bible of that movement, The National Review.
Until 24 hours ago young Buckley (younger than me anygate) had a column in his Dad’s old rag. Nice touch with the père no longer whinnying amongst us. But the backlash from people who had no business sticking their nose into a Brown blog was so overwhelming that when he playfully told Publisher Rich Lowery that he would send a letter of resignation, it was accepted before the ink was dry.
I’ve tried to read the NR a couple of times because they have some pretty good writers. But it so smacked of one-sidedness that I realized they weren’t trying to reach my ilk but more interested in pandering to the base, which is to say bowing and scraping to the one-eyed shrew, the buck almighty. Buckley said that the magazine was deluged with hate mail and the repeated cries to “cancel my subscription.” He notes that had happened even when WFB was in charge and he would retort, “Cancel your own goddamn subscription.”
Why is the idea of free speech so loath to the lapel-pin patriots who certainly must know that the first amendment is FIRST because it is the most important. When Sarah Palin nailed what she thought were hecklers at a rally, she made sure to remind them that people are dying in battle to protect your right to say whatever you want (which in this case was, “Could you speak up?”). We all have the right to say whatever we want, legally. You might get punched in the nose for expressing your opinion but basically we agree that it is a “right” and it is immutable. BTW, if there is a fire in a crowded theater, it’s okay to alert the patrons.
Here in the North Country, which is right now pimped-out in the panoply of autumnal awesomeness, we have a local rag that people love to rag on. They call it all manner of names that they think cute and pretend to barf when ever someone asks, “Did you read that article on whatever in the Sun?” Not the sports certainly, but the other stuff. The paper is such a hot topic that I was told the reason I didn’t get hired (years ago) at the Granite State News was because I had defended the Sun. Now there is somebody making their living on the first amendment actually telling me that there are certain things you shouldn’t say, even if you are asked?
I sympathize with Buckley having been fired from the Carroll County Independent at the beginning of the summer for writing a letter to the editor in the Sun. The publisher dropped me within hours of the letter's appearance. Dig it: A newspaper man fired one of his writers for writing in another paper! I still can’t believe it. But having been fired a good deal in my longish life I took it with equanimity because I knew that I couldn’t stay if they wanted me to back off of certain subjects or even just warned me to not write in other publications. It was of course very flattering to think that what I wrote had such impact. Not.
The Sun actually does its job of informing the people. They go beyond their mission of “printing the truth,” mostly, and provide just a shipload of entertainment mostly in the free form ravings of the letter-to-editor writers. This first amendment avenue, for those not fortunate enough to have their own blog, is a gift to the people. While many of us make fools of ourselves on those pages there are abundant laughs and even some information that can be filed under “useful.” It’s a great way to get stuff off your chest and for many a chance to see their name in print and wonder if they should have gone to J school, the better to change the world.
I feel like Thomas Paine in a way. He too worked for free. There endeth that tie except that he was pretty passionate about his pamphleteering. The free press is a really good thing and I worry that we take it for granted. Buckley’s firing is a symbol of those who would curtail that right and practice, that makes America a place of envy to many.
All to say, Buckley’s got nothin’ on the Pigge when it comes to getting canned.
Until 24 hours ago young Buckley (younger than me anygate) had a column in his Dad’s old rag. Nice touch with the père no longer whinnying amongst us. But the backlash from people who had no business sticking their nose into a Brown blog was so overwhelming that when he playfully told Publisher Rich Lowery that he would send a letter of resignation, it was accepted before the ink was dry.
I’ve tried to read the NR a couple of times because they have some pretty good writers. But it so smacked of one-sidedness that I realized they weren’t trying to reach my ilk but more interested in pandering to the base, which is to say bowing and scraping to the one-eyed shrew, the buck almighty. Buckley said that the magazine was deluged with hate mail and the repeated cries to “cancel my subscription.” He notes that had happened even when WFB was in charge and he would retort, “Cancel your own goddamn subscription.”
Why is the idea of free speech so loath to the lapel-pin patriots who certainly must know that the first amendment is FIRST because it is the most important. When Sarah Palin nailed what she thought were hecklers at a rally, she made sure to remind them that people are dying in battle to protect your right to say whatever you want (which in this case was, “Could you speak up?”). We all have the right to say whatever we want, legally. You might get punched in the nose for expressing your opinion but basically we agree that it is a “right” and it is immutable. BTW, if there is a fire in a crowded theater, it’s okay to alert the patrons.
Here in the North Country, which is right now pimped-out in the panoply of autumnal awesomeness, we have a local rag that people love to rag on. They call it all manner of names that they think cute and pretend to barf when ever someone asks, “Did you read that article on whatever in the Sun?” Not the sports certainly, but the other stuff. The paper is such a hot topic that I was told the reason I didn’t get hired (years ago) at the Granite State News was because I had defended the Sun. Now there is somebody making their living on the first amendment actually telling me that there are certain things you shouldn’t say, even if you are asked?
I sympathize with Buckley having been fired from the Carroll County Independent at the beginning of the summer for writing a letter to the editor in the Sun. The publisher dropped me within hours of the letter's appearance. Dig it: A newspaper man fired one of his writers for writing in another paper! I still can’t believe it. But having been fired a good deal in my longish life I took it with equanimity because I knew that I couldn’t stay if they wanted me to back off of certain subjects or even just warned me to not write in other publications. It was of course very flattering to think that what I wrote had such impact. Not.
The Sun actually does its job of informing the people. They go beyond their mission of “printing the truth,” mostly, and provide just a shipload of entertainment mostly in the free form ravings of the letter-to-editor writers. This first amendment avenue, for those not fortunate enough to have their own blog, is a gift to the people. While many of us make fools of ourselves on those pages there are abundant laughs and even some information that can be filed under “useful.” It’s a great way to get stuff off your chest and for many a chance to see their name in print and wonder if they should have gone to J school, the better to change the world.
I feel like Thomas Paine in a way. He too worked for free. There endeth that tie except that he was pretty passionate about his pamphleteering. The free press is a really good thing and I worry that we take it for granted. Buckley’s firing is a symbol of those who would curtail that right and practice, that makes America a place of envy to many.
All to say, Buckley’s got nothin’ on the Pigge when it comes to getting canned.
Friday, October 10, 2008
“That One” takes a knee
I think that Johnny Nutjob truly meant to say “The One,” as Obama was dutifully dubbed after the Berlin rally. McCain meant it as an homage to his nemesis who even he sees as having attained the magicalist of all numbers, forty-four.
It is curious and comical to watch and read the “experts” who preface most questions about the race with, “I’m not in the fortune telling business but…” But what? Kiss my butt Jack. You all slip it into the conversation constantly: “He’s on a glide path as long as things stay static…” yet you would never sully your patinaed halo of sanctity as a down the middle professional news-whore by actually saying, “Here’s what I think.”
Well, here’s what I think (and I have my network’s permission to say so). B. Hussein Obama takes VA, PA, OH, CO and Florida, Florida, Florida. And he does it with style and grace and come January 20th, 2010 when he gives his first of eight State of the Union addresses we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about? Why were we worried when he took the oath of office on Mao’s little red book that he had borrowed from Billy Ayers? (That’s the only part I’m kidding about.)
Hell, Bullet Head Schmidt, bring it on! O yes, you can claim that he is from Africa (ain’t we all?) and you can say he is an elitist and try to say he is out of touch with the common voter, and you can say that he palls around with commies and still sneaks cigs, but your guy is a dud. His campaign has flatlined. Except for the perky veep pick.
Very interesting to read this morning that Christopher Buckley, with profuse apologies to his absent pere, is endorsing Obama which is the first time he has ever voted D. He says sadly that McC is not that man he used to be but has become a sputtering, spitting-mad man promising the most unattainable goals to try to woo the uninformed voters who may not have made up their minds yet. McCain’s pledge to balance the budget has about as much possibility of happening as did the eighteen cents a gallon gas rebate that he promised before last summer. I don’t care that blondie promised the same thing; she lost too.
There is so much to read and listen to while trying to sort out what is really going on that it becomes somewhat mind numbing and like the state of the economy it feels whelming. Thursday’s stock market close has the Dow off 38 percent for the year. The crash of ’29 marked the same indicator off 47 percent.
The Crash signaled the beginning of the world wide depression which, in this country lasted about ten years. Setting up for World War II helped to bring us out of it. Strong measures, my friends, and especially for a military as strapped as ours is now. Then there is the human cost. Seventy million people lost their lives in that one, almost a tenth of them in the Holocaust. I don’t think this is a very good option for ending a depression should that eventuality obtain.
What is going to happen? What will the next president (That One) do when he begins to grapple with the myriad other messes that W has left for him? To me it is almost inconceivable that anyone would want this job no matter the perks and prestige. Surely the world is in a better place to recover now from this economic maelstrom than it was 70 years ago. But what I think about is the new position of the players. Iceland is borrowing money from Russia? That can’t be good. China is solvent and we’re into them for a Trillion? Yikes! The Japanese are shoring up the prestigious Morgan Stanley? Is this a time warp?
Buckley’s argument, though hardly original, has it that Obama does have the temperament, judgment and brains to lead this nation. I would add that his superlative organizing skills has to give him a commanding lead over the guy who didn’t acquit himself adequately at Annapolis. McCain gets too much credit for surviving, in life and on this campaign. His desperate veep choice and the all or nothing style he is employing this very day, says absolutely nothing that recommends him to take on the behemoth problems that face this government for another decade, at least.
Now picture this. It turns out that BHO, at eight years old, helped Billy Ayers plan the bombings. McC becomes POTUS 44 and shortly into his administration, his cancer comes back, he develops a staph infection in the hospital and shortly Sister Sarah is number 45. Do you think she will be able to handle all that is to come? You betcha!
It is curious and comical to watch and read the “experts” who preface most questions about the race with, “I’m not in the fortune telling business but…” But what? Kiss my butt Jack. You all slip it into the conversation constantly: “He’s on a glide path as long as things stay static…” yet you would never sully your patinaed halo of sanctity as a down the middle professional news-whore by actually saying, “Here’s what I think.”
Well, here’s what I think (and I have my network’s permission to say so). B. Hussein Obama takes VA, PA, OH, CO and Florida, Florida, Florida. And he does it with style and grace and come January 20th, 2010 when he gives his first of eight State of the Union addresses we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about? Why were we worried when he took the oath of office on Mao’s little red book that he had borrowed from Billy Ayers? (That’s the only part I’m kidding about.)
Hell, Bullet Head Schmidt, bring it on! O yes, you can claim that he is from Africa (ain’t we all?) and you can say he is an elitist and try to say he is out of touch with the common voter, and you can say that he palls around with commies and still sneaks cigs, but your guy is a dud. His campaign has flatlined. Except for the perky veep pick.
Very interesting to read this morning that Christopher Buckley, with profuse apologies to his absent pere, is endorsing Obama which is the first time he has ever voted D. He says sadly that McC is not that man he used to be but has become a sputtering, spitting-mad man promising the most unattainable goals to try to woo the uninformed voters who may not have made up their minds yet. McCain’s pledge to balance the budget has about as much possibility of happening as did the eighteen cents a gallon gas rebate that he promised before last summer. I don’t care that blondie promised the same thing; she lost too.
There is so much to read and listen to while trying to sort out what is really going on that it becomes somewhat mind numbing and like the state of the economy it feels whelming. Thursday’s stock market close has the Dow off 38 percent for the year. The crash of ’29 marked the same indicator off 47 percent.
The Crash signaled the beginning of the world wide depression which, in this country lasted about ten years. Setting up for World War II helped to bring us out of it. Strong measures, my friends, and especially for a military as strapped as ours is now. Then there is the human cost. Seventy million people lost their lives in that one, almost a tenth of them in the Holocaust. I don’t think this is a very good option for ending a depression should that eventuality obtain.
What is going to happen? What will the next president (That One) do when he begins to grapple with the myriad other messes that W has left for him? To me it is almost inconceivable that anyone would want this job no matter the perks and prestige. Surely the world is in a better place to recover now from this economic maelstrom than it was 70 years ago. But what I think about is the new position of the players. Iceland is borrowing money from Russia? That can’t be good. China is solvent and we’re into them for a Trillion? Yikes! The Japanese are shoring up the prestigious Morgan Stanley? Is this a time warp?
Buckley’s argument, though hardly original, has it that Obama does have the temperament, judgment and brains to lead this nation. I would add that his superlative organizing skills has to give him a commanding lead over the guy who didn’t acquit himself adequately at Annapolis. McCain gets too much credit for surviving, in life and on this campaign. His desperate veep choice and the all or nothing style he is employing this very day, says absolutely nothing that recommends him to take on the behemoth problems that face this government for another decade, at least.
Now picture this. It turns out that BHO, at eight years old, helped Billy Ayers plan the bombings. McC becomes POTUS 44 and shortly into his administration, his cancer comes back, he develops a staph infection in the hospital and shortly Sister Sarah is number 45. Do you think she will be able to handle all that is to come? You betcha!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Debate night
What do Mc and Billy Ayers have in common? Neither went to jail for wrong doing.
Professor Ayers and his equally famous wife Bernadette Dohrn turned themselves in to the authorities and then skated on charges up the ying yang (which has nothing to do with “yin” or “yang”) of blowing up people and things, because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” Say what? These assholes never had to do a day? That is mystifying indeed.
But the McPalin ticket is trying like hell to connect Barry with Billy’s crimes. At the same time they are claiming that McWrinkly Dude was “exonerated” by his fellow Senators and so the Keating smear doesn’t stick, in their minds. But he wasn’t.
Part of the problem is that campaign people can’t tell the truth and think they are not being dishonest when they dish some distortion, but rather, being clever. Somebody says, “My opponent is not telling you the whole truth when he/she says blah blah blah,” and the other person says, “He called me a liar.”
Censure is a warning to a member of Congress if they broke a law or committed a crime. "Censure is a procedure for publicly reprimanding a public official for inappropriate behavior… It derives from the formal condemnation of either congressional body of their own members. The word “exonerate” is not attached to this finding, as it usually is to most comments from Mc III’s protectors. It certainly would have been if it had been deemed that he had NO record of inappropriate dealings with the sleaze-bag S&L snake, Chas. Keating.
Billy didn’t even get a censure. He went on to lead a productive life, still married to the same gal, the rakehell bomb-throwing Bernadette, and they have raised their two kids to adulthood. He has met Obama who talked with him and probably figured that he was an okay guy with some wild stories about his past. But then he is also a friend of Mayor Daly and sits on and ed. board and a charity with Barry, or has at sometime. What is a little curious is that they live three houses from each other and even though Billy has contributed to the Obama campaign back when BHO was representing their district, no invite for a drink or something?
Nobody’s sticking up for terrorists of any stripe. This has more to do with the low sunken point of the campaign and how desperate it looks for Johnny Mc. How could he think that sending Sarahcudda after BHO would improve his image as a take charge guy? It makes me wonder if they aren’t just using her for bait. Let her dangle the Rev. Wright out there so that David Axelrod has to return fire on the Kenyan Witch Doctor incident and poke fun at the speaking in tongues that supposedly goes on at the Wassila Assembly of God Church. I guess there’s no footage of that or it would be more popular than a Tina Fey send up.
Even a died-in-the-wool serial cynic like The Smoking Jacket feels an eeriness about the seriousness of this global financial meltdown. If you watch CNBC for a half an hour you find they have lost their bonhommie and sense of humor. It’s no time to joke. The Today Show had Jim Cramer on again this morning because yesterday he advised TV land to “sell your stocks if you will be having a foreseeable needs for liquidity over the next five years.” He didn’t do his screaming thing but he was pretty forceful and Breathless Curry could only repeat, “really, REALLY?”
Today he calmy repeated it even when Meredith tried to make the connection to “yelling fire in a theater.” The Today Show does not like to upset their viewers. Cramer, to his credit stuck to his guns and said, “What if there is a fire?”
This is topic numero uno. This is what we should be hearing about tonight at 9 p.m. We don’t need no stinking mud slinging and gargantuan whoppers that debase all sides. Let Sarah do the one thing she’s good at because that’s why they hired her. It’s why LA lets Manny be Manny. It’s all she’s got. But the candidates should not pull this crap. I truly hope that Sen. McCain is working his ass off right this minute preparing to make this a debate about where this country is going in terms of financial security and what role we will play in the global financial community. What will he do about it should the fates treat him kindly (?) and put him in charge of this mess?
He’s got to prove that he is a better leader than a pilot. He doesn’t have to out do Obama so much as he has to let his supporters see that he really does have a plan that people can get behind and at the same time make them think that he can steer it though without dumping it in the drink, or clipping some low wires, and especially not getting shot down.
Professor Ayers and his equally famous wife Bernadette Dohrn turned themselves in to the authorities and then skated on charges up the ying yang (which has nothing to do with “yin” or “yang”) of blowing up people and things, because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” Say what? These assholes never had to do a day? That is mystifying indeed.
But the McPalin ticket is trying like hell to connect Barry with Billy’s crimes. At the same time they are claiming that McWrinkly Dude was “exonerated” by his fellow Senators and so the Keating smear doesn’t stick, in their minds. But he wasn’t.
Part of the problem is that campaign people can’t tell the truth and think they are not being dishonest when they dish some distortion, but rather, being clever. Somebody says, “My opponent is not telling you the whole truth when he/she says blah blah blah,” and the other person says, “He called me a liar.”
Censure is a warning to a member of Congress if they broke a law or committed a crime. "Censure is a procedure for publicly reprimanding a public official for inappropriate behavior… It derives from the formal condemnation of either congressional body of their own members. The word “exonerate” is not attached to this finding, as it usually is to most comments from Mc III’s protectors. It certainly would have been if it had been deemed that he had NO record of inappropriate dealings with the sleaze-bag S&L snake, Chas. Keating.
Billy didn’t even get a censure. He went on to lead a productive life, still married to the same gal, the rakehell bomb-throwing Bernadette, and they have raised their two kids to adulthood. He has met Obama who talked with him and probably figured that he was an okay guy with some wild stories about his past. But then he is also a friend of Mayor Daly and sits on and ed. board and a charity with Barry, or has at sometime. What is a little curious is that they live three houses from each other and even though Billy has contributed to the Obama campaign back when BHO was representing their district, no invite for a drink or something?
Nobody’s sticking up for terrorists of any stripe. This has more to do with the low sunken point of the campaign and how desperate it looks for Johnny Mc. How could he think that sending Sarahcudda after BHO would improve his image as a take charge guy? It makes me wonder if they aren’t just using her for bait. Let her dangle the Rev. Wright out there so that David Axelrod has to return fire on the Kenyan Witch Doctor incident and poke fun at the speaking in tongues that supposedly goes on at the Wassila Assembly of God Church. I guess there’s no footage of that or it would be more popular than a Tina Fey send up.
Even a died-in-the-wool serial cynic like The Smoking Jacket feels an eeriness about the seriousness of this global financial meltdown. If you watch CNBC for a half an hour you find they have lost their bonhommie and sense of humor. It’s no time to joke. The Today Show had Jim Cramer on again this morning because yesterday he advised TV land to “sell your stocks if you will be having a foreseeable needs for liquidity over the next five years.” He didn’t do his screaming thing but he was pretty forceful and Breathless Curry could only repeat, “really, REALLY?”
Today he calmy repeated it even when Meredith tried to make the connection to “yelling fire in a theater.” The Today Show does not like to upset their viewers. Cramer, to his credit stuck to his guns and said, “What if there is a fire?”
This is topic numero uno. This is what we should be hearing about tonight at 9 p.m. We don’t need no stinking mud slinging and gargantuan whoppers that debase all sides. Let Sarah do the one thing she’s good at because that’s why they hired her. It’s why LA lets Manny be Manny. It’s all she’s got. But the candidates should not pull this crap. I truly hope that Sen. McCain is working his ass off right this minute preparing to make this a debate about where this country is going in terms of financial security and what role we will play in the global financial community. What will he do about it should the fates treat him kindly (?) and put him in charge of this mess?
He’s got to prove that he is a better leader than a pilot. He doesn’t have to out do Obama so much as he has to let his supporters see that he really does have a plan that people can get behind and at the same time make them think that he can steer it though without dumping it in the drink, or clipping some low wires, and especially not getting shot down.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Bad Ass ets
The Senate has now passed the bill from hell and we don’t yet know what Congress will do. They surprised us last time. More importantly, I don’t know what I’d do if I had to vote right now and I’ve heard the arguments for both sides. I still feel so strongly that there will be obscene amounts of money stolen out of the bill from the money monsters who will game this piece of business to a fare thee well.
Already the senate version has tax breaks for Puerto Rican rum producers and some “wooden arrows for kids” company in Oregon. I kid you not. It was for $7 mill. If Ted Stevens wasn’t in court yesterday, for supposedly taking bribes, you can be sure he would have grabbed a taste. The purpose of these sweeteners is to sway the votes of the left or right side of the aisle. If these schmucks won’t stand up now for the right thing to do for their country without being bribed, when will they? It is almost impossible to comprehend the selfish and stupid thinking that makes these people tick. They seem to be proudest of their contributions to political gamesmanship and what they can get away with, but are absolutely spineless when it comes to their duty to make the best decision.
One interesting point is that the voters “seem” to be overwhelmingly against it though I heard a pollster yesterday that said that it was more like 45% that want the “rescue plan.” (“Bailout” being too strong a term for voters who will be easily tricked by this nuance.) And some congress members have claimed that they are voting with their constituents in mind. That should be good. But someone else has pointed out that individual members are sent to congress to do what we cannot do and that is to access and assess the information and do what’s best for the country. They know the little tricks of wording in the bill. They know what the pitfalls down the pike will be. They know the people to ask when they don’t know.
The Monday vote being so close in a 435 person chamber does nothing to clarify which is the way to go. I am instinctively opposed to giving the government this much rope. I do not trust the administration to do the right thing. I am fearful of Jim Cramer’s assessment of Bernanke and Paulson as being the wrong people for the job. But I am equally fearful that if the liquidity markets fail, it becomes a world wide problem.
McCain says he would “fix the system.” But he voted for the Senate versions with the goofball earmarks. He claims “this bill will prevent financial disaster” but cautions that “it is just a tourniquet.” That makes me wonder how much the actual operation will cost. Obama voted for it. And the coin canny Warren Buffet has said that he will buy $3 billion of the bad-ass assets. But even there, you know he’s just skimming the cream and leaving the taxpayers with the toxic wasteland that is the worst of the worst.
What would you do?
Already the senate version has tax breaks for Puerto Rican rum producers and some “wooden arrows for kids” company in Oregon. I kid you not. It was for $7 mill. If Ted Stevens wasn’t in court yesterday, for supposedly taking bribes, you can be sure he would have grabbed a taste. The purpose of these sweeteners is to sway the votes of the left or right side of the aisle. If these schmucks won’t stand up now for the right thing to do for their country without being bribed, when will they? It is almost impossible to comprehend the selfish and stupid thinking that makes these people tick. They seem to be proudest of their contributions to political gamesmanship and what they can get away with, but are absolutely spineless when it comes to their duty to make the best decision.
One interesting point is that the voters “seem” to be overwhelmingly against it though I heard a pollster yesterday that said that it was more like 45% that want the “rescue plan.” (“Bailout” being too strong a term for voters who will be easily tricked by this nuance.) And some congress members have claimed that they are voting with their constituents in mind. That should be good. But someone else has pointed out that individual members are sent to congress to do what we cannot do and that is to access and assess the information and do what’s best for the country. They know the little tricks of wording in the bill. They know what the pitfalls down the pike will be. They know the people to ask when they don’t know.
The Monday vote being so close in a 435 person chamber does nothing to clarify which is the way to go. I am instinctively opposed to giving the government this much rope. I do not trust the administration to do the right thing. I am fearful of Jim Cramer’s assessment of Bernanke and Paulson as being the wrong people for the job. But I am equally fearful that if the liquidity markets fail, it becomes a world wide problem.
McCain says he would “fix the system.” But he voted for the Senate versions with the goofball earmarks. He claims “this bill will prevent financial disaster” but cautions that “it is just a tourniquet.” That makes me wonder how much the actual operation will cost. Obama voted for it. And the coin canny Warren Buffet has said that he will buy $3 billion of the bad-ass assets. But even there, you know he’s just skimming the cream and leaving the taxpayers with the toxic wasteland that is the worst of the worst.
What would you do?
Friday, September 26, 2008
Be very afraid
“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” If the bill passes with this in it, Xiao Bushie will still have 3 months to dip his mitts into the bail out money. It is the Bush way to suspend the very underpinning of what makes Democracy work as well as it does. No pins is not good for the highly touted “transparency” which in large measure helps to keep the gummint honest.
This is so scary. Why would the Executive branch, within which the awesome responsibility will reside, need to insist on no judicial review. Isn’t that what criminals do when they turn states evidence so they won’t have to go to jail for things they haven’t yet been charged with? The 32 word sentence should be the deal breaker. Chris Dodd’s attempts to make provisions that would disallow such unfettered mastery over the financial lives of the citizenry have already been quashed. The Paulson polemic mimics what the bloody “Bush Doctrine,” preemption before you get caught, really means. They lied about the war then lied about blowing it. Called “quaint” the Geneva Convention rules. Brownie doing a heck of a job (think what New Orleans would look like with even a lick of that $700 B). Managed the budget and deficit into a staggering shag-up that some people’s grand-children will be paying for ad infi their lives.
McCain’s little trick, make that a BIG trick, to supposedly suspend his campaign to go roaring into the White House to solve what could be one of the biggest issues of this country in modern history, is about the only transparency in his campaign. If you can’t see through this gimmick, you ain’t been paying attention. It is as desperate a move as picking Palin. But it should show to most voters that he is relying on hoodwinking us which means he thinks that our level of nincompoopery knows no bounds. I can see Steve “the Bullet” Schmidt glowing over the plan and thinking, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. At least that’s what I think he’s thinking.
Will McCain show up tonight? The Smoking Jacket has learned that nobody actually knows. The multi-millionaires in the punditocracy who get paid to prognosticate, begin their answer to that question: “Well Pete, nobody knows for sure what the Senator will do, but… Then while they are getting paid more per word that some of us make a month on Social Security, they blab on. If I knew what the “it’s time to fish or cut bait” statement of definitiveness meant, I would tentatively hazard a speculation that if you held a gun to my head I might guess that a no-show would be a major blow to the campaign. What ever people think of Obamaian wisdom and judgement, you must know (or can learn here), the dude has a crack team of advisers that any campaign would love to claim and they are all over this. They are working around the clock so that whatever eventuality happens they will have the best possible response. “There is no advantage too small to take” and certainly that is true in this universe altering game of the White House race. But you knew that.
Click on Sue Bru’s column on the right (of this page) for a catch-up course on what’s taking place till now.
Supposedly, 100 million people will watch the debate. That is the number of voters in the country. Picture an up-market bar in Manhattan, DC, SF, or St. Looey say, with all eyes turned to the tube to see if McCain shows. Rehearsal dinners from sea to shining sea will halt in the middle of toasts to watch the white haired wrinkly dude greet the nation with that insane rictus. Voter age college kids will cancel their frat party to pay sober attention to this terribly important first debate that will pretty much control the polls on Saturday morning. If I had a tivo, I’d watch Larry King and Jamie Lynn Spears with pictures of her first breast feeding.
In Webster World there was only one big development. While she refuses to make eye contact, I can tell that she knows I know something or know somebody who does know, who in this case will remain OTR. A second secondary (or even flimsier) rumor has popped up and has confirmed (for me) that Margie may be looking at charges. This would make my heart soar like an eagle (thank you John Ashcroft) because I am a petty and vindictive little shit who will have revenge no matter the cost.
This is so scary. Why would the Executive branch, within which the awesome responsibility will reside, need to insist on no judicial review. Isn’t that what criminals do when they turn states evidence so they won’t have to go to jail for things they haven’t yet been charged with? The 32 word sentence should be the deal breaker. Chris Dodd’s attempts to make provisions that would disallow such unfettered mastery over the financial lives of the citizenry have already been quashed. The Paulson polemic mimics what the bloody “Bush Doctrine,” preemption before you get caught, really means. They lied about the war then lied about blowing it. Called “quaint” the Geneva Convention rules. Brownie doing a heck of a job (think what New Orleans would look like with even a lick of that $700 B). Managed the budget and deficit into a staggering shag-up that some people’s grand-children will be paying for ad infi their lives.
McCain’s little trick, make that a BIG trick, to supposedly suspend his campaign to go roaring into the White House to solve what could be one of the biggest issues of this country in modern history, is about the only transparency in his campaign. If you can’t see through this gimmick, you ain’t been paying attention. It is as desperate a move as picking Palin. But it should show to most voters that he is relying on hoodwinking us which means he thinks that our level of nincompoopery knows no bounds. I can see Steve “the Bullet” Schmidt glowing over the plan and thinking, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. At least that’s what I think he’s thinking.
Will McCain show up tonight? The Smoking Jacket has learned that nobody actually knows. The multi-millionaires in the punditocracy who get paid to prognosticate, begin their answer to that question: “Well Pete, nobody knows for sure what the Senator will do, but… Then while they are getting paid more per word that some of us make a month on Social Security, they blab on. If I knew what the “it’s time to fish or cut bait” statement of definitiveness meant, I would tentatively hazard a speculation that if you held a gun to my head I might guess that a no-show would be a major blow to the campaign. What ever people think of Obamaian wisdom and judgement, you must know (or can learn here), the dude has a crack team of advisers that any campaign would love to claim and they are all over this. They are working around the clock so that whatever eventuality happens they will have the best possible response. “There is no advantage too small to take” and certainly that is true in this universe altering game of the White House race. But you knew that.
Click on Sue Bru’s column on the right (of this page) for a catch-up course on what’s taking place till now.
Supposedly, 100 million people will watch the debate. That is the number of voters in the country. Picture an up-market bar in Manhattan, DC, SF, or St. Looey say, with all eyes turned to the tube to see if McCain shows. Rehearsal dinners from sea to shining sea will halt in the middle of toasts to watch the white haired wrinkly dude greet the nation with that insane rictus. Voter age college kids will cancel their frat party to pay sober attention to this terribly important first debate that will pretty much control the polls on Saturday morning. If I had a tivo, I’d watch Larry King and Jamie Lynn Spears with pictures of her first breast feeding.
In Webster World there was only one big development. While she refuses to make eye contact, I can tell that she knows I know something or know somebody who does know, who in this case will remain OTR. A second secondary (or even flimsier) rumor has popped up and has confirmed (for me) that Margie may be looking at charges. This would make my heart soar like an eagle (thank you John Ashcroft) because I am a petty and vindictive little shit who will have revenge no matter the cost.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
They don’t really know, do they?
Where are the wanker wonks of economic policy on this crisis? We haven’t really heard from BarackO on this and he has Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers on his team. He even has William Donaldson and Paul O’Neil, two republicans working with him. We’ve heard quite enough from that genius Phil Gramm, McCain’s guru who told us to “quit whining” because it was a “mental recession.” Gramm’s wife helped the Enron people figure out their mess. That’s just what we need. Actually, it looks like what we’re going to get.
Hank Paulson, who is said to be a very smart guy and respected on all sides, has asked us for $700 billion of our tax dollars to buy up the devalued mortgage bundles now risibly called “securities,” a misnomer if ever there was one. The idea being that eventually, when the next real estate boom gets rolling, they will be worth more than they are now and can be sold in an up market that will pay back the money into the treasury.
But they are not telling the public the whole truth. Just like AIG went from needing $40 B to $75 B and then got $85 B, all in the space of three days, we are now looking at the 700 number with no explanation how it got to be that high. Part of it, I read this morning, is that other bad debts, like credit cards and car loans, will also get paid off. But they will likely be written off. We really don’t think the government is going to buy those bundles and then a few years from now try to collect on them, do we? Hell no. The money will go to the schmucks who made the bad deals. This is supposed to shore up our economy and the people with bad credit will only have to wait a few years before their mail box is stuffed with card company offers of 0%.
Paulson sounds almost believable but what is he saying? We cannot trust just one guy to be making these decisions, but wait TSJ reader! Since the likely scenario will be that this Secretary of the Treasury and the next will in fact be making these decisions with the concurrence of their boss, you now gotta ask yourself, who you really want to be the one person who will say yea or nay to the next Treas. Sec.
McSame has been anything but lately. He says the economy is “fundamentally sound” one day but something else the next. He’s now conveniently for regulation, and suggests that maybe a commission can straighten this whole thing. Let’s wait till the next administration to get to work on that, is his thinking. His pandering is just more playing to us dopes who, he thinks, don’t know noffink. He wants to believe that should he possibly get into the WH, others will do his thinking for him, sort of like the guy who is in there now.
This is an argument that needs to take place because I believe that people who are undecided, if asked, will pick the Harvard hotshot over the bottom feeding legacy guy who barely made it through the Naval Academy. He may be a great pilot, but…never mind. I believe that the Obama skeptics (and you know who you are, you blue collar catlicks clinging to your guns) are going to have to take a very close look at the quality of leadership that is required for this situation because only the President will be able to say “no” to the Treas. Sec. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen. It could get very ugly. Does anyone think that a guy who admits to being out of touch with how the national economy is run would be the best one making decisions on recommendations from just one man? If Phil Gramm is that man, the mackerel snappers amongst us can kiss it all off. He will invariably do what’s best…for the richest five % of the country. It would be like letting Paul Wolfowitz into the DoD with no rules.
Bush is now asking Congress to rush the $700 B through. So you know it MUST be wrong. Xiao Bushie, whose only true business experience is trading on his family name, and I must say he has done this brilliantly, is the last guy we want trying to figure out a fiasco of this proportion. This hurry up mode suggests to some skeptics that there can only be something in it for him down the line. “Congress wants strict oversight with an equity stake. The administration wants flexibility.” If I want to borrow a bunch of money from you but I insist on “flexibility” on how it will be repaid or what it will be spent on, you are more than likely going to say no. What does Bush want with this money? What has he not already bought that this now gives him the means?
I like what Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, said. “It would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted.” O yes it would. This morning Paulson and Bernanke go in front of the banking committee to make their case. It should be veddy interesting. As Incurious George says, “The whole world is watching.”
And here it is, your moment of Zen. At the end of a longish article in today’s NYT, that never mentioned specific downsides to the bailout, came this: “Officials said that the administration was also prepared to adopt conflict-of-interest rules for any private firms that are hired to help the Treasury manage the bailout program. Some lawmakers were worried that such firms might also own assets that could grow in value depending on how the rescue plan was run.” The crooks will be in charge, gah fo’bid.
Hank Paulson, who is said to be a very smart guy and respected on all sides, has asked us for $700 billion of our tax dollars to buy up the devalued mortgage bundles now risibly called “securities,” a misnomer if ever there was one. The idea being that eventually, when the next real estate boom gets rolling, they will be worth more than they are now and can be sold in an up market that will pay back the money into the treasury.
But they are not telling the public the whole truth. Just like AIG went from needing $40 B to $75 B and then got $85 B, all in the space of three days, we are now looking at the 700 number with no explanation how it got to be that high. Part of it, I read this morning, is that other bad debts, like credit cards and car loans, will also get paid off. But they will likely be written off. We really don’t think the government is going to buy those bundles and then a few years from now try to collect on them, do we? Hell no. The money will go to the schmucks who made the bad deals. This is supposed to shore up our economy and the people with bad credit will only have to wait a few years before their mail box is stuffed with card company offers of 0%.
Paulson sounds almost believable but what is he saying? We cannot trust just one guy to be making these decisions, but wait TSJ reader! Since the likely scenario will be that this Secretary of the Treasury and the next will in fact be making these decisions with the concurrence of their boss, you now gotta ask yourself, who you really want to be the one person who will say yea or nay to the next Treas. Sec.
McSame has been anything but lately. He says the economy is “fundamentally sound” one day but something else the next. He’s now conveniently for regulation, and suggests that maybe a commission can straighten this whole thing. Let’s wait till the next administration to get to work on that, is his thinking. His pandering is just more playing to us dopes who, he thinks, don’t know noffink. He wants to believe that should he possibly get into the WH, others will do his thinking for him, sort of like the guy who is in there now.
This is an argument that needs to take place because I believe that people who are undecided, if asked, will pick the Harvard hotshot over the bottom feeding legacy guy who barely made it through the Naval Academy. He may be a great pilot, but…never mind. I believe that the Obama skeptics (and you know who you are, you blue collar catlicks clinging to your guns) are going to have to take a very close look at the quality of leadership that is required for this situation because only the President will be able to say “no” to the Treas. Sec. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen. It could get very ugly. Does anyone think that a guy who admits to being out of touch with how the national economy is run would be the best one making decisions on recommendations from just one man? If Phil Gramm is that man, the mackerel snappers amongst us can kiss it all off. He will invariably do what’s best…for the richest five % of the country. It would be like letting Paul Wolfowitz into the DoD with no rules.
Bush is now asking Congress to rush the $700 B through. So you know it MUST be wrong. Xiao Bushie, whose only true business experience is trading on his family name, and I must say he has done this brilliantly, is the last guy we want trying to figure out a fiasco of this proportion. This hurry up mode suggests to some skeptics that there can only be something in it for him down the line. “Congress wants strict oversight with an equity stake. The administration wants flexibility.” If I want to borrow a bunch of money from you but I insist on “flexibility” on how it will be repaid or what it will be spent on, you are more than likely going to say no. What does Bush want with this money? What has he not already bought that this now gives him the means?
I like what Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, said. “It would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted.” O yes it would. This morning Paulson and Bernanke go in front of the banking committee to make their case. It should be veddy interesting. As Incurious George says, “The whole world is watching.”
And here it is, your moment of Zen. At the end of a longish article in today’s NYT, that never mentioned specific downsides to the bailout, came this: “Officials said that the administration was also prepared to adopt conflict-of-interest rules for any private firms that are hired to help the Treasury manage the bailout program. Some lawmakers were worried that such firms might also own assets that could grow in value depending on how the rescue plan was run.” The crooks will be in charge, gah fo’bid.
Friday, September 19, 2008
The gift that keeps on giving
The feisty frequent traveler (picture a hungover Madeleine Albright on steroids) has told somebody that she is canceling her plans to move to Michigan where her “boyfriend” lives (she’s older than I am). What we think is happening based on the flimsiest of rumors and snarky speculation is that she got dumped. The wildest buzz, from the impeccably secure source of my dentist’s wife, is that she may have to stick around to answer some sticky questions about her performance when she was at the Tri County Cap, another government sinecure that she managed to snooker for twenty or so years.
We do know that she said she didn’t get fired from that place that her bullying helped to build, earning it the sobriquet “Marge Mahal,” but some higher authority (like there could be?) tried to split up her job and give her first choice, for less pay. But in the murk of the latest whisperings winding around the old court house in Ossipee, some of us are very curious to see if Marge is giving up on her Michigan beaux who she has been meeting, we suspect, at the semi-annual conferences. She has after all given up her cozy if contentious slot as a commissioner which pays about ten grand (?) a year for a once a week gig. Some cynics will wonder if she will give up going on these ridiculous conference trips all over the country if there is no boyfriend waiting at the other end of the flight. Maybe the commissioners should send him a bonus for saving the county money.
I know of at least one person who thinks that Margie will try for a job in some sort of supervisory capacity when the new nursing home is getting built. I would think that she should not benefit from such a position after lobbying so heavily for the new building. It would be such an obvious conflict of interest, not that I think that would stop her from trying. But I do know others who will try to stop her.
In other news: The re-count on the Carroll County sheriff’s race has concluded that there was a one vote discrepancy and that Frannie Lord lost by 17 votes instead of 18. I can’t help but wonder if that letter that Michael Callous wrote to the Daily talking about the potential sheriff “swaggering” along side his foxy blond wife in “six inch heals” (sic) was the death knell for Lord who most thought would win handily. Not trying to stir things up here, much. I’m just sayin’…
I have a question for Hank Paulson: Say a person sells their house because they are moving to a new job. Is it possible they won’t be able to buy a house where they are moving to because they didn’t get enough for the old house and the credit is now so tight because of all the loser loans that got us into this trillion dollar mess? Who bails their sorry ass out?
I forget how many years ago it was when ballsy Lee Iacocca went to congress to get a bail out for Chrysler. Bodacious audacity, it was thought at the time. 1.5 billion freakin’ dollars to help keep a company afloat that employed tens of thousands in the heartland, never mind all the derivative companies through out the land who depended on the vast car manufacturer. Well, they did it and got paid back. But even in today’s dollars, does 1.5 BILLION compute to 1.1 TRILLION? And aren’t we mostly bailing out egregiously greedy Wall Street hot shots who would sell anybody anything for an ounce of Colombian to do with their friends on their 60 foot Cape Hatteras in Long Island Sound? The old argument that Wall Street “doesn’t make anything” is a good one in this case.
And what is really bugging me is that over the last weekend AIG was looking for another 20 billion from a private source to make it 40 billion in order to survive. It didn’t happen. By Monday they were asking the government for a little help to the tune of 75 billion. Paulson and the CNBC barkers (not Erin Burnette though) were saying no way. The next day, the newspaper of record had headlines in rather large font saying the gummint (emphasis on the last four letters) will loan AIG 85 billion. Ten more than they were asking for. I just want to know if any lobbyist made money on that transaction and I bet one of our polymath commenters will tell me.
All in all it’s been a good week, for Wall Street. And me, for getting to pick on the Barge some more.
We do know that she said she didn’t get fired from that place that her bullying helped to build, earning it the sobriquet “Marge Mahal,” but some higher authority (like there could be?) tried to split up her job and give her first choice, for less pay. But in the murk of the latest whisperings winding around the old court house in Ossipee, some of us are very curious to see if Marge is giving up on her Michigan beaux who she has been meeting, we suspect, at the semi-annual conferences. She has after all given up her cozy if contentious slot as a commissioner which pays about ten grand (?) a year for a once a week gig. Some cynics will wonder if she will give up going on these ridiculous conference trips all over the country if there is no boyfriend waiting at the other end of the flight. Maybe the commissioners should send him a bonus for saving the county money.
I know of at least one person who thinks that Margie will try for a job in some sort of supervisory capacity when the new nursing home is getting built. I would think that she should not benefit from such a position after lobbying so heavily for the new building. It would be such an obvious conflict of interest, not that I think that would stop her from trying. But I do know others who will try to stop her.
In other news: The re-count on the Carroll County sheriff’s race has concluded that there was a one vote discrepancy and that Frannie Lord lost by 17 votes instead of 18. I can’t help but wonder if that letter that Michael Callous wrote to the Daily talking about the potential sheriff “swaggering” along side his foxy blond wife in “six inch heals” (sic) was the death knell for Lord who most thought would win handily. Not trying to stir things up here, much. I’m just sayin’…
I have a question for Hank Paulson: Say a person sells their house because they are moving to a new job. Is it possible they won’t be able to buy a house where they are moving to because they didn’t get enough for the old house and the credit is now so tight because of all the loser loans that got us into this trillion dollar mess? Who bails their sorry ass out?
I forget how many years ago it was when ballsy Lee Iacocca went to congress to get a bail out for Chrysler. Bodacious audacity, it was thought at the time. 1.5 billion freakin’ dollars to help keep a company afloat that employed tens of thousands in the heartland, never mind all the derivative companies through out the land who depended on the vast car manufacturer. Well, they did it and got paid back. But even in today’s dollars, does 1.5 BILLION compute to 1.1 TRILLION? And aren’t we mostly bailing out egregiously greedy Wall Street hot shots who would sell anybody anything for an ounce of Colombian to do with their friends on their 60 foot Cape Hatteras in Long Island Sound? The old argument that Wall Street “doesn’t make anything” is a good one in this case.
And what is really bugging me is that over the last weekend AIG was looking for another 20 billion from a private source to make it 40 billion in order to survive. It didn’t happen. By Monday they were asking the government for a little help to the tune of 75 billion. Paulson and the CNBC barkers (not Erin Burnette though) were saying no way. The next day, the newspaper of record had headlines in rather large font saying the gummint (emphasis on the last four letters) will loan AIG 85 billion. Ten more than they were asking for. I just want to know if any lobbyist made money on that transaction and I bet one of our polymath commenters will tell me.
All in all it’s been a good week, for Wall Street. And me, for getting to pick on the Barge some more.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
It's the stupid economy
“The fundamentals of the economy are strong (my friends) because the American worker is strong,” said the economic numbnut who is running for the highest office in the world. McCain couldn’t find his economic fundament with both hands. His understanding of what’s happening on Wall Street is that there need be no panic because the Americans have strong backs; just not enough jobs. And of course if they do have a job and hurt their back, they probably don't have adequate healthcare.
What is fundamental to the downer that is our economy right now is the housing crisis which through “greed and stupidity” has allowed the subprime mortgage fiasco to fester into a world wide crisis because the holders of the loans and collateral have no way to collect what is owed to them and can’t figure out some way to keep the payments coming in. TSJ has said before that some of this problem could be resolved by not upping the rates on ARMs at the consumer level. Think: half a loaf is better than none. If the lender started out thinking they were going to make money when the initial low rate period expired, too bad. Now you have to eat it. Work with Mr. Risky. Why foreclose and then have to play realtor in one of the worst housing slumps in modern memory?
And who in the Senate Commerce committee allowed the sleaze bag mortgage companies like the one I worked for to give loans to the riskiest possible candidates? That doesn’t make sense to anyone. Only the mafia makes loans to risky borrowers, but then they have ways of convincing people to pay them back.
How is it that McCain can go on the morning shows and not have a more complete answer to the direct question of what to do? I think you have to identify the problem, analyze its provenance and then offer up ideas for resolution. Mc saying that the “alphabet soup of oversight agencies needs to be consolidated” is much like closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. Why, when he was a sitting Commerce Committee member and chair (I think) did he not see the potential for the greed-heads to bend the rules and the resulting long term effects?
On Bloomberg Television this weekend, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank noted that, as a leader in the Senate Republican caucus, McCain did nothing for years to deliver reform in the face an impending credit crisis:
So here’s the record – 12 years of Republicans, including John McCain being a committee chairman for much of that period. Zero – zero enactment of any reform.
Well, nobody expects Barney to be singing McCain’s praises and it is most unlikely that McCain would put him on his bi-partisan admin but if Sen. Mc had done anything in the last twelve years, this morning would have been a good time to point it out instead of the clunky ingenuous sounding, “Look, the American people are the soundness of this economy.” More pandering to the dopes (he thinks) are going to vote for his ticket because they will believe any bullshit he tries to shove up their fundament.
And yet, I can understand why, even if he did know anything, he would be very unwilling to address the economic evils of the land. The US has an anual budget of almost ten trillion dollars. It has a debt of nearly ten trillion dollars. This administration took over with a budget surplus of $200B and now it’s in the red $400B. Who cuts taxes when you have war to run? And who offers to extend tax cuts when the economy sucks? You need to go to this page—www.federalbudget.com—to see how your taxes get spent. And remember a billion dollars may not seem like that much anymore but you can still buy 1,000 million dollar homes with a single billion dollar bill.
It is very interesting to look at this page to see the undulations of the fed def. Truman had a war going on while he was doubtlessly still paying for the one he helped to finish, so his was pretty high. Then it went down even under the tax and spend dems. In fact during Carter’s admin it was the lowest it’s been in the last sixty years. Reagan pushed it back up and the Slickster, with Bob Rubin’s help, brought it back down. W has added more than $400 billion to it after blowing the Clinton gain, and it’s climbing. He just offered Texas to pay 100 percent of the clean up down on the Gulf coast. The little dude can’t spend it fast enough.
If the economy is the main issue in this presidential race, I’m gonna go with the guy who has Bob Rubin on his team.
BTW/WTF W/ AIG? Here’s what they need to do before getting a taxpayer bailout: Go chapter 11, which is a “reorganization” with a judges permission and finite rules. Fix it, get better, pay people back. AIG isn’t just gonna collapse and go away. They are all over the world. Someone will pick up their slack if they fail. And just when did the thieving slime ball insurance companies of the world stop making money?
What is fundamental to the downer that is our economy right now is the housing crisis which through “greed and stupidity” has allowed the subprime mortgage fiasco to fester into a world wide crisis because the holders of the loans and collateral have no way to collect what is owed to them and can’t figure out some way to keep the payments coming in. TSJ has said before that some of this problem could be resolved by not upping the rates on ARMs at the consumer level. Think: half a loaf is better than none. If the lender started out thinking they were going to make money when the initial low rate period expired, too bad. Now you have to eat it. Work with Mr. Risky. Why foreclose and then have to play realtor in one of the worst housing slumps in modern memory?
And who in the Senate Commerce committee allowed the sleaze bag mortgage companies like the one I worked for to give loans to the riskiest possible candidates? That doesn’t make sense to anyone. Only the mafia makes loans to risky borrowers, but then they have ways of convincing people to pay them back.
How is it that McCain can go on the morning shows and not have a more complete answer to the direct question of what to do? I think you have to identify the problem, analyze its provenance and then offer up ideas for resolution. Mc saying that the “alphabet soup of oversight agencies needs to be consolidated” is much like closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. Why, when he was a sitting Commerce Committee member and chair (I think) did he not see the potential for the greed-heads to bend the rules and the resulting long term effects?
On Bloomberg Television this weekend, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank noted that, as a leader in the Senate Republican caucus, McCain did nothing for years to deliver reform in the face an impending credit crisis:
So here’s the record – 12 years of Republicans, including John McCain being a committee chairman for much of that period. Zero – zero enactment of any reform.
Well, nobody expects Barney to be singing McCain’s praises and it is most unlikely that McCain would put him on his bi-partisan admin but if Sen. Mc had done anything in the last twelve years, this morning would have been a good time to point it out instead of the clunky ingenuous sounding, “Look, the American people are the soundness of this economy.” More pandering to the dopes (he thinks) are going to vote for his ticket because they will believe any bullshit he tries to shove up their fundament.
And yet, I can understand why, even if he did know anything, he would be very unwilling to address the economic evils of the land. The US has an anual budget of almost ten trillion dollars. It has a debt of nearly ten trillion dollars. This administration took over with a budget surplus of $200B and now it’s in the red $400B. Who cuts taxes when you have war to run? And who offers to extend tax cuts when the economy sucks? You need to go to this page—www.federalbudget.com—to see how your taxes get spent. And remember a billion dollars may not seem like that much anymore but you can still buy 1,000 million dollar homes with a single billion dollar bill.
It is very interesting to look at this page to see the undulations of the fed def. Truman had a war going on while he was doubtlessly still paying for the one he helped to finish, so his was pretty high. Then it went down even under the tax and spend dems. In fact during Carter’s admin it was the lowest it’s been in the last sixty years. Reagan pushed it back up and the Slickster, with Bob Rubin’s help, brought it back down. W has added more than $400 billion to it after blowing the Clinton gain, and it’s climbing. He just offered Texas to pay 100 percent of the clean up down on the Gulf coast. The little dude can’t spend it fast enough.
If the economy is the main issue in this presidential race, I’m gonna go with the guy who has Bob Rubin on his team.
BTW/WTF W/ AIG? Here’s what they need to do before getting a taxpayer bailout: Go chapter 11, which is a “reorganization” with a judges permission and finite rules. Fix it, get better, pay people back. AIG isn’t just gonna collapse and go away. They are all over the world. Someone will pick up their slack if they fail. And just when did the thieving slime ball insurance companies of the world stop making money?
Friday, September 12, 2008
In what respect, Charlie?
You gotta hand it to the Moose hunter in chief, she’s got pluck. With everybody but me watching her interview with Charlie Gibson, the little lady leaned on her chair arm, looked him straight in the eye and said (under her breath) “Bush has a doctrine? You gotta be shittin’ me?” Then, she said to the question: “In what respect Charlie?”
Pretty slick, but… It showed that she had the hubris that she told Charlie she had in order to be the next veep and if necessary (Gah fo’bid) the 45th POTUS. And yet who without hubris would even consider running for the lowliest office? Her no nonsense style is really nonsensical. She’s kinda like: "I’m just gonna stick to my guns and back down all these dubbers until I have proven the Peter principal beyond the shadow of a doubt that my highest level of expertise is to be governor of a state with less people than there are cows in Vermont. I’ll make them see that I am no more prepared for this position than Mike Huckabee. In fact I’ll take a page from his book, and separation of church and state be damned, I’ll ask for god’s help to do it."
I saw her ask, in front of a huge churchy audience, for god’s help to build a natural gas pipeline. That’s some whacky stuff. Combined with her dogmatic refusal to deal with abortion and birth control by just saying no leads me to think that her simplistic black and white approach to policy is a from-the-gut decision making process that anyone can make. She is ready to write a blank check to Israel which does not help with Middle East tensions, and which she did not address for reasons best left to the people who prepared her for the debate. But her answer already speaks for a possible McCain administration and that cannot be encouraging for the people in that very region we are trying to foster better relations with.
Clearly the same debate coaches had not read The Smoking Jacket on the question of who threw the first rock in Georgia. And even though it is now widely known that Saaskasvili tempted the fate he got, the Gov just spouted the McCain line showing what? Loyalty or ignorance. Likely both. I believe the average Joe or JoJo on the street, in this pastoral rurality in which I live, would be able to answer Charlie’s questions as well as she did without any coaching. I’m sure many of them also think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. I have a hard time thinking she knows what the initials in NATO stand for never mind why we should tout the admission of two Russian antagonists by pushing for their acceptance in it.
Chuck Todd, who is seldom fallible in things political, sees her best quality as “being the campaigner in chief.” I don’t think you have to be Chuckie T to figure that out but what’s not being said by any of the Morning Joe carnival barkers (which is where I get most of my opinionatedness) is the feeling I have that she will stumble just at the right time and fa’ down; go boom. John Heileman summed up the essence of her ABC prime time debut (which I have only seen in clips) that she was “very unimpressive but said nothing disqualifying.” The best news is that newsies are still talking about her and they will continue to do so because, I think, it’s no longer just about two old boring white guys. And that’s a step up.
In local news: What is up over at Ossipee Lake Marina where they tried to secure a special permission to violate a standing ordinance to have access that they are not supposed to have? They wanted to know: If we can’t have the necessary permission, how much will the fine be?
These guys have been flouting the law over in Freedom for years. The first time I saw Kevin Price the owner, he was so obviously lying to the Ossipee Planning Board about cleaning up his off site boat storage on route 16 that I had to chuckle. They had given him five years to fix the place or shut down and back then they reminded him he only had one year left. Gee shock! Times up.
But a bigger question than why the special treatment for a guy from away is why the Selectmen (actually they are not all men, one is the wife of the marina’s manager) have, time and again, allowed the shenanigans. What’s in it for them? They have made arbitrary decisions that have cost the Freedom citizenry unnecessary legal funds climbing into the tens of thousands. It’s a boondoggle that appears to have to do with some personal animosity between the Town Fathers (and one Mother) and the Ossipee Lake Alliance who has fought the shifty daring-do Derry man from the first violation.
Pretty slick, but… It showed that she had the hubris that she told Charlie she had in order to be the next veep and if necessary (Gah fo’bid) the 45th POTUS. And yet who without hubris would even consider running for the lowliest office? Her no nonsense style is really nonsensical. She’s kinda like: "I’m just gonna stick to my guns and back down all these dubbers until I have proven the Peter principal beyond the shadow of a doubt that my highest level of expertise is to be governor of a state with less people than there are cows in Vermont. I’ll make them see that I am no more prepared for this position than Mike Huckabee. In fact I’ll take a page from his book, and separation of church and state be damned, I’ll ask for god’s help to do it."
I saw her ask, in front of a huge churchy audience, for god’s help to build a natural gas pipeline. That’s some whacky stuff. Combined with her dogmatic refusal to deal with abortion and birth control by just saying no leads me to think that her simplistic black and white approach to policy is a from-the-gut decision making process that anyone can make. She is ready to write a blank check to Israel which does not help with Middle East tensions, and which she did not address for reasons best left to the people who prepared her for the debate. But her answer already speaks for a possible McCain administration and that cannot be encouraging for the people in that very region we are trying to foster better relations with.
Clearly the same debate coaches had not read The Smoking Jacket on the question of who threw the first rock in Georgia. And even though it is now widely known that Saaskasvili tempted the fate he got, the Gov just spouted the McCain line showing what? Loyalty or ignorance. Likely both. I believe the average Joe or JoJo on the street, in this pastoral rurality in which I live, would be able to answer Charlie’s questions as well as she did without any coaching. I’m sure many of them also think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. I have a hard time thinking she knows what the initials in NATO stand for never mind why we should tout the admission of two Russian antagonists by pushing for their acceptance in it.
Chuck Todd, who is seldom fallible in things political, sees her best quality as “being the campaigner in chief.” I don’t think you have to be Chuckie T to figure that out but what’s not being said by any of the Morning Joe carnival barkers (which is where I get most of my opinionatedness) is the feeling I have that she will stumble just at the right time and fa’ down; go boom. John Heileman summed up the essence of her ABC prime time debut (which I have only seen in clips) that she was “very unimpressive but said nothing disqualifying.” The best news is that newsies are still talking about her and they will continue to do so because, I think, it’s no longer just about two old boring white guys. And that’s a step up.
In local news: What is up over at Ossipee Lake Marina where they tried to secure a special permission to violate a standing ordinance to have access that they are not supposed to have? They wanted to know: If we can’t have the necessary permission, how much will the fine be?
These guys have been flouting the law over in Freedom for years. The first time I saw Kevin Price the owner, he was so obviously lying to the Ossipee Planning Board about cleaning up his off site boat storage on route 16 that I had to chuckle. They had given him five years to fix the place or shut down and back then they reminded him he only had one year left. Gee shock! Times up.
But a bigger question than why the special treatment for a guy from away is why the Selectmen (actually they are not all men, one is the wife of the marina’s manager) have, time and again, allowed the shenanigans. What’s in it for them? They have made arbitrary decisions that have cost the Freedom citizenry unnecessary legal funds climbing into the tens of thousands. It’s a boondoggle that appears to have to do with some personal animosity between the Town Fathers (and one Mother) and the Ossipee Lake Alliance who has fought the shifty daring-do Derry man from the first violation.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Sliming Sarah
It is almost too much. The blogosphere is abuzz with the made up mystery of the true parentage of baby Trig. In a goofy spoof in Vanity Fair, after reviewing the putative “evidence,” 15,000 of their readers, or just random blog hounds, voted 70 percent that Trig is Bristol’s baby even though the time line shows that she would have had to have had the baby while already pregnant with the one she admits to.
People just want to believe what they already believe and no amount of evidence that Obama is not a Muslim will convince them other wise. I remember a friend’s grand father up in Maine who was asked, “Well grandpa, what do you think of them landing on the moon?” And he replied, “They say they did.”
People believe in creationism to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge that the world is older than 7,000 years. A hundred years ago, the President of South Africa refused to let it be said in his country that the world was anything but flat, even though he cheerfully entertained Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around it by himself. Many bright people say they believe in Adam and Eve and are serving in the congress and courts making life and death decisions. Our president believes, he says, that every life is precious, but has signed the official death warrant of many of his fellow Texans when he was their governor. He also started a war that has killed over a million “precious” lives.
Many Catholics say they believe the Pope is infallible. He may have impeccable taste, because the first thing he did after getting sworn in was to design his own Pope hat and then order up a new Mercedes Pope mobile made to his demanding specs. Obviously John Paul II’s taste was not good enough for him, making the former Holy See seem just the teeniest bit fallible. Maybe they just mean living Popes.
The thing about conspiratheorists is that they really have no interest in being proven wrong. They want to think that Sarah Palin is an early grandmother for whatever odd ball reason. They care not what it does to the hapless Bristol who has quite enough shit to deal with that is actually true. We news-nerds want the worst to come out almost whether it’s true or not. But keeping an eye out the way I do, I am not finding the kind of wrongdoing here that has risen to the level of John Edwards’ new baby. Now there is a clear case, if a grainy photo, of someone who looked awfully like Pretty Boy, visiting the hotel that we are pretty sure Reille Hunter lives in, so it must be so.
I’m not terribly turned off by Sarah’s political politics. I would expect the Republican nominee to pick some one with solid conservative credentials. But her ethical politics give me an eye ache. If she has a hand in the next Supreme Court nominee, I am going to have one upset wife and I feel more than a little queasy my damn self thinking of that happening. With all the Bush backward steps of the past eight years, I think that any more blows to the more sane of personal beliefs would be the tipping point in how America is perceived in terms of its once flaunted fairness. We are walking such a thin line.
My oldest brother, who is almost pope-like in his perspicacity, opines that Sarah is a very popular governor. He’s been up there since Nixon was in office and was mayor of a small Alaskan town too. He believes that she did a creditable job in Wasilla. But what we read and hear is the niggling of the nabobs of negativity, nitpicking how big the population of her town is or even that of the State. In fact, she has unprecedented approval ratings of 80 percent and higher. As Mike says, whatever her faults she’s a lot better than her predecessor. I wonder if people thought that Batista made Castro look good?
In bloggo-land we like to try to get the jump on any story. Palin’s popularity right now will have to answer to the premise that what goes up must come down, and, my guess is, the Peter principle. This may be her best show. A consummate performer on the campaign trail. But what happens in the debates with Biden, and how well will she respond to red meat questions the press is salivating to throw at her. She looks tough but she’s in for a tough slog and the self description of a “pit-bull with lipstick” may just come around to bite her in the ass.
People just want to believe what they already believe and no amount of evidence that Obama is not a Muslim will convince them other wise. I remember a friend’s grand father up in Maine who was asked, “Well grandpa, what do you think of them landing on the moon?” And he replied, “They say they did.”
People believe in creationism to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge that the world is older than 7,000 years. A hundred years ago, the President of South Africa refused to let it be said in his country that the world was anything but flat, even though he cheerfully entertained Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around it by himself. Many bright people say they believe in Adam and Eve and are serving in the congress and courts making life and death decisions. Our president believes, he says, that every life is precious, but has signed the official death warrant of many of his fellow Texans when he was their governor. He also started a war that has killed over a million “precious” lives.
Many Catholics say they believe the Pope is infallible. He may have impeccable taste, because the first thing he did after getting sworn in was to design his own Pope hat and then order up a new Mercedes Pope mobile made to his demanding specs. Obviously John Paul II’s taste was not good enough for him, making the former Holy See seem just the teeniest bit fallible. Maybe they just mean living Popes.
The thing about conspiratheorists is that they really have no interest in being proven wrong. They want to think that Sarah Palin is an early grandmother for whatever odd ball reason. They care not what it does to the hapless Bristol who has quite enough shit to deal with that is actually true. We news-nerds want the worst to come out almost whether it’s true or not. But keeping an eye out the way I do, I am not finding the kind of wrongdoing here that has risen to the level of John Edwards’ new baby. Now there is a clear case, if a grainy photo, of someone who looked awfully like Pretty Boy, visiting the hotel that we are pretty sure Reille Hunter lives in, so it must be so.
I’m not terribly turned off by Sarah’s political politics. I would expect the Republican nominee to pick some one with solid conservative credentials. But her ethical politics give me an eye ache. If she has a hand in the next Supreme Court nominee, I am going to have one upset wife and I feel more than a little queasy my damn self thinking of that happening. With all the Bush backward steps of the past eight years, I think that any more blows to the more sane of personal beliefs would be the tipping point in how America is perceived in terms of its once flaunted fairness. We are walking such a thin line.
My oldest brother, who is almost pope-like in his perspicacity, opines that Sarah is a very popular governor. He’s been up there since Nixon was in office and was mayor of a small Alaskan town too. He believes that she did a creditable job in Wasilla. But what we read and hear is the niggling of the nabobs of negativity, nitpicking how big the population of her town is or even that of the State. In fact, she has unprecedented approval ratings of 80 percent and higher. As Mike says, whatever her faults she’s a lot better than her predecessor. I wonder if people thought that Batista made Castro look good?
In bloggo-land we like to try to get the jump on any story. Palin’s popularity right now will have to answer to the premise that what goes up must come down, and, my guess is, the Peter principle. This may be her best show. A consummate performer on the campaign trail. But what happens in the debates with Biden, and how well will she respond to red meat questions the press is salivating to throw at her. She looks tough but she’s in for a tough slog and the self description of a “pit-bull with lipstick” may just come around to bite her in the ass.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Two Joes?
It’s nine o’clock on Friday morning and I think Joe Scarborough is about to confirm what the Smoking Jacket has pretended to know all along, Joe Liebermouse, or “Poor Loserman” as Joe likes to call him, will be McSame’s first choice for number two. And while I would like to have the luxury of waiting till eleven this morning to hear it from the candidate his own dang self before I start crowing in print, I can’t because we’ll be gone for ten days.
The Smoking Jacket is taking the show on the road. Maine for Joodster’s birthday bash, then down to Maryland for Hannah Medd’s fantasmagorical wedding and then heading up to Susannah Foo’s in Philly for some long sought after cuisine d’ Chinoise. Back via east Manhattan for the perfect bagle with Vic and Robin, before heading up to No Stamfo to scare the grandchildren.
Last night’s speech by that O’bama feller who thinks he would like to be the next commander in chief got glowing reviews from even Republican pundits like the estimable Mike Murphy. Peggy Noonan, who must write her own intros when she graces the news sets with her presence, thought it was flat and no one will remember anything but the pretentious set and that he didn’t soar. I have never liked this woman so I was thrilled when Andrea Mitchell, who was sitting next to Peggy, said in her demur way, that she disagreed thoroughly and thought it hit the mark. Egg on Peg’s puss is just as much fun for me as watching the guessing game galumph on toward eleven o’clock. This famous former speech writer for Reagan couldn’t even bring herself to pronounce “Barack” the way he does. She says BARE-uck, like the building soldiers sleep in. I wonder if she says CHEE-nee unlike the rest of the world, save the world class mispronouncer, Chris Mathews, and me.
New Prediction. The rascally Gustav is going to make it all the way to St. Paul next week where he will huff and puff and blow the stadium roof off the way Lieberman would have done with his own soaring rhetoric if they didn’t have to cancel.
Catch you on the flip side of Labor Day.
The Smoking Jacket is taking the show on the road. Maine for Joodster’s birthday bash, then down to Maryland for Hannah Medd’s fantasmagorical wedding and then heading up to Susannah Foo’s in Philly for some long sought after cuisine d’ Chinoise. Back via east Manhattan for the perfect bagle with Vic and Robin, before heading up to No Stamfo to scare the grandchildren.
Last night’s speech by that O’bama feller who thinks he would like to be the next commander in chief got glowing reviews from even Republican pundits like the estimable Mike Murphy. Peggy Noonan, who must write her own intros when she graces the news sets with her presence, thought it was flat and no one will remember anything but the pretentious set and that he didn’t soar. I have never liked this woman so I was thrilled when Andrea Mitchell, who was sitting next to Peggy, said in her demur way, that she disagreed thoroughly and thought it hit the mark. Egg on Peg’s puss is just as much fun for me as watching the guessing game galumph on toward eleven o’clock. This famous former speech writer for Reagan couldn’t even bring herself to pronounce “Barack” the way he does. She says BARE-uck, like the building soldiers sleep in. I wonder if she says CHEE-nee unlike the rest of the world, save the world class mispronouncer, Chris Mathews, and me.
New Prediction. The rascally Gustav is going to make it all the way to St. Paul next week where he will huff and puff and blow the stadium roof off the way Lieberman would have done with his own soaring rhetoric if they didn’t have to cancel.
Catch you on the flip side of Labor Day.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Hitch slap
Never mind every thing else, over 1 million deaths have been attributed to the war in Iraq so far. And the best that can be said is that we got rid of an awful unlawful dictator. There is no argument to the contrary that anyone can make that would convince me that that as Americans we must also bear some of this shame.
Christopher Hitchens has written eloquently (and when does he not?) about the solid reasons for taking out the Butcher of Baghdad, the man famous for gassing his own people, conducting a losing eight year war with Iran, torturing, murdering and every other thing that he has been rightly accused of.
There are over a million reasons why we should not have invaded, unprovoked, a sovereign nation no matter the desire to right wrongs and vanquish evil. If we are to stick by America even when it makes bad decisions we have to be careful to not blithely dismiss the consequences with alternative logic that wipes out the rule of, in this case, international law.
And if you buy the argument that some good has come out of our nation building, can you agree to the price paid thus far, over 4,100 dead Americans? More than 16,000 severely wounded, including those who will never recover from traumatic brain injury or grow back missing limbs or see again. It would be unseemly to talk about the financial cost when we consider this tragedy but there is a sobering clock on www.zFacts.com.
There are no figures for the Iraqi wounded but one can extrapolate and wonder how many of them went into the dead column for lack of adequate hospitals, electricity, clean water or even ambulances to get them to an emergency facility.
Hitch is pleased with the success of the “surge” and how it has in part helped to reduce violence and make some neighborhoods somewhat safer. But it has taken seven years and the bloody toll above just to reach this fragile state. In his self serving sado-cynicism he does not write about the costs of war although he did write about one moving memory of going out to visit the family of some young lieutenant who was killed and had mentioned the author in emails to them.
We all agree that Sadam was insane psycopath but not all of us felt he had to go. After all it was none of our business unless it turned out that we had proof positive, before invading, that the foul son-of-a-bitch had WMD. But we were told by world experts who had been vetted and trusted before, that there was no evidence to conclude what the Cheney-Bush axis wanted so much to believe so that W could take revenge on “the guy who tried to kill my dad.”
Oh my dad! How in the name of all the Allahs everywhere could we have been led into this behemoth blunder by such an ignorant little shit? It was up to him. The president cannot be superseded when he says “no.” They could have come to the very brink with tanks and troops locked and loaded and at the very last minute he could have said “wait.”
Was it possible that he thought maybe only a couple hundred Americans would have to get killed so that he could show his dad how tough he is? Having never gotten too close to military combat he likely didn’t calculate the number of wounded and the devastation to all the families. Maybe he thought that paltry loss was absorbable. Maybe he just didn’t do all the thinking that needed to be done before he said, “getter done!”
It will stay with me all my days that this country elected a known bozo, unqualified to lead a brownie troop, because he seemed like “a guy you could have a beer with” (not withstanding that he is what is known in AA as a “dry drunk”). Soon he will scoot out the back door, leaving all his messes, and the only thing I can hope for is that he lives to a 113 with a viciously vivid memory that will remind him every day of the unhealable suffering he has caused to so many innocent people. Hitch can go on living as long as he wants. It’s still a thoughtful provocative read.
Christopher Hitchens has written eloquently (and when does he not?) about the solid reasons for taking out the Butcher of Baghdad, the man famous for gassing his own people, conducting a losing eight year war with Iran, torturing, murdering and every other thing that he has been rightly accused of.
There are over a million reasons why we should not have invaded, unprovoked, a sovereign nation no matter the desire to right wrongs and vanquish evil. If we are to stick by America even when it makes bad decisions we have to be careful to not blithely dismiss the consequences with alternative logic that wipes out the rule of, in this case, international law.
And if you buy the argument that some good has come out of our nation building, can you agree to the price paid thus far, over 4,100 dead Americans? More than 16,000 severely wounded, including those who will never recover from traumatic brain injury or grow back missing limbs or see again. It would be unseemly to talk about the financial cost when we consider this tragedy but there is a sobering clock on www.zFacts.com.
There are no figures for the Iraqi wounded but one can extrapolate and wonder how many of them went into the dead column for lack of adequate hospitals, electricity, clean water or even ambulances to get them to an emergency facility.
Hitch is pleased with the success of the “surge” and how it has in part helped to reduce violence and make some neighborhoods somewhat safer. But it has taken seven years and the bloody toll above just to reach this fragile state. In his self serving sado-cynicism he does not write about the costs of war although he did write about one moving memory of going out to visit the family of some young lieutenant who was killed and had mentioned the author in emails to them.
We all agree that Sadam was insane psycopath but not all of us felt he had to go. After all it was none of our business unless it turned out that we had proof positive, before invading, that the foul son-of-a-bitch had WMD. But we were told by world experts who had been vetted and trusted before, that there was no evidence to conclude what the Cheney-Bush axis wanted so much to believe so that W could take revenge on “the guy who tried to kill my dad.”
Oh my dad! How in the name of all the Allahs everywhere could we have been led into this behemoth blunder by such an ignorant little shit? It was up to him. The president cannot be superseded when he says “no.” They could have come to the very brink with tanks and troops locked and loaded and at the very last minute he could have said “wait.”
Was it possible that he thought maybe only a couple hundred Americans would have to get killed so that he could show his dad how tough he is? Having never gotten too close to military combat he likely didn’t calculate the number of wounded and the devastation to all the families. Maybe he thought that paltry loss was absorbable. Maybe he just didn’t do all the thinking that needed to be done before he said, “getter done!”
It will stay with me all my days that this country elected a known bozo, unqualified to lead a brownie troop, because he seemed like “a guy you could have a beer with” (not withstanding that he is what is known in AA as a “dry drunk”). Soon he will scoot out the back door, leaving all his messes, and the only thing I can hope for is that he lives to a 113 with a viciously vivid memory that will remind him every day of the unhealable suffering he has caused to so many innocent people. Hitch can go on living as long as he wants. It’s still a thoughtful provocative read.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Midst the midden
In the dung heap of choices for the vice presidency the most obvious choice is none of the above. I like Joe Biden’s chances and except for his mouth, he is eminently qualified. Forget about the fact that he has emphatically declared, “I’ve been on the Hill since I was 29 years old. I don’t think I want to start working for somebody else now.” His glib jib and prominently displayed hauteur often gets him in trouble but I like that especially as entertainment over the next eight years. His foreign relations chops are worthy and at 62 he still cleans up pretty good for funeral duty.
Evan Bayh is too wimpy. Tim Kaine is better for the party where he is and too white bread to get people excited. Richardson would be excellent but I think the clingers to religion and guns, you know, the “hard working, blue collar Catholics” who love Hillary, will be slightly to moderately uneasy with two “persons of color” at the top of the ticket. Never mind that they both have white American born mothers, “I know what I see with mah own damn eyes.”
Which brings us to Hillary who we love to pillory. Too bad, she would ordinarily be the best choice but for all the baggage she brings. Most notably, the Slickster, who couldn’t keep his bulbous proboscis in line with the best interest of her campaign. That race was so close that you could say that this or that tilted to the big O, but what really stands out as I look back to almost a year ago, was the eponymously named Willy jumping in where he was not needed thinking that people didn’t remember him for his lack of a strong connection to the truth. In my view, she seals the deal for the Obambians but when you include the whole family package (whaddup with Chelsea introducing her mom and WJC getting a speaking spot too?) then, it will just be too much for people. They probably would win but a lot of people at the top of the campaign would have every right to be pissed after all they have put into the effort. It’s a tough call but I think I’d take her, with some very strict rules for her laddie, up front and in writing.
Liebermouse for Vice President, again? There’s a reason that Joe has been seen in so many scenes with McCain. It’s a kind of subtle polling to see how people react to them. There doesn’t seem to be any republican outcry and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him get picked. The idea, of course, is to reach across partisanship and bring in somebody who jumped from his own party because he lost his primary battle in his home state for the Senate. He was too pro war and held other conservative views so they voted the bum out. Bolting Joe knows better and not taking no for an answer he became an “independent” who has voted reliably with the other side since getting reelected.
Charlie Christ should be right up there in McCain’s choices. Hell, the guy got married to improve his chances and maybe to squash rumors that he was too much of a man’s man. Tim Pawlenty is said to be very “attractive” as a possible but if you’re not sure who he is, than you are with the majority of voters. It doesn’t make any difference who he is or how good he might be, ya gotta have more name recognition than this guy has. Tom Ridge might get past the pro abortion/anti life tag but how many of us know him as the first and fleetest head of the failed home land security tax soaker upper. He might bring Pennsylvania but he might bring a shit storm of criticism for yet another gargantuan failure of the Bush administration. He jumped ship on that, so they wanted to bring in Bernard Kerick. Oy vey!
The thing I don’t quite get is why Lindsay Graham is not at the top of the short list. There’s a soldier with like mindedness of the candidate who is willing to say whatever the day’s talking points are and with a straight face. A frequent guest on the Sunday morning shows, he can come across as thoughtful and believable. As a Light Col. in the air force he is said to be a good call for the national security issue. But that is Mc’s strength, so maybe he get’s sacrificed for someone who can bring a needed state, or a youthful look, or economic strength, even though he might be the best guy to serve with die alte.
I’m going with Liebermouse.
Evan Bayh is too wimpy. Tim Kaine is better for the party where he is and too white bread to get people excited. Richardson would be excellent but I think the clingers to religion and guns, you know, the “hard working, blue collar Catholics” who love Hillary, will be slightly to moderately uneasy with two “persons of color” at the top of the ticket. Never mind that they both have white American born mothers, “I know what I see with mah own damn eyes.”
Which brings us to Hillary who we love to pillory. Too bad, she would ordinarily be the best choice but for all the baggage she brings. Most notably, the Slickster, who couldn’t keep his bulbous proboscis in line with the best interest of her campaign. That race was so close that you could say that this or that tilted to the big O, but what really stands out as I look back to almost a year ago, was the eponymously named Willy jumping in where he was not needed thinking that people didn’t remember him for his lack of a strong connection to the truth. In my view, she seals the deal for the Obambians but when you include the whole family package (whaddup with Chelsea introducing her mom and WJC getting a speaking spot too?) then, it will just be too much for people. They probably would win but a lot of people at the top of the campaign would have every right to be pissed after all they have put into the effort. It’s a tough call but I think I’d take her, with some very strict rules for her laddie, up front and in writing.
Liebermouse for Vice President, again? There’s a reason that Joe has been seen in so many scenes with McCain. It’s a kind of subtle polling to see how people react to them. There doesn’t seem to be any republican outcry and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him get picked. The idea, of course, is to reach across partisanship and bring in somebody who jumped from his own party because he lost his primary battle in his home state for the Senate. He was too pro war and held other conservative views so they voted the bum out. Bolting Joe knows better and not taking no for an answer he became an “independent” who has voted reliably with the other side since getting reelected.
Charlie Christ should be right up there in McCain’s choices. Hell, the guy got married to improve his chances and maybe to squash rumors that he was too much of a man’s man. Tim Pawlenty is said to be very “attractive” as a possible but if you’re not sure who he is, than you are with the majority of voters. It doesn’t make any difference who he is or how good he might be, ya gotta have more name recognition than this guy has. Tom Ridge might get past the pro abortion/anti life tag but how many of us know him as the first and fleetest head of the failed home land security tax soaker upper. He might bring Pennsylvania but he might bring a shit storm of criticism for yet another gargantuan failure of the Bush administration. He jumped ship on that, so they wanted to bring in Bernard Kerick. Oy vey!
The thing I don’t quite get is why Lindsay Graham is not at the top of the short list. There’s a soldier with like mindedness of the candidate who is willing to say whatever the day’s talking points are and with a straight face. A frequent guest on the Sunday morning shows, he can come across as thoughtful and believable. As a Light Col. in the air force he is said to be a good call for the national security issue. But that is Mc’s strength, so maybe he get’s sacrificed for someone who can bring a needed state, or a youthful look, or economic strength, even though he might be the best guy to serve with die alte.
I’m going with Liebermouse.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Pong Yang ping pongers
The South Korean Ryu Seung Min kicked the ass of Austria’s Chen Weixing in a brutal(ly) boring battle for king of pong. I’m trying to decide if this is more entertaining that watching a 20 year old Belarusian put 444 pounds above his head without, literally, busting a gut. Yee hah! SK just won, bronze. This is so not the table tennis that we used to while away many teenage hours with. It looks like they serve with their cheek. The table is the size of a pop tart and now, unbelievably, they are playing doubles.
The whole Olympics hype has pretty much ruined the spectacle for me. It’s become too political and the gamesmanship is more about cheating that being the fastest. Not that many have been kicked out but one of them who did was someone who shoots at targets. Why does he need to get cranked up on steroids? Well, of course, he doesn’t. He needs to crank down so he takes something for that but he won’t be taking home the medal he won.
And whaddup with the Chinese sending in kindergarteners and pretending they are sixteen but there doesn’t seem to be a big whup about it because the hosts are a little huffy over any hint of impropriety on their watch? Though I haven’t watched that much besides really cool stuff like sailing and Siamese beach volley ball, I have caught a lot of highlights on the news and so I actually know who Michael Phelps is and the other swimmer, Lezak (sp?) who saved Phelps from only a tie with Mark Spitz.
With the medal count 79 for the US and 77 for China you would think that would spell second place but the Chinoise have more gold, 18 more. What is not known in this equation is how to weight the value of the individual sport. Surely, tiddly winks does not have the heft of putting a record smashing 569 pounds over your own head. And Shawn Johnson’s gold can’t compare to ladies archery or dancing in a swimming pool. So if the Sino set says “but we have more points because our golds are worth more than your collective silvers and bronzes,” we can counter by pulling our troops out of Iraq and lining them up on the Siberian border. Let the games end!
The whole Olympics hype has pretty much ruined the spectacle for me. It’s become too political and the gamesmanship is more about cheating that being the fastest. Not that many have been kicked out but one of them who did was someone who shoots at targets. Why does he need to get cranked up on steroids? Well, of course, he doesn’t. He needs to crank down so he takes something for that but he won’t be taking home the medal he won.
And whaddup with the Chinese sending in kindergarteners and pretending they are sixteen but there doesn’t seem to be a big whup about it because the hosts are a little huffy over any hint of impropriety on their watch? Though I haven’t watched that much besides really cool stuff like sailing and Siamese beach volley ball, I have caught a lot of highlights on the news and so I actually know who Michael Phelps is and the other swimmer, Lezak (sp?) who saved Phelps from only a tie with Mark Spitz.
With the medal count 79 for the US and 77 for China you would think that would spell second place but the Chinoise have more gold, 18 more. What is not known in this equation is how to weight the value of the individual sport. Surely, tiddly winks does not have the heft of putting a record smashing 569 pounds over your own head. And Shawn Johnson’s gold can’t compare to ladies archery or dancing in a swimming pool. So if the Sino set says “but we have more points because our golds are worth more than your collective silvers and bronzes,” we can counter by pulling our troops out of Iraq and lining them up on the Siberian border. Let the games end!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
One creepy crap shoot
What the hell was President Saakakashvili thinking to go poking the Bear with such a sharp stick? Strong leadership is important and the ideal of democracy is a good thing but why push it when you are pretty sure that the consequences will be tragic.
Russians are notorious for their bullying and land grabbing. Think of the wholly unsuccessful attempt to protect the commie population in Afghanistan against the mujahedeen. Hard to pick a favorite in that one but I think most of us wanted to see the 3CP get the short end. War-crossed Chechnya is a federal subject of Russia that has been fighting them since the USSR broke up in 1991. This murderous and wasteful conflict actually goes back 80 plus years. They’re still fighting.
Those of us of a certain age remember the early TV footage of war when Khrushchev sent tanks into Hungary to put down that revolution. The tanks reappeared in 1968 when Alexander Dubcek had to get slapped around by the Kremlin for trying a similar stunt in what is now the Czech Republic. The heinous aftermath of these “conflicts” has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, even more wounded, orphans and homelessness. It’s insane.
It boggles to think that Saakashvili thought he could pull this off and it makes it a little unbelievable that he would think that the west and particularly the US would come to his aid. It would be a bad idea even if we weren’t stretched so thin militarily. We shouldn’t go to war just because we can. There are strategic interests but that is true else where and many of us think that phrase is just code for “blood for oil.” When I read in the Times that neo-cons think that “promoting democracy is the paramount goal” I think of how hideously wrong they were on invading Iraq. In the same article I read McCain saying good things about his “friends” the Georgians (he nominated President Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 – good call) even though it seems that they have pushed Putin to what most observers would conclude was an obvious and avoidable outcome. And I do mean Putin. Nobody thinks Medvedev thinks for the country.
It isn’t clear who fired the first shot when “fighting broke out in South Ossetia” but Tom Ordeman Jr. of Spero News has this analysis:
“Fighting broke out earlier this week between the Georgian military and South Ossetia's rebel forces. Despite an initial ceasefire agreement, fighting flared back up, eventually resulting in Georgian forces shooting down two Russian aircraft. (Guardian, Times). The Russian military responded by sending tanks into South Ossetia and bombing Georgian air bases. The Russian incursion has allegedly escalated to air attacks on Russian cities outside South Ossetia. How this incident will end, and what its impact will be, is anyone's guess.”
But by the time the Migs got shot down, they had already taken out an Israeli made (un-manned) drone belonging to the peace loving Georgians.
I guess, since no one got killed, I wouldn’t have shot down the Russian Migs even for that. On the other hand, nice shooting! You’d think the Russkies would have planes that a little country like Georgia couldn’t blow out of the sky. O well, more boys being boys with big toys. What fun is it to have all this cool stuff to shoot if you don’t get to squeeze the trigger?
Now they have called a truce after Russia has decimated the Georgians' military, killed a couple of thousand citizens and soldiers, and ruined ancient architecture and modern infrastructure. BarackO said yesterday, “there is no possible justification for these attacks.” He’s wrong. The justification is to send a clear message from Moscow not to mess with us. It does remind one of the adage, “If he takes a knife to a fight, you take a gun.”
The Russians are not going to take any guff from US or our allies and they feel provoked by the Bush policy of cozying up to one of its neighbors, who just happen to have a lot of oil being pumped across its borders. McCain’s bluster about kicking the Rooshians out of the G8 makes about as much sense as a “gas holiday.” I wish he would take a holiday from gassing on about how he “knows” that every American is a Georgian. That’s more than a little over the top. It has a Howard Dean in Iowa eeriness to it.
This thing will blow over because it’s stupid and we need Russian oil and, thankfully, civilians don’t give two shits about all this macho posturing. But look at the mess that is left behind. Two thousand dead “bred of an airy word … A plague a’ both your houses.”
Russians are notorious for their bullying and land grabbing. Think of the wholly unsuccessful attempt to protect the commie population in Afghanistan against the mujahedeen. Hard to pick a favorite in that one but I think most of us wanted to see the 3CP get the short end. War-crossed Chechnya is a federal subject of Russia that has been fighting them since the USSR broke up in 1991. This murderous and wasteful conflict actually goes back 80 plus years. They’re still fighting.
Those of us of a certain age remember the early TV footage of war when Khrushchev sent tanks into Hungary to put down that revolution. The tanks reappeared in 1968 when Alexander Dubcek had to get slapped around by the Kremlin for trying a similar stunt in what is now the Czech Republic. The heinous aftermath of these “conflicts” has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, even more wounded, orphans and homelessness. It’s insane.
It boggles to think that Saakashvili thought he could pull this off and it makes it a little unbelievable that he would think that the west and particularly the US would come to his aid. It would be a bad idea even if we weren’t stretched so thin militarily. We shouldn’t go to war just because we can. There are strategic interests but that is true else where and many of us think that phrase is just code for “blood for oil.” When I read in the Times that neo-cons think that “promoting democracy is the paramount goal” I think of how hideously wrong they were on invading Iraq. In the same article I read McCain saying good things about his “friends” the Georgians (he nominated President Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 – good call) even though it seems that they have pushed Putin to what most observers would conclude was an obvious and avoidable outcome. And I do mean Putin. Nobody thinks Medvedev thinks for the country.
It isn’t clear who fired the first shot when “fighting broke out in South Ossetia” but Tom Ordeman Jr. of Spero News has this analysis:
“Fighting broke out earlier this week between the Georgian military and South Ossetia's rebel forces. Despite an initial ceasefire agreement, fighting flared back up, eventually resulting in Georgian forces shooting down two Russian aircraft. (Guardian, Times). The Russian military responded by sending tanks into South Ossetia and bombing Georgian air bases. The Russian incursion has allegedly escalated to air attacks on Russian cities outside South Ossetia. How this incident will end, and what its impact will be, is anyone's guess.”
But by the time the Migs got shot down, they had already taken out an Israeli made (un-manned) drone belonging to the peace loving Georgians.
I guess, since no one got killed, I wouldn’t have shot down the Russian Migs even for that. On the other hand, nice shooting! You’d think the Russkies would have planes that a little country like Georgia couldn’t blow out of the sky. O well, more boys being boys with big toys. What fun is it to have all this cool stuff to shoot if you don’t get to squeeze the trigger?
Now they have called a truce after Russia has decimated the Georgians' military, killed a couple of thousand citizens and soldiers, and ruined ancient architecture and modern infrastructure. BarackO said yesterday, “there is no possible justification for these attacks.” He’s wrong. The justification is to send a clear message from Moscow not to mess with us. It does remind one of the adage, “If he takes a knife to a fight, you take a gun.”
The Russians are not going to take any guff from US or our allies and they feel provoked by the Bush policy of cozying up to one of its neighbors, who just happen to have a lot of oil being pumped across its borders. McCain’s bluster about kicking the Rooshians out of the G8 makes about as much sense as a “gas holiday.” I wish he would take a holiday from gassing on about how he “knows” that every American is a Georgian. That’s more than a little over the top. It has a Howard Dean in Iowa eeriness to it.
This thing will blow over because it’s stupid and we need Russian oil and, thankfully, civilians don’t give two shits about all this macho posturing. But look at the mess that is left behind. Two thousand dead “bred of an airy word … A plague a’ both your houses.”
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Ken Doll gets screwed by Lisa Druck, returning the favor
Ya gotta love MoDo. In her Sunday column she eviscerates the one term senator, no term vice president, and no term president with the same kind of fervor she used to favor Bubba with. I believe this story has legs. Bony, hairy ones with scabs on the knees. I just caught part of Edwards' interview with Bob Woodruff that was at the end of a news clip with him saying something along the lines of, “…you can be 99% good but it’s that other part that will get you.”
Was part of the 99% where he was so sold on himself that he had to put his family through the cruel strains of a national campaign—again—because he really had more to offer than some of the more serious and tested candidates? Riding a bus through Iowa and New Hampshire in the winter, three towns in a day, and then jumping on a plane to get to the next venue is the kind of torture that these guys (and one gal) put themselves and their “loved ones” through on purpose and I got to say, it doesn’t seem like a good thing to do.
The truth for me is that I never liked him, even before I knew that he paid $400 for a hair cut and you gotta see this to understand why.
When he admits that he was/is full of himself you know that he’s telling the truth for a change. All that stuff about how he was going to eradicate poverty starting “right now,” as he stated in some snake water neighborhood in New Orleans with a bunch of bought-off kids for props behind him. They probably would have demanded more if they knew how long it would take him to pimp his ‘do’ before the video began to roll.
I remember covering him last fall in Conway when he suddenly changed the meeting place to the Salyards building which only held 200 because that kind of a piddly crowd would make him look like the loser that he is if they carried on with plans to use the cavernous new High School gym. They hadn’t got the fire department permits they needed and didn’t make the necessary accommodations for possible emergency evacuation and so when I left, as soon as I could, there were about fifty people standing outside in the rain waiting for others to leave so they could get in. For what?
I wonder if the water these ego maniacs drink is also laced with Viagra. Probably only Mike Gravel has no sexual scandal attached to him in this last go around. Even the diminutive alien look a like Kucinich is on his third wife (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Perhaps the whole business of running is just a ploy for getting laid. We used to have a NH congressman who was telling my buddy Jim that he had to go up to tiny little Orford that night to give a speech. “Hard to get laid up in Orford, Jimbo,” says he with a wink, “but not impossible.” Chuckle chuckle.
The lure of the opposite sex is fun. It’s what keeps the human race going and some people are not blessed with the kind of self-discipline that would be helpful when temptation knocks. But this guy was running for POTUS for the love of jaypers. Did he think no one would find out? Had he never heard about FDR and Lucy, Ike and Kay, Jack and his whole pack, the Trickster and Checkers and of course the audacious one from Hope who liked to talk to his friends on the phone in the oval office while not having sexual relations with that 21 year old in the blue dress.
The bigger part of the story is the lying. Not to reporters and us but to his family. Why does he have to go on TV to drag the ugliness right up to their noses? He told them already what happened and had it out of the way, so we are led to believe, he was thinking of them? It is not remotely possible that Edwards went out to LA just a month ago to straighten out some details of an understanding that he had with Druck/Hunter.
And who believes that Andrew Young guy, who supposedly says he is the father, is at all reliable when he takes money that we are asked to believe comes from a private donor to resettle, just like Lisa/Reille did. Young too has a wife and kids. I bet the money is somehow being funneled from campaign treasury funds which could lead to criminal charges. Keep it up, boys.
Why should we care? We don’t. It’s just fun.
Was part of the 99% where he was so sold on himself that he had to put his family through the cruel strains of a national campaign—again—because he really had more to offer than some of the more serious and tested candidates? Riding a bus through Iowa and New Hampshire in the winter, three towns in a day, and then jumping on a plane to get to the next venue is the kind of torture that these guys (and one gal) put themselves and their “loved ones” through on purpose and I got to say, it doesn’t seem like a good thing to do.
The truth for me is that I never liked him, even before I knew that he paid $400 for a hair cut and you gotta see this to understand why.
When he admits that he was/is full of himself you know that he’s telling the truth for a change. All that stuff about how he was going to eradicate poverty starting “right now,” as he stated in some snake water neighborhood in New Orleans with a bunch of bought-off kids for props behind him. They probably would have demanded more if they knew how long it would take him to pimp his ‘do’ before the video began to roll.
I remember covering him last fall in Conway when he suddenly changed the meeting place to the Salyards building which only held 200 because that kind of a piddly crowd would make him look like the loser that he is if they carried on with plans to use the cavernous new High School gym. They hadn’t got the fire department permits they needed and didn’t make the necessary accommodations for possible emergency evacuation and so when I left, as soon as I could, there were about fifty people standing outside in the rain waiting for others to leave so they could get in. For what?
I wonder if the water these ego maniacs drink is also laced with Viagra. Probably only Mike Gravel has no sexual scandal attached to him in this last go around. Even the diminutive alien look a like Kucinich is on his third wife (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Perhaps the whole business of running is just a ploy for getting laid. We used to have a NH congressman who was telling my buddy Jim that he had to go up to tiny little Orford that night to give a speech. “Hard to get laid up in Orford, Jimbo,” says he with a wink, “but not impossible.” Chuckle chuckle.
The lure of the opposite sex is fun. It’s what keeps the human race going and some people are not blessed with the kind of self-discipline that would be helpful when temptation knocks. But this guy was running for POTUS for the love of jaypers. Did he think no one would find out? Had he never heard about FDR and Lucy, Ike and Kay, Jack and his whole pack, the Trickster and Checkers and of course the audacious one from Hope who liked to talk to his friends on the phone in the oval office while not having sexual relations with that 21 year old in the blue dress.
The bigger part of the story is the lying. Not to reporters and us but to his family. Why does he have to go on TV to drag the ugliness right up to their noses? He told them already what happened and had it out of the way, so we are led to believe, he was thinking of them? It is not remotely possible that Edwards went out to LA just a month ago to straighten out some details of an understanding that he had with Druck/Hunter.
And who believes that Andrew Young guy, who supposedly says he is the father, is at all reliable when he takes money that we are asked to believe comes from a private donor to resettle, just like Lisa/Reille did. Young too has a wife and kids. I bet the money is somehow being funneled from campaign treasury funds which could lead to criminal charges. Keep it up, boys.
Why should we care? We don’t. It’s just fun.
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