This is it. This is my last pre-election post. The fate of the free world is in the hands of the American voting public, and the machinations of the Machievellian Republican party. I’m terrified that this election will be stolen, like the last two. My boss, the political wonk, assures me that this won’t happen. He’s predicting an electoral college vote of 350 for Obama. I’m predicting civil war if he loses.

Here’s the stump speech that Bruce Springsteen’s been giving for Barack Obama. I can’t say it better.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S COMMENTS FROM THE STAGE AT CLEVELAND’S VOTE FOR CHANGE RALLY

November 2, 2008

Hello Cleveland

It’s great to be here today among friends. I’d like to thank Senator Obama and his folks for inviting me. I’ve been here many times since 1973, but never on a day as glorious as this one. We are at the crossroads.

I’ve spent 35 years writing about America and its people. What does it mean to be an American? What are our duties, our responsibilities, our reasonable expectations when we live in a free society? I saw myself less as a partisan for any particular political party, than as an advocate for a set of ideas. Economic and social justice, America as a positive influence around the world. Truth, transparency and integrity in government. The right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home. These are the things that make a life, that build and define a society. These are the things we think of on the deepest level, when we refer to our freedoms. Today those freedoms have been damaged, and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless, and morally adrift administration.

I spent most of my life as a musician measuring the distance between the American dream and American reality. For many Americans who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no health care, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that dream and their reality has never been greater or more painful. I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and work. I believe he understands in his heart the cost of that distance in blood and suffering in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president he would work to bring that dream back to life, and into the lives of many of our fellow Americans, who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning.

In my job, I travel around the world, and occasionally play in big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I continue to find everywhere I go that America remains a repository for people’s hopes and desires. That despite the terrible erosion of our standing around the world, for many we remain a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down. That is something only we can do, and we’re not going to let that happen.

This administration will be leaving office, dumping in our laps the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis. Our house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, influence or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, pragmatism, toughness and faith. But most of all it needs us. You and me. All a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between its’ citizens. Whatever grace God has deemed to impart to us resides in our connections with one another, in honoring the life, the hopes, the dreams, of the man or woman up the street, or across town. That’s where we make our small claim upon heaven. In recent years that contract has been shredded and as we look around today, it is shredding before our eyes. But today we are at the crossroads.

I’m honored to be here on the same stage as Senator Obama. From the beginning, there has been something in Senator Obama that has called upon our better angels, I suspect, because he has had a life where he has so often had to call upon his. We’re going to need all the angels we can get on the hard road ahead. Senator Obama helped us rebuild our house big enough for the dreams of all our citizens. For how well we accomplish this task will tell us what it means to be an American in the new century, what’s at stake, and what it means to live in a free society. So I don’t know about you, but I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back. Now is the time to stand together with Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the millions of Americans that are hungry for a new day, roll up our sleeves and come on up for the rising.

Tonight, we’ll be watching and praying and drinking at the Casita de Zapatas. I’m too afraid to ice the champagne, so it’ll be vodka, at least for a while. Come on, America. Do the right thing.

Well? You folks in the states with early voting, have you done it? Are you going to? Let’s fill those ballot boxes, people. It’s just too important. For all of us.

And if you think this entry is a little short, here’s an op-ed from The Guardian UK, pulling no punches on how the rest of the world sees American politics these days.

Back from the void, the original actors reprise their roles in one of the more annoying (or more amusing) ads of the past decade.

I’m going to kill myself or my boss. Or maybe just hurl… a brick through the always-on CNN television in his office, or my breakfast. If I have to listen to that high-pitched mosquito-like drone of John McCain and his verbal tic of “my friends” for one more fucking minute the odds are good that it may go down in this order: hurl breakfast, brick through the tv and boss through his window.

I voted yesterday morning. I am so disgusted by the McCain/Palin campaign, the depths to which it has sunk: the Anti-American states vs the Pro-American states… the them vs us, the fear-mongering. The nerve of that twitchy little Hitler, to bring up the specter of nukes and to imply that he had been tested during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962?) because he’d been a fighter pilot off the coast of Cuba. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but as a fighter pilot, he was just sitting there waiting for the orders that would have come from the Commander in Chief, President Kennedy. John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were the ones being tested in that instance. And for him to claim that this somehow makes him, Twitchy McCancer Jowls ready to lead? Hah.

You want to talk tested in a time of crisis? Let’s look at his record on the USS Forrester.

One such case involves McCain’s experience in the devastating fire and explosions that killed 134 sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the Vietnam War three months before he was shot down over North Vietnam. McCain has made claims about this accident that differ dramatically from parts of the official Navy report and accounts of reliable eyewitnesses…

...Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.

McCain has never been asked to explain why he claims that the Zuni rocket struck his plane. If a bomb or bombs subsequently fell from McCain’s plane as he has said, it seems to strongly suggests pilot error, and if a bomb or bombs did not fall from his plane, it suggests rash disregard for important facts in his accounts of the accident.

There is plenty more about this story that raises questions about McCain’s truthfulness and judgment. In the first hours after the fire, he apparently did not claim to have been injured. New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, who helicoptered out to the ship the day after the tragedy and sought out McCain as the “son and grandson of two noted admirals,” never mentioned him being wounded, although he reported on him more than on any other crew member. This would be an odd omission on Apple’s part if McCain indeed had been wounded, given that service wounds are usually highlighted in such reports during wartime.

Read the whole report here. Try not to scream with indignation and rage.

And I can’t let this go without a swipe at the other half of the ticket. Lifted from Mr. Fish

A special tip of the wingtips to my GirlCousin, who sent me this one. Turn it up and sing along. I agree with everything, except I think the RLA and I are bound for New Zealand if this election goes to the McPalin ticket.

Thoughts on last night’s “debate”, if by debate, you mean competing talking points and stump speeches.

According to the LA Times, McCain used the phrase “my friend(s)” 24 times in 90 minutes. If you allow for the questions and Tom Brokaw reminding them of the agreed upon time limits, that would be maybe 35 minutes of talking time for each candidate, which means that John McCain referred to me as his friend on average of once every 85 seconds. It got on my nerves. There is no way in hell that he and I could ever be friends in real life.

Another annoying verbal tic on his part is that simpering, self-deprecating snigger (heh, heh, heh) whenever he says something that he thinks is clever. It reminded me of nothing more than Mickey Mouse, who does the same thing. In the same octave and register. Make of it what you will. At one point I turned to my husband and said, I would never let that man near a grade-school playground. He is very creepy. The RLA said that he thought McCain would scare the children. I was thinking something a little more sinister.

My man Barack Obama has his own little verbal ideosyncracy, which is no less annoying: He begins his statements with “Look.” And I understand, I do, I sympathize with someone who had to be the smartest guy in the room last night, trying to make a point to those who would not see…or hear. “Look, it’s really simple” is what I’m sure he wanted to say.

The faces on the crowd members ranged from “I’m smelling something nasty” to “you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me with this shit, right?” And yet, there was that control group, sitting there talking to the talking heads and professing that they still couldn’t decide who to vote for. Like there’s a choice? It’s the economy, stupid. And the economy is in the giant, reeking crapper. And that propped up rotting corpse with the FemBot Veep in the wings, waiting to bring on the End of Days has been in the catbird seat for thirty years. Keating Five. The Great Recession of the late 80s-early 90s that resulted from the deregulation of the S&Ls. Sort of the dry run for the Even Greater Depression that we are careening into today, as a result of deregulating the traditional banking industry.

I’ll tell you something else. I don’t give a flying rat’s patootie if drilling off the coast of Florida would solve all of America’s energy problems tomorrow and for the next 100 years. It would fuck up the environment irrevocably long before that. I don’t want drilling in the Gulf or the Atlantic or in the Florida Straights. Period. Stick a few hundred wind mills out there, instead. Figure out hydro solutions with the tides. Put solar panels on the roof of the new Marlins Stadium. But no drilling off-shore.

I loved the question from someone on-line who said what would you ask the American people to do, to sacrifice to help the various challenges the nation faces? Obama almost came close to having concrete answers to that. Finally, what ever happened to real debate? You know, pro/con? Lincoln vs Douglas style oration and on-your-feet thinking? I’d pay to see that, but I fear that I’ll never see that kind of political exchange in my life-time.

The best political reporter today is an ex-sports writer. But he’s not afraid to take off the gloves when dealing with the Fem-Bot/Stepford Veep. Twenty-three Skidoo!!

That Sarah Palin is an unmitigated idiot, a Stepford Veep, a fem-bot with her logic chip impaired, this video should dispel all doubts. Compare and contrast, muthafuggers.

I’ll be back later with my Project Runway recap, because, you know, all politics and no play makes me more unbearable than Sarah Palin.

OH. MY. GOD. The Rude Pundit has outdone himself, again. I’m having a shitty day here at my shitty job, and the car I’m trying to sell has to have work before I can sell it, and my husband’s run up a dental bill of about $2000 this last month, and the special snowflake that I work with is up my ass so far that if I grind my teeth any harder, I’m going to shatter one or more, but I read Rude’s essay on what Joe Biden should say about Sarah’s readiness to serve, and I laughed out loud. And felt a little bit better for a minute or two.

A moment of silence for Paul Newman, please. A fine actor, a fine human being and a fine looking man. I got to see him race once at Limerock. He was a fine driver, too.

In other news, it seems like Senator Obama actually read the Rude Pundit’s play book regarding the first debate. At one point, I even high-fived the RLA for the way Obama made McCain get a little squirmy.

Finally, regarding America’s Next Top Model: with the departure of Isis, the show has lost all appeal for me. Sorry, gentle readers, but there will be no further Miz Shoes Reviews of that show. You’ll have to get your laughs from Potes on Television Without Pity, instead.

In Nazi Germany, a Jew Catcher was a Jew who, in exchange for a little food, or a few months or years of life, would turn in their fellow Jews to be sent to the death camps. The most famous Jew Catcher was Stella Goldschlag.As inconceivable as her story may be for some, for others it was just survival… survival at the cost of her fellow man, but you know, survival. In her defense, she originally worked for the Nazis to save her parents. It didn’t work, they were eventually deported and killed, as was her husband. And she ultimately committed suicide in her old age, but you know…

I believe that Sarah Palin is the feminist equivalent of Stella Goldschlag. She would use her position as a woman of power to prevent other women from ever getting that power. She would help overturn Roe vs Wade. Why do I believe this to be true? Her politics and her religion. Here is an excerpt from an essay about that religion. You can find the whole article here.

Palin enjoys the enthusiastic backing of the Christian right because she is blindly obedient to the male hierarchy. She does not question. She submits and obeys. Her views on abortion and marriage, on the Middle East, on gays and the war against Islam are precooked. They are handed to her by men who claim to speak for God. And in power she would be the perfect conduit for an ideology that seeks, in the end, to eradicate individual moral choice and replace it with subservience to a terrifying Christian fascism.

On another note, this came over the transom yesterday, and I think it’s a wonderful idea. I pass it along to you, now and encourage you to make a donation.

Dear Friends:



We may have thought we wanted a woman on a national political ticket, but the joke has really been on us, hasn’t it? Are you as sick in your stomach as I am at the thought of Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States?

 

Since Palin gave her speech accepting the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency, Barack Obama’s campaign has raised over $10 million dollars.  Some of you may already be supporting the Obama campaign financially; others of you may still be a little over the primaries. None of you, however, can be happy with Palin’s selection, especially on her positions on women’s issues. So, if you feel you can’t support the Obama campaign financially, may I suggest the following fiendishly brilliant alternative?



Make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin’s name. And here’s the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:



http://www.plannededparenthood.org

You’ll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:



McCain for President

1235 S. Clark Street

1st Floor

Arlington, VA 22202



Feel free to send this along to all your women friends and urge them to do the same.

And finally, a little perspective on the Republican spin from a viral e-mail that I haven’t gotten yet, but found here:

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”

Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.



If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.



Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.



If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.



If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.



If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.



If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.

If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

I’m feeling a little dyspeptic today, what with the boss blasting CNN throughout the office, and messages of “certain death” if people stay along the Texas coast, and the mind-numbing adoration of that Republican fuck puppet, Sarah Palin. So to make myself feel a little better, I give you the Rude Pundit’s advice to the Obama campaign. I’ll be following it as I argue with the right, I suggest you do, too.

You want the best route? Here it is: emasculate John McCain. Use Palin to cut his nuts off. Constantly say shit like, “Am I running against John McCain or Sarah Palin?” or “If the Republicans wanted her to be president, they should have nominated her” or “Maybe Republicans are used to a vice president that runs the show” or whatever. Make McCain have to defend himself. Turn him into Palin’s bitch. It’ll make him insane. And if there’s one thing that Republicans hate most about women, it’s the perception of the castrating bitch telling men what to do (see all the shit about Hillary Clinton).

I love John Stewart. And no, I just can’t leave off worrying this particular bone.

I am transfixed by the Stepford Veep and her unwed, pregnant teenage daughter. It’s a train wreck that I can’t stop myself from watching, and of course, commenting on. Cynically commenting upon. And for all the people telling us that the pregnant daughter is a non-issue, to me, it is very much an issue, and only because she represents the failure of one of Palin’s firmest beliefs: that sex education should be abstinence education and no other method or mention of birth control should be addressed. That’s the sex ed Bristol had, and in the words of the LOL cat: Irony? She haz it.

So now, despite historic interviews and position papers and every other damned thing, we, the voting public are asked to accept that there was choice and free will involved in both Sarah and Bristol’s decisions to keep their babies: Sarah’s late-life Down Syndrome Trig, and the TBD spawn of the underage and unwed teen. The lack of logic in the arguments presented would give my old logic professor (Howard Pospesel) apoplectic convulsions.

A. I do not believe in choice (regarding abortion), to the point where, if my under-age daughter were raped, I would demand she carry the child full term.

B. My child is pregnant.

C. She had a choice, and made the decision to keep her baby and marry the father.

If I remember Dr. Pospesel’s class correctly, this is a fallacious argument, because point A states that there IS no choice. Therefore, point C can only be to carry the child. Unless they are saying that the choice portion was the intent to wed.

And just for good measure, the age of consent in Alaska is 16, which means that there is no cause to charge the baby daddy (who is over 18) with statutory rape.

But let’s just throw a few more links on the bonfire, shall we?

Book Banning? She’s all for it.

The oil boondoggle that’s lining Alaska’s pockets.

Maverick or Neophyte?

Privacy, Pregnancy and the Double Standard

The baby daddy.

RJ is particularly on point today, too.

And no evil, bitchy, inappropriate mud-slinging would be complete without the Rude Pundit’s take on the whole mess.

Sarah Fucking Palin?

That’s all you got? Are you kidding me? A creationist fundie with a suspect fifth child? Who defers to her husband, the oil-man?

Do you really think women are so stupid as to confuse this prom queen with Hillary Clinton? How utterly demeaning and dismissive to women is it to think that we’d not notice the basic differences between this twit and Hil? Thinks birth control is the same thing as abortion? Thinks that drilling in the Arctic Wilderness is a cure for oil dependency? Thinks unlimited and unending war in Iraq is a good thing? Thinks that being a hunter is the same thing as being an environmentalist? Thinks that

intelligent design should be taught in school?

Yeah, dead ringer for our Hillary, there. What? Do the Republicans honestly think that women will be eager to vote for anything with ovaries and a vagina? Like that’s the be-all and end-all of our concerns?

And good luck with the links. This woman’s web trail is getting scrubbed on a minute-by-minute basis.

ETA: More on Palin’s judgement/circumstances of her last child’s birth.