wherever you were on the thug and "up to no good" index before, add an arm sling and your score goes through the roof.  

Dr. Pepper and a bag of chips

Sometimes I really don't know why I read the news.  

yeah sure

This Greenwald post almost makes me grateful that some thieving Scottish hooligans used to steal my issues of TNR.  It was tough medicine to swallow at the time, but I now see that it was fundamentally a gesture of love.  

radiating congeniality

From Alexander Cockburn, an interesting (if extremely poorly sourced) take on alleged recent developments in McCain's health status.  Very troubling if it's the case that McCain's received treatment for cancer recurrence as recent as a few weeks ago.  For my thoughts on this, I refer you to my earlier post "a cancer on the presidency."  

If you want an example of someone making quick work of any potential nagging cognitive dissonance, you could do worse than check out Cockburn's second item, where he incredibly suggests that since the bailout vote Democrats' chances of gaining any seats in the House have pretty much evaporated.  He makes vague reference to an unnamed poll, assumedly one that is being maintained by the Republicans in a secret, undisclosed location.  Look out world!

Finally, as a lapsed subscriber to CP, I recall being frustrated that my issues always came long after they were published and the resulting untimeliness convinced me that it wasn't worth the $35, particularly when I could read Cockburn's stuff online either on his own site or elsewhere.  In a bid to be more relevant this election season with this McCain health coverage, I wonder if Cockburn and St. Claire might consider finally ditching the carrier pigeon method of distribution and perhaps consider posting their material directly online and, if necessary, charging a fee--preferably per article?  

candor

10 seats!  Wow, that'd be quite a feat.  I'm sure the war in Iraq would be over in no time in that case.  

But in all seriousness, strange that the most sober bit of candor about Republican prospects on Nov. 4 comes from Republican strategist Ed Rollins, the same dude that once tried to payoff a bunch of black pastors in New Jersey so their congregants wouldn't go to the polls on election day.  From the Nation:

bloodline

With all of this high-minded talk about Obama's bloodline, I thought I'd enter the fray to point out that new evidence has come to light pointing to Palin's obvious bloodline connection to a certain hinterland politician vying to depose Stephen Harper.   

Via Ambinder:

Crookline

Here's a mildly amusing article recounting McCain's "five oldest moments" during the most recent debate.  

I like this one:

4. Leaving the floor. After the debate finished, both McCain and Obama worked the crowd to shake hands with members of the audience. But McCain departed after a few minutes, leaving the entire place to Obama, who continued to meet and take photos for what seemed like another half hour. Why would McCain allow Obama to soak up the TV coverage of that scene — much of which continued on cable news long after the debate was over — all by himself? Our guess is that he was just pooped after standing and walking for most of the debate.

Mostly because it reminded me of Michael Dukakis in 1988, when he finished one of his debates with H.W. and got the hell outta the auditorium in a hurry.  I remember my mom remarking that that wasn't probably the wisest thing to have done, to leave the cameras with nothing else to film except H.W. shaking people's hands and, while breathing through his mouth like he was in a porta-john, pretending their pedestrian body odor didn't bother him.  

And I also like it because it gives me cause to reprint the following greatest picture from 1988:

And, please, whatever you do today, note the "Mike Dukakis" label on the helmet.  I can see the careful deliberation that went into this by his campaign higher-ups.   "We've got to assure that he has some way of identifying which helmet is his--otherwise those hooligan army boys could run off with his helmet!  But if we put a 'Michael Dukakis' label on his helmet, well, that sounds too stilted and he could get de-pantsed.  So we'll go with the laid back, 'with it' variant 'Mike Dukakis.'  Win/win!"  

Mike Dukakis: I'm gonna shoot your Soviet ass with my label gun!!!

Whatever, the guy lives in Brookline. 

This is how the world will end . . .

. . . not with a bang or a whimper, but with Walt Monegan's mouth.  

why do I have the sneaking suspicion that Walt Monegan's mouth is an emerging black hole that will suck up the entire contents of the universe, leaving nothing behind but perhaps two or three pathetic examples of John McCain's support for more regulation?  

It does look weird, right?  The mustache and all, and the skin around his mouth that's sort of like a sinkhole in the middle of his face?  Am I alone in this?

Better question: am I alone here?   

what ifs

I'm glad somebody finally stated the obvious: if "That One" ends up getting the nod, we're all fucked.  

Roe

Interesting commentary on the past and prospective jurisprudence surrounding abortion rights, with at least a little to say about the impact an Obama administration would have on Roe's staying power.  

He could be

Via the most popular one-man political blog site in the world, perhaps the most illuminating, sobering, yet somehow unsurprising three or four minutes of footage on the campaign to date:

Favorite parts:  

Q: When did you first hear of Obama?

A: Never.  

and

the bit where the legal eagle gives his hand-wench some pretty keen advice to "refuse to answer any questions unless they give them to you in writing."  Brilliant!  

and

Q: Is Barack Obama a terrorist?

A: He could be.

Way to explore the very outer edges of logical possibility!!!  

Seriously, were all of these people just drunk?  

it's good . . . it's natural

TV reader surveys are back and after careful analysis, it appears that a full 1/3 of TV readers have an abiding interest in the native intelligence of swine.  

As such, w/out further ado, here is the latest from Saul Bellow on smart pigs:

When I came back from the war it was with the thought of becoming a pig farmer, which maybe illustrates what I thought of life in general.

Monte Cassino should never have been bombed; some blame it on the dumbness of the generals.  But after that bloody murder, where so many Texans were wiped out, and my outfit also took a shellacking later, there were only Nicky Goldstein and myself left out of the original bunch, and this was odd because we were the two largest men in the outfit and offered the best targets.  Later I was wounded too, by a land mine.  But at that time, Goldstein and I were lying down under the olive trees--some of those gnarls open out like lace and let the light through--and I asked him what he aimed to do after the war.  He said, "Why, me and my brother, if we live and be well, we're going to have a mink ranch in the Catskills."  So I, or my demon said for me, "I'm going to start breeding pigs."  And after these words were spoken I knew that if Goldstein had not been a Jew I might have said cattle and not pigs.  So then it was too late to retract.  So for all I know Goldstein and his brother have a mink business while I have--something else.  I took all the handsome old farm buildings, the carriage house with paneled stalls--in the old days a rich man's horses were handled like opera singers--and the fine old barn with the belvedere above the hayloft, a beautiful piece of architecture, and I filled them up with pigs, a pig kingdom, with pig houses on the lawn and in the flower garden.  The greenhouse, too--I let them root out the old bulbs.  Statues from Florence and Salzburg were turned over.  The place stank of swill and pigs and the mashes cooking, and dung.  Furious, my neighbors got the health officer after me.  I dared him [sic] to take me to law. "Hendersons have been on this property over two hundred years," I said to this man, a certain Dr. Bullock.  

By my then wife, Frances, no word was said except, "Please keep them off the driveway."

"You'd better not hurt any of them," I said to her.  "Those animals have become a part of me."  And I told this Dr. Bullock, "All those civilians and 4Fs have put you up to this.  Those twerps.  Don't they ever eat pork?"

Have you seen, coming from New Jersey to New York, the gabled pens and runways that look like models of German villages from the Black Forest?  Have you smelled them (before the train enters the tunnel to go under the Hudson)?  These are pig-fattening stations.  Lean and bony after their trip from Iowa and Nebraska, the swine are fed here.  Anyway, I was a pig man.  And as the prophet Daniel warned King Nebuchadnezzar, "They shall drive thee from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field."  Sows eat their young because they need the phosphorus.  Goiter attacks them as it does women.  Oh, I made a considerable study of these clever doomed animals.  For all pig breeders know how clever they are.  The discovery that they were so intelligent gave me a kind of trauma.  But if I had not lied to Frances and those animals had actually become a part of me, then it was curious that I lost interest in them.

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King 20-21.  

* * * *

In addition to pig stories, in response to requests from readers from near and far the coming month will bring pictures of both the beautiful fall foliage, a measure of time's ceaseless tumble forward, and my johnson.  

GYWO: Sarah Palin

funny.

getting your money's worth

What a shocker.  

Apparently my earlier understanding was incomplete.  I was under the impression that various Democratic Party-aligned groups and a huge corrupt law firm spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2004 to boot Nader off the ballot and then, once accomplished, in an unprecedented move, went after him and his running mate to recover the court costs in removing him from the ballot, totaling more than $160,000, and going so far as to attempt to attach one of Nader's personal accounts in the District of Columbia.  In reality,this was only part of the story, and, incredibly, the cleanest.   It turns out through the payment of my (meager) taxes, I actually subsidized these corrupt and anti-democratic efforts because state workers were illegally working "all day long" during the 2004 campaign to block Nader's ballot access by invalidating signatures and the like, i.e., being paid by the state to perform work for a campaign, or, in other words, they made a huge in-kind contribution to the pathetic Kerry-Edwards campaign* that was supported financially by the taxes of all Pennsylvanians.  Lovely.  

I hasten to add that Pennsylvania maintains one of the most onerous and indefensibly exclusive ballot access laws in the country, requiring anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000 signatures (depending on the year) in order to be placed on the ballot--that is, only if you're a minor candidate.   It goes without saying that the two major political parties don't face a similar hurdle.  

Relevant passage from the Post-Gazette:

Back in the courtroom, witnesses described the election work being done at state expense between 2004 and 2006.

The work included preparing challenges to 2004 presidential candidate Ralph Nader's nominating petitions, they testified yesterday in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court.

The Nader effort was "massive and completely consuming," testified Melissa Lewis, who worked in Mr. Veon's office and now is caucus director of the Allegheny County delegation. "That's what we did all day long."

*I hope history will record that not only was the Kerry-Edwards juggernaut unable to win fair and square, but it's now clear it was unable to win despite cheating and effectively disenfranchising voters.  Of course, taints like this just undermine Democrats when they begin to, self-interestedly, bleat about voter suppression efforts.  There are no doubt credible allegations of vile voter suppression efforts being perpetrated by the Republicans and their ilk, but when Democrats so brazenly conspire with others to prevent voters from having a choice, well, their credibility to make voter suppression complaints goes out the window.  

Wellstone!

So, I recall back in 2002 when I was doing nothing much of anything except waiting tables and following a few U.S. Senate races pretty closely.  My favorite to follow was the Wellstone/Coleman race in Minnesota.  Recall that this election came right at the heels of the rushed vote for the AUMF and under incredible pressure to vote yes, Wellstone stuck to his guns and voted no, and, as I recall, made a pretty good speech about it on the floor to boot.  

He was always a hero of mine.  I remember in 11th grade (it woulda been 1996, snow was on the ground) me and a friend of mine went up to Minnesota to visit my sister at college and, in a very unserious way, check out a few colleges on our own.  Yes, we were geeks, but we made it a point to head to what I think was Wellstone's St. Joseph, MN campaign office.  We picked up a t-shirt and a bumpersticker or two, probably chipped in a couple of bucks for them as they weren't going to make much of a difference to out of staters, and were on our way back on the road, smoking cigarettes and enlivened by all of the freedom.  I had that green Wellstone! sticker on my bumper for several years and only got rid of it once the old Red Baron died.  True, I think most folks thought the sticker was some strange reference to smoking pot or something, but I was proud to have it on my car.  

So, fast-forward to 2002.  He's a hero of mine still and it's a tight race between Wellstone and the craven Norm Coleman.  All of a sudden, out of the blue, Wellstone's campaign plane crashes in Northern MN, killing the senator, his wife, his daughter, and the pilot.  Just like that.  I'm sure I cried myself to bed that night on my huge pillow, and I always get wistful and nostalgic when I think of what a great senator he was, and, from the anecdotes I've heard from folks who have had first-hand experiences with him, what a great and decent man he was (these latter qualities being pretty rare in politicians as I understand it).  As you probably know, Wellstone was then replaced on the ballot by fmr. Vice President Walter Mondale, who went on to lose the seat to Coleman.  

This is all to point you toward the following video, highlighted by Ezra Klein earlier today.  In it, Coleman's campaign manager tries to evade questions about some suits that someone allegedly purchased for Senator Coleman as a gift and that went unreported (whether for good reason or not).  I don't typically like to watch folks squirm like this, but, well, since 2002 I've pretty much felt like the apotheosis of my political spectating would be reached once Coleman goes down to ignominious defeat of huge, humiliating, world-historic proportions.  Because he's a slimeball, a fake, and basically the perversion of everything Wellstone was.  Oh, and he has funny teeth.  Personally, I think Coleman's routine funding of an unjust war that's resulting in the deaths of all manner of soldiers, civilians, children, etc., should be reason enough to oust the douchebag.  But apparently that's not enough to get you fired these days.  Well, if having a foreign-sounding guy buy your nice suits will do the trick, then I'm all for it.  Again, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  

Coleman is locked in a tight battle with the very funny Al Franken and former senator and independent Dean Barkley.  I really don't care whether Franken or Barkley wins.  I don't know enough about either of their positions on various issues, but I know enough to know that I don't necessarily find either utterly repellent.  And, of course, anyone is far preferable to Coleman.  So I hope one of the two challengers wins.  And, as Klein points out, and I hope he's right, this Neiman Marcusgate thing just might push Franken over the top, or at least Coleman out the door.  We can hope.  This is one race in which I'll be closely following the returns come election night.  And, if as speculated, Coleman goes on to defeat, I predict I'll have that sort of warm civic feeling I got when I first voted and was (almost) impaneled on a jury, together with the feeling that some things can be made right (or as close to right as possible), but it just takes time.  

I sure hope someone can get it done for Paul come Nov. 4.  

Glamour and culture

My friends, these are not small-town values we can believe in.  

Great article on Palin in the LRB by Jonathan Raban.  Here's a snippet:

Palin’s view of aesthetics was nicely highlighted in 1996, a few months before she ran for mayor, when a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News happened to light on her in an excited crowd of five hundred women queuing up in the Anchorage J.C. Penney’s, waiting to snag the autograph of Ivana Trump, who was in town to hawk her eponymous line of scent.

‘We want to see Ivana,’ Palin said, who admittedly smells like a salmon for a large part of the summer, ‘because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.’

Here's hoping she was able to finagle a playstation 2 for her trouble as well, or whatever it is people were waiting outside department stores in the cold for in 1996.  

This is just surreal.  

What a wonderful day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

to do

Probably not many people have the following on a to-do list:

Email dad to remind him to wear priest collar on trip home from South America to help avoid being mugged en route.

TMI!

LOL from HuffPost:

 "I've been in an underdog position quite often in my life and so has John McCain and we've both come out victoriously from that underdog position."

the debate

I thought Obama did a lot better last night.  In a few exchanges, Obama was masterful and fluid, particularly where he rebuffed McCain on his "he doesn't understand" line.  I'm happy to see that Obama improved, showed more fight, and certainly had a presidential air of confidence and authority, whereas McCain's shallow, labored breathing, his constant incantations of "my friends," and his adept use of the third-person pronoun "that one" to describe someone standing 10 feet away from him, all fell flat and were evidence of a generally languid performance.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.  

I still feel like Obama speaks in this halting sort of way.  On the plus side, it's likely that he's simply being very deliberate about what he says, editing along the way so as not to commit some gaffe that wouldn't be forgiven a black guy running for president.  On the negative side, it really makes it sound like he's one of those translators at the U.N. or somewhere, listening to the original in a headset, translating instantaneously, and (inevitably) rendering it in an uneven and halting manner.  

Substance-wise, it strikes me how much, even in this overwhelmingly Democratic election, the discourse and policy prescriptions are heavily skewed toward right-wing orthodoxies.  With the major exceptions of Obama's insistence that taxes for those with incomes above $250,000 will go up and all other rates will either stay steady or decline, and his (typically) hedging claim that health care "should" be a right, he's no leftist; rather, he's a garden-variety centrist Democrat.  At least that's what his campaign (and his tenure in the U.S. Senate) have shown him to be thus far.  

In other words, again I seem to be in agreement, more or less, with this guy.  Although I wasn't as bothered by the candidates' unwillingness to answer the question asked as he apparently was, though this is probably due to being completely inured to this phenomenon after the Palin non sequitur marathon the other night.  

BREAKING * * * EWOKS BACK MCCAIN!

In the furious battling between the candidates over the heavily sought-after Ewok vote, it appears the Ewoks finally settled upon their candidate: John McCain ("McCain is only carrying Andorra, Georgia, and Macedonia.")--no doubt due to the likeness of physical characteristics.  Ewoks will begin phonebanking and registering voters in an effort to prop up McCain's flailing campaign.  

Oh right, it's Endor, not Andorra.  Whatever.  Ewoks!

My friends!

Another prick in the wall

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Marc Kaplan of North Fayette, Pennsylvania, is speaking from experience.  In today's Post-Gazette letters to the editor:

Treadmill safety

With the Sept. 17 Health and Science section article "Surge Training Promises to Work Off the Weight," there was a photograph of Ann Caldwell running on a treadmill. Anyone thinking of buying a treadmill and placing it in a small area should know that it is extremely dangerous to have it positioned with the back of it against a wall. In case of a sudden problem resulting in a loss of leg speed turnover, a person can be thrown into the wall. The back of the treadmill should always be facing the open end of a room.

MARC KAPLAN
North Fayette

Let's hope that "anyone" never makes this foolish mistake again.  

Gotta love it when the David Duke set shows more circumspection and restraint in its statements about an Obama presidency than the Republican ticket.  

You want a hand to shake?

Man, Wonkette's funny.  

On McCain's refusal to shake Obama's hand, "Here, you want a hand to shake?  Shake the cunt's."   

What?  I didn't say it.  

I report, you decide. 

Oh, and here's that great moment where McCain swallowed his pride and actually acknowledged the existence of his sub-human opponent, very decorously referring to him as "that one." Ah, watch your head on the ceiling, the level of the discourse is getting so, so high!

(update below)

So, when the inevitable credible assassination attempts come against President Obama, I hope folks look back at moments like this and those highlighted earlier this morning and note that these speeches were stoking the flames of the violent extremism to come.  John McCain and Sarah Palin should now be held morally responsible for any harm that should befall Obama on account of racism or xenophobia.  

McCain's a dishonorable cretin.  Always has been, always will be.  Palin is someone who is so out of her depth and, regrettably, dangerously, compensates for her utter ignorance with zeal and contempt.  There were moments early on when I felt pity for her because she is so obviously not fit for running for vice president (or any other office really).  But after her sneering and veiled racist comments about community organizers and now her de facto fanning the flames of violent extremism in the name of white pride, I think she's easily one of the most ridiculous yet execrable characters to come along in modern politics in a very long time.  

p.s. Yglesias: This is on her.  

You know that new sound you're looking for?

As I said originally (and I stand by it), why not just call it a mini-mall to begin with?  Just saying.  

and here we have Acapulco.

That white man is flying.

Take it from me, parents just don't understand.  

antz

Via Sullivan et al., the world's air traffic simulated over a 24-hour period.  Notice half-way through when it gets dark.  Cool.  

 

Have to admit though, if I were an alien I'd be tempted to start stomping.  

Waiting for the worms

From the WP:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

what's in a name?

A newspaper industry analyst proposes the following model to save the newspaper from the same fate as the town crier (the town crier!):

"A smaller, less frequently published version packed with analysis and investigative reporting and aimed at well-educated news junkies that may well be a smart survival strategy for the beleaguered old print product."

Let’s see.  Smaller.  Less frequently published.  Analysis and investigative reporting.  Aimed at well-educated news junkies.  Hmm.  

I guess we could call this new-fangled thing a ‘serialized fortnightly news and analysis delivery system.’  Or better yet, how about ‘Arthur Sulzberger’s self-edification method.’  No, doesn’t really have any sort of ring to it.  What about, oh, I don’t know, ‘magazine.’  Or, I know I may be going out on a limb here, but why not ‘periodical’?  And perhaps some of these new-style newspapers could even be published online, like Slate or Salon.  There.  Problem solved, newspapers saved! 

 

(Via the most popular one-man political blog site in the world*)

 

*Oh, and by the way, the most popular one-man political blogger in all of the world (Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia!) actually has a significant team of interns  and other support helping him to produce his blog.  So really a corrective is in order.  It’s not quite accurate to refer to oneself as the “most popular one-man political blog site in the world” so much as it would be to refer to one's blog as “the most popular one-man political blog site in the world that’s written, researched, edited, etc., by a team of folks but for whom all of the credit for such work is given exclusively to one individual.”

Where the girls are the fairest and the boys are the squarest

We are getting pretty boxy I suppose.  

Some guy here says that Tracy Flick was more likely than not being less than truthful about her desire to head to Nebraska to see the famous Omaha foliage.  Disagree.  She said: "And I so wanted to reach into that TV and say no, I'm going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska."

You tell 'em, sister!  I am so with you.  

I'm willing to say that this is probably the first thing she's said all campaign long, or in at least the last five weeks of her life, that I'm willing to credit as truthful.  Who wouldn't want to head to Nebraska for its own sake?   I don't get it.  The Civic Auditorium?  COME ON!  

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

tell-tale.

Most people would know they lack the decorum or temperament required of a lawyer were they, in a not very subtle way, to suggest to their torts professor during the course of a lecture to 90+ students that he has a small penis.

Truth is a defense.  

Citizen's arrest

In reality, there's probably no such thing as a citizen's arrest.

my sweet coconut

Really I'm speechless.  Except that I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Teixeira de Jesus, learning how to kiss oneself is a worthy life pursuit; living any other way is just pure self-abuse, plain and simple.  

''I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,'' she said. ``He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss myself.''

Uh, Ms. de Jesus, I think I'll be writing that book.  

'ALSO' DEFEATS MCCAIN!

Yep, it's 'also' in a landslide.  

By the way, did Sarah Palin really say "John tapped me"?  A scientific composite photo of what their kid would look like has surfaced:

It checks out.  Same teeth and ghostly pallor as McCain.  And by appearances alone looks to be about as credible of a candidate for VP as its governator mother.