Obama & Biden vs. McCain and a woman

First of all, yes, Obama’s speech last night was everything it needed to be. I liked how he named the elephant in the room, so to speak, when he rejected out loud the charge that Democrats cannot run on national security. It’s a spurious charge, but one so oft-repeated by pundits that politicians and the mainstream media and those who parrot their views treat it as if it were the truth, instead of damnable spin.

Obama laid out his platform with specifics, and he took on McCain in exactly those areas where McCain believes he is stronger: temperament, experience, and the war. It was such a strong but still respectful attack that MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan actually swooned. Buchanan went on so long about what a great speech it was that Keith Olbermann had to finally cut away because, he said, smiling, “we don’t have enough time to let Pat Buchanan finish praising Barack Obama.”

But the high did not last long, readers, because the thing I most feared all along has come true: McCain has picked a woman as a running mate.

It’s got to be one of the most cynical political picks since Clarence Thomas was chosen to replace Thurgood Marshall. Back then, you could imagine the frantic behind-the-scenes scurrying as Republicans scoured the land for the last surviving Uncle Tom with a decent enough resume that they could present him with a straight face. Now, it’s as if the Republicans have decided that the most important qualification their VP pick must have is the ability to add an asterisk to the description of Obama’s campaign as “historic.”

I mean, is this move a tad on the transparent side, or what? The McCain strategy has all the subtlety of the American Pie franchise. They’re all “Oh yeah, well, we got a woman, and you don’t anymore! And p.s., ours is hawt!”

CLEARLY the McCain camp hopes to siphon off women from Obama’s supporters. Why else would a 72-year-old man choose a running mate whose total experience in government is two years as governor, and several stints as city councilwoman and mayor in a town of 6 thousand people? I guess they’re not planning on hitting Obama’s inexperience too hard any more, eh? Because when you put a man McCain’s age (sorry, DadE!) in the Oval Office, you have to look pretty hard at the qualifications of the veep.

According to my Alaskan connections, Palin is well-respected in Alaska because she ran on a pledge to clean up the rampant cronyism and corruption in the state, and has had moderate success. They see her as playing an important role in redirecting the funds for the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” which brought so much negative attention to Alaskan politics.

There is also a scandal involving Palin currently under investigation. It involves a fired commissioner who refused to fire her former brother-in-law who may have been violently stalking her sister. I’m going to reserve judgment on that until more is known.

Shut up. I do reserve judgment sometimes, you know.

What I’m not reserving judgment on, is her militant anti-choice stance. She opposes the most basic right a woman has, which is dominion over her own body. Look, a few people have commented from time to time on my strictly pro-choice views. I’ll take this opportunity to state for the record that personally, I have no idea whether I would decide to have an abortion. What I do know, is I want to be the one who does the deciding.

So, here’s the McCain crux, as I see it:

Do the so-called evangelicals vote more enthusiastically for McCain, because he managed to partner with another staunch supporter of dogma over freedom?

Do blue-collar males vote less enthusiastically for McCain, because his running mate is a relatively inexperienced former beauty queen and sports announcer with a messy personal life that runs over into her politics?

One thing I know for sure, is that any former Hillary supporter who uses Palin as an excuse to vote for McCain is an idiot.

I take that back. A fucking idiot.

Remember Alan Keyes? He runs for president every couple of years. He’s the only black man I know whose score on the “caring about black people” scale is so low it rivals George W’s. What would you think of a black person who voted for Keyes, just because he was black, and they thought it was time to elect a black person?

You would think they’re stupid.

Clinton has left the building

Stunned.

I will admit that's how I felt when Senator Clinton, speaking before DemCon Tuesday night, admonished the crowd with "Were you in this campaign just for me?"

On. Point.

On fucking point.

All props to Hils. She swallowed her considerable pride and managed to make us believe that campaigning for her formal rival is her new and joyous life's work. That's what is known in politics as a class act. Take note. They do not occur often.

Which brings me to Bill.

I was not so impressed by Hillary's deus ex machina, wherein she orchestrated her own name to be submitted as a nominee behind the scenes, and then orchestrated its withdrawal on live television with NY Senator Schumer grinning maniacally over her shoulder. It was scripted within an inch of its life, and it smacked of Bill Clinton. Smacked. And not in a good way, readers.

But Bubba made a good speech, and hit all the right points. I particularly liked when he said "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of example, than by the example of our power."

Fuckin' A, Bubba. Right on.

Also well placed was the reminder that Clinton himself was widely derided as too young and inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief when he ran in '92.

Of course, the talking heads, when reminded of this same point, defended themselves by saying that okay, they may have been wrong in '92, but Obama is WAY more inexperienced than Clinton was, and so they could not possibly be wrong again this time.

I'm sure there are a variety of people who find this convincing. I'm not one of them. I think the ability to function well as president can't be so easily quantified. Case in point: Bush, having spent 5 years as the governor of the second largest and second most populous state in the union, looked fairly good on paper in 2000.

Also, the heads keep talking about what various speeches weren't, what they didn't accomplish. But of course, no one speech can be all things to all pundits. Given the entirety of the first 3 nights, all points were hit quite nicely. The DNC made damn sure of that.

So go forth and unite, ye Clintons. The proof is in the pudding.

Barack's Marbleopolis

The McCain camp, always seeking to raise the bar on political discourse, is deriding the Democrats for being out of touch with the common people.

Yes, it's an extremely ironic statement whose irony is yet to be appreciated by about half of this country's voters. It's also nothing new.

What's new is what McSame is using as proof of Obama's aloofitude: the set for his acceptance speech.

I'm not kidding. They think the set that's being erected in Denver's Mile-High Stadium is too high-falutin', and they're refering to it as the Barackopolis. The set, which I could not find a picture of, appently features a number of Greecian-style columns.

While I can't help but agree that nothing's classier than a bunch of columns, I'm wondering if the DemCon set could possibly surpass this in grandiosity:

That's Bush, accepting his party's nomination at the 2004 Republican Convention. Hey, are those columns I see in the back there? Swanky!

Although truly, for uppity architecture, it's hard to beat this one:



Or that one:



Or how about this one:



Or, the ultimate in snootyville construction, the Ineptopolis:

Why can't I cast away the mask of play and live my life?

Great minds think alike

Or, actually, eccentric individuals with questionable pasts but really sincere interests in the welfare of this country, think alike.

See? I’m only two sentences in, and I’ve managed already to 1) muddle my point, and 2) compliment myself.

And what the freak am I even talking about?

Well, for those of you who saw Teddy K’s speech last night at DemCon, you may have already noticed that it paid homage to the very same speech that I referenced in this post.

Not that it makes any difference to the PUMAs. Their acronym stands for Party Unity My Ass, which is pretty clever, I guess. I’m sure they think it is. But I wonder if they’ve thought about something else - mainly, that puma is another word for cougar.

Is this really an inference that they want to make? I wouldn’t, if I were them.

Also, I lost count of how many times the talking heads made reference to the Huxtables, the family from that awful ‘80s TV fixture, The Cosby Show. As in, the object of Michelle Obama’s speech was, according to the heads, to make her family seem more like the Huxtables.

Wow, that analogy is like an M.C. Escher painting – no matter which way you turn it, it takes off in a different direction, but brings you back to the same place.

A racist place.

I’ll show you what I mean.

The easiest explanation for the analogy is that the heads are grasping for an example of a black pop culture family that whites would actually know by name. Yeah, whitey can say he’s sad that Bernie Mac died, but that don’t mean he knows who the McCulloughs were. And sure, there are other well-known black TV families, but I don’t really think Michelle would want to take part in a comparison of the Obamas to the Sanfords, or the Jeffersons, or the…whatever that family was called in Good Times…I think it had something to do with dynamite.

And why can’t Michelle Obama’s speech inspire whites to compare her family to an appropriate white pop culture family?

Aw, see? Right back to the racist place.

Okay, let’s try a different tack.

Why the Huxtables? Weren’t the kids kind of bratty/stupid, and the wife kind of a know-it-all bitch? Yes, but the dad on that show, see, he was not a clown. Yes, he mumbled a lot and wore clown sweaters, but the point of the show was that he was the sane one in the family, and his wife and kids were all crazy, see?

So in a sense, The Cosby Show was really quite groundbreaking in that it allowed millions of white men all over the US to identify with a black man.

And in that way, Bill Cosby succeeded in becoming a Good Negro.

You know, a Good Negro: Floyd Patterson. Jackie Robinson. Sammy Davis Jr. Michael Jordan. Nipsy Russell. Wayne Brady. Hootie. The non-angry, non-threatening, and definitely non-horny version of black America. When The Cosby Show was a hit, there wasn’t a single beer-swillin’ mullet-sportin’ n-word-spewin’ redneck in the en-tire US of A that wouldn’t have gladly groveled at the feet of Bill Cosby. Well, okay, maybe not grovel at his feet, but they definitely would’ve wanted a picture taken with him.

Obama has got to become that guy. He has to become the exception. He has to become the Sammy Davis Jr. to this nation of Archie Bunkers. Or else he has, quite frankly, a snowball’s chance in hell.

Hoosiers?

If KMBC in Kansas City is correct, and they might not be, as the Obama campaign is saying that they had bumper stickers printed up for several candidates, fellow Hoosier Evan Bayh is the choice. He's a pretty conservative choice, but might be just the ticket for skittish blue color voters who, by the way, definitely do not cling to guns or religion. I checked.

And this would put my home state into play, so say the pundits. Which, if I can dare to dream for a moment, would be glorious. When was the last time Indiana went Dem in a presidential election? Johnson in 1964, I believe. And before that, it was 1936.

So, the state that voted for Wilkie over Roosevelt in 1940, going for Obama? Be still my heart.

Anyway, he's now supposedly moved his veep announcement to Saturday, so we'll have to wait a little longer to know for sure.

Is it just me? Or is it time to really hate the Clintons?

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton was asked if Obama, the presumptive nominee of his party, and the man he pledged to support, was ready to be president. He said “You can argue that nobody is ready to be President.”

Yeah, you can argue that, Bill, especially if you’re a dick.

Look, I’m not saying that it’s not true, I’m saying that he refused, in that churlish “I did not have sex with that woman” way of his to say, simply, “Yes.” And you and I both know, that if the nominee had been his wife, or in fact any other Democratic nominee except Obama, he would have said yes.

Clearly he has a bone to pick with the Obama campaign over their allegation that Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s South Carolina primary win to Jesse Jackson’s South Carolina primary wins was a racist one. It really sticks in Clinton’s craw that the Obama campaign had the nerve to accuse him (whose office is in Harlem, c’mon!) of racism.

Regarding the Jackson comparison…make no mistake, politicians of Clinton’s caliber don’t just stumble into analogies like that. He walked into that trap with his eyes wide open. It was a calculated risk he took, saying that it wasn’t, in his mind, the first time that an unelectable black man won that same primary. The inference was clear that Obama only won because he’s black, and even if you don’t think it’s a racist statement, it doesn’t matter, because Clinton knew it would be perceived that way, and knew the Obama camp would push back, and knew that he would pull out his “first black president” credentials, and that would be that.

Except it turns out that Clinton’s credentials had expired in the last eight years, and he had never bothered to have them renewed.

And now he’s pissed. He wants his wife to be president, and goddamn if he’s not willing to take the whole kit and caboodle down with him if he has to, in order to get his way.

Take for instance, his recent comments wherein he implied that there was no difference between the McCain and Obama platforms on the environment.

Say what?

Yes, Clinton said, apparently with a straight face, that Obama’s platform was comparable to McCain’s, and that both candidates “have positions that guarantee that there will be a price set for carbon and will start to do something about climate change.” I guess Clinton’s not aware that McCain has made offshore drilling for oil a centerpiece of his campaign. I’m not sure how he missed that, especially since McCain’s first attempt at a stump speech on the subject, scheduled to take place on an offshore oil platform, had to be rescheduled due to an oil spill.

And more recently, when BushCo threw out the window a 30-year-old rule that required that the status of endangered species be evaluated by independent experts, and not by department cronies with hard-ons for industry, McCain’s campaign was strangely silent on the subject. In fact, I believe their comment was “no comment.” Obama’s spokesperson, on the other hand, said he would kill the new BushCo regs and strengthen the Endangered Species Act. I guess Clinton could not have predicted that when he said that Obama and McCain were equal, environment-wise. Although it’s funny, because I sure could have.

And now, we have Hillary’s brother and some of her old campaign flacks organizing meetings between Pennsylvanians who voted for Hillary, and Carly Fiorina, an agent of McCain’s campaign who’s so thick-headed that she can’t grasp that McCain is the enemy of every sensible woman everywhere.

And then there’s Hillary’s ex-Communications Director, Howard Wolfson, who performed some very public hand-wringing over the recent fall of John Edwards, saying that if he hadn’t lied about his extramarital affair prior to Iowa, Hillary would’ve won that state, and thus would’ve naturally won the nomination. Even if you accept all of that, which is quite a mouthful to swallow, it’s interesting to me that the campaign that prided itself on its right to not go gently into that good night is suggesting that Edwards should have.

Perhaps I can recommend to the Clintons that they consider the advice of Maria Shriver, who recently hosted a “Women for Obama” unity function, whose guests were prominent Hillary Clinton supporters that the Democrats hope to bring back into the fold. Shriver’s family was dealt a severe political blow when Ted Kennedy, a man many assumed was a presidential inevitability, lost the nomination to the very unpopular Jimmy Carter in 1980. Maria confessed that she held grudges from that campaign for too long, and that it did not, ultimately, serve her well.

Some of Clinton’s more dogged supporters refuse to accept that she did not win the nomination, and they vow to disrupt the Democratic Convention. Perhaps I can recommend to them, from that same campaign, the words of failed nominee Ted Kennedy:

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

In other words, it’s bigger than Hillary, bitches. It’s bigger than a woman being president, even. If McCain is elected, I guarantee you’re going to look back in a few years and not be able to believe what a world-class fucking idiot you were.

The very personal is political

Readers, I just had to share with you this column from WaPo’s Sally Quinn, which made me laugh out loud with its completely un-self-conscious emotionally naked batshit craziness:

When I was little, I had a recurrent dream that there was a terrible earthquake. My father, his body a horse with wings, swooped down from the sky, kneeled so I could jump on his back and flew away just as the earth cracked open beneath me. It was my most comforting dream.

Holy fucking Freud sandwich on rye toast with mayo and a big phallic kosher pickle on the side, Batman!

If I ever had a dream like that, I’d wake up my boyfriend and tell him to quick, fuck the memory of it right out of me. I wouldn’t go revealing to the whole world that the reason why I’m politically conservative is because I’m a deeply insecure individual with an Electra complex and a near-psychotic fear of sex, and the world in general. Wow. You have to give her points for honesty bordering on a compulsive need for humiliation, I guess.

And what is her column about, that she chose to begin it with such a horrifyingly inappropriate personal revelation?

It’s about evangelist Rick Warren’s interviews at Saddleback church with Obama and McCain.

!

I know. I can’t hardly believe it myself, but it’s dreamy, isn’t it? It’s like a little gift-wrapped Christmas present right there on baby Jesus’s insane op-ed page from hell.

Let’s read some more:

I want to live in that world again. I want to live in John McCain’s world. My father was a military man…

Wow. Huge fucking surprise. No doubt he made The Great Santini look like the Dalai Lama.

…My parents were friends of McCain’s parents and lived in the same apartment building. My father’s closest friend was Barry Goldwater, McCain’s mentor. Those were the days when men were men, when the differences between good and evil were clear, when they knew where they stood on every issue, when life was less complicated, when there was an air of insouciance, no matter how difficult the issues.

Damn right there was an air of insouciance. It was caused by the collective shrugging of all the white people in America when blacks and other minorities came to them and asked if they might please be allowed to vote, and have their own families, and oh, I don’t know, not be beaten randomly on the streets by policemen who no doubt were very clear that they were “men.”

Minorities can be complicated and difficult that way.

Back to Ms. Quinn:

I want to live in a world where Gen. David Petraeus and Meg Whitman, former chief executive of eBay, are the wisest people I know…

Whoa, there, Sally. Hold on. What’s a gal doing heading up a company in this little world of yours? In this world, women are for carrying pregnancies to term, and for staying faithful to their philandering husbands, and for financing, with family money of course, their husband’s political careers, even if they have to mortgage one of their ten homes or their own private jet to do it. Occasionally, women are also for becoming so overwhelmed by the soul-killing hypocrisy and uselessness of a life lived purely for the benefit of men that they become addicted to pills and/or booze. But that’s it. Definitely no CEOing allowed.

Back to Sally’s ideal world:

…where offshore drilling will help ease our energy crisis, where a guy stays in a Vietnamese prison camp even when told he could get out, and has great stories to tell.

Anybody else kinda creeped out by that last remark, by the way? I mean, to me, a “great story” is what you get when you and your pals decide to drive down to Mexico in an old school bus with 10 pounds of shrooms, and instead you end up in a bridesmaid’s dress and a Brazilian wax on a gay cruise to Alaska. Getting beaten and tortured in one of the most notorious prisons in the whole regrettable history of mankind is a life-altering experience, and an amazing personal ordeal, but it’s not a “great story.” Okay, I’m arguing semantics, now. But still. She’s a columnist, for pete’s sake. What does she have to do except get the words right?

I want to live in a world where I was absolutely certain that life begins at conception…

Instead of the world I live in now, where life begins as soon as you are white, and wealthy, and have a degree from Smith.

…where a man is a maverick and stands up against his Senate colleagues when he disagrees with them, where the only thing to do with evil is defeat it, where a guy will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell to capture him.

So…McCain thinks bin Laden is in Iraq, then? Is that why he refuses to get us the hell out of there?

I want to believe that our biggest enemy is radical Islamist terrorists.

Really? What the fuck for? I want to believe that our biggest enemy is high-fructose corn syrup, or people who wear Crocs in public, or pop stars who can’t sing without pitch correction software, but I don’t think I could make a credible case for any of it. The world is a dangerous fucking place, whether I believe it or not. Still it would be comforting to believe that our biggest enemy is the stupefying popularity of Dane Cook. I guess that’s just the difference between me and Ms. Quinn.

I want to be part of a world that doesn't have to raise taxes…

Now, that I believe.

…where America is a beacon, a shining city on a hill; where our values are simply Judeo-Christian values; and where a man always puts his country first.

I just figured out what kind of world I want: a world where the Judeo-Christians don’t think they have some kind of fucking monopoly on ethics and morality.

By the time McCain finished his interview with pastor Rick Warren…I was curled up in a fetal position in my chair, wrapped in a mohair throw, practically sucking my thumb.

If only she could stay that way until after election day.

Plus…I’m sorry, but “mohair throw”? What a cunt.

McCain did a great job of making me feel confident. He was clearly in his element at Saddleback, among supportive evangelical Christians, and he went a long way toward alleviating their fears about his inability to communicate with them in their own language.

Oh great. McCain finally figured out how to speak Bigot.

But wait, readers, for Quinn is about to get to the topic of Obama’s performance:

Obama came first, and he handled himself well in front of an audience that clearly disagrees with him on many issues.

Yes, he’s black and they disagree with that.

…He was low-key, thoughtful and nuanced. That kind of nuance is hard to understand sometimes -- it's unclear, complicated. Obama's world can be scarier. It's multicultural. It's realistic (yes, there is evil on the streets of this country as well as in other places, and a lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of good). It's honest.

So, evangelical voters are scared of thinking, nuance, non-Caucasians, realism and honesty. I must admit that I’ve rarely seen anyone on the political right speak so frankly about their constituency.

When does life begin? Only the antiabortionists are clear on that. For the majority of Americans (who are pro-choice), it is "above my pay grade," in Obama's words, where there is no hard and fast line to draw on what's worth dying for, and where people of all faiths have to be respected.

It’s true that the majority of Americans believe a woman’s body does not become government domain simply because she is pregnant. A majority of Americans believe that the woman is the best person to decide whether she must dedicate her life and her body to the growing of another life. Obama is acknowledging that the decision is not his to know, or to make. Now, you may think, as does professional tool and fellow WaPo columnist Michael Gerson, that that is a “silly” point of view. Gerson believes that if Obama is unsure of when a fetus gains human rights, he should err on the side of “innocent life,” which, just to be clear, does not refer to the pregnant woman.

Ah, but the depths of his idiocy are for another day, for Ms. Quinn is about to get to the climax of her rather sordid confessional:

I would rather live in McCain’s world than Obama’s. But I believe that we live in Obama’s world.

And there it is, in all its stunning simplicity and arrogance. The mourning of a long-ago world full of violence, machismo, intolerance, and closed-minded bigotry, and the grudging acknowledgment that by doing so, she is indulging in a childish fantasy. I would applaud her for that recognition, if only she weren’t so fucking sad about it.

P.S. You can keep the money I gave you

Dear John,

Ha, ha, that’s funny. “Dear John.”

Except it’s not.

So, John, dude.

Dude.

Ya fucked up. What else is new, huh?

I guess I have to say that, having had one marriage in which I was under a microscope, and everyone in my little community knew every detail and so therefore thought they knew me, and knew him, and also therefore thought they knew the story of our marriage, I am firmly in the “your marriage is none of my business” camp. Because no one outside of a marriage can ever really understand that marriage. And they certainly cannot judge that marriage.

But hold on. There are, as Pee Wee would say, a couple of big buts.

Big but #1 – Did Gary Hart teach you nothing? He certainly taught Bill Clinton nothing, and so Clinton was doomed to repeat Hart’s history. And now you, having not learned from Clinton, are doomed to repeat Clinton’s history. And holy cow, dude, that is some tired-ass mamajamma history. No one’s history is more tired than Bill Clinton’s. So, you know, that is making me doubt your taste a little bit. Well, that, and the dad jeans.

Big but #2 – You got 30% of the Democratic vote in Iowa! You were on television in, like, 157 debates! Have you figured out yet that the only candidate in the Democratic primary that gets to sneak around town unnoticed is Mike Gravel? In your big mea culpa statement, you pled guilty to narcissism and being egocentric, how exactly does that jive with your assumption that wearing a t-shirt to the Beverly Hills Hilton constitutes an effective disguise from the paparazzi?

Big but #3 – Dude, it’s so obvs not all out. Your timeline is wonky. Your statement disavowing all knowledge of monies paid to the other woman is not believable. You agree to a paternity test at exactly the same time the other woman changes her mind and decides NOT to have one. And lastly, your alleged baby daddy beard is a paid political operative with a criminal history. Really, the only thing missing is your DNA on the baby’s diaper.

Stop trying to mitigate. There is no mitigating. It just makes you look like a bigger weasel. Accept it all, even the bits that you feel are unfair. Take all the abuse, and take it like a man. Don’t quibble the details. You are so, so past the details.

Then go home and grow a beard and work on something worthwhile for a couple of years. I don’t know, start a soup kitchen or an employment agency. Get your hair cut at Super Cuts for twelve dollars. Suffer. Do something for that second America that I think you really do care about. I hear Habitat for Humanity can always use a hand, and hanging out with President Carter wouldn’t hurt, either. He might be able to teach you how to lust in your heart, and keep your little mill worker in your pants.

Whatever happens, don’t write any books. Seriously. That is the last thing you, and most especially we, need.

You’ve admitted that you fucked around because you thought you were special, and you thought the world revolved around you. That’s a big step. That’s a hard thing to face up to. Don’t throw it away. Embrace the humiliation, and learn something.

And then in eight years or so, come back, and tell us what you learned. By then, you will have so little to lose, that you might actually possess something valuable. Something we need. Hey, you never know, right?

Good luck, John. I mean it. Goodbye.

Dear International Olympic Committee,

Congratulations on your foresight. When you picked Beijing as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics, many critics lambasted the choice, pointing out that there were two things that Beijing was lacking that are essential components for a successful Olympic games:

1. Air that people can breathe
2. Journalists that report news

But you scoffed at their lambastion. Chinese officials assured you that by 2008 they would find a way to provide what they lacked, and you decided to listen to them and believe. After all, Communist regimes are known for producing public officials that are ambitious, and that take personal responsibility for their actions.

So cheers to the IOC. And guys, I wouldn’t make too much of the stories about how the Chinese doctored the feed of the opening ceremonies by inserting CGI fireworks. It just goes to show you that no matter how many times the TV commentators breathlessly remind us that the Chinese invented fireworks, and that they are the masters of fireworks, there’s really nothing that can’t be improved by the use of CGI.

Well, except for that first Hulk movie.

And I’m not even peeved by the fact that the Chinese denied a visa to US Olympic Gold Medalist Joey Cheek, due to his involvement with a group of athletes protesting China’s support for the government of Sudan. You know why? Freedom of speech is just not appropriate when you are visiting someone else’s country. It’s like, if I went to a party, and I found out the host was supporting a known murderer by giving him money and shielding him from law enforcement authorities, I wouldn’t keep drawing attention to it. It’s rude. Besides, it’s not the job of the US of A to go around the world spreading freedom.

One tiny word of criticism, and that involves your charter, which I do believe says that you forbid “any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise.”

C’mon guys, Saudi Arabia, like many Muslim countries, has never sent one woman to the Olympics. In 36 years, not one. Bupkiss. And it’s not because they simply don’t fund women’s athletics equally, like the US. It’s because that it’s, well, kind of illegal for women to play sports in Saudi Arabia. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m sure you could get that Saudi prince who is on the IOC to explain it to you. Also, you might be able to get some information from one of the female members of the IOC, if you can find one.

But hey, you say, what about when we banned South Africa from participating in the '60s, because of their policy of apartheid, and the fact that black athletes could not compete equally with whites there?

To which I say, yeah, what about that? That’s really confusing. Because clearly Saudi Arabia’s actions are worse in that women can’t play sports at all, let alone compete equally. Yeah, that is really fucking confusing, alright. Hm. Yeah, I have to admit that that puzzles the shit out of me right there.

In any event, best to just remove that pesky “no discrimination” clause, eh? I mean, you can always put it back at some future date, you know, like when it happens to be true.

Does that make me crazy? Probably.

Hey, guys, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been a tad sans inspiration lately, and we all know what happens when you write without inspiration. Yes, you end up penning some awful column for some paper of record wherein you compare the Democratic presidential nominee to a character from a Jane Austin novel. And all you manage to prove is A.) you’ve never actually read Pride and Prejudice, and B.), actually, there is no B., I just thought it was really embarrassing that such a famous columnist could write something so stupid.

I’ve been following the post-suicide damnation of scientist Bruce Ivins, and thinking that there was a time when we all were pretty sure that Hatfill was guilty too, and shit, he ended up with a tasty FBI settlement. 5.8 mil sure takes the sting out of being fired from a tedious government laboratory job, eh?

The general thrust of the case against Ivins, beside some pretty unconvincing circumstantial evidence, is that he’s crazy. How is he crazy? Well, mostly he appears to be crazy because he refers to himself as crazy. Like, he wrote emails to friends wherein he described his behavior as compulsive and crazy. So, I was in my house, listening to a story about Ivin’s craziness on the radio as I equipped several new handbags I’d just bought with some pursekits. What are pursekits, you ask? Well, pursekits are little, well, kits that I assemble that contain things that I want every purse to have in them. The contents of my pursekits have varied somewhat over the years, but I have now settled upon five things: a pen, a business card, matches, an individually-wrapped moistened towelette, and of course, a tampon. For years I could not decide whether to use a generic moistened towelette, or a Shout! stain-removing wipe, but I finally decided that the towelette was the more versatile performer. Anyhoo, I generally put my little kits inside that zippered interior pocket that just about every purse has. If a purse does not have an interior zippered pocket, I do also keep a supply of small drawstring bags, they’re little giftie bags, really, like what you can buy at a store that sells gift-wrapping items, although mostly I have gotten mine for free by saving them when someone gives me a gift in one of those little bags, and I put my kit in one of those and then I know when I take my wallet and sunglasses and stuff out of one purse and put them in another, to leave the little kit with the purse where it belongs. It’s a system I’ve developed over many years, and I’m pretty happy with it, except when I run out of one of my kit items, and then the purses on my desk will start to back up, either because they are new and need a kit, or because I used one of the kit items and it needs to be replenished. Now, you would think that the tampon would be the thing that most often needs to be replenished in the kit, but it’s not. It’s actually the pen. People just love to walk off with pens. I used to waitress, so I know. In fact, when I was a waitress I found that the only way to keep a hold of my pens was to never give the customer the cap. That way, they couldn’t just absentmindedly stick it in their pocket, you know? But when a friend of mine is asking for a pen, and I give them one out of my pursekit, I can’t really take the cap off and keep it, can I? That would be rude. Besides, most pens these days are retractable, anyway.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was about to say that crazy is as crazy does.

And if the standard for proof of craziness is an opinion that one is crazy, well, then the only sane people left will be those too crazy to think they’re crazy.

And don’t point to all the medications that Ivins was supposedly taking for his psychological problems. Half the population of LA is on Ambien. You can get Ambien at any corner bar. In fact, in my neighborhood, it comes with a beer back.

Look, I have no idea whether Ivins is guilty or innocent, but what I’m really wondering is if we took the same standard for evidence from the Ivins case, and applied it to Ron Suskind and the Habbush memo, well, it’d be quite a different kettle of fish, no?

In his new book, Suskind alleges that the infamous Habbush memo, which was initially hyped as the missing link between Saddam Hussein, WMD, and collusion with the al-Qaeda plotters of 9/11, was created by the CIA at the behest of BushCo. The Habbush memo was quickly revealed to be a phony, although who faked it has never exactly been known until now.

Comparison point #1

FBI: Although investigators cannot put Ivins at or near the mailbox they believe was the starting point for many of the anthrax letters, the mailbox, while located in a different state than his residence, was near a storage facility owned by a college sorority that Ivins may or may not have been obsessed with at one time. Wait. Huh?

Suskind: Ayad Allawi was a CIA “asset” who met with the CIA the week before he passed the phony memo to the reporter who published it.

Comparison point #2

FBI: Ivins, although never linked to the anthrax strain personally, did work in a facility where he and about a hundred other people had access to a strain that the government says was identical to at least some of the strains used in the mailings.

Suskind: Habbush, once chief of Saddam’s intelligence service, betrayed his country prior to the Iraqi war in order to give intelligence to the US that indicated that Saddam did not have WMD. Then, when the phony memo, which was supposedly written from Habbush to Saddam, surfaces, and says the exact opposite, BushCo suddenly gives him 5 million dollars and resettles him in Jordan.

Comparison point #3

FBI: After many years of harassment from the FBI, including offering 2.5 million and a sports car to Ivins’s son in exchange for damaging evidence, and showing pictures of dead anthrax victims to Ivins’s daughter while pressuring her for information, Ivins can’t take anymore, and kills himself, while still maintaining his innocence. He is declared crazy and is thus a liar.

Suskind: A Bush administration spokesperson said that you’d have to be crazy to believe that the order to plant the phony memo came from the White House.

Well, that’s all I got for now, readers. I encourage you to check out the links, especially on the Habbush memo story. I know that the government lying to us in order to send more soldiers to their death is kind of old hat, but I’m pretty sure it’s still news.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great idea for a post wherein I compare the Republican presidential candidate to a character from the old “I Love Lucy” show. See if you can guess which one.

Spoiler Alert!

Okay, first of all, it's called MASKING. It's what you do to your windows, your chrome, your wheels etc. so that they are protected when you set off that paint bomb in your garage.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got that spoiler kit, but it looks like something my brother might have built with his circa 1967 Erector Set.

Thirdly, you are not a badass. I'm pretty sure the reason why this car is always parked in the Walgreen's lot is because you work there.



Previous Bells On Spoiler Alerts!

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I thought since my sister just blogged her favorite TP story, that I would blog mine. She copies me a lot, because I am her big sister and she worships me. Don't worry, readers. I’m used to it, y’all. It ain’t no thing. Anyways, sometimes I like to copy her so she feels better about being in my shadow all the time.

Ahem.

So I’m playing a witch in a production of Macbeth, and the director has this concept of the play that is making my life miserable, i.e., that the witches are these seductive sirens (so original!) that are basically controlling Macbeth through paranormal means. Of course the dude playing Macbeth hates the concept, because if his character doesn’t have free will, it kinda makes it not a tragedy, but anyway, in those days I ran with a crowd who thought dramaturgs were cool and we cared about shit like Sophoclean theory. So there I am, hanging in a giant spider web above the stage with the other two witches, waiting for Macbeth to come out for his “To be thus is nothing; but to be safely thus” soliloquy, and because the three of us had to be on stage so much without any dialogue, we had developed a language of grunting and belching noises that were meant to sound like natural scary witch talk to the audience, but to us each sound had a specific meaning. Those meanings had nothing to do with any witchy-type interests. They were geared more toward wringing some amusement out of that 3 hour marathon of watching from above as dudes in burlap leggings and fake fur raised swords and shouted “Huzzah!” So basically, if one of us saw a spear carrier scratching his ass when he thought no one was looking, and managed to alert the other two in time for them to also witness said ass scratching, this was sufficient amusement to us for at least 5 or 6 scenes.

So we’re hanging in the web, and Macbeth enters, and the 1^st Witch made the sound that meant “look at this crazy shit happening over here!”, and sure enough, there was Macbeth, talkin’ all serious to the audience about vengeance and the futility of ambition with a nice long trail of toilet paper attached to his shoe. He’s walking back and forth, getting himself worked up into a good actorly froth, and completely oblivious to this tremendous kite tail following him, and I don’t know how many audience members noticed the toilet paper, but I think they couldn’t help but notice that that spider web was shaking like a poorly designed suspension bridge in a windstorm.

Eventually, the toilet paper fell off, and we witches watched from above for a whole act as it got kicked around the stage, and then when it came time to do the famous cauldron scene, we descended from the web, and as we walked downstage toward the cauldron, the 1^st witch bent down, picked up the piece of toilet paper, held it aloft, and with a great screeching howl of victory, she tossed it with some ceremony into our noxious, eye-of-newt-and-toe-of-frog-laden brew.

Mmmm. That one got us through the rest of the run. As I recall, it was a good two and a half weeks, at least.

What up, Monkey?

Monkey hasn't posted in, like 18 hours.

That is not like the Monkey.

So Monkey emailed me, and what's happened is that someone tagged his blog as spam, and so he is being prevented by Blogger from posting to it until they determine that it is not spam.

Of course Blogger doesn't say how his blog got tagged, but given the content, and given the propensity of certain right-leaning lurkers to troll teh internets and try to bully those who aren't still clinging to the mast of their sinking ship, it's not difficult to imagine.

Be strong, Monkey! And if they don't release your blog soon, I say we all go down to Blogger HQ and fling our poo at them.

Please leave a message of support for Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein here, at Monkey Muck 2.0.