Quick Hits and Countdown to Election Wierdness...Marc Maron at Comix in NYC...

If American life lacks the punch of a reality show to the point that we demand larger than life puppets as candidates for our highest office these days; if Jerry Springer-esque family drama played out in oil wrestling is the thing we need to fill our check-out-line reading needs; maybe we shouldn't be so fucking surprised that we pay to fully costume the actresses and actors and that the production companies...er...campaigns stand on the sidelines with the storyboard and airbrush machine at the ready. No such luck for the McCain campaign which history may look at as really a night course in performance art 101 taught by some agitprop group found in Washington Square Park. It seems impossible that any professional politicos could have run thigns exactly this badly without it being part of some sorta joke. But then, the delusional current administration did at some point drink their own koolaid and after all that inmates/asylum stuff blows over, it will be anyone's guess if we can ever untangle what part of the nightmare thats gonna lave quite a hangover in this country for a long time to come. Whats left to hope for? Well, I hope that my son might be captured by Obama's hope thing in the way that I was captured by Jimmy Carter and before that the Kennedys, when I was a kid. Maybe he can feel some feeling of being able to shape the destiny of his world before the reality comes crashing in.

Sarah Palin may well be looking towards 2012, and for the appetites of the wingnut fringe, the ongoing Palin saga should be a great diversion while Obama races to deconstruct all that the Bushies have put in place. This, my friends, is not a joke. It would behoove us to keep the lunatic fringe that Palin will lead back underground with her in mind because if we don't there wont be any excuse. I tell myself that its gonna be a good time for me to pull back from politics and to try to work with birds and just be happy...but really, its probably not going ot be possible in the long run. I can always hope though, cant I?

With an unbelievable eleven days to go, Rachel Maddow is taking over the TV-box cable ratings game with her MSNBC show, proving that even a network run my the M$M has to listen when ratings talk. The American people surely have made it clear that they want liberal voices out there, and Rachel has risen to the top on sheer intelligence and star power. Its been fantastic to watch her rise. Tonight Keith Olbermann had Sam Seder on to punditize about snarky republicans spinning Obama's break to see his grandma into some sort of air mile thievery. Sammy immediately turned that silliness into how sick McInsane is in his cold assessment of "the life of the mother" being important in the abortion issue, spotlighting how fucking cold the radical right can be when dealing with real people as opposed to test tubes of cells....and how cold McCain is in general as he would say anything to get a few more votes. This delighted me because no one is better than Sam at pointing out wingnuttia in terms that draw us all together, along with Obama, shaking our heads in disbelief at the silliness of the children in their pretend world.

It occurred to me tonight that with Rachel rising, Sam is going to be moving into the spotlight more and more. At the same time, Seder and Marc Maron are breaking ground with their web based daily live show, Maron v. Seder 3PM EST, M-F, here. Maron is currently traveling cross country with the UK Guardian and talking to a remarkable array of people from all walks of life showing us the front lines in America up close and personal. Of course, Marc also has his way of pulling even the most far-out survivalists close, and helping us to see their humanity if not really understand it. Looking at our ever morphing culture along with Marc makes it all a little more bearable...and seeing things like the plight of homeless veterans standing on line for services with our own eyes is jarring and sad. This is merely a small glimpse of what the future will be like as we pull out of Iraq and the Guardian and Air America are doign a great thing by showing us some unvarnised truths. Maron v. Seder should be on cable or even network TV...I think that they would have to tone it down for network, so it probably belongs on HBO, Showtime, or FX, daily. In any case, look for Maron to also start turning up on Olbermann etc, as he is a tremendously smart commentator with a gift for explaining issues from angles that touch on everyday people while not being so wonky as to over intellectualize them.

Lucky New Yorkers will have the opportunity to see Maron on Friday the 24th and Sat the 25th at Comix in NYC...I'll be there at some point, tho I'm not sure which show yet...I'm in transit again from CT to NYC, and everything is in flux, as usual. Come on down and see our traveling correspondent in his element...its always fun, and Comix is a nice place. Its gonna be a rainy Saturday in NYC, and you know, I love me some weather...

See ya there!

c/p Briliant at Breakfast

Saturday Night Live Does Hillary V. Palin, and Palin is Apparently Sorta Kinda my Look-alike.

I was out at a wedding and so missed the beginning of SNL this week... at which wedding a woman came up to me and...looking at me sideways...maybe she was drunk...(and yes I get Amy Yasbek and a young Diane Keaton sometimes)... told me... that... I... look... like...

Sarah Palin!!!! EEEEKKKK!!!

Which sent me to the bathroom to not only look at myself because I often forget what I look like... but also to take a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror with my cell phone cam, and then email Jill Brill to be sure that this couldn't possibly be true. Ah its true, I was wearing my fashionable glasses in the interest of seeing; something I don't often do because I prefer a little soft blur these days. but this was my friend's daughter and I wanted to be able to report on the ice sculpture and the Chinese tea ceremony and the 6 (yes 6!) courses of food that just kept coming (Will and I slipped out before the Viennese Dolce Table, which was after the wedding cake...which consisted of around 7 layers from straight cheese cake to chocolate cake to some sorta Italiano rum section and maybe a meringue!)
Anyhow, my quick answer was that no I don't get that (perhaps a new problem, but if it continues I may have to color my hair or something drastic like that) but it must be the glasses...and that the real difference is that my IQ is around double hers... (heaven knows, my knowledge of foreign affairs trumps hers, and I'm no Rachel Poli-sci Maddow.) I actually used the silly comparison to make some pretty sober points which made the woman quickly drift towards the raw bar while Will laughed and I doubled over in disgust!

Will found it hysterical that one exchange with a woman who probably only watches Faux News bothered me so much, or maybe it was that she approached with such a fun and peppy attitude and was quite shocked at my reaction... but I guess that the whole Palin thing is in my craw...stuck...and I have trouble making light of how little this county has learned after 8 years of a Bush government begun by the feeling that he was a good old boy who was some sort of renegade that we should have a beer with. Isn't it time to just maybe try out someone who has some ideas and ...um...ideas of diplomacy?...at least maybe someone who isn't a rapture ready snake handler...? Just for a while?

The Palin woman, as my grandpa calls her, has charisma and spunk which sort of distracts from the fact that every other sentence out of her mouth is a lie. I cant even fathom how it is OK for all of them in lockstep, from the lowest coffee boy to the biggest policy maker, to throw it all at the wall and just see what sticks. Its too late in the game for so many to have such wrong information in the face of science and...um...real political science experts. How can they fucking lie so much? How can it be?

So you can see why I havent been writing much the past weeks....I think that others might have somethign more to say than "why, why, why?"...its all so tragic for the people of America who really, really need a little turnaround to start happening soon. Its a crying shame.

So, I guess I'll leave the funny up to the SNL folks...and of course, its the comedians (artists) in any society who mirror back our most glaring faults. I think that's why the Republicans have been so keen on cutting funding to the arts in this country. It is artists who are often the loudest speakers of the truth. It is certainly the artists who have the most guts to make the uncomfortable statements that the rest of us are unable to. And this is why the Republicans are complaining about this skit...to which I say: Boo-fucking-Hoo!


h/t to Sam Seder Be sure to catch the warm-up shows of Seder V. Maron daily here at 3PM eastern. Even in it's rough state, its fantastic!

BREAKING: Palin's Daughter Preggers...Again? Palin's Lies, McCains Gambling Problem, and The Big Brother Backdoor Strategy....

Breaking News: Sarah Palin just confirmed that her 17 year old daughter, Brillo, is 5 months pregnant and is gonna marry the father, Levi, and keep the baby. Supposedly McCain knew about this pregnancy before choosing Palin as his running mate.
These people are so full o' lies that its mind boggling in its enormity. Read on for more on ungodly partnership of the dysfunctional Alaskan with the PTSD Gambler.
(h/t to my Mom and her diligent monitoring of the Bill O'Reillys of the world...know thy enemy!)

I'm looking at MSNBC's coverage of Gustav barrelling ashore in Louisiana and throwing Michelle Kosinski off camera, intercut with pictures of ....er...walls, which are the levees not quite up to snuff, we're told, because the project is supposed to take until 2012. At this moment the wind driven water is reportedly pouring over the tops of west side industrial canal walls of New Orleans like a waterfall...they might actually be breached by the force or punctured by loose ships floating around (and how did that happen with so much advanced warning?) In the 9th ward the walls are holding so far because the wind is not blowing directly there yet. It all depends on the speed and direction of how this thing turns around. Tornados have already been reported here and there but they don't seem to be touching down.

Bad and evil girl that I am, (and feeling like most people in the path of the storm are out or trying to be secure...they at least have the information...I have been wandering the city streets with a smile, thinking that never could payback be so targeted as to force the republican party to conduct business in the shadow of this. They are unable to postpone the business of the convention by law, so as the "stars" of the party fall away leaving the silly democrat troll Joementum Lieberman, mother Palin, and McInsane hisself trying to figure out how to not appear in split screen against the embarrassment reminder of what his party finds important. If we had to have big storms...and we do, with the environment as it is, and as part of the normal course of things...the timing of this thing is perfect!

On to the unbelievable joke that is Sarah Palin....and wasn't that her riding the air on her bike in the storm surge? (I've got to work on learning to photoshop!!)
John Cole nails this situation at Balloon Juice with the unbelievable news that McCain's people are finally now heading up to Wasilla to look into Palin...now....Here is what hes got:
According to the Washington Monthly, democrats doing opposition research found out that no one had checked the archives of the local papers up there (they are not online in full and archives have to be searched in person if one wants to do a complete search.) The former Republican House Speaker for Alaska expressed surprise that Palin was chosen because no one had come to Alaska to do any research on her. Only just now have the McCain people reserved rooms in the local hotel...just now?.....
Is this part of McCain's tendency to gamble (one man's maverick is another man's idiot when it involves expensive fighter planes or, heaven forbid, national security,) or part of a bigger plan (more on that to come?) More to come on the high stakes gambling addiciton of McCain....but keep it in mind if youknow anything about PTSD, addiction, and the 12 steps...we are dealing with a pretty old guy who has been through major trauma in his life and remains in denial about much of it. At some point soon we have to look at this seriously and not through the lens of David Gregory's failed climb to the top of broadcasting.

I could have guessed that Palin has flip flopped on the bridge to nowhere, that she is not real sharp on historical facts about America, was likely a member of the Alaska secessionist movement before jumping into mainstream politics, and is unclear about what the VP job entails. She only just got her passport in the past year, so those...ahem, Faux News...who feel like she has international experience because she lives close to Russia...well....

The issues about her kids and the maternity/paternity of little Trix or Snap, Crackle, Pop, is less important than the lies involved in how the issue was/is being handled. The holier-than-thou conservative right can come up with some of the best lies when its their foot in the bathroom stall of the solicitous cop next to them, or their kid having the baby out of wedlock.

Regardless of who actually gave birth to Twig, I say from personal experience and all the medical advice I've ever gotten, not to mention airline safety rules, that one does not get on a plane when one's water has broken and one is in labor. After the first child, the labor process tends to vary in that it can be very, very fast or can be troublesome...and from what Ive heard and experienced in my lifetime of being a mom and from other mothers, subsequent babies are usually born quicker than initial ones; sometimes surprisingly quicker. So, why would anyone in their right mind (especially one who purports to care for the health of the unborn,) get on a plane in that condition? This wasn't a short flight either; we're talking Texas to Seattle to Alaska to a small town hospital. She went specifically to a small town hospital knowing that the kid was going to have Downs Syndrome and probably would have special needs.

This was a very high risk pregnancy and actually, regardless of how she got back to the small hospital, she shouldn't have even gone anywhere at that risk level.No one in their right mind, and who has access to the best health care in the country, would do that! Setting aside gossip on the intertubes, I've got to say that I question the woman's judgment in all matters if she took such a chance with not only her own health but with the health of the baby and with a number of planeloads of people. Is it right to take a chance of making a plane, or connecting flight, make an emergency landing? Is it right to expose her unborn special needs kid to the bacteria involved in all of that travel? Finally, is it ,medically possible to break your water and yet show no signs of pregnancy or labor over the hours spent travelling? Possibly....but unlikely. The whole explanation shows poor judgement in the best case scenario and a real tendency to lie (with the possibility of insurance fraud and endangering airline safety) in the worst.

Then there is Troopergate...but I'm in a hurry this morning. 87% of Alaskans believe she lied about it and I agree. Here is what Josh Marshall has on it. Its minor in the scheme of things, but these things add up, and what really is troubling is the McCain campaign's lack of due diligence.
Maybe he is a gambler...er...maverick...but, who is handling him? If there is institutionalized denial apparent before we've even gotten to the issues at hand then what can we expect when the next disaster arrives? More of the same, as they say.

A rumor is being floated around that if Palin were to have to step down then the obvious choice would have to be Lieberman. Check Christy Hardin-Smith at FDL's exasperation and questioning about all of the same stuff here, and then peruse the comments there or at Kos or anywhere else, (soon to be on the M$M...not!...until, that is, it happens in their faces or Rachel Maddow forces it out,) that the real plan is to have Palin step aside and put Joementum in the slot when its too late to do much about it.

Its the Big Brother Backdoor Strategy that those of us who try to relax and forget with reality shows know all too well. See, the head-of-household (or nominee in this case) nominates 2 houseguests for eviction. One is often a pawn, because when the veto is played that nominee can be removed from contention for eviction and the real target can be slotted in with no chance of being saved by the veto. If this is a backdoor admission of Lieberman onto the ticket, then I'm impressed...though its been sorta clumsy by Big Brother standards. But hell, it indicates that someone, anyone, in the McCain camp turns on the TV at all; forget news or the internets...just plain old pop culture TV will do at this point.

I don't see how this whole thing isn't a joke...but....I couldn't believe most of what Bush was doing while he was doing it either. Depending on the American people to actually think about this and weigh possible outcomes of their voting actions is a non-starter. There must be some way to produce this into a reality show that will grip the masses in prime time and spell it out s-l-o-w-l-y and carefully. The security of the nation may depend on it.

McCain is out of His MInd...Sarah Palin and the Future of this Country.

Unqualified, wingnut, crazy, scary....these are just some of the words that come to mind when looking at the life and time of Sarah Palin.

Ah, Sarah Palin, runner up to the Ms. Alaska crown, outspoken opponent of a woman's right to choose, enemy of the Polar Bear, and great leveler of the field in the area of youth, gender, experience and the naming of children, will be side by side with pinky mouse McCain on the republican stump starting immediately.

Is this a joke? Trailing her cadre of children, including the infant dangling oddly from the arms of an older daughter, this oddball is being paraded around the bubble where the Bushies live, while the rest of America is shaking their heads at the similarities to the Harriet Miers debacle. Isn't anyone advising the McCain campaign?...what an embarrassment!

Sarah Palin is advertising herself as a mother, but if the naming of children is any indication of one's ability to reason and govern, then the republicans are in trouble. How she chose her kid's names is anyone's guess (and it has been mentioned that on those occasions that she admits that she tried pot , which I should add is legal in Alaska, she may have thought up those names!)

So, we've got Track and Willow, Piper, and Trig(Paxson Van Palin,) but worst of all is poor Bristol, who is known as Brillo....Track will be called up to duty in Iraq soon, Trig may be the love child of Brillo...who can keep them straight? Trig, with Downs Syndrome is more likely the 44 year old wanna-be Commander-in-Chief's, child, though she remained pretty scary thin throughout the pregnancy; shes strongly anti-choice yet kept this a secret from even her closest co-workers for 7 months, knowing that the child would have Downs Syndrome. US Conservatives at About.com had this:

The Palin family released this statement the morning after Trig Paxson's birth:

“Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Three days later, Gov. Palin was back at work.

She went back to work 3 days after having this child!? And who is going to be caring for these children when she is VP? McCain is pretty damned old, not to mention the cancer; he could very well die. Is this who we want for president? Haven't we been through the not very bright and very crazy wing-nut thing for 8 long years already? Palin has no experience; less than no experience in that she is in such a remote area...her level of experience is in no way comparable to Obama's supposed lack of experience; she really, really has no experience except in the way of governing a state with very, very few people. She has had the ability to wield a strong outspoken wingnuttian stance on just about every issue that the rest of the country is too busy trying to pay the rent and juggle some semblance of a life, to take seriously, and the fact that McCain and his team view any part of her bio as a viable political option is just plain scary.

Onward: She has a husband who is part commercial fisherman and part oil field worker, and a history herself as a "maverick" of sorts, who hunts and fishes and is a lifetime NRA member; her bubbly yet carefully crafted delivery of support for the war, guns, and the conservative line, make her an interesting choice for McCain in a field where the PUMAS might actually be crazy enough to vote for a woman, any woman....my god, is it not apparent that Alaska and the life there is not representative of most of the country and that just as McCain is removed from the lives of most Americans to the point that he can't even state what "middle class" means or how many houses he has,what car he drives, this nut is also so far from the main stream as to be...a joke....this is a joke, right?

Sarah Palin is a surprise, and she is surely an all or nothing roll of the dice for a desperate Republican party that is looking towards a convention shown in split screen with hurricane Gustav bearing down on NOLA, in a stark remembrance of the failures of this administration. Even now, the White House is trying to pull Bush from having to appear on that split screen. Clearly this is not what Bush needs for his legacy of failure...Forget the beauty of karma and how the timing of Gustav cries out to the Bushies paybacks-a-bitch boys! Is the gulf prepared for this thing?...its horrifying that all of this time later, the infrastructure questions have not been clearly addressed and flooding has become a huge problem across the country.

I fell pretty strongly that most Americans are disgusted enough on both sides to just vote the knee jerk opposite of what we've had. I cant see this Palin woman going up against Biden in any meaningful way and I look forward to McCain trying to hold his own in a direct debate with Obama. But in reality, most Americans lack the interest, attention span, and mostly time to go much past their morning paper in this. They will vote their pocketbooks and the gas pumps...the war...food prices...and disasters on television. I'm not so sure that polls mean much in this strangest of strange times, but they sure are embraced by the media as a foundation for creating a reality show that could somehow produce ratings. This particular episode is like the Big Brother house when the old guy makes a pact with the sorority sister.

So, with Brillo and Trig, Twig, Twat, and Pipe....Tracks and Willy and the little green sprout....as the shiny-shiny that Mom, (with her obligatory still-working-apparently vagina,) is holding up to distract us from the magnificent speech of Obama, we have to know that it wont last long when its clear that the meat is not there. Mom is viewed as an intellectual lightweight, as is McCain, and up against the democratic ticket they will fail. Remember, most of America views Alaska as a scene from the Cicely Alaska of Northern Exposure. What happens when the scruffy John Corbett character ends up being the scary hairless mouse McCain?

Not to even mention that scandal has rocked her office lately in the form of an aide trying to kick her sister's ex out of his job. That bit of pulpy gossip has legs only in that its personal dirt of the kind that sells rags on the checkout line. Further, her popularity among the sparse voters up there could have something to do with $1200 oil rebates to cover the price of fuel....is she popular? Maybe, if you could even begin to tease all of this out.

So, if this is for us a Dan Quayle moment, minus the sharp intellect of the Q, then I hope to be heading north for the duration...If its just another installation of that wacky DC show, Wingnuttia, then I hope that Ms Palin and all the little Palinettes enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.
Some of us are serious about trying to fix this country; John McCain is certainly not. This nomination proves it beyond a doubt.

c/p RIPCoco