I Was Just Wondering

News from the epicenter

2011-02-19T18:37:00.004-06:00

Heeeeyyyyyyyy!!!!! I'm right here in Madison where the shit is going down. I wish I could say I was down on the square to join the demonstrations, but I'm not. My heart is with those people all the way.

Quiz: (Scores will be posted later)

Two tea baggers stand on a street corner with "Gummint keep yo hans off ma helthcare" signs and it is a mandate. 100,000 people show up at the state capitol of Wisconsin and it is

a) one of those crazy flash mob things that just went on too long. Like several days too long

b) hippies who thought it was the 60's all over again. Smelly hippies, mosh pits are for kids.

c) anti democratic muslim brotherhood funded egyptian whackery.

d) a schocked populace who bought the crap that republicans and democrats are just the same and who now soundly regret their vote.

e) democrats who warned all you stupid fuckers a long time ago that this is exactly the Milton Freidman-like politics we'd be thrashed with if the republicans who are a godamned ton worse than democrats were elected.

f) d and e above

Health Care Part II

2009-07-15T14:19:00.002-05:00

We are being warned that if we get universal healthcare our own care will begin to suck like Mark Foley at a Fire Island hot tub party.

Say what?

My daughter needs a physical for summer camp a month from now. I can't get her in to see her doctor until sometime in September, several weeks after camp is over. (I admit that I should have scheduled this sooner, but who knew?)

A few years ago I was having some problems my general practitioner couldn't diagnose. I had to schedule an appointment with a neurologist. That wait was 3 months.

I never see an OB-GYN; to get to see one of those at my clinic would mean making an appointment ONE YEAR in advance. I'm supposed to see a physician's assistant for my annual exam, so in truth it's not even possible for me to go to a doctor.

The nurse at the pediatrician's office just called me and suggested one of those quick clinics at Walgreens or Wal Mart. Earlier, I called a free clinic and offered to trade time or a nice donation for my daughter to get a physical. The clinic said they weren't able to do that kind of exam.

A few years ago when I had very comprehensive and expensive health insurance I used to go to Planned Parenthood for my exams. I shudder when the conservatives fight to close those clinics just because they believe that crazy notion that parenthood should be planned. Crazy kooks.

Sorry folks. This is what we've gotten for the most dollars ever thrown at healthcare in all the world. I simply do not believe it will get worse.

Now I've got to find a Costa Rican directory so that I can schedule some dental work.....

How's About Some Health Care?

2009-07-14T22:17:00.003-05:00

Lord, lord.

My brother in law is both a republican and an insurance agent. And yet, I feel that he might be drifting from his rock solid republican roots.

Here's one of the biggest reasons that I want to speak freely as a small business owner (yes, I actually am a partial owner of the business now, but I generally refrain from throwing that around. I get lots and lots of mileage from salespeople and others who assume that because I'm a girl that I'm the receptionist. So be it)

I despise the money that I spend in insurance. Republicans always tell you that the small business owner is choked out of new hires bytaxes, but I have found that is not true at all. Insurance is our own personal smack down.

You know how you hear stories about guys like Willy Nelson who didn't pay their taxes and oh, woe unto them? I find that Uncle Sam is alot more forgiving than the private for profit insurance companies that I have to give money to.

It comes down to this: Money that I pay in taxes is based on money that I have earned. It's a simple percentage. Granted, sometimes I hate paying my sales tax,when, as a contractor, my client may not pay me for 60 days.

What I despise are my fixed costs. And my biggest most fearsome fixed cost is health insurance. Also,I am required by law to carry worker's comp and general liability. These are charges that go up or down once a year based on my volume. The money essentially is private for profit in the way that, had GW Bush gotten his way, our social security money would have gone.

I ramble. The point is simply this: Don't believe anyone who tells you that the government can't run something better than the private sector, because they can.

Second, insurance simply shows us that the privatization of needed services that includes a profit motive will kill a small business 100X faster than a tax will

Third, small business owners who still believe in the Republican Party and/or Jim Cramer from CNBC will be flipping hamburgers next year.

Good onya lovs.

My Own WPA project

2009-07-10T19:36:00.004-05:00

I've emerged again.

Let me say, I miss you and I love you.

Kiss. Kiss.

That aside, I dropped blogging simply due to time constraints. For the last six months or so, simply breathing had to be scheduled. Every time I even slightly considered a blog post it only sounded like whining to me with the added distraction of me spending time on the computer obsessed with me - a negative - so I've avoided you guys for well over two months.

Last week I picked up a book by a Wisconsin author, Michael Perry, who writes about himself and his life in his small town up Nort', as we say.

He is self deprecating and honest, which I admire. He's a bit worduluous which has put at least my father off of his books. (I made up wordulous. It mostly means using a bigger, off-putting word where a smaller humbler word would've worked. For the record, Mr. Perry NEVER overuses adverbs, and the overuse of adverbs is a sure sign of a horrible writer.)

Perry made me think that maybe I should stop shying away from my blog and just writstraight and true about the crap that has been going down lately. I think that if I simply tell you these stories without an agenda then maybe I'll have a record of how things went down ITE (cool people shorthand for "In This Economy")

Here's the deal. Or Chapter One.

One year ago I was a stay home mom. I put my two girls in all the rec. department classes I could fit them into. In the afternoons we went to the swimming pool and I knit mittens or socks or other small things while they played.

In September the guy who was runnning my family's company called me and asked me to come help him get caught up. I was really the perfect candidate since I hired him and trained him in the first place. My good friends will recognize that I first described him as the "Republican Dude".

The day I went in to discuss starting working for him he offered me $10 an hour. I knew that he started ( and I left at) a much higher pay scale ten years ago. I said I'd work for $15.

Then I came in on my first day and fired up the computer. Exactly three seconds after looking at our books I knew we were fucked.

But really, I spent the time between September and the end of November trying to save things through straight but silly will power alone.Then one day I went to work and the Republican Dude criticized a suggestion that I had.

At that point I already knew that he had fucked our company to the point that he knew he couldn't afford me on the payroll at $15 an hour. I volunteered to be a 1099 independent and I didn't take money until they had it.

So after two months of working for nothing, he criticized me in front of the accountant. I blabbed. I told everyone who would listen that he grew our company in half.

He should have been fired on the spot.

Rather, I was told to go home for the week and cool off.

I did.

But when my brothers who own the company looked closer, they realized this guy was killing us.

He's been a friend of the family for nearly 30 years. Did I mention that?

We decided that he should work as a salesman. We'd knock his salary back but kick up a comission. If he went out I.T.E (in this economy) and brought us new business he'd get the comission.

For some reason, this made him collapse.

Rather than fight for his life, or even the life of our company, which he had an ownership of, he just gave up.

More tomorrow.

National Day of Prayer....How's That Working?

2009-05-07T17:23:00.003-05:00

The last eight years were the most prayerfyin' years in the history of the United States, or at least since the crackpots of the 1830's ran amok*. Yet, one would think that if praying for the United States had any efficacy, we'd be in a much different place today than where we are.

Unless of course Jesus thought the prayers of the last eight years were just kinda lame.

And he is punishing us.

*I seem to remember reading somewhere that in the early part of the nineteenth century people were particularly religious. But I'm too bored of the subject myself to google it, so if I'm wrong, suck it.

They Fear the Frankenspecter Monster

2009-04-29T06:56:00.003-05:00

" The issue, he said, "really relates to ... whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority party to have whatever it wants, without restraint, without a check or balance."

---Senator Mitch McConnell on Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party

Hey, Mitchie. Would that be like letting the majority party go into a trillion dollar war, tank the economy and ruin the environment?

Just wondering.

Every post same as the last post

2009-04-27T19:17:00.004-05:00

Please don't think that I haven't thought that I ought to come over here and post some crap on my own blog, fer cri-yi.

I have thought that. It's just that for the last 100 days every post I've thought about in my head was of the same theme: "How fucking stupid do the conservatives think we are?'

And the answer is always "Pretty goddamned stupid".

Today's affront was caught by me on an am blather-radio station who's right wing harpie host was congratulating Fox for not broadcasting President Obama's next press conference, scheduled to mark his first 100 days in office.

They can't, she breathlessly remarked, possibly cave in to the Obama love fest. Really? Really?

This from the same network that would run as breaking news anytime President Bush got in a taxpayer funded aircraft to get himself back to Crawford for some brush clearing?

Further, thanks to the fact that I work in an industry that inexplicably hosts a lot of conservatives, I get loads and loads and loads of rightie crap in my inbox.

No. 1 - I would never discuss my political beliefs with suppliers OR clients, so the fact that conservatives always do just proves how unprofessional they really are, all the while claiming the superior end of business acumen.

No. 2 - George Bush didn't do press conferences. When he did, liberals watched. We prefer to be engaged in our government. Conservatives just prefer to be pushy. And god forbid, intelligent discourse.

S'okay. Their self-proclaimed "Know-nothingism" is turning off the vast majority of the American public.

Fortunately, self-identifying republicans are falling by the wayside day by day.

And as they fail, so they give off the stench of desperation.

And no one believes them anymore.

Barbara Bush Receives Heart Implant

2009-03-05T06:08:00.002-06:00

Barbara Bush is recovering from heart surgery.

Which, means, I suppose that she just got implants because I don't recall there being a heart there previously.

boom bappa chee! Don't forget to tip your waitress.

When I first discovered that I am an asshole.

2009-02-19T21:18:00.002-06:00

First off--my friends who check me to see if I am still alive--I am.

Second--those of you who care about my position--prone and breathing or prostrate and not-- I thank you for checking in.

Here is what I have learned while I have been away.

I. Am. An. Asshole.

Okay, matter being what it is, I really WAS an asshole and am no longer an asshole because we are all in a constant state of flux. I am on a post-Assholian trajectory. Yet, I do think I need to own up to the historic data set that has called me out as an asshole.

When I was a stay at home mom, I picked our organically grown vegetables from a local sustainable farm. I knew the first name of the farmer. (Chris) (his dog's name was Frost).

Now that I work 60 hours a week I hope to never have the Costco Representative have to help me with my self-service check-out of Preservative Laden Lasagna.

Remember that I insisted that every product that came into our home was made in America?

Now I simply hope that most products don't have too much of an overbearing chemical Chinese carelessness smell about them. (And I am discovering misting sprays).

I used to volunteer in my children's classrooms. Now I just hope they remember my name and that I do, kinda, care if my kid crosses all the acceptable thresholds they expect of her. If they don't, maybe I can send in another pan of brownies?

Dear Mr. President:

2009-01-22T18:21:00.003-06:00

Dear President Obama*

Thank you for your bold move on Gitmo, and for declaring that our government will no longer spy on us citizens. Excellent start in your opening days.

Now I have a little request:

Please in the next few days declare the phrase "Who are you wearing" as well as the term "Ginormous" to be illegal and punishable by Ex-President Bush** era techniques.

I thank you in advance for your consideration of these important issues,

Yours in peace and democracy,
Jess Wundrun.

*Yay
**YayYay

A President Who is Smarter than Me

2009-01-22T06:15:00.002-06:00

Once again the man and woman living in the White House are smarter than me. It's a great feeling.

Of all the images and memories of the inauguration the one that will stick with me forever is when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the lines of the oath, and President Obama* gave a slight nod and waited for Roberts to correct himself.

I was listening on Democracy Now! at work. Our accountant was here and when that part happened he whipped his head around -- we both thought Obama had messed it up.

When I got home Tuesday night I watched the inauguration and saw what really happened.

The presidential oath of office is written into the Constitution. It is important to get it right. (Remember, if you will, that ex-President George W. Bush** did not). Our new president who once taught Constitutional Law, knew that. I'm going to assume that the Chief Justice was simply very very nervous.

The man who should have had shaky nerves-the President-showed his mettle. How many billion people around the world were tuned in at that moment. President Obama is completely unflappable.

That moment showed me that we chose the best possible American to lead us in these times. Everything we need to know about him took place in those few seconds.

We have overcome.

*My first use of the phrase. Yay!
**Dean Wormer's favorite phrase. I plan to use it LIBERALLY.

The Last Night of Self-Loathing

2009-01-19T19:03:00.002-06:00

I'd like to drop some profound bon mots on the fact that this is the very last night that a Bush will EVER be in charge of our country. Shhh, Jeb and the lesser generations don't yet know all that.

I wonder how many times someone on our side will tell a rightward soul "America, love it or leave it"? It's almost a shame that conservatives have been given a free pass. There ought to be some penance for their sins. And yet, as many times as Ol' Newt Gingrich has been gassin' up the airwaves lately, I'm sure that we'll all just move along and his own brand of partisanship AS politics will be forgotten.

I may never be able to stop hating them.

But that's me. Apparently, President Obama will find room for bi-partisanship. And when it is all said and done, I bet you that he will not get the credit for it that he deserves. There is still far far too much of the "two sides of the story" meme in the MSM.

Now that our side is in charge, do you think our talk radio will resemble intelligent conversations regarding our possibilities, or do you think it will resemble the vocal equivalent of a steroid-addled wrestler bringing down a figure four leglock on the popcorn vendor?

Well, it's been a damned long time since I was proud to be an American. It's nice to know that this is the very last night in a very very long nightmare.

If I Could Save Time in a Bottle

2009-01-18T19:18:00.003-06:00

We fired RD.

If I never run across another republican who thinks he knows how to run a business (or a country) again, it will be too soon.

The truth is that if I hadn't gone to work and looked at the books, RD would have run the company out of business within the year.

When I mentioned this to him at his "exit interview" he said, almost blithely, that "companies are going out of business left and right, right now".

Not ours, buddy.

So I've been trying to figure out everything that he did, both right and wrong, and get us turned around. It's taken all of my time.

I've started a few blog posts about the whole situation, but then I toss them because they've been a bit too whiny.

So that's where I've been. All is well and is getting weller. At least I hope so.

You've really got to stop shopping at Wal-Mart

2008-12-28T22:42:00.002-06:00

Just a little while ago there was a brief story on the 10 o' clock news that Wal-Mart, unlike almost ALL other retailers in the country, actually saw its sales increase by 3% this past Christmas season.

Wal-Mart happily mid-wifed the birth of our crappy economy by forcing American manufacturers to close American factories and ship those jobs to China. And for this they get repaid by being the only place Americans can now afford to shop.

Less Drugs, More Alcohol

2008-12-28T21:58:00.002-06:00

I've been narcotic free for over a week. Which is good because pharmacoepia was getting in the way of wine drinking. Though holiday excess has made me decide that this year I think I will give up alcohol. Unlike last year when I enlisted the entire family in the Buy USA challenge, I think the kids will find it fairly easy to give up alcohol. (Don't kid yourselves, they love them some mouthwash.)

Since it is still 2008 I may wander over to the kitchen and rustle me up a chardonnay.

Hey, the Packers managed to not lose to the Lions. It wasn't such a sure thing throughout. We went over to my aunt's house for her partner's 50th birthday party and watched the game. On the way home we listened to Aaron Rodgers interview on the radio. The guy is a real class act. He said that as a football quarterback there is a lot he can control but that far more happens that is out of his control. You can only trouble yourself with that which you can control, he said. Considering that he spent the pre-season submerged in the Brett Favre unretirement brouha, I think he is an admirable soul.

I wonder how Brett Favre is feeling have lost to Mike Holmgren in Mike's last home game and to Chad Pennington today?

te he.

One more mishap

2008-12-20T09:22:00.005-06:00

My life is beginning to resemble a sit-com. Following closely on the heels of those madcap adventures-the problems with RD at work, the faux heart attack and subsequent vicodin bender, then jury duty and the twenty hour deliberation, I went back to work promising not to miss a day unless I was bleeding out my eyes.

The very next morning my back seized up on me while I was in the laundry room. I went up to my bedroom, called work and told them I'd be in as soon as the drugs kicked in. Then I hollered at Ben to bring me the prescription ibuprofen they gave me at the hospital. "Not the vicodin!" I added.

I took two of the 600mg ibuprofen pills and sent Ben to Walgreens for some Doan's pills.

When Ben got back I took two of the Doans.

Eight hours later, when the workday was nearly done, I woke up.

The next day I discovered that I did not take ibuprofen, I took two prescription muscle relaxers my doctor had prescribed and that Ben had filled while I was zonked out on the vicodin bender, plus the two Doan's pills.

I shall heretofore refer to this as the incident of the 'Lude bender.

Working My Way Back To You

2008-12-16T06:01:00.004-06:00

Zowie. The last month has been insane. First there was the problem at work and the 12 hour days that followed, then faux heart attack scare and subsequent vicodin bender, then jury duty.

Let me tell you about jury duty.

We had jury selection on Monday, listened to testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday, heard closing arguments then we deliberated for 11 hours on Thursday (we left the courthouse at 11pm) and we deliberated for nine more hours on Friday.

The case was an accusation of rape against a not very savory man. The accuser was his daughter. She was a teen at the time of the allegations; prosecution said that he took her virginity. He was also accused of raping her on a weekly basis for over a year.

Yuck.

The problem with the case was that I didn't believe the young woman's story. She reported it ten years after the fact, yet there was no claim of repressed memory. She says she didn't report because she was afraid of the man, yet when her baby daughter (worse than if it were a son, imo) was born she took her to meet him. Defense claimed that she often asked for rent money. After the money stopped he was accused. We learned through a defense witness that she threatened that she said "I'm going to make you pay, you son of a bitch".

I'm trying to give you the largest swaths of the case. We listened to testimony for two days. We deliberated for 20 hours.

Though there were four counts in the case and the vote was different for each, essentially nine people thought that we should convict and three people felt the verdict should be not guilty. I was in the minority. The major difference was that 11 of 12 people felt that the state did not make its case against the man, but that 8 of those people felt the reasonable doubt threshold had been reached. The twelth juror was a nutcase who said straight out that rape stories are NEVER fabricated. (She also said that she could not vote for innocence in a case where the defendant didn't testify on his own behalf. Screw you, fifth amendment!)

When this lovely young woman took the stand, she had my faith and my belief in her. I wanted to do right by her. But as she spoke, she struck me as a bullshit artist. In my scribbled notes there were circles and arrows and question marks and the word "Contradicts". I would go into detail for you here but that would make a lengthy post that I don't have much of a stomach for. I've been living with this story in my head for over a week. It's there when I wake up and when I go to sleep. I truly truly wish that I could have believed her. The easiest thing to have done would have been to say 'guilty'. But I believe that it is worse to put an innocent man in jail than to let a guilty man go free. The state did not make the case against the man. One woman on the jury said the polar opposite: "I can't stand the thought that there's a possibility I'd let a rapist walk around on the streets". Screw you, reasonable doubt!

Though deliberations lasted for over 20 hours for the most part they were respectful, thoughtful deliberations. There were some heated exchanges but very little animosity. In the end, we were a hung jury and a mistrial was declared.

Ask me questions in comments about the case, if you like. I'll answer and/or give greater detail as to why, as much as it pained me to say so, I thought the accuser was lying.

Merry War on Christmas!

2008-12-10T06:41:00.002-06:00

I am reposting my Christmas Card from last year. Feel free to download it for your personal War On Christmas Use. Onward, Christmas Soldiers!

Jury Duty

2008-12-08T18:06:00.004-06:00

Because I didn't miss enough work with my faux heart attack scare and subsequent vicodin bender, today I reported for jury duty to find myself empaneled on a jury for a case that should take all week.

I have always wanted to be on jury duty. But somehow the county couldn't find me for the last five years when I had no job (or at least gainful employment). Let's just say the timing sux.

Of course, I'd love to tell you all about it, but rules are rules. It is a criminal case, I think that's all I'm allowed to divulge.

Cross your fingers that they do not make me foreman. I plan to pick my nose in public for the first part of the day tomorrow.

If I ever get there, I should add. Big snowstorm is predicted for tonight. The kids stand a good chance of having a snow day tomorrow. Have fun, Ben!

Not Much, You?

2008-12-07T18:38:00.002-06:00

As Freida Bee always says "oh yeah, I have a blog". I haven't meant to be lax but let me tell you the last two weeks have been beyond. Major shake up at work. Without going into too much detail, Republican Dude (RD) was doing an even worse job than I had originally suspected. So, careful what you bitch for, because I went from working 20 or so hours a week and setting my own schedule to full time and more, lately putting in 10 hour day averages. Man.

And then last Wednesday night I went to the emergency room with chest pains. I thought of Dr. Monkey, who was my age when he had his heart attack. I thought about mattyboy who went in last year for some chest pain issues. Let me just say that when a whole lotta people come rushing at you with little stickers and wires and machines that go 'bing', it can be pretty scary. I had to stay in the hospital until a little after 1 am. I sent Ben and the girls home at 9 pm and called a cab to get me. Thus far the conclusion is that it was some kind of a pulled muscle in my back or rib cage area. Thursday and Friday are vicodin indused hazes.

Here it is, Sunday night and I am tapping this out on my new laptop while I sit in my armchair. How cool is that? Just wait until we get the wifi router at our house, I'll take all you guys to bed with me. Or something like that. (I wonder if my hit counter will go up with that last statement?)

So that's what's been up with me. Sorry I haven't visited all y'all. I'll be around soon.

Love,

Jess.

2008-12-02T06:46:00.003-06:00

Last night I dreamt that Paris Hilton told me I was fat.

Dear Psyche, haven't we got better things to do with our dreams? Tonight is she going to come and tell me I'm poor?

Oh, and as far as messengers go, I know you've got a Mark Rufalo or a Kenneth Branagh (as Hamlet) in there somewhere.

Let's shape up up there, shall we?

Hopefully, Spelling Is Not a Requirement for These Jobs

2008-11-28T10:22:00.004-06:00

I found this list this morning of Lotta's goals. Lotta is going to be eight in a few weeks.

They are:
Scientist
Archeologist
Music Composer
Athlete
Inventor
Photographer (this one took me a long time to figure out)
Teacher
Chef
Author
Host on a TV show
Veterinarian
Artist
Manager (of what I do not know. Hopefully not a Taco Bell. No offense Taco Bell Managers)

These things do not remain

2008-11-24T04:20:00.006-06:00

Maybe it is the coming on of Thanksgiving, or the thought of how much has been lost and gained in the last year, but I find myself searching through landscapes and buildings that exist only in my mind these days.

I was a child in the late sixties and early seventies. First generation off the farm on dad's side of the family, an extra generation removed on mom's side. A city playground was exotic to me, but a barn, a chicken coop, a dynamite shack - all abandoned - were my familiars.

Suburban homes are tombstones to those places, now. It's not worth grief or a maudlin sensibility but it comes to me that my children haven't the faintest notion of these places.

My grandfather quit farming sometime before I was born. The father of eight, but only two boys, no body wanted his farms. My aunt and her family lived at one but didn't farm it, Grandpa and Grandma retired and lived at the other. Some of the land was used for gravel pits, some for shacks that were specially built to store dynamite road crews were using to carve new roads into the limestone bedrock of the state in the 1950's. Snowmobiles, old cars and furniture were stored in the barn.

I don't know how many years passed between the last cow to have lived in Grandpa's barn and the time that I came to know it. Great big hewn log beams were still whitewashed down below by the cow stalls. Hay decayed on the dirt floor. A manure smell still clung to the timbers, with a topnote of dust and straw. That barn and the dairy barns of today have little in common.

At some point in the middle of the last century, the old highway that passed just outside Grandpa's front door was moved. They ran it along side the railroad tracks that divided the farmhouse from the barns. The new highway was just feet away from the big red barn with the "King Midas" flour sign painted 20 feet high on the eastern side of the barn.

There were 1000 abandoned acres for playing in. There were those dynamite shacks I mentioned. They were gunmetal gray and had no windows, but one small tightly locked door. The rumor was that if we searched the area we might find a stick or two of dynamite that fell off a truck once upon a time a long long time ago. Never did.

The gravel pit had giant piles of gravel. I've never slid down a mountain scree, but as a child knew how to slide down gravel. It gave way under your feet, you dig your heels in a little, bring your feet to parallel with the earth, not the hill. Were the gravel was dug were ponds. We were told they were as deep as 90 feet. Swimming was not allowed. I remember being with my dad on at least one occasion were strangers had to be yelled at, told to get out of the ponds before the sheriff was called and trespassing was charged. There was never any real trouble.

At my cousin's house there was a chicken coop. Plastic forts and 'play structures' have nothing on the beautiful simplicity of a chicken coop for a playhouse. The scale was perfect for little girls. There were windows, both at our eye level and up near the top. An old abandoned silo housed only bats. Dares were made about who could go in and for how long.

Old cars were another thing. There were abandoned cars to make forts out of everywhere. Like skeletons, the stripped out cars didn't offer clues about what they had been if a former life. But I'm guessing old Buicks or DeSoto's from the thirties. They were so commonplace then that it is sometimes catches me that my kids have never been in an old stripped out car. There were at least two in the woods behind my house. There was a junk pit next to my friend's house. In that was a Volkswagen Beetle. At the edges of my memory are so many old trucks. Some working, others not. Cracked leather over horsehair seats, dust and grease. If you bottled the smell, I'd buy it and sit on my porch remembering a child's eye view petulant gear boxes, cigarettes, rolled up sleeves, itchy seats where tears showed springs and stuffing. Rust and hope.

There were cellars. In cellars were salamanders and low ceilings and dark corners. At one farm of a not-relative but damned close, the men spent parties down in the cellar, near where the farmer put up wine. Nobody drank that wine, we heard it was godawful from our folks. But down there inside the cellar built up of field stones, ones that actually did come from out of the fields the farmers tried to coax from land poured over by glacial till, there was a smell of grapes and yeast and lime mortar and dirt. And that night's spilled beer. Kids liked to hang off the wooden stair rail and eavesdrop on the men. Until we gave up trying to translate their stories or spot the funny part of the story that got them all laughing. Then we'd run outside beneath the halogen light that formed the big greening circle around the yard, the darkened edges of it evoking mystery and danger. Run, run out into the dark, it is time for 'moonlight starlight'. A million places around the farmhouse to hide in the dark, listening for Olly olly ump ump free.

And we ran.

If I could find the road back to a soft June night, under a farmyard light inside its circle, outside of it beneath stars, pumping my legs and screaming and running back to 'home', right now I would take that road. I would like just a little visit back. Only for the evening.

Five Years Out. Two Months In. Conclusion: Work Sucks.

2008-11-20T07:06:00.003-06:00

I have been working part time since my daughter started kindergarten. I am in a very unusual position of having gone back to work for the guy I hired nine years ago to take over my job. At this point I'm sure he views me as subordinate to him, because in the interim my parents, who started the business, sold it to my brothers who each have a 40% share and to republican dude who has a 20% share.

I haven't being doing the job that I did way back when. I've been going in to do the financials. For two months it has been breaking my heart to see what this guy has been doing to the company that my dad built from the ground up. In essence, Mr. Republican Dude is returning it right back to the ground from which it came.

Everything blew up on Tuesday. No sense going into it here, just suffice it to say that at a point where he insulted MY intelligence by admitting that he was incapable of doing something therefore so would I, too, be incapable, I asked the accountant to explain the checks written out by Republican Dude to himself on a Cost of Goods Sold account and not a reimbursement account. It was not a clear accusation of theft, but a point of incompetence with serious repercussions. And I was making the point that both RD and the accountant are not doing their jobs.

Well, today I go back to work. Bet they're going to be happy to see me, eh?

Senator Palin Stevens Loses in Alaska

2008-11-18T20:34:00.002-06:00

Look, I never went in for the fables the right wing told about Sarah Palin. Every single trope they threw up was easily dispelled by facts. The right loved to tout her resume as a corruption buster. Yet in the middle of the Ted Stevens Corruption Affair she would not commit to condemnation of his activities until the court rendered its verdict.

As grown ups we know that there is a valley vast and wide between the truth and what is actionable in a court of law. I believe that in ethics circles (not recently traversed by republicans) the term is impropriety or the APPEARANCE of impropriety. Palin could have, ball buster she's supposed to be, declaimed Stevens merely on the appearance of impropriety.

Well not only did Stevens get busted for felony indictments while our Sarah did nothing, now it seems the angels have found way for Stevens to lose his election bid.

There will be a D behind the name of the Senator from Alaska, one Honorable Mark Begich, which means that Mrs. Palin cannot dismiss Stevens and claim the job for herself.

Now, lets all sit back and see how she (retroactively) tackles this corruption.

Car Trouble. (Or, Can You Drive With Your Nose Up in the Air?)

2008-11-18T10:23:00.008-06:00

There's a commercial on television that shows young girls playing. The voice over talks about how she was your friend when you were young and how together you got in all kinds of trouble that your dad secretly laughed about. The commercial urges you to call her.

Whenever I see that ad I think of my childhood best friend. Except that there is no way that I could ever call her. Nor would I want to. When I was thirty I made the mistake of marrying her brother. Eighteen months later he had a new girlfriend and I was asked to leave.

She never spoke to me again. She never called during the divorce process to say...what? Anything, I guess. She could have said she was sorry that I was going through a hard time, without being sorry for being related to an asshole. Assholes, by the way, were in extreme abundance in her family. That was ten years ago.

I was relieved after my divorce to move away from my hometown so that I wouldn't have to run into any of the ex's relatives, most especially my childhood friend, and to a lesser extent, her parents. But five years ago we moved back. I'm just blocks from my high school alma mater. I can refer to the house I live in by the name of the family who we bought it from and people know where I live. Last month I skipped a funeral where I knew my ex or members of his family would be, but otherwise our paths don't seem to cross.

Two years ago I was in a car accident. I was in Milwaukee, about 90 miles from home, when a woman ran an intersection and T-boned my car. The police officer took me to a car rental shop and arranged for my car to be towed to the auto body place. The car rental agency sent me home with a PT Cruiser.

If any of you own PT Cruisers or are fond of them, I apologize in advance. I don't like those cars and having to drive around in one for six weeks didn't improve my opinion of them. Call me snobby, but I was embarrassed to be seen in the car. Had it said "LOANER CAR" in great big letters on the door that would be one thing, I probably wouldn't have minded. But as it was, when I had that car it looked like it was mine own. My taste.

My daughters take dance classes at a studio that shares the building with a gymnastics company. One night after dance class I saw my childhood friend's husband watching their children in gymnastics. Every week after that I tried to time my exit so that I wouldn't run into them, rushing my girls out of their dance shoes and into their parkas and fleeing for the parking lot.

One night the timing was off. As I was getting into my PT Cruiser, I looked up and saw an enormous Cadillac Escalade parked too close to my passenger side. Inside was you-know-who staring down at me and my little PT Cruiser.

I've no idea what she was thinking. I don't know if I imagined scorn or ridicule. It was the last time I saw her in person.

The question at the end of this story is: Who is the biggest snob?

I think, though I would never never ever want to be seen in an Escalade either, the answer is probably me.

I Hope It Doesn't Hurt (Maybe They Have Nicely Scented Lube)

2008-11-14T09:09:00.002-06:00

There's a beautiful old hotel in Milwaukee called the Pfister. I never gave the name any thought until Beck came to Milwaukee for Summerfest and on a national interview claimed he was a little nervous to be staying in a luxury hotel called the "Fister".

Yikes.

We are going there tonight for a little fete, called the Lombardi Challenge. It's a fundraiser with a silent auction, dozens of restaurant samples and wine tasting.

I believe I'll open my gullet, but tighten my sphincter.

Have a great weekend!

Remember the "Glamour Don'ts"?

2008-11-11T15:41:00.004-06:00

Oh, anonymous politician, what were you thinking?

(From a post at the Glamour-Do Princess Sparkle Pony's House. Go see what Condi Rice has gone and done to herself. Extreme Makeover? You decide.)

Those mavericky maverikkkers 'll be right back! Ka-pow pow!

2008-11-10T07:39:00.003-06:00

Click to embiggen

If not for that liberal media, you'd believe that John McCain lost ...why? It's too bad GDP is already in widespread use as an acronym because The Grand Delusion Party seems just about right.

Say What?

2008-11-08T13:12:00.003-06:00

There's been a lot of chatter in the last few days about how a resurgent democratic party should treat the republicans who've just gotten tossed. I'm going to bet that no one ever told Newt Gingrich when he took over a republican congress in 95 that he ought to play nice. Demonizing the opposition was chapter one of his playbook.

Two of the conversations on this topic can be found at D-Caps place as well as D-Cups.

As far as republicans being utterly clueless and tone deaf, you've got to read this letter to the editor in my morning paper. Amazing me and that guy even exist on the same planet!

Too bad respect didn't extend to Bush

While your recent editorial urging the country to "pull together" following the election was right on the mark and appropriate, we should not overlook what we've witnessed over the past six or eight years. That has been the constant uncivil, cruel and disgraceful attacks launched against President Bush.

He has been disparaged, vilified, disrespected and demonized without end by commentators, political pundits, editorial cartoonists and late night comedians, among others.

Lost in this frenzy of ridicule is the fact that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Bush came to office or were beyond his control.

We do need more civility and respect for one another, as your editorial stated. It's just too bad such generous thoughts were not put forth long ago on behalf of President Bush. I'm sure the political right will give our new president better treatment and the respect he deserves.

- Fred Wagner, Clinton

I bet that this guy just HATES that he lives in a town named "Clinton".

Up The Stairs the Slaves Laid

2008-11-05T09:38:00.004-06:00

This morning I heard Donna Brazile say that the steps of the Capitol were laid by slaves. Nearly 200 years later, a black man is going to climb those stairs, raise his hand and take the oath of office to be the president of all of us.

Hope may take a few hundred years to float. But here we are.

Little things you should know

2008-11-04T19:47:00.003-06:00

It's election night. Here in my area there was a bomb threat that sent all the voters in a 75% dem ward to a new polling place. I volunteered at the office where ALL of the Wisconsin voters who needed voting assistance or a ride to the polls had their phones mysteriously fail this afternoon.

Think the republicans love a clean campaign?

(FYI: calls were not being received at the Statewide Obama campaign number today. BUT- people who called and asked for rides to the polls and were disconnected by phone failures, we got their numbers and we called them back.)

Maybe in four years from now we will welcome everyone's vote. Maybe by then Americans won't hope that the way to power is through suppression of the will of the American people.

We Voted.

2008-11-04T14:19:00.004-06:00

The alarm went off at 5:30, but I was already awake. (The end of daylight saving time helped). I made breakfast, coffee, got the paper. Woke the kids. We did our usual morning routine, just an hour earlier than we normally would.

Then we went to our polling place to be there when the doors opened at 7 am.

The line was long, but our volunteers were organized. We saw lots of neighbors in line too. Some who've got McCain signs out, but others who we know are Obama supporters.

Lotta came to my booth with me. I showed her the ballot and pointed to Barack Obama's name. We have a paper ballot thats marked with a number two pencil. You fill in the center of an arrow that points to the candidate's name. My votes all went to democrats, but I fill each one out anyway.

My daughter saw me cast a ballot for the first black candidate. She saw me vote to re-elect our openly gay congresswoman, Tammy Baldwin. None of these votes were probable, if not impossible, when I was seven years old.

I took the girls door-to-door canvassing on Sunday. I really want them to remember this election. Even when they are 95 years old, I want them to tell their great-grandchildren that they helped elect Barack Obama. Lotta will say she saw my vote. She'll say she put it into the counting machine for me.

Ima went in the voting booth with her father. "Who'd he vote for, Ima?" I asked.

"I don't know" she said, rolling her eyes. "I can't read!"

"Well did the name start with an 'O' or an 'M'?"

Ben, the republican in the house, laughed. "That's why I took her with me. So she wouldn't know."

"This is a historic vote, Ben. Don't you want your girls to know how you voted?"

After telling us he voted for a man, that he voted for a man with an 'A' in his name, that he voted for a man with an 'A' in his name who is running for president, he broke down and told us he voted for Barack Obama.

I hope many many more of us vote for Obama than for the other candidate with an 'A' in his name.

Peace, friends. I hope tomorrow brings us joy.

Hope.

Write Up the Goddamned Nominating Papers.

2008-10-30T18:21:00.001-05:00

I want that fucking mother of the year trophy, bitches. I just sat through High School Musical. Spoiler Alert: Troy never does get laid.

A Fabulous Time Was Had by All

2008-10-28T19:05:00.003-05:00

I am a wonder of science. My bout with pinkeye lasted from approx. 3 am Friday morning to 9 pm Friday night, which was just enough time for me to have to go to the doctor (hatehatehateyhate) but not enough time to even get my prescription filled.

Ima and Lotta went with their grandparents Friday after school so I was all alone until Sunday at 1:30.

This is what I did:

Friday - Went to see doctor at 4 pm. Went to Walgreens, but prescription wasn't ready. Left with Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, a can of cream of mushroom soup and minute rice plus two moonpies. (This is the crappy way I ate in college. Ah, memories). Fell asleep on the couch at 8:30. Woke up at 9:30 with miraculously cured eyeball. Trust me, Lourdes has nothing on my couch. Only tell this to pilgrims who will shell out $100 dollars for the privilege of falling asleep on my couch to obtain curative miracle. Curative miracles guaranteed only to those whose faith is beyond reproach.

Saturday - Built a fire in the fireplace and read magazines all morning. People seem to really like this Obama guy. They do not seem to care for that McCain fellow. At least in the magazines I read this weekend. National Geographic is still in its wrapper, but I'm guessing not so much on McCain for them either. 1 pm filled prescription that I don't really need. Went shopping for Halloween costume odds and ends at JoAnn Fabrics. Went to Savers and got a suede winter coat for 40 bucks. Eat it, retail!!! Ate lunch at old people's dinner time (4:30) at the Hubbard Avenue Diner. Always think I should buy Mattyboy a t-shirt from there. Will do that after I get the local "Missouri Tavern" t-shirt for Dr. Zaius. Worked on Halloween costumes. Wondered if 'Supermom Sarah Palin' ever made a Halloween costume for Pogo or Sapling or Fig. Drank wine. Finished a stars and stripes themed sock for my mother. She has patriotic feet.

Sunday morning - took dogs for a walk while wearing my cool suede winter coat from Savers because it was cold as a witch's what-y-hoo. Dogs seemed to appreciate my new sense of style. Probably I'll find out that I'm way out of style. Dogs still won't care as long as I bag their doo for them. Cleaned house with amazing speed. Wished I had bought more Moonpies. (Moonpies are very very new to our local Walgreens. We're pretty far north for the usual moonpie territory). Everyone got home at about 1:30. At 2pm I secretly longed for a little more alone time.

A Great Weekend

2008-10-24T08:12:00.004-05:00

This weekend is the Food and Wine show in Kohler, Wisconsin. Ben and I have plans to attend. In addition to all kinds of food and wine tastings, educational seminars, good eats, there are shows too. Ilan and Hung, winners from Top Chef seasons two and three will be having a cook-off. I met a woman who attended last year who said her only complaint was that the tequila tastings were at ten in the morning. Whoo-hoo. The in-laws are on their way to pick up Lotta and Ima. They are going back to Grandma and Grand-dads for a Halloween party and weekend o' fun. Up whose alley does this whole thing run? Mine, dammit.

Until I woke up this morning with pinkeye.

Crap.

(On the bright side **not too bright, the lights hurt** I will have the house to myself for the whooooooole weekend).

Presented Without Comment

2008-10-23T12:17:00.003-05:00

But I'd love to see yours.

(Just don't pick on the ~~lady's~~ woman's weight, kay? There's enough material there without going down that drive-thru.)

The Palin Wardrobe

2008-10-22T16:06:00.002-05:00

Okay, it's been discussed to death. But have you considered that $150,000 worth of clothes is $2000 every day for the two months that Governor Palin will have been on the campaign trail?

And they are going to solve our fiscal problems? Lady, here's a suggestion: Wear something twice.

Lotta Wundrun; Conversations with the 7 yo

2008-10-20T19:02:00.003-05:00

Lotta: Momma, if you could go back in time and change anything what would it be?

Me: How far back can I go?

Lotta: 7 years. [ed. note- 7 years = 1 lifetime to a 7 yo]

Me: Could I cheat and go back 8 years?

Lotta: Sure.

Me: I'd go to Florida and work my butt off to make sure they changed those butterfly ballots that gave the Jewish vote to anti-Semite Pat Buchanan and 500 too many votes to George W. Bush.

Lotta: If I could go back in time I'd go back 2000 years and stop the first war.

Me: Oh, sweetie, the first war was probably 200,000 years ago when more than 10 cavemen decided they all wanted a bigger piece of the mastodon.

Lotta: (60 Minutes piece on the War in Afghanistan is on TV) Well, I'd like to go back and stop this war.

Me: If Al Gore had won we wouldn't have had these wars. So my trip to Florida would save you your trip.

Joe the Plumber is full of shit.

2008-10-16T17:36:00.006-05:00

Apparently Joe the Plumber doesn't have a plumbing license. Guess what? It is illegal in ~~Ohio~~ Toledo to perform plumbing work without a license. Given Joe's age (mid 30's) he could have registered to become an apprentice, but one can only be an apprentice for five years. Joe says he's been plumbing illegally for 6 years. If Joe really wants to buy that business, he'll need a Masters Plumbing License, unless he wants to keep his boss on as his employee. Every plumbing shop needs a licensed master plumber on board.

If he starts now it will take at least seven years of schooling, testing and professional experience for Joe to obtain his Masters license, so his concern about Obama's tax plan seems to be the least of his worries in his dream to make $250,000/yr.

Most plumbers today are scrambling for work. With housing starts down, many plumbers are laid off or are cooling their heels on the union 'bench'. Even remodeling which usually picks up when housing starts fall is down because of the credit crisis.

Joe says he works in a two man shop. It is not legal for Joe to work unless he is directly and constantly supervised by his boss. If they charge $100 an hour for their labor the most money they could gross would be $208,000 a year. If they charge $100 an hour for both plumbers they need to be turned in to the Better Business Bureau, because, again, Joe is qualified to do nothing more than manual labor. That $208,000 is their max gross profit working 52 weeks a year/40 hours a week. From that, they need to pay for their plumbing van, their tools, their gas (the price of which more than doubled in the last eight years, Joe. Real plumbing companies are more concerned about that), their healthcare and so on.

If Joe's boss is talking about selling the business for $250,000 trust me it will be a looooong time before they net that profit in a year.

If McCain is going to send shills around to Obama's appearances, he should at least send genuine Americans who have genuine concerns. McCain's problem is that he has never met a genuine American.

P.S. If McCain sold Cindy's $300,000 convention night get up he could buy Joe's business for him. If Ohio officials look into Joe's illegal plumbing activities and shut him down it is the least Daddy Beerbucks could do for his "old buddy Joe".

Separated at Birth?

2008-10-16T09:12:00.004-05:00

That spittle sucking noise he kept making at last night's debate reminded me of someone....

Finally Something Broke Our Way

2008-10-14T20:30:00.002-05:00

If you believe the thesis of the wildly popular book 'Blink' most people make up their minds in an instant. Really, we don't have undecided voters we have people who need to be assured that their first instinct is okay. If you think of Obama and McCain as brands it is obvious why Obama is ahead in the polls.

No one wants to be associated with the people who are currently buying the McCain dish soap. All weekend long the news showed that clip of the freaky lady from Minnesota who called Obama an Arab. They showed it as proof that McCain hadn't slipped over the edge into racist creepy bashing because he tells that lady 'no, no my opponent is a family man'.

The problem is that the world saw BATSHITCRAZY40CATSINTHEHOUSE lady and said 'whoa wait a minute-I'm not buying the same crap that lady buys'.

Not even Joe Sixpack wants to be associated with that crap.

How do I know? I asked.

Jess: Hi Joe. Say, did you see that all the guys in wife beaters are out for McCain?

Joe: Yeah, I did. But so's that crazy freaked hair lady. Fuck. I'm not on her stinky ass side.

Jess: Really? Why?

Joe: Do you think I'd ever get laid again if people thought I was in deep with the cat people? I fucking think not.

Jess: It's true that if you vote for the half black guy people might think you've got some mojo to go.

Joe: Fuckin' A. Plus, have you noticed that the republicans don't really seem to have my interests at heart?

Jess: yes, Joe I have. I have.

Me me me me me me Meme

2008-10-14T20:18:00.002-05:00

Lord lord. You open yourself up for one meme and then there's more. It's like meme porn. I'm expecting the pizza delivery guy to ask me to type the answers to five questions about myself.

Brownchickenbrowncow. (sing that, you'll get it).

Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein has tagged me with this meme he got from Splotchy who has made silliness an art form.

Here goes:

The rules.

1. Post the rules

2. Close your eyes

3. Count to five seconds

4. Type a whole bunch of random crap on the keyboard while you're counting

5. Open your eyes

6. Tag a few people

alkjd

lkeowsekmn

b kjsoekn mcaciani

kmamaoendoiken

lkmea

amel.

There, look! It is a prayer in maninka that John McCain go home to Arizona ne'er to bother us no more. Lovely. And even though it was thrust upon me from a monkey, it was not 1000 monkeys typing for 1000 years to come up with Hamlet. Or however that stupid trope goes.

I never tag anyone because I am a brat like that.

Kisses.
Jess.

Say a Little Meme with Me

2008-10-14T16:27:00.005-05:00

The Delightful DGuzman of Impeachment and other dreams tagged me with a meme. Little questions, little answers. Let's see how this goes:

1. Clothes Shop: Savers. Like Goodwill, but money goes to Easter Seals. Whenever you take something there for donation, they give you a 20% off coupon. I started shopping there because the Wundruns are trying to only buy American made products or second hand items. I may never go back to "real" clothes stores again. Honestly, I've probably never bought nicer clothes for myself than since I started buying second hand. (Most of which have never been worn). My little secret is that I've been buying shoes there, too. An amazing amount of shoes come in never worn. I've taken to wearing chunky heels to work, I threaten Artie, the republican dude with a kick to the crotcheola if he pisses me off. Heels are very empowering. Whoops, I digress.

2. Furniture Shop: My sofas came from a local boutique and were manufactured in North Carolina. My kitchen set is a '50s chrome and vinyl retro deal I got at an antique store. My dining room table is from Ikea (it seats ten). My bed is still the one I had when I was married to the ex. Feng Shui acolytes will tell me I ought to get rid of it, what with the fact that ex boned his girlfriend on it. Oh well.

3. Sweet: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

4. City: Middleton Wisconsin, population 16,000. If I run for mayor, maybe the next stop would be the White House?

5. Drink: pinot grigio. (red wine makes my tummy go whoo.) I'll never turn down a Margarita on the rocks no salt, though.

6. Music: it dawned on me today that I have a thing for wussy bands: Cold Play, Snow Patrol, Oasis. But this is just a phase. It could be worse, I could have said Toby Keith.

7. TV Series: Mad Men

8. Film: Auntie Mame (but you knew that)

9. Workout: yoga. There's a nap at the end for pete's sake! Oh, and I should mention here that I finally got the kayak I was dreaming about last spring. More on that later.

10: Pastries: birthday cake (particularly if it is mine)

11. Coffee: Fair Trade whole bean. I like Guatemalan and Costa Rican. (Coffee is exempt from our 'buy American' program, though Maui Girl says I should buy Hawaiian Kona coffee.)

m. yu's humble pie

2008-10-13T20:01:00.003-05:00

m. yu who has the fabulous but NSFW bondage blog The Jade Gate and the political blog Social Seppuku wrote a post the other day about the heightened anxiety of Americans as our consumption-based economy comes crashing down around us. I loved the post and thought it would make a good movie. Here's the movie. You can read the original post here

The Tooth Fairy Has Experienced a Derivitives Meltdown

2008-10-10T10:16:00.005-05:00

It finally happened.

I have a few recurring fears about motherhood

1. After big Christmas dinner w/wine, will fall asleep and forget about Santa coming.
2. After big Easter dinner w/wine, will fall asleep and forget about Easterbunny coming.
3. After nothing in particular will forget that even the tenth lost tooth requires trip from tooth fairy, will fall asleep and forget.

#3 happened last night.

We hear today that Governor Sarah Palin has written her own report on trooper gate and has exonerated herself. According to Princess Sparkle Pony, today should be celebrated as "Clear Yourself of All Wrongdoing Day".

Then, in the interest of honoring this day, I officially know nothing about why the fairy did not show up. I was asleep after all, how would I know?

True Story

2008-10-09T08:41:00.003-05:00

Artie (Republican Dude or R.D.) at work says that the economic mess is the fault of poor people who took out mortgages they can't afford. I argue that is why we have government oversight, to prevent predatory lending practices. Me: blame goes to predatory lenders. He: blame goes to irresponsible borrowers.

Not two minutes after above debate, he tells me that if he had foreseen the current economic crisis he wouldn't have bought the house he is in.

"Why's that" I say, just wondering.

"It's too much mortgage for me".

Kid you not. Exact quotes.

Umm, Why?

2008-10-07T21:09:00.001-05:00

Why did McCain want to do so many town hall style debates? He is breathing heavy, writing copious notes and for all the world sounding like the guy who wants you off his lawn. He seemed LOADS more presidential behind the podium.

Note to Barack: accept the offer for another 11 townhall style debates in the next month!

When She Wallows in the Mud with Her Lipstick On, What Shall We Call Her?

2008-10-04T20:22:00.003-05:00

The McCain Campaign, dewy with anxious flop sweat, has determined that the road to the Whitehouse is not paved with anything, but that it is indeed just a muddy rutted back-country road.

Today, free from fear that someone will call her on her bullshit, Sarah Palin called Obama a terrorist for palling around with William Ayers, a 60's radical member of the Weather Underground who is now a professor of English at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Every leading mainstream newsource has discredited any association between Obama and Ayers as a passing acquaintance.

Righties have been trying to push this meme for longer than the Jeremiah Wright canard. One would almost think that Obama hates his country so much he would sleep with a secessionist, and that secessionists business partner to boot. (I mean of course, Todd Palin and his ex-business partner, in case you hadn't heard).

Inside that glass house of Ms. Palin's from whence she is tossing these stones are the other glaring inadequacies of her own:

Drug-addicted son with anger management difficulties swept off to Iraq.
Pregnant teen daughter set to wed high school drop-out boyfriend.
Illegal tax evasion for not paying taxes on unethical per diem charges against the State of Alaska, taken for the days she stayed home and worked out of her house in Wasilla
The bending of zoning rules for her own profit while mayor of Wasilla
The failure of the new Alaska pipeline, thanks to a plan to build it straight through Native American property in Canada (that would require diplomacy with a hostile foreign nation, I guess). Even though Palin asked constituents to pray that God's will be done in building the pipeline.
The continued lie about a "Bridge to Nowhere" and reformer fight to take on her own party. As yet she has not distanced herself from indicted Senator Ted Stevens
The witch hunting pastor.
The troopergate coverup
The tens of thousands of dollars in gifts she received illegally while in office.
The number of people she had fired for disloyalty
Defying open records laws by conducting government business on an easily hackable yahoo mail account.
Todd Palin's inclusion in government business.
All the hypocrisy.

Add yer own.

Make me a pundit

2008-10-02T21:36:00.002-05:00

Last week I hit the depths of despair because I thought that Obama might have not done as well as expected.

This week I saw a solid win by Joe Biden. Palin had notes--wait, I'll capitalize SARAH PALIN SPOKE FROM NOTES and still made no sense.

If anyone says Palin won it is only because she didn't throw up on her shoes.

The one clincher moment that Biden let go by was when they were talking about the commander in chief Biden should have said "Are you prepared?"

That would have won the election by twenty points.

Sarah Palin is Dumber Than.....

2008-10-02T17:39:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I mentioned that I hope I don't get called an anti-woman woman for calling Sarah Palin dumber than a box of rocks. Since then I've come across several uses of this same colloquialism for Sarah's endumberment. So I thought, as a public service to both of you reading this that I would google up a list of instances where other bloggers call Sarah dumber than something. And the results are:

Sarah Palin is dumber than Bush
Sarah Palin is dumber than a box of rocks (also plain rocks, a bunch of rocks, a bag of rocks)
Sarah Palin is dumber than a sack of doorknobs
Sarah Palin is dumber than me
Sarah Palin is dumber than a sack of hammers
Sarah Palin is dumber than we thought
Sarah Palin is dumber than John McCain's daughter
Sarah Palin is dumber than a stick
Sarah Palin is dumber than a moose
Sarah Palin is dumber than a snail
Sarah Palin is dumber than a seventh grader
Sarah Palin is dumber than a doornail (yikes!)
Sarah Palin is dumber than a dumb thing from dumbsville
Sarah Palin is dumber than a fence post
Sarah Palin is dumber than a tub of Elmers Paste
Sarah Palin is dumber than a box of Sarah Palins
Sarah Palin is dumber than a bag of cat shit
Sarah Palin is dumber than a pile of bricks

My two faves? Sarah Palin is dumber than a dumb thing from dumbsville and Sarah Palin is dumber than a box of Sarah Palins.

Dear Family Values Voters: Thanks for bringing down the empire.

2008-10-02T15:46:00.005-05:00

let us eat cake

Regular readers will attest that I am no genius. Just one of many (ha ha, I kid). But whenever I've come across a blog that asks what will be the legacy of the Bush presidency, for five years at least my answer has been "His presidency will mark the beginning of the end of the United States' role as world superpower". Generally, my opinion was that we wouldn't notice ourselves in a post-American era until after he left office, but it seems that the end of the empire is all too evident right this moment.

In 1989 I was an intern at the United Nations (yes, this gives me more foreign policy experience in spades than Sarah Palin.)That September, I saw George H. W. Bush give his speech before the UN General Assembly. At that time the Berlin Wall had a little less than two months left to go but the jokes at the UN went that GDR (the acronym for East Germany-German Democratic Republic) stood for Gradually Disappearing Republic. History was flipping over in those days, but honestly, inside the UN there wasn't alot of discussion of re-alignment, or the "New World Order".

I don't even recall what Bush talked about. I think it was fairly standard fare. The General Assembly hall was full to the rafters. I sat up in the gallery, next to a Russian staffer. When Bush concluded, the General Assembly cleared. "Who's next?" asked the Russian next to me. "I think Poland speaks next" I said. "Oh," contemplated the Russian" and then in thick Boris accent he said "Unnn Luckkky Poe-lund!" You see, the president of the United States was always such a big draw that any following speaker was left feeling deflated giving a speech to the backs of exiting diplomats.

Reports from Bush v.43.2 at Tuesday's UN General Assembly speech are that many attendants were anything but attentive.

According to the German journal Spiegel

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN

The Post American Era. Welcome to it.

Now here is the thing. The last two elections were so close that one was stolen and the next one was so close that it probably was stolen. What got W re-elected after a dismal four years was reportedly "Family Values Voters" meaning not family values at all, but hysterically anti-choice people voting for Bush on the dream and a prayer that he would make abortions illegal and that all cell divisions past the second one would be protected with the might and weight of the full United States Government-all the way up until birth. (And then those babies formerly known as fetuses are on their own.)

In two hundred years and beyond, students of history are going to be baffled by the idea that the right wing fundamentalist hope that women must be forced to bear children that they could not afford nor raise responsibly would be the issue that brought down the greatest superpower in history. This is particularly true because we are also at the end of an era where sustainability is a polite and hopeful word and turning toward an era where every activity of human commerce will need to be sustainable.

I use an easy definition of sustainable as "anything the 6 billion inhabitants of the world can engage in without destroying the earth". The stock market, because it measures progress only in growth is not sustainable. Our shopping malls and markets that produce more waste than useable products that will glut refuse sites and continue to pollute the earth are not sustainable. Having unlimited children and increasing the population further is not sustainable. How the future deals with over population is beyond me. I simply have no idea, but I do know there will be a fundamental shift in thinking between now and then. Perhaps it is a bit like looking back and trying to figure out how a fear of witches could produce hysteria in the new world. We're pretty far removed from the supernatural hopes and fears that guided people in the 17th century.

So, right wing fundie mouth breathers: for bringing us two terms of George W. Bush's reign of error- thanks so much for the Post-American Era. I hope you enjoy your Chinese overlords. BTW, have you heard about their ideas for family planning? Bet you're not too thrilled with those.

The Onion Nails the Care Bear

2008-09-30T05:47:00.003-05:00

Watch clip. You may be tempted to believe it's true, but it is from the Onion.

Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad Against McCain

Republican Cannibals

2008-09-29T15:32:00.002-05:00

If they're going to eat their own, I should hope they send out the disclaimer about eating raw or undercooked meat. With the GOP you never know where that flank steak has been!

Okay, Newt is sorta kinda sticking by Palin.

Kathleen Parker says most feminists are hairy, so ain't it great that she could get behind Sarah Palin, until she discovered that there's no there there. The link is to NPR, who has a link to the original article at National Review Online.

Speaking of - Wick Wilson former editor of the National Review is actually claiming that he'll vote for Obama. This is a great column about how the conservatives have lost their way, degenerating into a party he does not recognize.

Today I casually mentioned to Republican Dude (RD) at work that I think after the shenanigans of the last few weeks that it must be embarrassing to follow McCain. Te he. Naturally, he disagreed, thinking that Joe Biden is more of an embarrassment than McCain's little temper tantrumy stunts at the end of the week.

Paul Newman has died.

2008-09-27T10:52:00.003-05:00

It seems silly to be so saddened by the death of a person I don't know, but I am. What a great man. What a sad loss.

Never have been so dissappointed

2008-09-26T21:32:00.001-05:00

We Watch as Sarah Palin Endumbens Herself Before Our Eyes

2008-09-25T22:59:00.004-05:00

"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is — from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to ... to our state," -Sarah Palin to Katie Couric

Um, why is Putin flying around in Alaska? Does Sarah know that Russia is actually quite large and that if he's going to Washington he's got no reason to go thousands of miles out of his way to fly around above Alaska? Will someone call her on it? Is pointing out that she's stupider than a box of rocks sexist?

I am just wondering.

Help Shape the Debates

2008-09-25T22:13:00.004-05:00

Free Press is looking for a few good men and women to provide instant feedback on how the media is presenting the debates. If you sign up you'll be asked to watch whichever debates you want and respond on how you feel the debates are being covered. The data will be used to provide media and moderators with a scorecard on their own performance. If you don't sign up a horrible recession, war, famine and a Britney Spears comeback will surely follow! Help.

Here's the link: www.freepress.net/debates

Now All We Need is a Plague of Frogs...

2008-09-24T15:16:00.003-05:00

Zowie, that John McCain sure feels like it's important to govern these days. Remember how they sort of shut down the first day of the convention because there was a hurricane brewing down south? That helped McCain keep Bushie away, a bonus. Sadly, when Katrina struck McCain was eating birthday cake with the big chimpster.

Now McCain thinks that perhaps he should not appear with Barack Obama at their scheduled debate because there's this financial thing a ma roo going down. McCain says he ought to git on back to Washington and start doing some senatorin'.

Great idea, John. You know, way back when you might have considered actually casting a vote on the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act rather than simply "present".

Maybe McCain's campaign slogan should change from "Country First" to "Better Late than Never".

Nah, too honest for the Straight Talk Express.

BREAKING: Clay Aiken Is....

2008-09-23T22:22:00.003-05:00

Gay!!!

I know. Shocking isn't it? Not since Rock Hudson came out of the closet has-

Oh forget it. I don't even have the heart to go on. Say, did you see the FBI is going to investigate the Welfare Queens for possible financial hankery pankery. Ya think?

Welfare Queens

2008-09-23T08:12:00.006-05:00

If I had a billion dollars for every time I heard a jackass on tee vee this week exclaim that corporate executives being handed free money FROM THE TAXPAYERS deserve to make whatever salary they can get away with cuz hey that's capitalism, I could actually bail us out of this mess.

If the government gives your company more money than it is worth to fix the mess you made that is not capitalism, no matter how hard you try to spin that onion.

I heard some con on the other day say that in America everyone has the right to go before their employer and ask for what they are worth. This in defense of the CEO's who brought down our economy. I thought 'damn, what an eloquent argument for collective bargaining'. Somehow I'm sure that's not what the guy had in mind.

UPDATE: If you are so inclined, here is a petition: http://action.seiu.org/bailout/

The Ten Places to See Before You're Ten

2008-09-21T13:03:00.002-05:00

Travel and Leisure magazine has produced a list of ten places kids should see before they are ten. Having both children and a love of travel, this kind of list is right up my alley. (If an alley is a geographical entity, have I mixed my metaphors? Care.)

Here's the list:

1. The American Visionary Museum, Baltimore
2. Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia
3. Ellis Island, New York
4. Niagara Falls, New York
5. The Sears Tower, Chicago
6. The Grand Canyon
7. Disneyland, Anaheim, California
8. Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles
9. Muir Woods, Marin County California
10. Monterey Aquarium, Monterey California

One nice thing about this list is that it could be done in two family vacations. One to the west coast for the Grand Canyon and all points California, and the rest on a loop south to Virginia up through Baltimore, over to Niagara and home to Wisconsin through Chicago.

One bad thing about this list is that with the exception of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and sort of Niagara Falls it completely ignores us here in 'flyover country'.

The other place I'd have put on this list is Any Foreign Country. Any. My kids' passports show pictures of little babies, which cracks up the much older and wiser 5 and 7 year old travelers. Foreign travel teaches kids that America is not the center of the universe. They will meet people who don't share the same cultural values, for good or for ill. It opens up their thinking in ways that travel within the United States can't.

George Bush and Sarah Palin didn't do any foreign travel until they were in their 40's. Barack Obama traveled all over the world before he was ten. Just sayin.

So what are your suggestions for places my kids should see before they are ten? I'm just wondering.

Social Security, Busted Flat in B'an Rouge Waiting For A Train

2008-09-19T08:58:00.003-05:00

It has been said but bears repeating over and over and over to our rightie friends on the streets and in their cubicles: If we had privatized social security the way that McCain and Bush wanted, fully 25% of the Social Security fund would be gone as of today. And we've got no idea what crisis tomorrow will bring.

It must be the republican efficiency brought to us by the first MBA preznit: He told us Social Security would be busted by 2018. (Others said 2042, making the republicans even more remarkable!) If they had their way they'd have hit that mark a full ten years earlier.

Back From the West

2008-09-18T08:17:00.002-05:00

Hey all y'all. I was out west last week enjoying the spoils of my radio contest victory in which I won a stay at the London Hotel just off Sunset in West Hollywood and dinner at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant at the same hotel.

Really, I need to get myself a laptop. When we travel, Ben takes his work computer with us. Innocent googling of tourist traps and directions to freak shows are allowed. Logging in to my blogger account - not. There's lots and lots I want to say about our trip, but I haven't got the time to plop it all down in one post. Maybe I'll just be an ass and sprinkle little tidbits in all my conversations, on my own blog and yours too: 'Well, when I was following that Bentley up the Pacific Coast Highway it dawned on me....." Yeah, no.

Perhaps you recall that before I left for this trip I positively expected to hate Newport Beach and to love L.A. Well, I got that backwards. (Except that "The O.C.^TM is so conservative there were McCain signs in the art gallery windows. I ain't saying I'd live there!) More on that later.

Here's a nugget: We had lunch at a sidewalk cafe in Venice Beach. Across the sidewalk was a black man selling Barack Obama t-shirts. A mother and her young son, also black, walked up to the man's table. I saw the man put his hand on the young boy's shoulder, bend down and whisper something to the boy. That child grinned from ear to ear and happily put on his Obama shirt. I've no idea what was said between the man and the child, but what I saw on the boy's face was what Obama is all about - Hope. The future. Change.

A Quick Note About Ratings

2008-09-06T10:58:00.004-05:00

I saw someone on the intertubes worrying that Palin and McCain got higher television ratings than Obama and Biden for their respective speeches. If someone mentions this to you remind them that many regular venues are not included in ratings. PBS, C-Span and the Democratic National Convention feed are not included.

Considering that republicans tend to need to have their ideas formed for them by talking heads on the news channels and networks and democrats tend toward PBS, I'm fairly certain more of us were watching than were counted. I started the dem con week on PBS until the fantasy images I had of a waterboarded (not torture! just a nice spa treatment like at Gitmo!) David Brooks made me tune into the jackass-free DNC feed.

Auntie Jess wants you to be in the know.

A Shout Out For Country First!!!

2008-09-05T21:11:00.004-05:00

Seems the McCain theme is "Country First". That's Great! I have been spending the last few months in the exact same endeavor. If you don't normally read my blog, that makes you a) visitor 31 today and b) unaware of my pledge to spend all of my discretionary dollars on products that are Made In America. Yay!!!

You know, Barack Obama has not made a "Country First" pledge. But John McCain has! Doubtless this means that John McCain is doing all he can to buy American products. I bet his family does too. Let's check on Cindy.

Cindy is NOT an elitist even though she claims with a straight face that one cannot get around that big bumpy windy forested state of Arizona by Prius-try as you might. No, all Arizonans get about by means of private jet. That state rocks!!! I am so moving there once I figure out how to fly. 'Cause the lessons and the gas for learnin' are free too!!!

Cindy's outfit for her little fund-raising-not-mentioning-George-Bush-or-what-she-was doing-when-Katrina-struck-not-drugs-kay?-so-fuck-you-libbie speech at the RNC with Laura-my-cheeks-hurt-from-smilin'-so-wicked-I-WILL-go-to rehab!! while not being elitist cost approximately 1/3 more than my house. Here's the math: My house= $200,000. Cindy's outfit= $300,000. I'm sure that if I lose my house the McCain's will feel my pain. It'd be almost like Cindy accidently forgot those diamond earrings on the desk in the suite at the Marriot. Fuck! I hate when that happens. Then again, they have insurance for stupid bonehead moves like that, all I have is a personal sense of dropping out of that promising "ownership society". Crap.

You know there is a figure given by one of my 'buy America first' sources that says that if all American households shifted $20 of their discretionary dollars away from a product made overseas to a product made in America, we would create 5,ooo,ooo new jobs. Imagine that! Criminy, if Cindy's outfit was domestic there'd be 4 people who'd have pensions and kids headed for college. On one outfit! Really don't you think we ought to elect them? By that math, every day the McCain's are in office 4 new jobs are created just so the crypt keeper can drape herself in jewels and chintz. That's economy and if you don't think so, then you're just anti....well, anti something. It'll come to me.

Ok. It's next to impossible to discern whether McCain's tour bus is an American product or if it is imported. If you know let ME know. Thanks.

Also, could you please find out where those McCain T-shirts are coming from? Doubtless they are Union Made USA worker products, hell we probably don't even need to check. But if you can, would you? Thanks, you're a dear.

The Unreported Side of the Trooper Scandal

2008-09-05T08:23:00.004-05:00

I'm fairly certain that the Trooper scandal as it's reported doesn't really have legs. Because the story now centers around the fact that ex-bro-in-law Wooten is an idiot of the first degree, Palin comes off as sympathetic. Fer criminy sakes, tha guy thret'nd tha daaaaad. What is a poor girl to do?

Aside from the claim that all complaints against Wooten seem to have originated in the Heath and Palin families and haven't been proven (we've been admonished to stick to the facts, folks. Let's do!) most of us would probably love to punish a pesky ex-relative if we had access to some channel of power.

One unassailable fact is often missing from this story. Monegan was fired, and the reasons given were that Palin wanted to take the department in a new direction. Palin appointed his replacement. His replacement lasted 10 whole days.

Chuck Kopp, the successor, had been accused of sexual harrassment in his previous job as police chief of Kenai, where he had been responsible for a staff of about eight troopers. After the scandal broke, Kopp resigned.

If you think that this story is about Palin's bad judgement in not properly vetting an appointment (a theme?) it is but there's more.

For ten days' work on the taxpayers' dime, Kopp was given a $10,000 severance check. A thousand dollars a day. Monegan, who worked in his capacity since the start of Palin's administration was given nothing. (All things being equal, Monegan could make a claim for $590,000 dollars, given that he worked for Palin for 590 days.)

That's real fiscal responsibility.

Wikipedia

Four More Years!!! (for Jack Abramoff)

2008-09-04T16:55:00.002-05:00

Jack Abramoff was sentenced today to an additional (sort of) 4 year sentence for corruption charges. You know I bet those Maverick reformers working hard to convince us to vote for them up in St. Paul have no links to Abramoff.

I shall now consult my magic Google ball:

Oh, um oops. It looks like John McCain tried awfully darn hard to keep Abramoff isolated as a rogue player in the whole lobbying scandal. And he suppressed 750,000 documents. Way to go Mr. Clean!!!

Yah but Shotgun Granny Palin der hey, she's a real reformer who takes on her own party ta fight tha c'ruption, yah?

Oh notso fast der youse. It seems Shotgun Granny hired a lobbyist to secure federal funds for her 2nd biggest town in the country's largest state*. That lobbyist was Steven Silver. Steven Silver listed Abramoff's lobbying firm as his client. Together they worked on "issues relating to Indian/Native American policy," "exploration for oil and gas" and "legislation relating to gaming issues"

Additionally, for those of you who enjoy a little extra icing on your cupcakes, Silver yoostabee Senator Ted Stevens chief of staff.

*I'm using the republicans own geographical facts. Palin was, you know, governor of the country's largest state. According to John McCain.

Going Back to The Well or Kicking a Dead Horse?

2008-09-04T09:15:00.006-05:00

The last few days have been truly astounding. I was going to drop the whole Sarah Palin Trig Palin birth scandal and wait for the National Enquirer to touch the story the MSM won't. But in tilting at windmills on the internets, or just being an ass, whichever you prefer, I've been dismayed by a few things that I want to talk about.

There was a comment left here and elsewhere that it's silly for me to believe that Palin should be exposed as a liar. Since all politicians lie we've no business pursuing that. Remind Bill Clinton of that one, would you?

Here's hopefully the last I'm going to post on this matter: Alaskans have been bandying this baby parentage story around since Trig was born in April. In all that time, the Palins never swatted the "silly rumor" down with a doctor's affidavit, a birth certificate, or even a simple hospital photo. Her name has been tossed about for veep since January. This is a simple little duck that could have been placed in its row in a half a second.

Tell you what. If someone questioned where Ima came from (actually, someone once asked me if I adopted her from Central America) I'd waste no time showing them this:

Flattering, I know.

It is a legitimate question to ask "Well, why should they have to produce those things? Isn't that an invasion of privacy?" And my answer is yes. If she didn't make the birth story a cornerstone of her qualifications to be president of the United States of America. And second, a charming loving family values photo is a whole lot nicer than a statement that your daughter couldn't have given birth to child #5 because she's working on grandchild #1. That is an inconceivable invasion of privacy, as BlueGal continues to point out, that was perpetrated by the mother.

And it is the only thing they have produced to rebut the rumor.

When they announced Sarah Palin's nomination, they should have said right away who they considered to be members of her family, and what their family story was as well. Levi got left out of the bio until he was expedient to them. That's sleazy. Apparently, according to my critics, so is pointing it out.

Now back to the issue of Sarah Palin being a liar. Of course it has been confirmed in a myriad of ways that she has lied about lots of things. You know, George W. Bush told a lie so big that more than half a million people lie six feet under for it. And in reply, the American public says "who's on American Idol tonight?" But if someone continues to explore these allegations that she is not Trig's mother and they are found to be true, she is not just a liar but a nutjob. These are things Karl Rove understands and exploits. Al Gore did not say he invented the internet, yet 90% of Americans believe he did, and they believe that if he said them then he's a little touched in the head. What Karl Rove did was lie about Al Gore. What I would like us to do is to search for the truth about Sarah Palin. Therein lies the difference between us and them. Is it distasteful? Extremely.

So are the photos of Katrina and the hundreds of thousands of people in the Gulf who were left without a government to help them because John Kerry wouldn't fight as hard as Karl Rove did four years ago. As I have said elsewhere: The high road is a road to nowhere. Your Eckhart Tolle books and your Randy Pausch books are meaningless until the people who hold power in this country are on our side. Until then it's Sun Tzu and The Prince.

Over at Shakesville I butted in on a thread where the poster said that this idea that Sarah should be home with her special needs son is just so much 1950's throwback bullshit. I left a comment saying that once you decide to have children, they should be your first priority. Sarah Palin said in an interview in January (supposedly six months pregnant) that she routinely works until 9 or 10 at night. If you believe her story, she was doing this while her teenage daughter was home sick with such an infectious and debilitating case of mono that she had to be kept out of school for five months. (How long was Levi out sick with mono? I am going to assume that he exposed himself to that disease whilst impregnating Bristol). What the other children were doing, who knows? Todd Palin's job involves him being gone from the home for two weeks of every month, so it's not like dad, equally responsible for their welfare, was home raising children. I said that for me, I chose to be a stay home mom because I chose to have my children and nothing, nothing that I have ever done is more important than that. Todd and Sarah Palin's priorities seem to be Todd and Sarah Palin.

I was immediately called self-righteous.

Apparently, it is okay to be proud of yourself in a profession, but shut your damn mouth if your career choice is not to have one, lest you make others feel bad. You know, I don't hold it against my doctor that she chose to go to medical school and I'm hoping that she worked then and now to be the best damned doctor she could be. I reject the idea that you can't be critical of another woman's parenting skills if you are a mother yourself. Judge lest ye be judged, I guess. My kids are too young for me to say how they are going to turn out. They may wind up in a boatload of trouble when they get older and the theory is that I wouldn't want people to claim that I'm a crappy mom because Lotta can't put down the pipe. That's true. But I'm not trying to run the most powerful nation on earth (well, not counting China) based on the idea that I'm great at what I do. I like to think of it as 'peer review'. Lady, if you don't ask for my opinion or my praise, I won't give it. I won't even think about it. But if you do, best be prepared for what you get.

Two parent and single parent working families can raise fantastic children, but only if the children are a priority. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are the democrats shining examples of that.

When I mentioned that in reply over at Shakesville, a commenter said that Joe could be a great dad because he had lots of resources many other people don't. Well, duh. He was also a senator who could have chosen to let the nanny do it. Choices - do you see the recurring theme?

Sarah Palin is for forced childbirth. And she is anti-contraception. Anti-choice. How many resources will be available to people who are forced to have children? And who are forced to work at the same time. But who can't get childcare. Who are denied the right to make their own choice. The fundamentalist Palin-ite republicans love love love to rail on the idea of welfare queens and people expecting handouts from the government for the children they just pop out willy nilly, yet do not see that it is irresponsible to bring children into this world when the parents are improperly prepared to care for them. That is true if the parents are seventeen years old or are 44.

In other news, today is a happy one for me and my anti-career choice. Ima is spending her first day in kindergarten as I post this. I hesitate to say that I sacrificed for her and her sister by staying home. In some ways that is true. But everyone who raises children responsibly sacrifices for them. Everyone who chooses a career makes a sacrifice. Anyway, I did the best I could. And I am proud of myself and of her. My next step is to work at a part time job with flexible hours, and to start a business that will allow me to be at home next summer when school lets out.

And because I have that choice, I think that still gives me my feminist cred. Even if others would disagree.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2008-09-03T08:09:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin's first photo-op at the convention. Anybody notice anything kinda...weird? If this is a politician's spousal confab, um, shouldn't Todd Palin be the one tossing back watercress sandwiches and iced tea? (okay, that' entire hypothetical. Between Laura and Cindy a luncheon is xanax and Jack Daniels)

To republicans this is perfectly natural. The girls chit chat in the parlor, the boys stand out in the garage drinking beer. Or something like that.

They do not take her seriously. Tell me, why should we?

Tax Widget - Check Out Your Obama Tax Cut

2008-09-02T21:58:00.003-05:00

Click to embiggen.

Actually, given my real circumstances (I do not make 500k/yr yet), my tax cut would be about $500 dollars. Which is a real tax cut and not borrowing against my tax return to give me an economic stimulus check. Kinda cool, eh?

Here's your link

The High Road? Oh, Really?

2008-09-02T19:16:00.001-05:00

Yeah, let's play nice. That's a great idea. Cuz, you know, the other side is nothing but honorable.

Sarah Palin's Future Son-In-Law to be Indicted?

2008-09-02T17:25:00.001-05:00

Alaska Statutory Rape Laws

Statutory rape is defined as sexual activity – without the use of force or violence – with anyone defined as a minor. The thought behind these laws is that a minor is unable to legally consent to sexual activity. Statutory rape is so common in the United States that the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a report on this type of crime in 2004.

State laws vary slightly in terms of defining the term “minor” and in the criminal and financial penalties that can be applied to statutory rape cases. At this time I’d like to discuss Alaska statutory rape laws with you for a few minutes.

The age of consent is defined as 16 years old, according to Alaska statutory rape laws. If a person who is at least 18 years old engages in sexual activity with a person who is 16 years old or younger, he or she will be charged with sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree. This charge is a felony in Alaska. And remember, it does not matter if you did not force or threaten the other person into performing this sexual act with you. It is still a crime under Alaska statutory rape laws.

Any person who is 16 years old or older who has sexual intercourse with a minor who is 13-, 14-, or 15-years-old will be charged with sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree. Again, this charge is also a felony.

You can also be charged with a felony – sexual abuse in the third degree – if you are at least 16 years old and you have sex with anyone who is age 13-15, or if the person is a minor at least three years younger than you. In addition, Alaska statutory rape laws declare that anyone who is 18 years old or older who has sex with a person who is 16 or 17, or who is at least three years younger than the offender, can be charged with sexual abuse in the third degree. This is also a felony.

Alaska statutory rape laws carry punishments that include imprisonment and fines.

McCain says he knew. Really?

Just Wondering.

From 'Maverick' to 'Sidekick' to Just 'Kicked Around'How Palin Proves McCain is Wrong.

2008-09-02T15:22:00.006-05:00

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin has been described in every possible manner. Sweaty, desperate and increasingly shrill right wing partisans are trying to convince us that she's the greatest thing since sliced baby seal.

I heard some buffoon at the convention say that 4 years ago [constitutional law professor, Harvard graduate] Obama was merely a state senator [representing a district in a city that is 4 times larger than Palin's state, in a state that is the 5th largest compared to the 48th], though he failed to mention that 4 years ago Palin was mayor of a town of 6000. [In towns that size, don't they just take turns being mayor?]

On the left some of us [including me] find her family hypocrisy to be relevant to the race. In short, she is at best a hypocrite and a crappy mother and at worse a cover-up artist. Others are more interested in Troopergate. [BTW - when Hillary fired people in the Travel Office at the White House, that was a scandal. When Sarah fires enemies in Alaska government, that's reform?]

Here's one thing we ought to discuss:

She wasn't McCain's pick.

The "Maverick" wanted Lieberman or Tom Ridge. Well, since he stands up to his party so often and so well, what happened here?

Take it away, New York Times:

"Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates."

If elected, "Maverick" McSame needs to hire [nominate, pickypants] as many as 3 Supreme Court justices, and an entire administration, dozens of federal judges as well as name ambassadors, and probably CIA, FBI and Homeland Security personnel.

His own party finds him incapable of picking his running mate all by himself. We should believe he'll stand up to them on anything else...why?

Jack Booted Thugs.

2008-09-01T20:55:00.003-05:00

Here is your press freedom, America. This is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now, a credentialed journalist at the RNC. She is being arrested at the convention for what seems to be "probable cause for a riot".

UPDATE: Washington Post has this story.

A Turn For the Worse Is Still Change

2008-08-31T08:21:00.004-05:00

A group of anarchist protesters at the RNC convention in St. Paul
were sitting down to eat dinner and watch a movie when police conducted a no-knock raid, breaking down doors and entering the space with guns drawn. There were children there.

Police claimed that they were searching for bomb-making materials. Later the charge was a fire code violation.

Outrageous. Where is the media that kept an eagle eye on the Chinese waiting for a juicy story of governmental abuse of power?

In other news, Blackwater has put out a call for mercenaries, preferably cops with semi-automatic weapons-not revolver only-to report to the Gulf. Evacuees are being bar-coded and recorded so that authorities will know where they are going and what they are doing.

Granny Palin

2008-08-30T17:56:00.004-05:00

John McCain became the presumptive republican nominee on March 4th.

Sarah Palin announced to stunned colleagues that she was pregnant on March 5th.

And yes, veep rumors were swirling at the time.

Coincidence?

Just wondering.

UPDATE: Here is the story of Sarah and Todd Palin's wedding: " When they married in 1988, Sarah and Todd were coming off a mediocre fishing season in Bristol Bay. She didn’t want to burden her parents with the costs of a lavish wedding, something the young couple felt was unnecessary.

So they took the practical approach. One day in August, they simply drove to the Palmer courthouse and bought a marriage license. But they still needed two witnesses to stand for them at the ceremony.

“So they went to the senior center there in Palmer and got two old people as witnesses,” Heath said. “They didn’t know them at all. I’d love to have seen that. When Sarah came home, she said, ‘By the way, we got married today.’”

Guess who had a baby eight months later.

Lying about babies and family values seems to be a theme. Teh hypocrisy. It burns.

I Guess that Experience Thingy Wasn't So Important After All.

2008-08-30T12:01:00.004-05:00

If elected, do you think they'll make her secret service code name 'Trollop'?

Just wondering.

UPDATE: There is all kinds of wackiness flying around the interwebs about Sarah Palin covering for her daughter and claiming her daughter's out of wedlock child as her own. Particularly weird is that her water broke in Texas and she flew an 11 hour commercial flight home to give birth.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I flew to Germany when I was six months pregnant. Trust me, nobody who thinks they may be going in to labor would ever board a flight. First, can you imagine the inconvenience to other passengers? Second, she claims that they knew that the baby had downs' syndrome. She was 44 years old. Everything about that pregnancy screams 'high risk'. Third, when I flew pregnant I was warned to be very careful about sitting for too long. It is possible to develop blood clots that can become fatal.

I think they need to produce some hospital baby pictures. Otherwise it seems to me that yet another 'family values' republican has children who aren't exactly taking the abstinence only education to heart. That is hypocrisy.

A Quickie

2008-08-28T16:05:00.002-05:00

According to a story at CNN, John McCain hopes that 15,000 people will turn out for his rally tomorrow where he'll announce his running mate. They say that will be five times the number of people at his largest event so far.

Judgement.

2008-08-28T13:05:00.001-05:00

They did a good job of getting this across last night at the convention.

Happy Birthday Pee Wee!

2008-08-27T06:49:00.000-05:00

Happy 56th B-Day Paul Reubens, my adopted actor.

Best Line of the Night at the Convention

2008-08-26T22:16:00.004-05:00

Bob Casey, Jr: "John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That's not a maverick. That's a sidekick."

Unapologetic

2008-08-26T09:13:00.004-05:00

I would like to write something about Michelle Obama's speech last night but I fell asleep. Rather, let me say that I watched Ted Kennedy's speech with Lotta, who is 7. I tried to watch and answer her questions all at the same time. She wanted to know who Kennedy was. I answered that he has been a senator for over 40 years, that he had three brothers all of whom gave their lives for our country.

Is he a hero? she asked.

Yes. I answered.

Ken Burns put together the tribute to Kennedy. It opened and closed with images of the Kennedys sailing. A timid democratic party would probably shy away from that, given their sensitivity to the utter ridiculousness of the rightwing claim that Obama is elitist.

You know what I loved about it? Kennedy is elitist. And yet the Kennedys never ever have been accused of not having the best interest of the people at heart in all their signature legislation.

In short: Noblesse Oblige. Or, the Kennedy motto: "To whom much is given, much is expected" [Luke 12:48]

This is in complete opposition to the blue-blooded Bushes of Connecticut, who have always acted under the free market modus operandi "To whom much is given, much is never enough".

Cindy McCain: "The Pills Made Me Feel Euphoric and Free"

2008-08-22T13:49:00.006-05:00

Just Say No is apparently only for people of color and kids. Wealthy heiresses? Pass the scrip baby!

The Rude Pundit shares a bit of the story of Cindy's drug use. Cliffnotes version: it was John's Keating Five scandal's fault.

"[M]y pain was more than just physical. The Keating Five savings and loan scandal had just blown up, and my husband was implicated. (I became a focus of the investigation when I couldn't find receipts showing that John and I had reimbursed the Keatings for a vacation we took to the Bahamas.) The first time I ever heard of the Keating Five, I was in the hospital, recovering from my first back surgery. A resident came in, threw a newspaper down on my bed and said, 'Gee, I guess your husband's not so perfect after all.' Throughout the investigation, the painkillers cushioned me. The newspaper articles didn't hurt as much, and I didn't hurt as much. I can remember sitting in the Senate hearings, listening to Howell Heflin saying terrible things not just about my husband but about me. The pills made me feel euphoric and free."

Jesus, imagine if she had a really shitty life. You know, like only having three houses!

Who Is Today's Saint?

2008-08-22T09:22:00.003-05:00

Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Symphorian. My Saint-A-Day guide describes him as a "mother-encouraged martyr". Insert your own Catholic Guilt joke here.

Saint-A-Day says:

In the town of Autun, France (then the Roman province of Gaul) this Christian schoolboy staunchly refused to participate in the pagan rites honoring the harvest goddess Cybele. Symphorian carried on an edifying theological debate with the local magistrate while being flogged and was then escorted outside the town and beheaded while his proud mother stood on the walls and shouted encouragement to her son.

Okay. On a personal note, Lotta swam with swim team this summer and turned out to be pretty good. It was hard not to overdo the, shall we say, parental encouragement. But what I can say for certain is that I would not stage-mother her into a beheading. Whack.

Symphorian is the Patron Saint of children (I suggest a re-vote) and students; is invoked against syphilis. (Does it seem to you that an inordinate amount of Saints get invoked against sexually transmitted diseases? Particularly when the Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe that extra-marital sex was invented right after the birth control pill? Just wondering.)

If Symphorian were alive today he would not be a saint, he would be that even lesser-talented Lohan chick or Jamie Lynn Spears.

Do They Make a Power Flip Flop?

2008-08-21T11:23:00.002-05:00

Guess who's headed back to the world of paychecks and racing away from home in the morning, happy to see the house in her rear-view mirror?

Yep. Ima is starting kindergarten in a few weeks. I managed to be a stay home mom for five and a half years. When Lotta was a baby I took a job at a daycare center just so that I could always be with her. So Lotta had a little daycare experience, but I was there for all the times she bit other kids, ate twice her share of snacks, and said her first word. (It was "more" -- which we tell her still fits her personality).

So I'm going back to work at the job I quit when I met Ben and moved to Virginia. The guy I hired has hired me back to help out. I think I'm actually getting a raise of 25 cents an hour over what I left at. Is that good or bad after a nine year hiatus?

Anyway, it's part time. Oh, and that guy I hired who hired me back? Raging republican. So much fodder for future posts, it practically makes me think they could pay me less! Nah.

Now I'll need to think up a fake name for him. I won't start until mid-September, so I (meaning you guys) have plenty of time to come up with something.

I'm Going To Hell.

2008-08-19T10:06:00.008-05:00

Really.

Next month Ben and I are heading to Los Angeles to recoup the vacation I won by writing a story about a kitchen nightmare I experienced. This is not the hell we are headed for.

Rather, because I bought a vacation from Marriott Resorts over a year ago that we weren't able to use, we transferred that package to their resort nearest LA, where we'll stay for a few days before heading to the London Hotel in Hollywood.

Here's a clippy from an e-mail from the Newport Beach tourism board:

I stroke a cashmere scarf so soft that my hand seems to float weightlessly upon it. Today the good life is mine as I sail through my private island, cloaked in contentment.

Newport Beach is perhaps best known for its unrivaled life of privilege. Mariner's Mile must be experienced to be believed with its endless stream of exotic automobiles and lavish yachts, and its restaurant row boasting million-dollar views These are the vehicles used to transport their owners to the mansions and boutiques of Balboa and surrounding islands.

But perhaps the island you prefer is Fashion Island with its 200 specialty boutiques, just waiting for your discerning perusal.

Yeah, I'm going there. Maybe sunshine and salt air will cure the hives I'm sure to break out in.

(This image is taken from Shop Till They Drop and shows the tin shacks that Bangladeshi garment workers live in, unable to afford better.)

Olympic Size

2008-08-18T18:28:00.003-05:00

Hi all. I'm back. What'd I miss? Ha. I was paying attention. Apparently 11,000 people are competing in sporting events in China, but without cable I was able to watch only one. Let me say I think Michael Phelps is outstanding. I think media coverage of Michael Phelps sucked. Dear NBC: every other swimmer in that pool also spent nearly every day of their lives in the water, deserving their own moment in the spotlight. But every 'caster just had to ask every athlete they talked to about whether they'd maybe gotten to touch the sacred hem of Phelps swim trunks.

Oh well. I tivo'd the Olympics while I was away and spent a good deal of today looking through the stuff I missed last week.

On NBC's enhanced coverage through our DirectTV I found this little gem. It's an isolated camera on Usain Bolt's "stride" and "celebration" in slow motion. Ladies, you'll notice if you watch to the end of the short clip that Mr. Bolt doesn't wear any impeding undergarments that reign in his "celebration".

Ben had to tell me to quit looking.

Wowzah.

I think the Packer management did the right thing.

2008-08-08T13:09:00.004-05:00

Hey, it's not a popular opinion, but then I recently got up the guts to announce my true hidden feelings about the Beatles.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll ~~berate your dumb opinion~~ love to see what y'all've got to say when I get back.

(Time for some vacation).

Ladies and Gentlemen: Miss Buffalo Chip!

2008-08-07T09:26:00.006-05:00

The McCain's go to Sturgis. Those boys over there've pissed out more Cindy product than you'll drink in a lifetime, kids.*

The story goes that McCain offered Cindy up for the topless and sometimes bottomless Miss Buffalo Chip contest. You know if he's willing to throw the trollop to the wolves half naked in South Dakota for the votes of a few drunken racists, for God's sake can you imagine what he'd offer the Saudis?

*My brothers were in a bar in far northern Wisconsin when a grizzly old drunk told them he'd pissed out more beer in his lifetime than they could hope to drink. Ummm, I'm guessing he wasn't real well informed in biology.

Re-Posted: The Day of the PDB

2008-08-06T14:37:00.003-05:00

Last year there was a blogswarm around the theme of the August 6th, 2001 Preznechal Briefing which warned our Commander in Chief of an imminent attack on American soil. His response, as we all recall, was "Well, you've covered your ass".

Here's my post from last year.

What if?

A favorite anecdote among historians who play the 'what if' game is the story of Annie Oakley and Kaiser Wilhelm. It is said that Annie performed a gun trick that involved shooting the lit end of a cigarette from the mouth of a male audience volunteer. The volunteer was a shill - her husband. But while on tour in Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Annie asked for a volunteer for the trick and got a real one: Prince Wilhelm of Germany. Though Annie had spent the night before in a beer garden, her aim was true and she performed the stunt without incident.

But, ask historians, what if she hadn't? What if she had shot the future Kaiser in the ear, killing him? If not for Kaiser Wilhelm we wouldn't have had World War One. Some say we are still battling the repercussions of that war: it spun itself out into the conflicts that engulf the middle east to this day. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was, according to Iraq anyway, predicated on the fact that Kuwait should not have been partitioned by the British following the First World War. In more obvious examples, the First World War gave rise to the bitter German who eagerly embraced fascism. Without the kaiser there wouldn't have been Hitler. Without Hitler there wouldn't have been the millions of deaths at the hands of his reich.

What if Thomas Jefferson hadn't been such a fan of John Locke's? What if George Washington thought like John Hancock and believed the United States of America should be ruled by a king? What if Abraham Lincoln weren't the president during the civil war? What if FDR wasn't president during World War Two. What if Kennedy wasn't president during the Cuban Missile Crisis? These are fortunate what ifs.

There are unfortunate what ifs, like the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln, of Martin Luther King, Jr. They fill my chest with a weight like buckshot. And today, August 6, 2007 the ghosts of two thousand nine hundred seventy four terror victims, the ghosts of four thousand six hundred and nine coalition soldiers, the ghosts of thousands of Afghanis, the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis beg the question 'what if?'

What if George Bush took seriously a memo entitled 'bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US'? What if he asked the question 'How would that be likely?' What if our intelligence and law enforcement agencies were tasked with estimating how that attack might happen? What if FBI agents in Minneapolis and Arizona and Florida were granted the search warrants they had requested just days after the August 6th PDB for suspicious foreigners taking lessons at local flight schools? What if the president, upon reading the PDB, reached out to the Hart Rudman commission and implemented its recommendations, rather than the path he chose, which was to reject Hart Rudman and turn the issue of terrorism over to the vice president who did nothing but hand the issue over to FEMA.

Would there have been the Afghan war?
Would there have been the Iraq war?
Would Americans stand for the Patriot Act?
Would Americans approve of the suspension of Habeas Corpus?
Would Americans allow total information awareness data mining?
Would Americans have voted in record numbers to return the worst president in American history to office?
Would Americans agree that torture is situationally okay?
Would we have New Orleans rebuilt by now?
Would our bridges and tunnels get fixed before falling down?
Would we still be held with esteem by most of the other nations of the world?
Would we still be improving our country with the money in our 'peace dividend' account?

Would the towers still stand?

If that memo had been taken seriously, if the president acted with the same determined haste he managed to show for Terri Schiavo's parents, how different would our lives be today?

One afternoon. One piece of paper. One choice.

A frozen accident

Stranger Than Science Fiction

2008-08-05T12:06:00.003-05:00

Dr. Zaius was attacked by an Assassin....bug.

You Know What?

2008-08-04T11:24:00.002-05:00

I don't like the Beatles.

There. I've said it. It was hard to do, but I feel like a great weight has been lifted.

Carry on.

Jerry Lewis Busted For Carrying a Concealed Weapon

2008-07-31T10:00:00.002-05:00

Jerry Lewis was nabbed by security agents at the Las Vegas airport for carrying a concealed handgun in his luggage. His publicist claims that the gun was a hollowed out non-functioning weapon that Lewis uses in his act.

I was stunned. Mostly because I was completely unaware that Lewis had an act.

boom bapa chee!

Dear Lord, Thank You for Placing In My Inbox Shit That Writes Itself. Amen.

2008-07-30T07:49:00.003-05:00

click to embiggen

Because the Lord God sayeth that you can't pray for China unless you are wearing a cheap plastic bracelet produced by slave labor in China. Buy more-they'll be forced to work harder!!!!

If You Live in South Carolina, I Urge You to Buy the New "I Believe" License Plates

2008-07-29T08:21:00.011-05:00

Florida couldn't do it, but by God and praise Jesus, South Carolina's legislature approved the controversial "I believe" license plates. Asked if he thought the plates were a violation of the separation of Church and State, South Carolina legislator and bill sponsor Lawrence K. Grooms said "I didn't see a constitutional problem with it". Deep reasoning indeed.

It seems that proceeds from the plates will not benefit any particular group, so I give the Wundrun seal of approval to these plates. Particularly if you would go out and buy customized license plate frames and decals to go with them. Here are some suggestions:

The original plateOptional Frames with illustrative decals:

As an aside: If you follow the link above to the story in the Christian Post, you'll find some hilarious christian comments.

Right off the bat Loretta49 gives my favorite "This is beautiful and wholesome idea that gives you and everyone around peace and spirituality and anyone who doesn't like it, is a freak with a psychologycal problem and needs to go a psychologist and do not bother people who enjoy their religion and the peace and happiness it brings."

Man Upset About Loss of Food Stamps Hates on Libruls

2008-07-28T11:05:00.003-05:00

Most of the places I've seen this on the interwebs has noted that a man shot up a Unitarian Universalist church because of his hatred for their liberal stance. Gays and liberals seem to be taking all the good jobs. (Insert hairdresser/ decorator/ congressman joke here). Yet the other straw cracking this camel's back is that his allotment of food stamps was cut back. Because conservatives would've given him more? Whack.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - A man who opened fire inside a church, killing two people with a shotgun hidden in a guitar case, was frustrated at being unable to find a job and blamed liberals and gays, police said on Monday.

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred of the liberal movement," Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen told reporters of Sunday's incident at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

Suspect Jim Adkisson, 58, who was being held on $1 million bond, had previously worked as a mechanical engineer in several states. He described his violent plans in a four-page letter found at his home, which also explained that his age and "liberals and gays" taking jobs had worked against him.

Another recent setback was that Adkisson's allotment of government-issued food stamps had been reduced, Owen said.

Good News

2008-07-28T10:11:00.002-05:00

Read "The Myth of a Toss-Up Election". It's good news. However, I'd like to cynically piss in your cheerios by adding that I think the reason we need to believe the race is close is so that the GOP can pull a steal aka 2000. I'm guessing General Electric and Rupert Murdoch agree.

Then again, Gallup has Obama at 9 points ahead of McCain following his European tour.

Better Diplomacy, (brought to you by grown-ups)

2008-07-28T09:57:00.001-05:00

Obama Goes to Germany; McCain Eats a Brat*

2008-07-25T07:23:00.006-05:00

Barack Obama:
"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time," the democratic hopeful told an enthusiastic crowd which local authorities estimated at more than 200,000.

John McCain:McCain had his own German experience Thursday -- at a restaurant in Ohio. "I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president,"McCain told reporters after a meal of bratwurst with local business leaders at Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus' German Village neighborhood.

Then he yelled at some kids to get off his lawn.

*That's pronounced [brot] just so you don't assume that McCain ate a small spoiled child. (One of his own? Would that he...)