A number of random thoughts, only some of them sad and cynical. Hope springs eternal – after all, we survived four years of Jimmy Carter. A quarter of a century later, we are still mopping up after his major foreign-policy/military disaster – the Iran hostage taking at the Teheran Embassy - but the Republic survived.

The Obama campaign outspent the McCain campaign four to one. I will look to hear murmurings about ‘buying public office’ and ‘campaign reform’ and ‘public financing’ in the next couple of years from the Mighty Wurlitzer of the mainstream news organs, but I am not holding my breath. I will also look to serious investigation of vote fraud in various precincts, especially as regards your friendly neighborhood ACORN office, but again – no breath being held there.

Do you suppose this will put an ash stake through the heart of the ‘America is teh most racist nation eveh!’ meme? Jumping Jeezus on a Pogo Stick, I hope so. I can also hope that the Good Reverend Sharpton and the Good Reverend Jackson might actually go out and get real jobs, doing something useful in their respective communities. I can also wonder if secretly they were both crying into their respective beers last Tuesday night, as the returns came rolling in.

I have about just had it up to here with “unnamed officials” and “anonymous sources” spilling dirt to compliant reporters. This most recent bitchfest of McCain campaign functionaries complaining about Sarah Palin is just the final straw. Sorry, mainstream media whores – up with this I will not put, starting here and from this moment. Either put a name on it, or skip it. And to those Unnamed and Anonymous highly placed sources? Man up and put your name where your mouth is. I mean it. I’ve complained about Sy Hersh doing this for years, suspecting that he is merely being used by his so-so-inside sources and he is too arrogant and F&&#ing dumb to know that he is being played..

And la Palin herself? She was the only reason McCain had a chance at all, so nice way to treat her, just so you have a chance of holding on to your insider access. I still wonder if the incredible, venomous anti-Palin spewings, which seemingly came up from nowhere didn’t have a lot of help from the notoriously efficient Axelrod organization.

How long will the Obama honeymoon last? Probably only a little longer than it takes the One to discover that the Presidency is not an office like that of the Tsar, that matters cannot be instantly resolved with a wave of an imperial hand. Also, the behind-the-scenes activities of various minions cannot be concealed by a local and compliant press for long, anyway. At some point the adoring press will have to get up off their knees and wipe the drool off their lips. The mainstream media, god help us, have been acting like a teenage girl in the throes of their very first crush. The fangirly squeals of “Oh, isn’t he marvelous!” are getting fairly wearing. So are the comparisons to Camelot. I can’t say I particularly remember Camelot at first hand – but I do know that practically everything about the Kennedy administration was a fraud, except for Jackie’s dress sense. And maybe the space program.

It’s one thing to quibble, strike heroic poses and Monday Morning quarterback, when you are on the outside – another to actually have full charge of whatever. Blaming your predecessor usually only works for about six months. A year, tops. I’d feel better about the Obaminator if he had actually stuck around in any of his jobs longer than it took to decide on which upward rung on the ladder he wanted to try for. I also can’t throw the notion that he is one of those fast-burners who rocketed up the ranks so fast that they actually never had time at each step along the way to do much. I think of him as the political version of the charming and ambitious scoundrel hero of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”.

On this weekend’s Prairie Home Companion, I listened to Garrison Keiller warble a hymn of praise to The One, and threw up a little in my mouth. I used to love that show, back when he was poignant and funny.

Finally – wouldn’t it be a hoot if everything that GWB and the Republicans were accused of doing over the last eight years – stealing elections, reviving the draft, corrupting the political process, allowing terrorists to attack on our own soil, selling out our allies for oil, fumbling national disaster response, trashing freedom of speech, oppressing minority racial and religious groups, bullying legislators and civil servants, neglecting military veterans – actually turn out to be SOP for the new administration?

Oh, yeah. I would laugh and laugh and laugh – if I weren’t already crying.

I am not the first blogger to note how depressingly appropriate is Padme Amidala’s line from the last Star Wars movie. “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” There are about 12,000 google hits on it, and probably not all of them are lamenting the (insert sarc tag here) depredations of the Bush administration in stealing elections, shredding our liberties, values, constitution, interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, crushing dissent, etc. (close sarc tag here) Probably a lot of them are looking ahead to the prospect of an Obama administration, and wondering if The One and his Democrat minions, allies and supporters are going to perform – for the good of us all, most assuredly – those very actions they have spent the last four years screeching about the Bush Administration doing.

Frankly, it’s depressing enough just looking at the current campaign season, never mind the fresh hells just around the corner, when the “Chicago way” of doing business and machine politics goes nationwide. It’s also depressing enough, considering how the major media has just about given up any pretense of even-handedness. Even Blondie, who is only lately come to take an interest in politics noticed how a local news anchor on the 10 PM news last night referred to Obama with his proper title of senator, but to John McCain with his name only, no mention of his title. I caught a few minutes of NPR discussion the Obama-McCain debate last week, and was struck by the fact that all the included sound bites… were of Obama, sounding ever so presidential. Nothing from McCain; little things, to be sure, but the constant drip-drip-drip is very wearing. Adorable little moppets singing songs about him, teenagers chanting his name, crowds roaring applause call to mind all sorts of unsavory parallels, everything from Hitler Youth to Mao’s Little Red Book waved in every hand. “Change and Hope” are vague and inspiring slogans. Too many eventual dictators surfed into office on a high tide of such offerings. Most of them were not dislodged as easily. Where did he really come from? What is his real resume and his solid accomplishments, who are the people and interested parties who got him were he is, this very day? We know who some of his friends are – the Reverent Wright, William Ayers – and some of the operatives like David Axelrod, the king of political Astroturf – and the ACORN organization. This intelligence is not the least bit reassuring. These sorts of questions are only being raised now, with three weeks to go. The mainstream media should have been dissecting him long since – so much for being the guardians, the unblinking eye upon the political process. Is the way for the One being paved with fraudulent voter registrations, smoothed by ballot-box stuffing on a grand scale in key districts and states? Is this what the grand plan is, to put him across the finish-line no matter what it takes? Stabbing our trust in the electoral process to the very heart, while the cheering section in the media shouts hosannas? While those of us with doubts are told brusquely to shut up and go along with the rest because we don’t want to be called racists, do we?

If there was anything that to me was the equal of the 60 Minutes fraudulent TANG memo story of the last presidential election cycle, it was the almost universal trashing of Sarah Palin, a whirlwind of loathing from the mainstream media which sprang up seemingly overnight, and the constant recycling of debunked stories – the rape kit one, the banning-of-library books one, the baby-isn’t-hers-but-her daughters one, the stupid-and-ignorant-redneck meme… on and on it goes. How horribly depressing all these memes are, especially mouthed by supposedly liberal and feminist types. Pointing out that she had better than 80% approval ratings in Alaska, was take-no-quarter reformer, with apparently no intent on shoving her personal pro-life inclinations down anyone’s throat… it’s like spitting into a hurricane. What decent person would want to go into politics after this, knowing that their family would be slimed by a complicit media— and their fellow-travelers in the intelligentsia—all in the name of hauling the One over the finish line and into the White House. The Chicago way, indeed.

Politics has always been dirty, but watching the mainstream media and the entertainment world become so very insanely partisan has been quite a startling thing to me, and I thought I was a cynic. Obviously, not cynical enough.

The juggernaut was-and still is, according to a quick internet search, an enormous, towering wagon, with the image of a locally-worshipped Indian deity enthroned at the very peak of it, under a vast canopy, which is taken out for a grand procession once yearly, pulled by devotees through the streets of the city. This is no quick spin around the block and back again, for this wagon is enormous, clumsy, and heavy. Picture Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, arriving to meet Mark Anthony, or the Persian emperor Darius grand entrance in ‘300’; it’s an arresting image, which must be why it was used to indicate a certain sort of power and will.

And it also comes to my mind, increasingly often, this election season. Rather than picturing our very dear mainstream press creatures as deep-sea divers so far into the tank for Obama that they must have a couple of handlers and a pump feeding oxygen down to them, now I visualize the Obama campaign vehicle as a garganutuan, creaking juggernaut, pulled along by the masses of our media, along with lashings of the more loudmouthed and stupider popular entertainers. I visualize them straining at the chains, the ropes that bind them to the axles of this impossibly heavy vehicle as they tug it painfully onward, as they push at the back of it. They lean their shoulders to the wheels, willing the tottering structure ever onward towards the finishing line. They will accomplish this, of course – it is in the power of their will to move the One to glorious victory, and never mind those concepts - or those among them who fall under the wheels or are crushed against the side of a stone building as the juggernaut lurches briefly out of control.

I have honest to god never seen it as bad as this, as blatant – and I was paying attention during the last election. As hard as they could, the mainstream media couldn’t make the sow’s ear that was John Kerry into a presidential silk purse. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though – and they weren’t helped that he appeared to have all the actual, personal charm and charisma of Frank Burns and Eddie Haskell put together.

This time, they appear to have thrown any pretense at impartiality under the wheels. What can you think after seeing the storm of vicious editorials and outright fantasies about Governor Palin that somehow appeared out of the clear blue, upon being named to the VP seat? How can anyone not compare and contrast the energetic digging into her past, personal life and professional career in the last few weeks, with the elaborate disinterest in Senator Obama’s over the last 18 month and not begin to wonder if there is something just a little unbalanced about this sense of focus.

It’s not been unknown for members of the working press to have sentimental favorites – look, they about got down and drooled over John. F. Kennedy, and the deity knoweth some of the old press guys and gals still view him through a hagiographic haze. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson was so universally despised by the press and the intelligentsia that I (as a middle school kid just getting interested in that kind of stuff) rather felt sorry for him. Nixon was loathed, and Gerald Ford lampooned as a clumsy oaf… but in between all that, the serious media still were capable of some kind of detachment. Well, mostly… and mostly those in the middle of the road, not veering off onto the lunatic fringe. Which sense of impartiality still lingered long among us— but it just seems now the lunatic fringe is driving the whole thing. And that sense of even-handed detachment is what the media is losing, or has already lost this season. It’s gone; no one who has been paying attention the last couple of weeks, months, years – no one believes that mainstream media is neutral and independent any more. They are become the organ of state, or the state that they hope will be, once they drag the juggernaut over the finish line.

It’s as if NPR and the New York Times were about to morph into Pravda, or the state media in one of those third-world nations where el Presidente’s cousin is the head of the national press council— and no one dare print or broadcast a critical word about either of them. What a pity – for a lot of the last century, being a journalist in the mainstream American media was a respected profession… and now they are reduced to shoveling out propaganda and dragging the juggernaut along.

I’m SHOCKED, shocked I tell you…

Other things I’m shocked about:

Senator Barack Obama is black.

Senator John McCain is white.

Governor Sarah Palin is hot.

Senator Joe Biden’s mouth moves faster than his brain.

700 billion dollars could possibly be spent on better things than bailing out rich guys who don’t know when to fold when they’re holding a pair of twos and there’s a nut flush showing on the table.

The Air Force is talking about bringing back Strategic Air Command and putting Space back in Colorado Springs.

Marines are just plain bad-ass.

Matt Damon is a fine writer/actor, but seriously, he should stay out of politics until he learns to Google.

Russia may not be the good buddies we thought they were in 1990.

Pakistan is shooting at U.S. troops on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

Bill Clinton seems to be undermining the Obama campaign.

David Blaine’s latest stunt was preempted by the President’s speech and nobody cared.

Most of the people in Survivor Gabon aren’t who they say they are.

Here we sit in a branchy row, thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do, all complete, in a minute or two—
Something noble and wise and good, done by merely wishing we could…

In following the current twists and turns of the current election season, with particular attention to the hackerish little creeps who think it is an excellent thing to break into email accounts… tell me, why is it a Good Thing and entirely justifiable for people in sympathy with the Obama campaign to break into Governor Palin’s yahoo account, looking for incriminating evidence of dark plots and deeds… but it was a Bad Thing for Richard Nixon’s cabal of plumbers to break into the Watergate looking for incriminating evidence of dark deeds and plots? Oh yes, that was before you were born, probably. But they made a movie about it, so you must have heard about Simply Teh Greatest Political Crime EVER!!!! Just sit down, and think about this real hard. And look up the definition of hypocrisy, while you are at it.

Bottom line, for those of you whose moral sense is situational – if it is a crime for free-lance or paid operatives to break into another party’s HQ, operating office, personal email account… whatever, on a fishing expedition – than it is a crime all the way around, no matter how justified you think you are in your motivation. Those of your friends, teachers, college professors and fellow Kossacks who may have been insisting otherwise? They are wrong. I would advise you to stop listening to people like that.

I would also stop paying much attention to our Major Media Creatures and those who keep popping out of their ol’ golden rolodex to screech about Sarah Palin. Just a quick look down some of those crazier rants (especially the ones by foreigners) about the suddenly front-and-center Governor of Alaska — her relative inexperience, all around tackiness, blue-collar-ness, lack of capital-F feminist credentials, religious beliefs, et cetera gives cause for serious head shaking. Jeeze, people, get a grip! Take a valium. (In the case of Heather Mallick, take a lot of valium. In the case of Sandra Bernhard, a lot of valium, a lot of scotch and please review a basic human anatomy text.) Pouring all this vitriol on someone you probably didn’t even know about three weeks ago seems kind of… I don’t know, unbalanced? She’s only been front and center on the major American political scene for three weeks, and she is already attracting a degree of odium usually reserved for someone who has been around for a bit, and done some bad things. Like a reckless, grandstanding, philanderer with a taste for shady friends. But enough about Bill Clinton.

And then there the not-terribly-surprising discovery by Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report that certain alleged and dubious factoids about Governor Palin which suddenly began sprouting like toadstools after a rain were actually planted by the minions and employees of a well-known and well-connected publicity firm, in the sure and certain knowledge that the howler monkeys of the KOSsacks left would fall on them as if on a tasty treat and repeat them incessantly.

All the talk we ever have heard, uttered by bat or beast or bird—
Hide or fin or scale or feather— Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again! Now we are talking just like men!

Of course, once this precious little piece of Astroturf was tracked to it’s originating point, everything got yanked, with the speed of a cartoon character at the end of a long piece of elastic band. Note to self – every time I start to notice the same poisonous little factoid appearing spontaneously and simultaneously in – blog entries and blog comments, from out of the mouths of the dumber Hollywood celebs and the sort of TV commenter who goes from rational to spittle-fleck rant in thirty seconds flat, I will assume that some busy little astoturfers have been at work, behind the scenes. And that someone like Rusty or another enthusiast will be able to track it back to the originating source. It’s not like you can launch damaging rumors without leaving any marks, people. The internet never forgets. The tracks are always there, especially when someone does a screen-capture or downloads a file.

Finally, the recent request from the Big O for his minions to really get out there and go all righteous in confronting those of us who are less than fully enamored – great idea! Yeah, people just love getting hectored and bulled, and called names like ‘racist’ and ‘hater’. My suggestion – put on a leather teddy, spike heels and fishnet stockings. Brandish a leather crop, too. You might not get anywhere politically with that scenario, but at least that part of the audience who is into playing kinky submissive games will get some cheap thrills, while the rest of us look on in amusement.

Damn, did this election season get interesting all of a sudden. Who’d a thunk it possible, back in January, 2008.

A running gag at Tim Blair’s blog over the last five years or so has been reports of the appearance of the eternal bird in the dribblings of various writers, entertainers and columnists. That is, a sneering reference to the pictures of President Bush holding a supposedly plastic turkey, in a series of pictures taken at his surprise Thanksgiving visit to troops in Iraq five years ago. Explained and debunked over and over again by eyewitnesses that it was a real turkey, for display at the steam tables where the main entrée was being dished out, put together by the mess-hall staff and that such displays are actually commonplace at military mess halls… the plasticized version of this meme appears yet again, unscathed, rather like a turkey-shaped Freddy Kruger. The bird is not only the word, it is eternal. (Spotted yet again this very morning, as I contemplated this essay while being dragged around the block by the dogs.)

Obviously, this is a convenient short-hand for the people who enjoy sneering at George W. Bush and are too damned lazy to rustle up something a little more current than the old plastic turkey story. Tim Blair and his commenters get a lot of mileage – and a lot of hearty chortling - but the fact that the meme is still current after five years and a ton of energetic debunking is kind of depressing. It proves that Joseph Goebbels was on to something when he observed the effectiveness of telling a big lie and sticking to it… even at the cost of looking ridiculous. If a story is repeated often enough, it will be believed by a depressingly large number of people: 9/11 was an inside plot by the Bush Administration, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans was completely blameless in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the 2000 election was stolen, the Swiftboat veterans’ claims about John Kerry were all debunked, that US government were Saddam Hussein’s biggest supplier of military equipment… oh, add your own favorite here, the list is practically endless.

Such memes persist because they are repeated incessantly by all sorts of people, against all available evidence to the contrary. The most depressing aspect is that in a lot of cases they are repeated by media figures that once I would have expected better from - and applauded by audiences that I also expected better of. (Garrison Keillor being a particular offender. I can barely stand to listen to Prairie Home Companion these days, and I used to love that show.) Now I only hope for better. Sad to say, that hope is growing fainter and fainter by the hour… especially over the last two weeks. As if it wasn’t bad enough to suspect our very own dear media folks of being lazy and careless in vetting stories in the last election cycle, as if it wasn’t bad enough that 60 Minutes could air a blatant hit piece just before election day, based on shaky fact-checking and dubious memos in an attempt to throw the election to John Kerry… as if the hurricane of vitriol this time around didn’t reach a new and unexplored depths with the Palin-faked-pregnancy story, now it looks as if mainstream media has moved solidly into place as a propaganda arm of the Obama Democrats.

Not just the dirt-digging on Governor Palin – it’s the asymmetrical dirt-digging. Plus the final edit of her interview with Charles Gibson, with her answers judiciously edited to put the worst complexion on them… (sample of it here) plus the staging of it in the studio, plus his hectoring manner, so very different from his interview with Senator Obama. Really, it does give one pause. Then consider the cover shoot of Senator McCain, for the Atlantic Magazine, with such very artistic and well-considered outtakes doctored by the photographer….

Just some examples from the last couple of weeks… but still, very revealing ones, about the various aspects of the current political scene. I wouldn’t go so far as to make a blanket insistence that the whole lot are in the tank for the Obama campaign… but I sure as hell wouldn’t assume anything about their impartiality, either. Were I a media advisor to a Republican nominee to high office, I’d certainly be advising a quick pre-interview google-search of the interviewer’s name… and for the nominee to bring along his or her own own camera crew.

(Thanks Sigivald - corrected!)

Dear Sarah Palin Attackers,

At this point, only a week and a half after Sarah Palin was announced as the Republican pick for the VP candidate, whenever I hear or see a new attack on her, I simply roll my eyes and assume it’s bullshit.

Too much, too silly, too fast.  Nothing’s sinking in.  My eyes just sort of glaze over whenever some new, negative report of her “wrongness” comes on the air or over the net.

To be quite honest, it’s pissing me off.  The more you attack her, the more likely I am to vote for McCain and her, and I wasn’t all that excited about him before you started flinging the crap.

And Senator Obama?  The difference is, when Senator McCain made the “lipstick on a pig” remark last year, he was talking about Senator Clinton’s medical insurance program, you seemed to be attacking Governor Palin herself. That’s not the sexism card, that’s the, “What happened to disagreeing without being disagreeable?” card.

So just keep it up, we may not be paying attention to the details any more, but we are paying attention to what you’re attacking.  You’re attacking the person, not her policies.

What you’re not getting is even though a lot of us don’t agree with her on everything, I know I don’t, we admire her for what she’s accomplished and who she is.  We admire her for being so freaking normal compared to the rest of the political world.

You blew it.  When you attack her, it feels like you’re attacking me, disagreements and all.  I can relate to her a whole lot better than I can to you.  Every time you throw mud at her, it splashes onto me.  You seemed to have missed that.

And if you missed that, I just think you’re too dense to run the country.

UPDATE:  In all fairness to Senator Obama, once I saw the entire clip, the argument can be made that he was talking about McCain and his policies vs Governor Palin.  Although the crowd obviously didn’t take it that way.

We’re half watching the McCain/Palin rally in Colorado Springs.  There are a lot of American Flags in the audience.  Where did they all come from?

Apparently, vendors cleaning up Invesco Field after the DNC found them heading for the trash!

I know, to many people the American Flag is just a party favor, to others, kind of big deal.

To me, it tells me that I can’t even think about voting Democrat.  The organizers gave no thought to taking care of all those flags if folks didn’t want to take them home.  The participants gave no thought to what to do with them after they were done waving them.

No consideration.  That’s what I can expect from the Democrats, and that’s what I’ll give them.

They simply don’t get anyone outside of their scope.

From: Sgt Mom
To: Our Various Political, Media and Intellectual Elites
Re: The Appeal of Palin

1.I have to admit all over again, ladies and gentlemen of the uber-elite, if there were ever more proof needed that y’all (and I use the Southernism purposefully) and the rest of us live – if not on two different planets, than at least in two separate yet linked realities – then we’ve collected that proof by the bucket-full over the last week. I speak of course of the nomination of Xenia, the Warrior Princess of Wassila, Alaska to run as the vice-presidential candidate of the Grand Ol’ Party in this suddenly electrified election season.

2. A cat among the political pigeons doesn’t even begin to express the mad flurries this week; first the shock of another maverick, formerly the governor of Alaska, an outside and relatively unknown regional political personality. She appears amidst us - not like Venus wafted ashore, on a sea shell and attended with nymphs and cupids and fluttery draperies… but heralded with the other kind of shell, a whole barrage of them, and appearing out of the smoke mounted on a roaring Harley, dressed in cammies with a hunting rifle and a sniper-scope over her shoulder and a field-dressed moose carcass slung over the back… oh, no – that’s no moose, it’s Michael Moore! You get the idea, this has been a pretty startling week, all the way around. I actually can’t blame the “good ladies”* of NOW for reacting as if a hairy Visigoth had just barged into their board meeting and let out a prodigious fart. (And lit it.) They’re all for women in positions of power and authority – they just have to be the right sort. With the right kind of background, the right sort of friends, the properly vetted positions and opinions.

3. So, Governor Palin – able, charismatic, sharp as a humming-bird’s beak, with a proven record in local and small-town politics – very definitely not the right sort to be enthusiastically embraced by the old-line political, media and intellectual elite. That the rest of us are charmed, energized, and approving, that is just killing the old guard. I mean, really killing them. I picture Maureen Dowd and all the rest of the NY Times line-up, doing the haughty Margo Dumont impression, all evening gown and pearls, looking down their noses through the lorgnette: well, really, how dare those…those peasants approve of That Woman!? Don’t they know what is best for them? How is this possible, they can reject our wise and knowledgeable counsel? (With her pregnant teenage daughter, and her own hasty marriage… and that impossibly dishy blue-collar husband of hers… et cetera, et cetera.)

4. I swear, you must be in such a tiz about this, everywhere from the lunchrooms of the High and Mighty, the boardrooms of the Ivy League, Kos’s mother’s basement, the CBS newsroom and all. Shouldn’t all those (shudder) revelations about Her… shouldn’t all that have sunk Her nomination deeper than the Titanic with all those blue-state hicks in the sticks? You know what those people are like, darling…

5. Matter of fact, it’s become pretty clear that y’all don’t know what it’s like, out here in blue-state-land. No, honestly, I don’t think y’all have a clue at all. You have some bizarre visualization of small-town, blue-state, working-class and middle-class Americans. You appear to be disconnected from Americans who go to church regularly, who serve in the military, who go into a trade or profession without bothering with college attendance. You have nothing to go upon but tired old tropes gleaned from the movies and stale clichés from television shows and novels that someone forced you to read in high school, four decades ago. In that sort of fun-house mirror of the ‘other America’, church-goers are hysterical, judgmental fanatics, women who want to do anything more than marry well and squeeze out offspring are treated like pariahs, being divorced is cause for social blackballing and gays and blacks are regularly lynched and/or flogged. Everyone is a red-neck, hostile gun-worshipper who doesn’t know which fork to eat the salad with and reads on the 5th grade level… and lusts after their sister, and can’t wait to murder the next stranger who drives into town.

6. Pointing out that small-town, flyover, other-America is nothing like that at all is like spitting into a hurricane. There is nothing so granite-like in its’ certainty like well-established prejudices. It’s coming back to bite you. Yes, you, our very own home grown elites. My dear people, you live in a bubble and have come to believe what you have created, in the vision you have of the ‘other’, your own countrymen and women.

7. The problem is that for you elites, the ‘other’ America can see clearly and very well, thank you. They can see past the vision, or is it the hallucination? And they also vote.

Hoping this is of help to you all
I remain,

Sgt. Mom

* As always, viciously skeptical quotemarks

So, late to the blog-reaction party, being out and about this morning, in my some-time employer’s high-off-the-ground bright yellow jeep with the ranch advertising etched on the windows, collecting my paycheck from the Large Corporate Entity and buying groceries. I had the classical music station on, which didn’t go to a newsbreak that I heard for most of the morning… eh, it was the same with 9-11. I wasn’t aware for hours.

But upon returning to the house… and wow! Talk about getting inside the Obamanation’s decision loop. Or as they say in chess parlance, ‘check’. That strange whistling sound must be that of the air rushing out of whatever room that the Obama-Biden campaign is strategizing in. Tell me, who the hell made speeches last night? There were some speeches last night at the Democratic convention, weren’t there? This is such a true maverick move. I can’t stop chortling. Somewhere, Hilary Clinton must be shredding that orange pantsuit, snarling “Mine! It should have been mine!” and making life hell for whoever is with her. In a truly just world, that would be Mr. Bill, ex-prez and aficionado of young interns.

Picking Sarah Palin for the VP slot – youngish, sharp, attractive, female, with administrative experience as a mayor and governor, mother of children, blue-collar husband, soldier son, another political maverick – oh, a Veep candidate who is proof against the arrows and slings of the hard-core Kossacks. They can’t chuck stones at her without having them rebound on them tenfold! Honestly, the only way she could be made more critic-proof would be if she were black or mixed race, spoke Spanish as her first language and was a lesbian – admittedly that last would be hard to square with the marriage and five children.

Oh, man – this campaign has just all of a sudden gotten fun. Break out the popcorn, now we are all paying attention. To loosely quote J.P Rourke, “Old age and treachery beat out youth, speed and a bad haircut.”

Later - more from the peerless Iowahawk, waxing homeric.

How come Oprah Winfrey is on the cover of every issue of her own darned magazine? I mean, even Martha Stewart gives it a rest.

Why does it have to be so bloody hot in Texas in the summer? And how long will summer last this year? How many more months of running the AC night and day will we have?

How come we were supposed to be moving beyond race with the nomination of the Fresh Prince from Chicago… and yet here we are again, having the same old discussion! But with the added frisson of being called a racist it we don’t vote for him. (Oh, yeah, and can we have a break from his entitlement-addled BAP of a spouse moaning about how hard it is to get along on a yearly salary of more than I will ever make in the next decade? Or two or three? Thanks.)

How deep are major media in the tank for Obama, actually? Deep enough to need a snorkel? A deep-sea divers’ suit and something to pump down oxygen to them?

How come anyone cares what celebrities think? About anything other than their next professional appearance, that is.

Who the hell cares about Paris Hilton? And why?

Which one of the dogs or cats threw up a strangely reddish patch of vomit, and please god, let the red color be from the reddish chunks of stuff in the dog food.

What’s Madonna’s new remaking of herself going to look like? Anything age-appropriate? She’s pushing 50, you know.

Will the price of gas go down? Would it be a little cheaper to run the car on milk? It’s at about the same price per gallon this week. How soon will the owners of all those big honkin’ SUV and pick-up trucks replace them with something smaller and fuel efficient. I remember the 70s, people – I remember this happing once before, and yes, I’d like to be able to see past the vehicle waiting next to me at a stoplight. Instead of looking at the step that allows them to climb into the cab of their big honkin’ SUV, which is at my eye level, thank you very much.

When those SUV’s and pick-ups get to expensive to run… will they wind up in the hands of people, who… I don’t know… live out in the country and really need a big, sturdy, 4WD vehicle with space to stuff a couple of Angus cows in the back?

How badly am I going to hate the part-time and regular job that I start next week at “Enormous National Call-Center Which Shall Remain Unnamed” by the next of six months? One year? Can I stick it out long enough for some of my books and on-spec writing jobs to pay off… so that I can turn in my employee badge of servitude and shake the corporate dust off my feet… again.

Stay tuned – we’ll know the answers to most of these in a couple of months. Or a year, tops. All but the one about Paris Hilton. That’s a mystery for the ages.

Just because…

I’m tired of Yahoo f**king up.

I’m tired of never getting any answer to the mailings and emails that I send about my books.

I’m tired of being treated like crap because I’m a writer and there are another ten-thousand of writers just like me (only most of them are F**king worse!) on the next bus. And that most of them seem to be better connected than me.

I’m tired that most of the ones that I am connected to, appear to to blow me off like an embarrassingly incontinent relative.

I’m tired of being stalled on payment on work that I have done.

I’m tired of having to work like a dog just to get a one-hundredth of the interest awarded to crappy, mediocre writers, just because they’re the flave of the moment. Or they have well-connected friends and fans.

I’m tired of looking at things that I should like to buy, but can’t because I can’t afford them. Oh and I am really, really tired of jugging bills. (please don’t construe this as a bleg, I am just venting.)

I’m tired of non-essential stuff but non-the less non-functioning stuff around my house that I can’t afford to fix. Like, giving the animals the vet care that they deserve.

I am really tired of Pajamas Media - my reason for sticking with them is…

Oh, yeah - I am really tired of Old, Traditional, Established Media. That’s what my reason is. Otherwise, I can’t see that I am really getting anywhere with the PJ Media association, anyway.

I have a couple of glasses of chablis in me. And tomorrow, or the day after, I will have to go into a couple of employment offices and make a pretense of being all about them and tending to their coporate needs, just so that I will have enough to fund the last bits of the Adelsverin Trilogy. Like mailing copies of same to reviewers - three-quarters of which will take the copy of Book One and never do a damn thing with it. Except take it down to the local second-hand book outlet and get a couple of dollars for it.

Pardon me while I swallow the vomit in my throat.

From: Sgt Mom
To: B. Obama
CC: Mainstream Media, Lefty Blogosphere
Re: The Sound of Skewered Sacred Cows in the Morning

1. I haven’t read the New Yorker in a while; somehow all that New York trendoid media’s almost incestuous fixation with its own navel kind of wore thin after a couple of decades. They will also persist in paying great wads-o-cash for Seymour Hersh to dribble all kinds of disinformation from his handlers – er, his oh-so-secret gummint sources into the world at large – apparently on the off chance that the law of averages will catch up to him someday and he will actually make an accurate prediction. So here they go, making a huge splash with a cover that has managed to become the blogosphere’s “S**tstorm of The Day” by skewering both the anointed of the lefty blogosphere, the Obaminator himself and his missus… and the so-called follies of the righty blogosphere.

2. I presume that the editors of the New Yorker are chortling all the way to the bank, having created more interest in this particular issue than in practically anything else since the cover that featured a Hasidim in a torrid embrace with a black woman. Still, if they really had a pair, I can’t help thinking that they’d have used one of the dreaded Danish Motoons of Doom on the cover. Ah, well, say what you will, I don’t think Moveon.org or the Huff-Post will slap a fatwa on their asses or break out the exploding vests at this act of les-majestie against the Chosen One, the Fresh Prince of Chicago.

3. It has not gone without notice that other political figures have been savaged in caricature and cartoons in recent times, occasionally by this very same publication, with scarce a resulting peep. In fact, sitting presidents and aspirants to that office have been savagely caricatured for simply decades, nay for the two centuries plus that this nation has been a going concern. There were early politicians of hot temper and thin skin who were moved to fight duels, and a senator of Southern sympathies who took a cane and whaled the tar out of a senator with abolitionist leanings on the very floor of the Senate in the lead-up to our Civil War… but in the main, they manned up and developed a hide of the approximate thickness of a rhinoceros’s. The very best of them managed to pass it off with a quip and a chuckle – a course of action I would suggest to Mr. Obama.

4. It is being said – with an increasingly defensive tone of voice – that no, no, no, the cover is supposed to represent the those fears and rumors being whipped up by those running-dogs of the Right, the Minions of the Dreaded Lord Rove, all those gun-hugging, God-clinging white racist lumpen-proles who are not falling to their knees and instantly worshipping the Anointed One, all those ignorant Jesusland freaks who would just redeem their horrible selves if they would only accept the changyness and obey the commands of the anointed… and if they don’t it only proves that they’re “teh racists!” Oh, yeah. Whatever. Go pull the other leg, sport, that one has jingly bells on it. Being one who actually hangs out on some of the dreaded “Right Wing Blogosphere Weblogs o’ Death, I must observe that the objections to his proposed tenancy in the White House mostly center upon a resume as thin as his skin, his choice of friends, his propensity for using and then throwing the embarrassing and/or inconvenient ones under the bus, his background as a product of Chicago Machine politics, and the whole “tomorrow belongs to me” * ambiance about his followers. I won’t even get into his search for a father figure except to note that these ‘seed and leave’ men (such as Obama, Senior) do tend to leave a lot of damage in their wake.

5. Eh, well – this is what makes an election season so interesting. It makes amusing sport, so pass the popcorn. At this rate, it may be a very interesting summer.

6. Sincerely though, Mr. Obama – develop a thicker skin. You are only a politician. Man up and take your lumps like all the rest. You are not special, and you are not allowed to float graciously above the fray. The color of your skin does not give you a pass. As MLK so cogently observed, one should be judged upon the content of ones’ character.

Sincerely,

Sgt. Mom

* For those who need reminding, here is the best “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” sequence that I could locate. It’s from “Cabaret”, and pretty well illustrates some of the creepiness that some critics see in elements of the Obama campaign:

Sorry, I knew I promised way back when not to indulge in juvenile name-calling when it came to this years election campaign, but that was just too rich to pass up, too much like a dense and fudgy slab of Mississippi Mud chocolate tart with pecans, whipped cream and a whole real maraschino cherry, on top, the kind with a stem and a real seed pit in the center… temptation, I can resist anything but temptation.

I will say this for Mr. Hopey-Changey-Chicago-Machine-Pol… he is at least a bit more personally charming than John Kerry, who alas, came off as an unfortunate cross between Lurch and Eddie Haskell. I still wish I could reach out and give the mother of all dope-slaps to whichever of his strategist-minions suggested that he make his military service the centerpiece of his campaign, lo these four years ago. I am still cringing at that awful salute that he rendered… God, the Air Force gets all kinds of stick for sloppy salutes, but that one of his took the absolute cake. And as for reminding everyone of how he made his first political bones… Way to go, people. I couldn’t find a single Vietnam-era military vet in San Antonio who didn’t despise him so much for his part in Winter Soldier and other anti-war follies that they could hardly say his name without adding some serious bad language. Or at least, making a face like they had just bitten into a breakfast taco and discovered a palmetto but into it. However… water under the bridge, people, water under the bridge. Now we are faced with a gorgeous, well spoken well-connected and charming… empty suit. It doesn’t help that his most prominent military affairs advisors appear to be Wesley Clark (better known as Weasely and worse to those who served with and under him) and Merrill McPeak… the very mention of whose name still makes NCOs who served during his tenure spit nails, not the least for his pet project – the new Air Force Uniform (ta-dah! – god, what a dog, and we would have had to buy it, too!) To steal a phrase; of all the possible advisors on matters military, I think that the Obama campaign has hit upon the two most likely former general officers to make military veterans run screaming. That takes a kind of genius, really. A warped genius… and has anyone seen Karl Rove, recently!!!???

Obama is an empty suit, albeit a beautifully tailored one. As long as the suit is reading off the teleprompter, and dazzling with it’s considerable charm and piquancy, distracting attention from the fact that it’s resume is as slender as Callista Flockhart’s thighs… no, I do not care for Mr. Obama. Or his friends, his resume, his pathetic father-abandonment issues, his irritatingly resentful wife, his propensity for throwing friends, family, staff and allies underneath the metaphoric bus… there are so many people under it now, it must be jacked up like one of those pick-up trucks that you need a tall ladder to climb into. I am allergic to demagoguery, to charming people who say whatever they need to say to one audience – mostly airy promises - and something else to the next audience, and then get their well-tailored knickers in a bunch when asked searching questions about whatever it is that they have said.

Still, there are more lawn-signs and bumper stickers out for him than there ever were in my neighborhood for M. Kerry, four years ago. It’s going to be a long summer…

This is something I learned in Mr. Bryer’s U.S. History/Civics class in 1977-78.

THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA’S WOES
BY CHARLEY REESE

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy.

Go read the whole thing.

I guess this story was around earlier this week. I just heard about it on Fox News’ Red Eye. Hey, “Man Vs Wild” is a repeat.

A cop comes into my kid’s classroom, tells him and his classmates that some of their friends were killed in a drunk driving accident, and then after an hour or so bring them to the athletic field and say, “Just kidding! No one’s dead. We just wanted to show you how bad you’d feel if it DID happen.” Oh. Helllllll no!

Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) started out doing great work. Educating people on the dangers of drunk driving and getting the legal BAC lowered to a reasonable level. That was 28 years ago and I think we can say that they managed to get that job done. They probably got the job done about 20 years ago, so in order to continue rationalizing their existence, they continue to mess with people.

Look, you want to continue campaigning to get the legal BAC down to zero? Go ahead. You want time out of my son’s academic schedule to educate him on the evils of drinking and driving? Absolutely…you can do it during Gym or Health or some assembly. Bring the trashed car with the blood and brains all over it. He’d think that was cool. But seriously, you pull that kind of crap, telling kids that their friends are dead, in Idaho? You’d better be well armed. Here in Idaho, we shoot back when you kill our dogs…imagine what we do when someone hurts our kids.

When is a scarf not a scarf? Apparently when it’s a keffiyeh. I know, I know, I said I was done reading Michelle Malkin over a year ago and seriously? I haven’t. But I do read Venomous Kate regularly and her post led me to MM’s. Apparently Charles Johnson of LGF was the first to “report” on this serious breech of national security, but I only read him when I’m bored and I’m looking for someone or something to be pissed off about. Frankly with my blood pressure, reading him would violate my Doctor’s and Beautiful Wife’s orders.

When I first heard about this on the news all I could think was, “Rachel Ray? A Terrorist Sympathizer? Give me a freakin’ break!” She needs to be arrested for being overly perky, but I’m fairly certain that she didn’t wake up that day thinking, “I’m going to send a message of support to our Palestinian brothers and sisters while I try to help Duncan Donuts sell some coffee, maybe I’ll get the Arafat secret recipe for falafel.” It wasn’t until I read Kate’s post that I discovered it was Johnson and Malkin who “got the word out.”

Malkin and Johnson’s point seems to be that if Ray and Dunkin Donuts had no idea about the political overtones of wearing a keffiyeh, they darn well should have and being “clueless” about the symbolism was just as bad. At least that’s what I got out of it.

Sigh. Excuse me while I go pound my head on a wall for about 15 minutes.

Thanks.

What’s my point? Well, you all know that I’m not a fan of radical islam. It’s what I consider a “Bad Thing.” But I think we have enough real things to be worried about without having to look at every piece of minutiae that might be part of a terrorist plot. Instead of “exposing” what for some is just a fashion accessory as the insidious symbol of Palestinian terrorism it REALLY is, steal the symbol.

Ya see, in my mind, if folks who aren’t terrorist sympathizers choose to wear a keffiyeh because, oh, I don’t know, they think it’s a cool scarf that goes well with their outfit, then it stops meaning what the terrorists and Gladys Kravitz’s of the world want it to mean. It takes the power out of it.

Think about it. If designers started making kaffiyehs with little stars of David? Maybe with American Flags? Make them in red, white and blue? Car companies could put their logos on them. Cafe Press could sell them with Little Green Footballs all over them, or maybe tiny pictures of Ronald Reagan. Or even…I don’t know…have a cooking celebrity with no ties to any terrorist organization wear one when she’s selling coffee for Dunkin Donuts. Liberals would start hating them it because now it’s a symbol of U.S. capitalism instead of Palestinian unity. Conservatives could start wearing them with pride. I’d like to get one with the Starbucks Mermaid all over it because it would offend people that don’t know a mermaid when they see one.

Just this afternoon I finished the last few pages of the final chapter of the final volume of the Adelsverein Saga (known to all as “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and Lots of Sidearms” - first draft, so there is quite a lot of snipping, editing, revising, et-cetera to be done.

But still - a grand total of 437,800 words, spread over three volumes. It’s nearly as long as Lord of the Rings, which is supposed to have clocked in at half a million. No wonder I feel like I have just finished a marathon.

There is so much that I wanted to do, to flesh out the characters and the various dramatic incidents, to include some significant backstories and to generally do right by the epic, even if some of the not-so-essential stuff is snipped, I may very well finish with just as many words or more.

Something to think about, perhaps dividing the final volume into two. Say the heck with that and make it a quartet….

Slightly depressed this evening - the part-time job that I went to, after my dear friend Dave the Computer Genius and part-time employer died most unexpectedly, has come to an end. Also somewhat unexpectedly. Eh, I knew it was temporary, I just thought it would last a little longer! But they did think the world of my work and enterprise, will call me in again to work on specific projects and will recommend me enthusiastically to their various clients, I departed on extraordinarily good terms - it’s just that I am back to a certain degree of job and financial uncertainty.

On the up-side, the commute, even once a week was a bear and I would have slashed my own wrists with my teeth after spending another couple of eight hours a day on the phone doing cold calls.

Well, really, isn’t that what it is turning into, what with Her Inevitableness and The Fresh Prince of Chicago locked in a knock-down, drag-out grudge-match to the death. I can hardly wait for the showdown at the convention – this is going to get really interesting, in the sense of ‘slow down and look at the carnage on the highway’ sort of interesting.

There is so much to dislike about both of them – who would have thought that a young and doe-eyed political neophyte, fresh from the mills of the Chicago political-machine could exhibit a collection of such embarrassing associates, unfortunate missteps and evidence of obvious wheeling and dealing. It’s a fascinating - in the forensic sense - collection of soiled laundry. And Her (perhaps) Inevitableness has been assembling her own vast collection for twenty years, so all hail the ambitious newcomer! Each has a spouse which may prove to be just as much of a millstone – the serial sexual harasser against the BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement and injury. Yep, the convention is going to be a cage match. I predict blood, inside and out, before and especially after – the fans of whoever doesn’t get The Big Nod will be extremely resentful.

It’s too much to hope for, that the delegates wander in the way of a ration of sense and nominate a compromise third candidate. Nope, never happen, although it’s been suggested – laughingly I am sure – that the Goricle himself would nobly put himself in the way of such an effort…

All kidding aside, I don’t think that Obama himself had any idea of how swiftly and how completely the Reverend Wrights’ inflammatory sermons would percolate through the national media and the body politic, or how absolutely offensive that ordinary people outside the holy environs of his immediate circle would find them. And they are offensive – I don’t care how many ways you slice and dice it. I am a fairly devout and intermittently observant mainstream Christian; any white minister preaching the Reverend Wrights’ line from the pulpit would have been disowned from a mainstream church so fast his clerical collar would have spun around his neck like a horseshoe flung towards a stake. There’s a lot to be said for the ‘flip’ theory – that is, reverse the colors (or the genders) involved in any controversy and see if it still seems fair to you. The Fresh Prince worshipped for twenty years and took as his mentor a racist and demagogic nut-case. Deal, ‘kay? So we’re started a dialogue about race in America in the 21st century – not quite the one expected, but as I said – deal.

I’m not even getting into the question of Obama’s association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers, except to note that damn-it, won’t the Sixties ever die? What do we have to do, bury that low dishonest decade at the crossroads with an ash stake through its heart? This picture says about all that you have to know about Bill Ayers, except to note that the advance publicity about his memoir – from which this local story derives - got lost in all the news coverage about 9-11. Bet he cried into his Chablis for months – how dare a bunch of Islamic fundies ruin his carefully laid publicity campaign about the golden days of ‘fighting the power’?!

Yep, it’s going to be an interesting couple of months. I’m going to need a couple of hundred pounds of popcorn just to be able to deal with it all.

(Link courtesy of Rantburg, my source for all that is sarky and cynical)

Oh, my goodness gracious me, the presidential-race politicking is just betting more and more engrossing, in that tacky drive-by on the high-way and slow down to take a look at the interestingly arrayed wreckage sort of way. Honestly, as an independent-tending-to-the-Republican side of the political side of the scale for the purposes of this particular race, I am a mere interested spectator to the machinations of the Democratic Party side of the house… rather in the sense of a spectator in the seats of the ancient Roman Coliseum was to a show on the sands down below to a match pitting a team with nets and tridents against a team with swords. There will be blood. Just not sure at this point who will be left standing, to receive the thumb-up or thumbs-down at the end of it all. Or how many corpses will be left strewn across the sand.

Yeah, well – I’ve beaten that imagery into the ground… ooohh, now we have a comic interval, with the Spitzer-fest. A prominent crusading New York DA, who made his political bones (and strewed his path lavishly with the bones of others, through strategic leaks to a compliant media) on prosecuting crime! Prostitution Rings! Wall Street White Collar Insider! Hoist on his own petard, stewed in his own juice! Great heaping plates of just desserts, just entrees, just salad course! All the way to the governors mansion on his record (and his family money) but wow – usually my dread is that someone this spectacularly big of a hypocrite and all around a-hole is a Texan. Thanks, New York – this one is all yours! Is he any sort of relation to crusading DA Mike Nifong of infamous Duke University rape case memory? Pity the wife doesn’t have the nerve of some wronged Texas wives- she just appears to be too lady-like to kick him out of the house, loot the bank account and run him over a couple of times in the parking lot with her BMW.

Eh, well – the political season is young, yet. I’d have had a lot more respect for Her Inevitableness… er, Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton if she had done something along those lines to demonstrate her displeasure after The Big He had confessed to his extra-curricular antics in the Oval Office. Sorry, it’s not a shock to me to learn that big men in high political places might be tempted to play hide the salam’ with women not their legal spouse. I just wish that if they must, they would have better **$#^!”!!! judgment about who they do it with. And that perhaps their spouses might be just pissed off enough about being paraded out for the big ‘stand by your man’ finale. Sorry, I don’t mind sex – it’s the stupidity that I can’t make allowances for.

So, the Fresh Prince of Illinois has for two decades attended a church and accepted the spiritual guidance of a minister who is given to saying things like this in the pulpit of a Sunday morning. Hooo-kay… is he some sort of weird kin to Fred Phelps? So much for the appearance of having moved beyond race in this happy shiny 21st century America. At this point, the great insert-whatever-here just looks like Al Sharpton with nicer suits and a bit more polish to him. Note to Sen. O’B.: the clue to being the first ‘black’ whatever in America, is not to be ‘black’. It’s to be… American. Any message, any person in your campaign that counters that impression does not play well, outside whatever bubble you may have been playing in heretofore.

Let the games begin. It’s gonna get very interesting, if this week has been any indication.

(link courtesy of Roger Simon, and practically everyone else who has been linking to the ABC report all day. Note - this intelligence about Sen. O’Bama’s church has been kicking around for a bit in the conservative blogosphere, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise)