Jane Harmon to step down

Jane Harmon leaving Congress to become the next President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I'm sort of surprised, but it's quite a prestigious position. So, once it's done and official, Governor Jerry Brown has 14 days to call a special election - perhaps finally Marcy Winograd will win the seat as a true progressive. Just hoping is all.

A Message from The Secretary of Strawberries & Cream

Hi my gramma gotta new kitty his name is Mr Bean but she don' havany picksures yet cause she's lazy and besides there's Mr. John McCain's friend Joe The Not Plumber to talk bout. Mr. John McCain doesn't do too well vetting peeples too much. Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is really not a plumber at all. So but he also seems to owe some back taxes too. An he doesn't have a liesenze thingy that sez he can be a plumber. I don wan him to work on my mommy's toilets because he's not really a plumber and we need to fix the back bafroom. So but he wanted to know about if he buys this bizness and it makes $250000 a year wud his taxes go up but they wudn't and that's good caus he owes about $1200 in back taxes anyways.

An Joe-the-not-plumber has the same last name as Robert M. Wurzelbacher Jr., the son-in-law of Charles Keating of the infamous "Keating Five" scandal but nobody's really proven that he's related to Robert M. Wurzelbacher Jr. but lotsa peeples think he is related but I don know for sure. If they is related then that's kinda stoopid of Mr. John McCain but he's a meanie man an I don much like him. An look what he does, he tries to grab anybody's behind.

A Cool Hand At The Tiller

Last night, during the debate, John McCain said "we need a cool hand at the tiller." Hmmm. People who know him say he has a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty. John McCain is a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.



I don't want the McCain/Palin team anywhere NEAR the White House. We must act decisively November 4th. In Ohio, you can already vote. Go DO it.

Leave it to the British to say what the US Media will not

Normally, I never take a complete article and reprint it. Today I am, because this about says it all. Friday, October 3rd, Michelle Goldberg of The Guardian writes:

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

She's like Phyllis Schlafly, only worse

She's the darling of the "Pro-Family" movement. No, not Sarah Palin, Phyllis Schlafly, mother of six, Karl Rove's godmother. Phyllis Schlafly, the woman Ann Coulter calls "amazing." This is the cloth from which Sarah Palin has been cut.

Which begs the question: what makes these UberConservatives "pro-family" and the rest of us not? I look at people around me, none of whom have traditional family set-ups anymore - children being raised in loving, single-parent homes; mothers who work; gay and lesbian parents raising children - aren't these people pro-family too? I don't hunt, which I guess is positively un-American.

Still. John McCain says this woman will be ready from Day 1. From the looks of things, I guess that's true.

Thought for today

Chronic homeless population down 15%, US says. Tracked over a 12 month period, a Federal Report claims a 15% reduction in chronic homelessness.

McCain says the surge is working.

I wonder if there's a connection here.

Mission Accomplished, my ass

cross posted at The Fat Lady Sings