New Shiny Blog!

It's oscar season, and now I get to focus on my other true love, but I decided to do so in a new blog. Hope you visit it and enjoy.

Media Meltdown: The election and my nerves

So... sorry about the dearth of posts. I've been so full of all things election and the constant flow of information that it's been hard to collect my thoughts long enough to express them coherently. I have to say a big huzzah to a column by Larry David in the Huffington Post in which he chronicles the jangling of nerves that accompanies this political season. There's just too much, I don't even know where to begin. I think I'm going to give my fellow nervous dems a list of my fellow iconclasts to help them through theses undoubtably torturous next six days. I'll do a short feature on each. stay tuned.

Piling On: Do I Really Have to Defend Colin Powell From the Charge of Racism?

I might not even post on this issue if it were only Rush Limbaugh saying this, but we've got normally even handed logical people like George Will and Pat Buchannan picking this up and running with it.

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama and now Obama's lead has gone back to double digits. So what else but bring up the charge that Colin Powell endorsed Obama because Obama happens to be of the same race as Colin Powell. It reminds me of a scene from Liar Liar

Fletcher: Objection your honor!

Judge: On what grounds?

Fletcher: It's devistating to my case!

In short Powell, a univerally hailed centrist, has just taken away part of McCain's argument that Obama is a dangerous outsider who can't be trusted. So the only attack left is the most odious.

**sigh**

Okay, Colin Powell was free to endorse any presidential candidate and in 2000 he supported George W. Bush. Not Alan Keyes, not Al Sharpton, not Carol Mosley Braun. If Powell made his decisions based on race, he would have joined Jesse Jackson's campaign and not served in the cabinet of George H. W. Bush. Powell has had no record of supporting, promoting, or following someone based on their race.

"But none of those guys had a chance," I hear you say, "Barack Obama does and Powell just wants to be a part of it."

Point to one moment in Colin Powell's life in which he didn't have the country's best interests at heart. I can only think of one that comes close: His case of Saddam's WMD's to the UN. He said then that he truly believed the intelligence and was speaking candidly. I believe him because in his decades of service to his country he has never been known to lie. Those who speak against him now and say his endorsement is racially motivated should choose to believe him for the same reason.

Losing My Lunch: McCain's Moral Entropy

McCain is using robo calls to mislead and smear Barack Obama with the ridiculous threadbare connection between Obama and Bill Ayers. Besides being repugnant, they are in some cases illegal, and in all cases hypocritical. He's using the same firm that spread lies about him in 2000, the ones that said he had fathered an illegitimate black child. Apparently, none of that bothers him.

Look at this exchage from Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: But Senator, back — if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said...
MCCAIN: They worked.
WALLACE: ... and you said the following, "I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic."
Now you've hired the same guy who did the robo calls against you to — reportedly, to do the robo calls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo calls. Will you do that?
MCCAIN: Of course not.

So, McCain's word is negotiable at the expense of winning an election. What other conclusion can one draw from that statement? This is rank unapologetic hypocrisy. Do conservative politicians think Fox News is an island where they can say whatever the hell they want because no one with half a brain cell is listening? Because we are listening Senator McCain, and we heard you. The message is loud and clear from Palin to Ayers to Joe the Plumber to Robocalls, McCain believes Campaign first, Country second.

The 14th Minute of Fame: Why Joe the Plumber is Irrelevant

I slightly regret my earlier post on Samuel Wurzelbacher aka. Joe the Plumber, but not because I feel sorry for him, as Fox News believes I should. His ability to complain about inquiries into his past ended when he signed up for that slew of interviews. No, I regret my post because it played, ever so slightly, into the hands of the McCain campaign.

Forget that Wurzelbacher's background includes several shady areas. It doesn't matter if you can draw up conspiricy links from him to the Keatings and the McCain camp. It doesn't matter at all. It doesn't even matter that Joe would benefit more from Obama's proposed tax plan than from McCain's

Here's the point: "Joe the Plumber" is relevant only as an symbol of the moderate, undecided voter; a vision of the mainstream, blue collar worker that we can identify with. This is McCain's hope in using him (whether it was organic or faked) and McCain is trying to swing the moderate vote. And Wurzelbacher is not a moderate, nor do I believe he is undecided. He has radical, extreme right wing views that are outside of the mainstream of America. Anyone who thinks American troops should be treated like Jesus in Iraq and who doesn't want Social Security does not speak for the majority of Americans. He is obviously a McCain voter, and has always been. Whether the lie was his or McCain's makes no difference. The point is he does not speak for mainstream America and is therefore irrelevant. I will no longer speak or post about him because he and his views have no bearing on this extremely important election year.

Losing My Lunch:Caribou Barbie's McCarthylicious New Chapter to the Campaign

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom." - Sarah Palin

Weeks ago, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum poked holes in Palin's provincial logic. But this is that same idea taken to a ridiculous extreme. I doubt Palin would think I'm from a very Pro-America place. I've always lived in big cities, from Austin to Dallas to Ft. Worth, to D.C., to Baltimore. I'm a child of the suburbs and have little to no connection with what Palin would call the "real America". But, last time I checked, they still have factories, police, and teachers even in the big city. Last time I looked they still recruited people from cities to fight wars. Just because the community is larger doesn't mean that we do nothing to serve that community or our country. In fact, often the sacrifices are far greater. We would do well to honor the service of every person who donates their time to improving the lives of those who live around them rather than their bottom line.

Barack Obama is such a person. He was editor of the Harvard Law Review and could have his pick of all the high powered law firms in the land. Instead he and Michelle gave back to their community. And for that Palin et. al. ridiculed him.

Now it has gone even farther than that. Michelle Bachman (aptly called the bats#$t crazy congresswoman from Minnesota by Stephanie Miller) has decided that there might be some people in the US Congress who are anti-american. Chris Matthews does a wonderful job of pinning her down and making her commit to her insane claims. He does nail her down to being suspicious of Barack Obama's patriotism.

I have a question for Bachman and the anyone else who shares her viewpoint: If Barack Obama and city policemen and firefighters and teachers and soldiers all dedicated their life to service of their community, for what reason did they do it than for LOVE OF THEIR COUNTRY? Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of Barack and Michelle Obama as well as the actions of public servants, yes even the ones in cities, are deafening compared to any words or assosciations warped by pseudo-populist politicians praying they can engender a cultural divide.

Not everyone small town person is Jefferson Smith or Longfellow Deeds. Sometimes you get a Bob Ewell or a Jerry Lundegaard. Being provincial does not make you superior, nor does it make you inferior. There are good folks and bad folks; nice folks and mean folks; honest and crooked; hopeful and bitter, everywhere, in every city, small town, hamlet, and dry county. You cannot parcel out patriotism by geography. And to do so only seeks to divide this nations citizens against each other and hurt our national unity. Now THAT's Un-American.

Crumbling Pedestal: Joe the Plumber Quacks Like a Duck

There's the real star of last nights debate according to John McCain (although MSNBC's focus group gave the topic of Wurzelbacher a resounding thumbs down), and by the end of the night everyone was saying his name. Yes this strapping, rugged, man with his head shaved to cover up his male pattern baldness ala Bruce Willis, was soon being interviewed by all the major media outlets. ("I think he should model!" intoned Joe Scarborough's airheaded co-host.) He claims to be undecided, but sounds very negative on Obama's tax plan because it will hurt his bid to buy his employer's plumbing business. My goodness! What a stroke of luck! John McCain, in the 11th hour found someone whom he could prop up as an example of the very person who would be hurt by Barack Obama's tax plan. (Being only 5% of the population and only 2% of small businesses, it's hard to find)

Sound a little too convenient?
Let's begin:

1)one is not taxed on the worth of one's company, but on their profit. It would take a herculean plumbing outfit to earn a quarter of a mil in Cincinatti. If Joe is pulling in 250k net, then I don't care if he's a plumber, an architect, or a stock broker, he can afford to pay a little more.


2) Joe is not a liscenced plumber and it is highly suspect that the outfit he works for would clear 100k, let alone 250k. So, Joe was lying... or misinformed... or one hell of an unliscenced plumber.


3) If Joe owed more taxes, he probably wouldn't pay them anyway. He has had a lien placed on his home for the $11oo he owes the government.


I don't know anything for certain, but


1) Wurzelbacher is improperly registered, but even if he wasn't he's registered as a REPUBLICAN, not as an Independant.


2) Wurzelbacher has said the following of Obama:

- "I asked the question but I still got a tap dance... Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr"
- That his tax plan is "kind of a socialist viewpoint"


On Iraq:
"I'm not sorry that we're in Iraq. . . . We liberated another country. I mean, freedom. Things that every one of you guys take for granted, everything that Americans take for granted, I mean these guys haven't had it. Now they've got it. I mean, that's an incredible thing. That's almost -- I don't know if you guys are Christians or not, but that's like somebody coming to Jesus and becoming saved. These guys have freedom."

On Social Security:
"Social Security is a joke. I have parents; I don't need another set of parents called the government. You know, let me take my money and invest it how I please. Social Security I've never believed in, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me."

Now there's a nice moderate voice.

but the most troubling and suspicious thing is the simplest.


Look at the picture at the top of this article. It was taken on the night of the debate. When asked, he said he was "surprised" at being mentioned at the debate. Why then were there reporters there to take his picture? Why were there cameras around when he approached Obama? Why was he so eager to go on all of the news shows today? Why does he sound like a Republican plant sent by an increasingly desperate McCain campaign?





Look at this animal. It has feathers and can both fly and float in the water. When it walks it makes a slight waddling motion. It emits a sound one could onomatopeonically describe as "Quack." What pray tell could this animal be?