Sooner Blue

Nina Simone sings a spooky song from "The Threepenny Opera" about Jenny, a lowly maid at a cheap hotel who's treated with contempt by the townspeople .. so she plots her revenge. Imagine a pirate ship – a black freighter -with eight sails, and 50 cannons entering the harbor .....

Hearing Nina Simone sing "Pirate Jenny" is like listening to a soliloquy by a brilliant actress on a bare stage .. she evokes an entire world, an entire soul, with just the sound of her voice.

This song is so eerie it gives me goosebumps .. maybe I'll dress up as a Pirate Jenny tonight ....

I've also included the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCcKBc4gwAQ

Pirate Jenny

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town, in this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship, the black freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in.

You gentlemen can say, "Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What's wrong with you! Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I'm counting your heads
as I'm making the beds
Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody! Nobody!
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship, the black freighter
turns around in the harbor
shootin' guns from her bow

Now you gentlemen can wipe that smile off your face
'Cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frickin' place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?"
Yes, that's what you say.
"Why do they spare that one?"
All the night through, through the noise and to-do
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair.

And the ship, the black freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air

By noontime the dock is a-swarmin' with men
comin' out from the ghostly freighter
They move in the shadows where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people and they're bringin' em to me
askin' me, "Kill them NOW, or LATER?"
Askin' ME! "Kill them now, or later?"
Noon by the clock
and so still at the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
And in that quiet of death
I'll say, "Right now.
Right now!"
Then they'll pile up the bodies
And I'll say,
"That'll learn ya!"

And the ship, the black freighter
disappears out to sea
And on it is me.

Lyrics: Bertolt Brecht/Marc Blitzstein
Melody: Kurt Weill

A sign someone carried at the Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall Saturday .. organized by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Now isn't that better than signs calling people evil Nazis and Hitler?

I got the biggest kick out of the signs - "I fought Nazis and they don't look like Obama" .. "Repeating something at increasing volume does not make it true" .. "I won't tread on you if you don't stomp on me" .. "I support reasonable conclusions based on supported facts" .. "Civil is sexy" .. "I'm for the separation of church and hate" .. "Birthers for Hawaii statehood" .. "Jews against frivolous Hitler comparisons."

What a great way to remind the 99 percent of us who aren't sign-toting crazies that we're all in this together .. that we have to work together to fix America. Humor has an amazing ability to bring people together despite our differences.

Yes, there was the odd "Legalize Marijuana" sign .. the crowd was mostly young but well-behaved, just wanting to laugh and have a good time .. maybe wanting to share a "Woodstock" moment.

There were also a lot of older people there too, I saw a lot of gray heads. A man and woman dressed alike in red, white and blue square dance costumes said they were moderates just wanting to be heard.

Nobody's head got stomped.

The size of the crowd took everyone by surprise .. Stewart only ordered porta-potties for 150,000 .. and a lot of people were too far away to hear and ended up going to bars to watch it on TV.

Stewart came out and mocked the crowd-size game first thing .. said over 10 million people were there.

CBS News commissioned a professional outfit that estimates crowds .. which estimated 215,000 people attended the rally.

Stewart and Colbert put on an really good show, made me laugh several times .. especially when they were trying to sing. The music was good .. I liked seeing Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow perform, singing, "Screaming on the Left, yelling on the Right, while I sit in the middle trying to live my life" .. and even elderly Tony Bennett singing "America the Beautiful."

Stewart and Colbert are comedians, yes .. but they're two real patriots, using humor to point out what's wrong with our country .. not using trite political catch-phrases but a plea for civility and "reasonableness" to heal our broken political system and move the nation forward.

They were not there to get rich by scaring people .. they weren't advertising gold or warning about Doom's Day as Glenn Beck does. I enjoyed the video montage devoted to the fear mongering of rightwingers Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly .. but they were balanced out by clips of leftwing rants by Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann.

Stewart waved around a remote, suggesting people turn it off.

I especially liked Stewart's serious closing address .. even he wondered aloud what his Rally to Restore Sanity was all about.

He didn't take aim at Washington, but did take a few shots at the 24-hour cable news "conflictinator" that goes for ratings and rants over perspective, truth and objectivity.

I liked it when he said, "This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies."

See the entire speech here, it's great:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JzGOiBXeD4

I'm sitting on my lawn
enjoying a nice blunt cigar
watching children ride scooters
up and down the street
twilight gently falling,
swallows circling,
Mississippi Kites high overhead,
tree frog, sounds of sweet shadows

Then I see them in the corner of my eye,
two bikes slow
they can not pass a lost soul –
I'm too conspicuous –
I don't want this feeling, I want them
to pass me by

Good evening sir they say
I'm Elder Hansen says the first
I'm Elder Olson the second chokes
and then they wait
but all I can think to say:
You're kind of young to be elders, aren't you?
They launch into their sales pitch
about Restoration and Heavenly Father
while I recoil in smoke, then interrupt
If I convert do I have to give up this cigar?
They are not sure
but soon get back on track
like a loose wheel wobbling
until they finally bid me good evening.
I watch them roll away
and wonder
what gives them the audacity to interrupt me
while I am at worship

by Ken Hada

Love it, love it .. I too have been interrupted by religious recruiters while pleasantly lost in my outdoor worship ...

"Mormon Missionaries Pay Me a Visit" by Ken Hada from Spare Parts. © Mongrel Empire Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

.. and it ain't just the Happy Meal.

Dang, talk about yer voter intimidation. How would you like to open your paycheck to find a handbill from your boss telling you how to vote .. saying that, unless Republicans win, you won't get raises or good benefits?

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A handful of McDonald's employees in northeastern Ohio received handbills in their most recent paychecks suggesting they vote for three Republican candidates.

"If the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels," the insert said. "If others are elected we will not."

The fast food chain's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., quickly condemned the action by Canton franchisee Paul Siegfried, saying it violated company policy. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the Democratic elections chief, said she was launching an investigation because the action appeared to violate Ohio election laws.

Allen Schulman, an attorney representing one of the employees, said Friday he had forwarded the paycheck insert to Canton's city law director, citing state and federal laws against corporate advocacy in elections. .....

The handbill with a simple McDonald's logo at the top recommended votes for Republicans John Kasich for governor, Rob Portman for U.S. Senate, and Jim Renacci for Ohio's 16th congressional district. A Renacci campaign flier was also included. [..]"

I love how McDonald's employees are told to vote for the Republican party which will likely try to eliminate the minimum wage .. which dismantled the government agencies that protect our food supply .. the party that has worked tirelessly to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and equal pay for women.

Someone found something unusual in a 1928 Charlie Chaplin movie .. a woman in 20's garb can be seen walking down the sidewalk and she appears to be holding a small, black object up to her left ear.

On this video the scene is slowed down, and the frame is zoomed-in closer, it would seem that the woman is "talking" into the "object."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiIrpEMbQ2M

Some people think the device could possibly be some sort of hearing aid .. could be. Others think it's a walkie-talkie, but those weren't invented until 1937, and even then, they required a bulky backpack transceiver powered by vacuum tubes.

Whatever it is .. it's still sort of cool .. and creepy.

Tea party candidates have said they will:

Spend our money attempting to impeach Obama.

Do away with Social Security as we know it.

Do away with the EPA.

Do away with public education.

Do away with the Department of Education to get rid of gay teachers, single women who are sexually active in unmarried relationships.

Do away with Medicare.

Do away with the minimum wage.

Do away with unemployment benefits.

Repeal healthcare reform.

Repeal banking/Wall Street reforms.

Pass legislation to force women who are impregnated by rapists to give birth.

Pass legislation to force women to have an unborn child, even if it means losing her own life.

Pass laws to outlaw birth control.

They want us to march backwards to the dark ages.

News videos show Tea Party goons stomping Democrats at rallies and handcuffing reporters who ask questions .. yet the Tea Party whines about Free Speech.

And get this -- Christine O'Donnell threatened to sue a radio station if it did not return a tape of an interview she gave. Her campaign manager phoned WDEL and threatened to "crush" the station with a lawsuit if it did not agree to turn over the tape.

WDEL's attorney told the campaign there was nothing illegal about videotaping the interview for later use on the station's website and added that such action is protected by the First Amendment.

These TP candidates are ignorant people swimming in great pools of money secretly donated by corporations who want them to win elections and fight corporate regulations.

Read more here about how bad publicity coming in from the Tea Party candidates could spell disaster for Republicans:

"The tea party's volatile influence on this election year appears to be doing more harm than good for Republicans' chances in some of the closest races in the nation, in which little-known candidates who upset the establishment with primary wins are now stumbling in the campaign's final days.[..]"

This is what Republican moderates get for making a pact with the devil -- radical Christians, bigots, racists, sexists -- to achieve the numbers they needed to defeat Democrats.

Yet the GOP mainstream won't speak out against all the violence and extremism .. they're caught between wanting to disassociate themselves with the crazies they've empowered, and the cold reality that they don't have the numbers to regain power without them.

.. that Sarah Palin would be a good president. He danced all around the question on "Face The Nation."

That puts him on a long list of notable Republicans who refuse to talk about Palin’s talents for the presidency.

Rove also knocked Palin in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, said voters wouldn't regard her as "presidential material" in 2012:

"With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office.'"

B-b-but Karl, what about her half term as governor of Alaska (an empty state with fewer people than Charlotte, NC)? Or her 6 years as mayor of Wasilla, AK (pop. of 11,000)? And what about all her outstanding work on Facebook and Twitter?

Seriously .. she's only in politics for the celebrity it brings .. and the money that celebrity brings.

The only thing Palin leads is a parade of rubes to her gimmick table .. books, tapes, buttons, etc. .. you can have it all for a price.

Moderates and Independents dislike her because she comes across as a simple minded fool. She's a wingnut conservative, and has no appeal outside of the Tea Party.

Which is a shame .. because I really really really want her to run in 2012. Please please please let her delude herself into thinking she can do the job.

What a gift to the Democrats. I mean, Sarah Palin is the most popular candidate with the GOP base .. and also the candidate most likely to get trounced in the general election.

Republican strategists are praying that Palin doesn't run. They know that, if she somehow transforms her cult of personality into the 2012 nomination, the Republican Party is screwed.

That has to be the biggest reason Rove can't stand Palin .. he wants to win. What else could it be? Because he can't control her? I mean, they have the same political views, don't they? Or does Rove not even have any actual views?

Maybe ol' Turd Blossom just has a dislike of women in power. Remember how he insulted the hell out of Christine O'Donnell until Limbaugh made him walk it back. Hey, I bet that's it -- Palin mocked Rove's remarks about O'Donnell .. challenged his Top Dog status in the GOP.

Or, maybe it's not women, maybe it's brain-dead fundies .. Palin and O'Donnell are supposed to be cannon fodder, they're not supposed to be calling the shots. I remember that a guy who worked on Faith-Based stuff for the Bushies wrote in his book that Rove mocked Christian Fundamentalists behind closed doors.

I know what Karl is waiting for -- Rick Perry of TX to announce his run for president in 2012, Karl will back him, probably become his chief strategist, thus propelling Karl back into the White House!

In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings—
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws—
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.

One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.

Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.

The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.

One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.

He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.

"The Sum of Man" by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. © Antrim House, 2009. Reprinted with permission

"Election Day is next Tuesday. According to a new poll, one out of three voters is still undecided. It's a tough choice. Do you vote for the people who got us into this mess, or the people who can't get us out of this mess?" –Jay Leno

"Sunday is Halloween -- it's the scariest day of the year. Unless you're a Democrat - then it's next Tuesday." –Jay Leno

"Bristol Palin has now survived six weeks on 'Dancing with the Stars.' She was neither eliminated nor impregnated. She'll probably get eliminated soon. Mid-November is when the Palin family typically goes into hibernation." –Jimmy Kimmel

"Juan Williams was fired by NPR. He told Bill O'Reilly that people in Muslim garb getting on airplanes make him nervous. And I was appalled: this is America, if we can't let a black man with a Latino name sh*t on Muslims to entertain a white guy, what do we have?"–Bill Maher

"Clarence Thomas's wife calls up Anita Hill 19 years later to ask her to apologize. Drunk dial much? And she did the right thing. She apologized. She said I'm truly sorry you're married to Clarence Thomas." –Bill Maher

"Clarence Thomas's ex-girlfriend came forward to say Anita Hill was right, he is a pervert. He was obsessed with porn and big breasts. And that's just a taste of what's in store on the next episode of Real Housewives of the Supreme Court." –Bill Maher

"An amazing week for idiocy in America. Glenn Beck said that evolution is ridiculous because he's never seen a half-man, half-monkey. Christine O'Donnell did not know that the First Amendment was in the First Amendment. We are truly one nation indivisible on the short bus." –Bill Maher

"One of the other nuts, Carl Paladino in New York state, had a debate, I've never seen this in politics -- he left before the debate was over to go to the bathroom. This is the best ad for Flomax I've ever seen." –Bill Maher

"New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's Facebook page was hacked and someone wrote offensive remarks in the captions of his pictures. The remarks were so crazy and offensive that Paladino was like, 'Are you sure I didn’t write these?'" –Jimmy Fallon

"According to a new L.A. Times poll in the gubernatorial race here in California, Jerry Brown now leads Meg Whitman 52 percent to 39 percent. She spent $163 million of her own money and she's behind by 13 points. That's the biggest expenditure of money for a loss since the Yankees." –Jay Leno

"The man Dick Cheney shot in the face on that hunting trip like four years ago says that Cheney has never apologized. Hey pal, join the club. The rest of the country is way in front of you." –Jay Leno

"Fox News, on Thursday, hired news analyst Juan Williams just one day after National Public Radio fired him for making disparaging comments about Muslims. Marking the first time someone has been fired and hired for the same comment." –Seth Meyers

"Following Williams' firing, several leading Republicans including Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, accused NPR of censorship and called for Congress to cut off federal funding for NPR. So in case you were wondering how much Republicans hate NPR, they're siding with a black guy named Juan." –Seth Meyers

"Last night on 'Dancing With the Stars,' Bristol Palin came out dressed in a gorilla costume. They say this is the closest a member of the Palin family has ever come to acknowledging evolution." –Jimmy Kimmel

"How can you not know about the separation of church and state? Someone get this woman a copy of Schoolhouse Rock because this is ridiculous. Apparently they don’t teach the Constitution at Hogwarts." –Jimmy Kimmel, on Christine O'Donnell's confusion over the First Amenment

"According to news reports, Christine O'Donnell's father used to play Bozo the Clown. It must be weird when your father is a grown man dressing up like a clown, and you're the embarrassment in the family." –Jimmy Fallon

"Jackass 3D" just opened. It’s the life story of New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino." –David Letterman

"Delaware Republican senate candidate Christine O'Donnell blamed her campaign's recent troubles on unfair coverage in the "liberal media." Yup, the liberal media used two of its favorite tricks on her: 'Record' and 'Play.'" –Seth Meyers

"In Washington, President Obama's recent speech to a women’s conference was interrupted when his presidential seal on the podium fell off -- two years early." –Seth Meyers

"The main purpose of the North Korean demonstration was to introduce Kim Jong Il's new heir-apparent – his youngest son, Kim Jong Un. But don’t be deceived...his cheeks are, in fact, not chubby. He's storing up evil for the winter." –Jon Stewart

[gathered from about.com, laughlines, and newsmax.com]

The Tea Party brown-shirts plan to police the polls for voter fraud on Election Day .. even offering a "$500 reward for anyone who turned in someone who was successfully prosecuted for voter fraud."

What they really would like to do is to bring back the Poll tax .. the one tax these nutjobs would support. They'd like to take us all back to the 50's and 60's .. but I've got news for them -- minorities are not as afraid and timid as they once were.

Read about it here.

"Tea Party members have started challenging voter registration applications and have announced plans to question individual voters at the polls whom they suspect of being ineligible. In response, liberal groups and voting rights advocates are sounding an alarm, claiming that such strategies are scare tactics intended to suppress minority and poor voters."

As far as I know, intimidating voters is illegal .. let's hope the Rand Paul stomping incident alerts law enforcement to prepare for trouble .. and to arrest any and all who try to keep voters from the polls.

After all, we do have this:

18 USC Sec. 241

"If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same [...] They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [...] "

I have the right to vote, only the Election Board has the right to question me!

What a joke. Righties have some nerve posing as the guardians against voting fraud .. do they think we've forgotten about the shenanigans of the 2000 presidential election. Hello .. Florida.

I hope my friend is right -- that all this brown-shirt goose-stepping, people-stomping intimidation is the last dying breath of the Tea Party. The Republicans have splintered themselves so much by creating this monster that whatever gains they win on Election Day will be short lived.

Especially when the rest of America wakes up to realize that this kind of thuggish/racist/Nazi-esque behavior is truly, truly un-American.

Talking about a bunch of Tea Party brown-shirt morons finally showing their true colors. Rand Paul supporters are filmed knocking a woman down and stomping her .. all because she tried to take part in the political process and exercise her 1st amendment rights to free speech.

If the sight of a brown-shirt crowd running wild doesn't motivate all of you who are even remotely sane to vote for Democrats (and then work for better ones later), then you are truly too pitiful and lacking in public spirit to pretend to be a citizen.

It started Monday night at a US Senate debate at a Kentucky TV station in Lexington .. the crowd outside the studios turned very ugly. Republican Rand Paul’s supporters plain and simple attacked a Moveon.org supporter for daring to carry a sign that the Rand Paul supporters disagreed with politically.

It was a smallish sign carried by a small woman .. it said Rand Paul was Employee of the Month for Republicorp. Really nasty huh? I guess it would've been okay if it had shown Obama as Hitler and said, "Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Ovens" .. one I've seen at Tea Party rallies.

Anyway, five men forced the woman to the ground, and one of them leaned in with full weight and stomped on her as she lay helpless on the curb.

Righties started hollering that he was a leftist plant .. but the police found him and served him with a criminal summons. His name is Tim Profitt, and he was the Bourbon County coordinator for the Rand Paul campaign .. which fired him.

The victim, Lauren Valle, was diagnosed at the hospital with a concussion and a sprained arm and shoulder.

She's lucky the whole thing didn't escalate into a 2nd Amendment Remedy.

Read more about it here, also see the video.

Look what the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party has done .. taken us back to the early brown-shirt days of Germany in the 1930's .. when disagreeing with someone politically would subject a person to being dragged to the ground, held, and stomped.

These Tea Party thugs aren't just nutty, they're dangerous. It starts with letting Joe Miller's goons handcuff reporters for asking a question Joe didn't want to answer ...

How do the Republicans dial back the agitation level of these extremists? Especially with Fox and hate radio continually escalating it? Is it going to take a McVeigh style terrorist attack, or a shooting death, to shake them out of their denial?

This very real stomping incident needs to be played on TV 24/7 the way Fox News plays up all their artificially created news .. e.g., ACORN "pimp" story.

Americans are divided over who they want to control Congress. A new Pew Research poll finds 32 percent of voters think the country will be better off if Republicans win control of Congress, 32 percent think the country will be better off with Democrats in charge and 30 percent think it doesn't make any difference.

So, we're even divided about whether Congress should be divided .. just great, the only thing that will bring change in America is a comet strike, nuclear war, or space aliens landing.

Polls still show high levels of voter unhappiness with Congress .. with even greater unhappiness with Congressional Republicans than Democrats. At the same time other polls project large Republican gains next week in the midterm election.

Go figure. It has to mean that at least some people will support Republicans because they feel it's better to have two parties splitting control of Congress than just one in charge.

Maybe they think if we have gridlock with one party in charge we'd have more legislative movement if power in Congress were divided?

A friend of mine said he'll vote straight GOP this time because he wants a divided government .. and if the GOP takes either or both houses, he’ll vote to re-elect Barack Obama in 2012 to keep it.

Someone will douse a cobra in gasoline,
light the sucker, and shove it headfirst
down your throat. It'll speed straight
through your esophagus, unfurl
its hood to fill your stomach
then begin to strike and strike and strike
and strike and strike: fangs pierce
your stomach, venom pours in,
the little burn of incipient ulcers
grows quick, paralysis sets in.
Your lungs stop before your brain,
before your hand, which lifts
to your mouth the plastic-lidded
paper cup holding the caramel
macchiato cappuccino with a double
shot of espresso and frothed soy milk
topped with two shakes of cinnamon
and no, NO (yes, you said no twice)
sugar that was made for you
slowly, while I, already running late,
waited behind you for a simple,
already-made black coffee.
You will lose all motion before
that drink reaches your mouth,
but you recover and the drink,
strangely, has vanished, and barrista
and cobra-douser-slash-lighter do it all again
and again. I know this because,
for my angry impatience,
I am behind you in line in hell
forever, the pot of black coffee
behind the counter steaming,
turning, I know, bitter.

by Gary Leising

"Your Punishment in Hell" by Gary Leising from Fastened to a Dying Animal. © Pudding House Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

We're on the brink of making history in Oklahoma -- our first female governor. Two accomplished women are vying for the job, one a Republican member of Congress and former lieutenant governor, the other a former corporate attorney, judge and Democratic legislator.

Looks like they'd have plenty to wrangle about .. but one of them embarrassed us by making a statement so stupid that it's making national headlines.

It all started last week during a debate when Republican Mary Fallin was asked what's the difference between herself and her Democratic opponent Jari Askins.

Fallin said that the experience of being a mother of six sets her apart and is the key credential that makes her more qualified to serve as governor of Oklahoma than Askins .. who is unmarried and does not have children.

Yes, folks, of all the important issues facing my state in these troubled times .. Fallin resorts to which one of them is the better mother and homemaker.

Good grief, Askins is lieutenant governor, and has been a judge, legislator, corporate attorney ...

Leave it to a Republican to throw us back to the dark ages when a woman's worth was measured by her marital status .. and if a woman didn't have children, she'd dang well better explain why not.

(Sigh) You'd think that with all the gains women have made, finally being judged on their own merits, even a Republican woman wouldn't want to be judged by an outdated stereotype.

But hey .. maybe motherhood would be helpful to Fallin in one area .. riding herd on Republicans .. who tend to whine and throw fits like children when they don't get their own way.

It did my heart good when the audience at the Oklahoma debate loudly groaned when Fallin cited her motherhood as a key qualification .. a sign that the voters have been there, done that.

Even in a "family values" Republican state like Oklahoma, not having kids shouldn't be a barrier to public service.

Because, unless she plans to breastfeed everybody .. how is motherhood relevant?

Askins won't get nasty, but I will -- she could've thrown it right back at Fallon, but she made no mention of Fallin's affair with her body guard .. or the marriages she broke up when it hit sunlight. It's public knowledge, people still talk about the bitter divorce -- Fallin's lawyer tried to paint her husband as having incest with their minor daughter .. with no proof.

But Askins' TV ads just stick to the issues .. only pointing out that it's not how many children you have, but how you vote on children's issues.

Read more here in the Washington Post.

Jon Stewart nails it again:

"The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption.... I'm less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians--the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it's a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn't say, 'Bad monkey'--somebody's gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They're representing a constituency.... [W]hat has changed is the media's sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there's this whole idea now that there's a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified." --Jon Stewart

In the pasture behind
the house, an island of berries
ripens in the summer
heat. They will grow
plump, darker than garnets, then shrivel
away, or rotting, fall
to the brambles, tasted only by birds,
field mice. Two horses graze
here. They watch from a distance as you
whistle, their ears shifting with each
variation. One morning they reward
you and stand at the fence, flies
clinging to the moist corners
of their eyes. They know
how to take the offered
apple, even from a child's hand. Brownie
shies from the gold one. She comes
only when he moves on, and then
with hesitation. You stroke her forehead's
blaze, give her your palm to smell,
to nuzzle. Late August,
two horses rolling in the afternoon dust.

"Gold Horse, Brown Horse" by Candace Black, from The Volunteer. © New Rivers Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission.

''I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, floating the possibility of armed insurrection, interview with right-wing talk radio host Lars Larson in Portland, OR, January 2010

''People ask me, 'What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?' Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, May 14, 2010

''I just think my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful getting married and raising a family. And I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn't.''—Carl Paladino, New York State Tea Party-backed candidate for Governor, Oct. 10, 2010

''When I said privatize, that's what I meant. That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I've since been studying and Chile has done this.''—Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, explaining why Social Security should be phased out in favor of a system resembling the one created in the 1980s by right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Aug. 12, 2010

''The Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry...This is for us...This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle

''If you're oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that's not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you'd have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you're oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions ... pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations.''—Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), member of the Tea Party Caucus, arguing that a hate crimes bill passed by Congress would lead to Nazism and legalization of necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality, Oct. 6, 2009

''What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP. I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.'' —Kentucky GOP Senate candidate and Tea Party hero Rand Paul, May 21, 2010

''By integrating women into particularly military institutes, it cripples the readiness of our defense. Schools like The Citadel train young men to confidently lead other young men into a battlefield where one of them will die. And when you have women in that situation, it creates a whole new set of dynamics which are distracting to training these men to kill or be killed.''—Delaware GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell, during a 1995 C-SPAN interview when she was press secretary for Concerned Women for America

''Do you know, where does this phrase 'separation of church and state' come from? It was not in Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. ... The exact phrase 'separation of Church and State' came out of Adolph Hitler's mouth, that's where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they're Nazis.''—Glen Urquhart, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for the Delaware House seat held by Rep. Mike Castle, April 2010

''We needed to have the press be our friend ... We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, during an interview with Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron, Aug. 2, 2010

''Oh gosh. Give me a specific one ... I'm very sorry right off the top of my head, I know that there are a lot but, uh, I'll put it up on my website I promise you.''—Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, unable to name a Supreme Court case she disagrees with during her debate with her opponent, Democrat Chris Coons, Oct. 13, 2010

''I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, explaining why she is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest, July 8, 2010

''They're following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that -- they follow me.''—Delaware GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell, claiming that unnamed political opponents are following her, Weekly Standard interview, Sept. 2, 2010

''Government shouldn't be doing that to a private company. And I think you named it clearly: It's a slush fund."—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, on the BP escrow account set up at President Obama's urging to pay out oil spill claims, Alan Stock Show, July 7, 2010

''I don't like the idea of telling private business owners -- I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant -- but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.''—Kentucky GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, arguing that government shouldn't require private businesses to serve customers of all races, interview with Louisville Courier-Journal, April 25, 2010

''When I get a friendly press outlet not so much the guy that's interviewing me — it's their audience that I'm trying to reach... They say, 'Bill O'Reilly, you better watch out for that guy, he's not necessarily a friendly' ... Doesn't matter, his audience is friendly, and if I can get an opportunity to say that at least once on his show — when I said it on Sean Hannity's television show we made $40,000 before we even got out of the studio in New York. It was just [great].''—Sharron Angle, talking to a guest at a house party about using right-wing media to raise big bucks, in remarks caught on tape and reported by the Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 2010

''The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, July 12, 2010

''These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities.''—Carl Paladino, New York State Tea Party-backed candidate for Governor, describing his idea to transform prisons into dorms for welfare recipients, Aug. 2010

''They were doing what they thought was right for their country.''—Ohio GOP House candidate and Tea Party favorite Rich Iott, defending Nazi soldiers who served in the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division, whom he frequently dressed up as while taking part in a Nazi re-enactment group (CNN interview, Oct. 11, 2010)

''I'm in the construction industry.''—Carl Paladino, New York State Tea Party-backed candidate for Governor, on why he sent emails of a woman having sex with a horse, President Obama and Michelle Obama dressed as a pimp and ho, and various other pornographic and racist chain letters

''It sounds funny, but you need to be paying more for your health care.''—Kentucky GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, on his version of health care reform, which calls for high-deductible insurance plans and people paying out-of-pocket for health care, (Details magazine, Aug. 2010)

''That is not within the scope of the powers that are given to the federal government.''—Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller, arguing that the federal minimum wage -- which has existed since Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 -- is unconstitutional and should be left to the states to decide, ABC News interview, Oct. 7, 2010

''Death panels are the bureaucracies that President Obama is establishing where bureaucrats will make the decision on who gets health care and how much.''—Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), founder of the congressional Tea Party Caucus, Newsmax interview, Sept. 10, 2009

(originally posted 10/15/10, accidentally deleted, want it in my archives)

.. you can bet that something significant has been exposed to the sunlight. The GOP screams the loudest when the Democrats have got a winning issue. This time it’s about corporations who are giving secret funds to the not-so-secret Republican agenda.

It’s about the US Chamber of Commerce collecting money from corporations who have special interests .. who would like to ship American jobs overseas, turn Social Security over to Wall Street, and turn Medicare over to the insurance companies.

Along comes Fox News crazy Glenn Beck, who tries to convince the American people that the US Chamber of Commerce is made up of many small businesses.

Not true .. we’re NOT talking about your small town Chamber of Commerce, which is indeed made up of small city businesses .. who have nothing to do with off-shoring, out-sourcing, and breaking labor laws.

We’re talking about the US Chamber of Commerce across the street from the White House. It’s a business lobbying group that represents some of the largest corporations you can think of .. Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, US Airways, JPMorgan Chase & Co., IBM, and Verizon .. and lots more that we don’t know about.

We’re talking about the US Chamber of Commerce that has been paying for a multimillion-dollar political advertizing blitz against the Democrats .. that contributes big bucks to Republican candidates .. AND refuses to reveal the names of the donors who are funding it all.

The Chamber’s chief lobbyist Bruce Josten, regularly appears on Fox News to candy-coat the Chamber’s fundraising and membership .. the same Fox News whose parent company donated $1 million to the Chamber.

Money that’s used on ad campaigns like the swift boat attacks against John Kerry .. nasty personal attacks meant to distract rather than spur debates on policy.

Then we have Fox’s carnival barker Glenn Beck calling on his hardworking listeners to donate money to the US Chamber of Commerce — which they did yesterday and it crashed the Chamber’s servers. How they must be laughing …

Beck is literally asking American workers to give their hard-earned wages back to their employers .. so their employers can use that money to push policies that benefit the rich .. maybe even out-source their jobs.

Sounds like a sort of twisted performance art, doesn’t it?

But, ThinkProgress has been digging around and reports that the US Chamber of Commerce received at least $885,000 from over 80 foreign companies in disclosed donations.

Do we really want China and Saudi Arabia to have a say in American policy?

And it turns out that there’s good reason the US Chamber of Commerce, Rove, and the Republican owned media want the Democrats to drop discussions of who is funding them:

"It has become an article of faith among certain Beltway inside-game commentators that there’s no way the Dem attack on secret money funding elections could ever have a prayer of working. …

But a new poll commissioned by MoveOn, and done by the respected non-partisan firm Survey USA, strongly suggests that the issue may indeed matter a good deal to voters after all.

The poll finds that two thirds of registered voters, or 66 percent, are aware that outside groups are behind some of the ads they’re seeing. This makes sense, since the issue has dominated the media amid the battle over the huge ad onslaught against Dems funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s groups.

What’s more, an overwhelming 84 percent say they have a "right to know" who’s bankrolling the ads." [..]"

Again, when the Chamber is whining, and Rove is squealing, you are doing something right.

C’mon Democrats, keep hitting ‘em on disclosure and on foreign money influencing elections .. hammer this each and every day. Put Republican/Tea Party candidates on record — ask them if they think voters have a right to know who’s paying for political ads in their district, or not? Simple question.

(originally posted 10/20/10, accidentally deleted, want it in my archives)

Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been in the news a lot lately for playing "an important role as a bridge between grass-roots Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans in Washington."

A lot of people thought her political activism was a conflict of interest with her position as a Supreme Court spouse .. others argued that she was an American citizen with rights. Whatever .. she is a great "get" for the Tea Party, they just love the money she raises for them through her nonprofit group, Liberty Central .. which is dedicated to opposing the leftist "tyranny" of President Obama.

Her activities with the group have raised questions of judicial ethics because the group, which pays her, has accepted large contributions from unidentified donors.

But I digress. It seems that Ginni took some time out from planning her next Tea Party event to leave Professor Anita Hill (a good Sooner) a voice mail — yes, a voice mail — asking Hill to apologize for accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings 20 years ago.

"Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas," it said. "I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband."

Ms. Thomas went on: "So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day."

The nerve! The gall! And that’s not even the most mind-blowing thing. This is:

"In a statement conveyed through a publicist, Ms. Thomas confirmed leaving the message, which she portrayed as a peacemaking gesture. She did not explain its timing.

"I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get past what happened so long ago," she said. "That offer still stands. I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.""

No offense? "Good morning you lying bitch .. isn’t it about time you groveled before me and my man and fessed up about being a lying bitch? Pray to Jesus and have a nice day."

Why would Hill take any offense to that?

Good thing I’m not the very classy, very brave Professor Hill .. because I might be on the next plane to DC for a little face-to-face with crazy Ginni.

BTW — some people, when they leave crazy voice mails after many years, have been drinking. Just sayin’ ..

Anyway, something is up .. maybe another intern is threatening to expose Clarence’s sexual harassment. Maybe this is a message for intern to shut up or they’ll do to her what they did to that "bitch" Hill .. the twist of the knife in Anita Hill one more time would merely be a bonus.

Professor Hill will NEVER apologize for being the victim of sexual harassment .. but now she has to worry about an army of Tea Party nut-jobs googling for her phone number and address.

I watched Thomas’ confirmation hearings on TV .. I don’t recall there being much doubt as to Hill’s truthfulness — she took a lie detector test — just that Republicans thought "pubic hair on a coke can" was an awfully funny joke. But, come on, one too wild to be made up.

The Republicans did their very best to destroy Hill’s career — I remember the phrase, "A little nutty, a little slutty." They seemed to want to make an example of her .. probably to discourage other women who’d been harassed by Thomas.

I hated Arlen Specter with the burning heat of a thousand suns for how he treated Hill in those hearings .. the most disgusting public display of organized misogyny I’ve ever seen. They savaged her and she withstood it all like a champ. She is still one of my heroes.

On the other hand, it kinda tickles me that Anita Hill’s truth-telling has been a source of never ending bile in the Thomas marriage for all these many years.

Read more about the voice-mail here at The NYTimes, and The New Yorker.　

(Orginally posted on 10/19/10 .. accidentally deleted, want it in my archives)

I have to laugh every time someone refers to the Tea Party as populist.

I looked it up — Populism is a "political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite" … the Populist Party started in 1891, it worked to improve conditions for farmers and laborers.

Yes, today’s Tea Party may have a few well-meaning and sincere folks in the mix .. but consider some of their standard bearers (Beck/Palin), their major media support (Fox), and most of their funding (Koch Bros., Dick Armey, Karl Rove) .. not exactly traditional grassroots .. and not really new either.

I also have to laugh when someone calls the Tea Party a new political movement. Tea Partyers certainly have more money, more organization and more media, but they’re the same old radical righties … with a new name of course.

Conservative zealots seem to pop up every time a Democrat takes over the White House. When FDR won in the 30′s, rightwing extremists called themselves the Liberty League .. they were hell bent to stop his New Deal.

When JFK won in the 60′s, they called themselves the John Birch Society. They called everyone else a Communist .. even called Eisenhower a Russian spy.

When Bill Clinton took over in the 90′s, hate radio exploded with the conspiracy theories of the Arkansas Project. They had Bill and Hillary doing everything from drug-running to murder.

Now today, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, they call themselves the Tea Party. But, unlike with previous eruptions, the Tea Party is bigger, richer and more mainstream .. and has all but taken over the Republican Party.

Tea Partyers hate healthcare reform and want to cut spending because they’re for a smaller government .. but they hold signs saying, "Hands off my Social Security and Medicare."

It sure tickles me that all of a sudden the rightwing is so concerned about spending .. when over the past 30 years, every time they’ve had a chance, they didn’t cut spending.

They didn’t cut spending under Reagan, they didn’t cut it under Bush Sr., and when they finally had complete control of the government under Bush Jr., they didn’t cut it then either. They did a lot of babbling about Social Security privatization, but never got anywhere. Actual cuts in spending were never on the table.

Please note that the Tea Party blossomed just one month after Obama took office — with Rick Santelli’s Feb/09 anti-Obama "rant" on the CME trading floor .. covered live by CNBC. You can find it on YouTube.

This was long before the auto bailout, before healthcare reform, before financial reform, and before anyone was even talking about the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

So, we Democrats think that the Tea Partyers are not really angry about spending .. they’re just pissed because it’s a Democrat doing the spending.

And a Black one at that .. because even the nuttiness over Clinton never got to this level of nasty racism and mob hysteria.

"A very joyous week. A week where the whole world was watching a bunch of men trying to climb out of a hole they dug for themselves -- but enough about the Democrats. Lets talk about those Chilean miners." –Bill Maher

"Americans love Chilean miners. One guy had four women waiting for him; there was the wife he never divorced, then there was the woman he lives with, then there was his current girlfriend and then the baby mama. He is now known as the Tiger Woods of mining." –Bill Maher

"They asked her to name a Supreme Court case that she disagreed with; she said Kramer vs. Kramer." –Bill Maher on the debate between Delaware Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell and Chris Coons

"The Obama administration had quite a day today annihilating the people who might vote for them. They appealed the ruling striking down Don't Ask, Don't Tell, even though they are supposed to be for striking it down. And then they said even if California legalized pot, the feds would still come in and bust people. But in fairness to Obama, it is an election year and Democrats can't afford to be seen being for freedom or equality." –Bill Maher

"There is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That's what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they'd be your relatives. But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter 'D'? Because it's a grade that means good enough, but just barely. You know why the Republican symbol is 'R'? Because it's the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark." –Bill Maher

"New Rule: Jerry Brown must stop apologizing for being in the same room when someone called Meg Whitman a whore. If you want to see a woman really get mad, compare a whore to Meg Whitman." –Bill Maher

"TLC just released a promo for Sarah Palin’s new reality show. Haven’t the last two years been her reality show?" –Jimmy Kimmel

"'Jackass 3D' just opened. It's the life story of New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino." –David Letterman

"I feel bad for the Chilean miners. They were down there in the dark so long. I mean, my God, it's like the Tea Party." –David Letterman

"At one point during the Deleware debate, Christine O'Donnell said, 'What I think is irrelevant.' I'll keep that in mind come Election Day." –David Letterman

"The first debate was at podiums. The next debate will be at satanic altars." –David Letterman

"Joe Biden said today President Obama has asked him to run again with him in 2010. So I think I speak for all late-night hosts when I say, 'Thank you, Mr. President." –Jay Leno

"You know that anti-gay candidate Carl Paladino running for governor? He had this horrible anti-gay thing the other day. It turns out he owns two buildings that house gay night clubs. So I guess when it comes to making money, Mr. Anti-Gay's attitude is 'Don't ask, don't tell.'" –Jay Leno

(PS - most of the late-night shows have been in reruns)

"American al-Qaida spokesman urges attacks in US"

CAIRO – A U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida on Saturday urged Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, calling it a duty and an obligation. In a 48-minute video posted on militant websites, Adam Gadahn directed his appeal to Muslim immigrants in what he called the "miserable suburbs" of Paris, London and Detroit, as well as those traveling to the West to study or work. [..]"

Why is he calling for attacks on Detroit? Seriously, those gang-bangers in Detroit are better armed than Al Qaida .. they aren't going to give a shiat if you light your underpants on fire.

Just let those Al Qaida morons try to move in on their turf ...

When I think of what news analyst Juan Williams said about how people in Muslim garb on a plane made him nervous -- I just wonder how many rational people out there said (ever so quietly) to themselves - "Me too."? I bet plenty, if not most.

Sorry, my liberal friends, but all that loose clothing makes me think of a suicide bomb .. I don't think this makes me bigoted, it just shows my strong instinct for survival.

Yes, of course western-dressed pregnant women could be hiding bombs too .. but we haven't been attacked by a slew of western-dressed pregnant women. Yet...

I know it's a raw deal for moderate Muslims, but just look at the recent history of attacks -- fundamentalist Imans have issued more fatwahs against Americans than Kellogg's has cornflakes. Who wouldn’t take nervous-notice of Muslims on a plane?

I still think Juan Williams got a raw deal (being fired from NPR for what he said) .. because I can tell the difference between someone who is spouting out-right racism and someone who is simply expressing entirely reasonable fears.

Sorry if this furthers ethnic and racial stereotypes, but some degree of caution just automatically kicks in at a lizard brain level .. some degree of worry is in order.

But we've reached a point in this country where political correctness-gone-wild now dictates that we keep our personal fears and concerns to ourselves.

A shame really, because feeling free to express such worries is the key to important dialog between both cultures .. we need to talk about both the distrust and the causes for the distrust .. we need to talk about what ails us and how to fix it.

Ending on a lighter note -- there are plenty of non-Muslims right here in this country who worry me whenever I see them. They too are dressed "funny" .. with tea bags hanging from their hats ...

Ever notice how Tea Partyers are always saying, "Get back to the ideals of our Founding Fathers and protect the Constitution!" .. unless, of course, they can simply rewrite it to fit their personal extreme political beliefs.

Even though it sounds as if many of them haven't actually studied it .. or even read it .. because we've seen a spate of strange behavior from Tea Party candidates in recent weeks.

Take Joe Miller in Alaska for example. He’s a strict constitutionalist except when it comes to free speech and freedom of the press. Last weekend, his body guards roughed up, handcuffed (HANDCUFFFED!) and detained a journalist from a respected Alaskan online newspaper .. all because Miller didn't want to answer a legitimate question.

The next Tea Party constitutional expert we have is Delaware's Christine O’Donnell. I've already blogged about her .. how she seemed oblivious to the meaning of the Establishment clause in the First Amendment. Got hooted by an audience of law students and scholars, she did.

Righties want to think that O'Donnell was making some sophisticated point about the separation of church and state not being in the text of the Constitution, but she was not .. what about the part where she didn't know what the 14th or 16th amendments were either? Had to be prompted by the moderator, she did.

Then we have Tea Party Queen Bee Sarah Palin .. who describes Tea Party candidates as "strict constitutionalists" and is out there stumping away, even though many of the candidates she supports refuse to appear with her. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California, Rick Perry in Texas, Angle in Nevada and even Miller in Alaska .. but I digress.

My point is -- I'd like to see someone smarter than I am do an article on the Constitution in its original form and explain what our government and country would look like if we were really strict constitutionalists and had not adapted and changed it over the years.

For example: Clarence Thomas wouldn't even be a lawyer, much less a Supreme Court Justice .. his strict constitutionalist wife Ginni, Christine O'Donnell, Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman, Sharron Angle and Carly Fiorina wouldn't even be able to vote.

Slavery would be preserved ...

How else would our great country be different? Would Tea Partyers really like it that way .. or are they just cherry-picking a few issues to support their ideology?

We should be very wary of extremist Tea Party candidates who want to "fix" the Constitution. They've said that want to roll back the "welfare state" .. phase out Social Security and Medicare and unemployment benefits. They'd like to repeal big business regulations, get rid of the Dept. of Education and minimum-wage, repeal the amendments that triggered the federal income tax and the direct election of senators. One of them questions the legality of the Civil Rights Act ...

Newsweek had an interesting article about all this.  

If the Tea Partyers somehow do get into power, we can only hope that they couldn't deliver.

It's one thing to campaign on change, quite another to legislate it.

Just ask President Obama.

When you text someone you haven't seen in a long time, you might want to ask, "So what do you do now?" before asking, "Wanna smoke some pot?"

EARLY, Texas -- A message between old friends who hadn't been in touch for a while led to a drug arrest after the recipient of the "So do you smoke weed?" text turned out to be a police officer.

Amanda Williams is a reserve officer with the Early Police Department.

The Brownwood Bulletin reported Friday that Williams said she received the text message Tuesday asking about getting together to smoke some marijuana that the man had.

Williams says she had not spoken to the man in some time and he did not know that she's a law officer.

Williams let police know that she agreed to meet the man at a park.

Early police and Texas troopers were on hand to detain the San Angelo man, who faces a marijuana possession charge.....[..]"

What a biatch .. I bet she's the life of the party.

How hard would it have been to delete the text and go about her day?

With yet another dastardly criminal behind bars, I feel so much safer and I'll sleep much more soundly tonight.

"To hear the Republicans tell it, from the second President Obama took his hand off the Bible taking the oath of office, everything that happened after that was his fault. I'd like to see any of you get behind a locomotive going straight downhill at 200 miles an hour and stop it in 10 seconds." -- Bill Clinton, quoted by the Washington Post.

In 2 years we've gone from losing 700,000 jobs a month to adding 60,000 jobs a month. I'd say he stopped the hell out of that train and is slowly pushing it back up the tracks .. but it's harder when he's got the entire Republican Party pushing the other way.

To be fair, for various reasons both parties should share a little blame for the economy being in the ditch .. although I personally hold the R's more responsible. Yet, I don't see a single one of them owning up to their part in it. Not one.

And I can't think of one senator who crossed party lines to work with the Democrats to figure out just what brought down the economy. Not one.

BTW, as time goes by President Clinton proves that he has more class than people ever gave him credit for. I'm sorry that at one time I let my disapproval of some of his personal behavior overtake my appreciation and admiration for his leadership and service.

"Terry Jones: Gainesville pastor picking up free Hyundai Accent today for canceling Quran burn"

Hey, I havent burned a Koran lately, where's my free car? .. OHH! looky! I just found some matches! I'd hurry up if I were you.

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, New Jersey (AP) — A Florida pastor who drew international criticism by threatening to burn a copy of the Quran will pick up his unlikely reward — a free car — today from a New Jersey car dealer.

Former New York Giants tackle Brad Benson, who is now New Jersey's largest car dealer, offered Florida pastor Terry Jones a 2011 Hyundai Accent worth $14,200 if he would agree to never burn the Muslim holy book. Jones had threatened to do it on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks....[..]"

And the car dealer gets to make a big deal out of it in a new radio ad, and get even more free publicity ...

Hey NPR, you pay Juan Williams for his opinions .. then fire him if you don't like them? Isn't your radio network funded by donations from we the people and federal subsidies? Aren't you supposed to be a forum for free speech?

Yes, I was uncomfortable with what Williams said - that Muslim garb on airplanes makes him nervous - but it isn’t close to being a firing offense.

Last Monday Williams, a Fox and NPR pundit, was chatting away on Fox's Bill O’Reilly show .. Bill-O was trying to get support for his side of the blow-out on The View. The one where Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walked off the set in a huff. Bill-O had sort of lumped all Muslims together because Muslims attacked us on 9/11 .. Whoopi and Joy argued that he should have said Muslim *extremists*. I agree, BTW.

Here’s what Williams said:

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Yes, that sort of plays into the fear about Muslims in America .. and borders on blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few extremists .. but to be fair, he did go on to warn against blaming all members of a religion:

"Wait a second though, wait, hold on, because if you said Timothy McVeigh, or the Atlanta bomber, these people who are protesting against homosexuality at military funerals, very obnoxious, you don't say first and foremost, we got a problem with Christians. That's crazy."

I agree .. crazy.

Next thing you know NPR puts out a statement saying that Williams’ "remarks on The O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

I just don't think Williams’ remarks were so outrageous that he couldn’t continue as an NPR news analyst. I mean, it wasn't like he ranted against Jews, saying they controlled all the networks, as Rick Sanchez did, which got him fired from CNN.

NPR has been responsible for so much good and important journalism .. but I don't think this firing was fair.

And the only reason that I ever watched Fox News Sunday was for the pundit news analysis at the end .. Juan Williams and Mara Liasson brought a balance of views. Both also worked on NPR .. and were probably the only moderate pundit voices that many Fox viewers ever heard.

We can't just draw up sides with all righties on this program and all lefties on that one .. we need to mingle their views for a little fresh air.

And don't worry about Williams finding work -- yesterday he signed a two-million-dollar, three-year contract with Fox News.

Read more here at Slate .. who says the left is doing to Williams what the right did to Shirley Sherrod:

http://www.slate.com/id/2271931/?from=rss

Ginni Thomas is still making headlines .. it's her timing that has everyone puzzled. Just why would Ginni call and ask Anita Hill to apologize *now* .. 19 years after Hill charged her husband with sexual harassment at his confirmation hearings?

Assuming Ginni was sober and un-medicated, why would she open this can of worms now? Why would she revive her husband's most painful public moment -- what good could it do?

It's obvious that the voice mail wasn't meant as an "olive branch" .. because nothing Ginni said even suggests a desire to make nice .. her message was incredibly hostile.

Does she want to rewrite history? Are the Thomases thinking about their legacy? Thinking about how to clean up Clarence's image? He's a joke among the law crowd .. a Republican toady who rarely speaks in Supreme Court sessions .. 281 words in three years by one count.

I even heard one TV pundit say that Ginni is trying to tidy Clarence up for a 2012 run for president .. backed by the Tea Party. Oh please, oh please, let this be true.

Then there's the theory that it was no accident that Ginni was trying to stir up the Tea Party base just two weeks before an election .. exploiting "how shabbily poor Clarence was treated" for recruitment and fund raising purposes.

Just speculating, but what if Ginni has taken her husband at his word for all these years and now something has happened to give her reason to doubt him. She would then decide that Anita Hill has to be the liar that Clarence has claimed .. or else she has been living with a lie for 19 plus years. That might keep someone up all night, drinking or not.

My favorite theory is that the call was meant to steal attention from a New York Times story that came out on the same day as the phone call .. a story questioning the funding of Ginni Thomas' organization, Liberty Central.

BTW, it didn't work, because Hill sat on the message for several days.

See, Ginni had been on the receiving end of some ethical questions about her business dealings, so this could be a distraction from all that .. maybe prevent further inquiry into her collection of 6-digit sums from anonymous sources .. anonymous so no one would know whether any Court vote by Clarence was tainted by a conflict of interest.

Very Machiavellian.

With or without shady funding, this is the first time in history that a Supreme Court justice's wife runs her own political advocacy organization.

Republicans seem to think that the most basic rules of judicial impartiality and ethics don't apply to them. I remember when Scalia went duck hunting with Dick Cheney while a suit against Cheney was pending before the court.

Digging up Thomas v. Hill 19 years later also digs up the facts .. reminding people that Anita Hill never wanted to testify against Thomas in the first place .. that Hill took a polygraph test at the time of the hearings and Clarence Thomas did not.

Also, a funny thing about mucking around in the past .. sometimes it comes back to bite you. The Washington Post found one of Clarence's old girlfriends who claims that what Hill said about his behavior in the early 80's sounds exactly like the Clarence Thomas she once dated.

"... Lillian McEwen, a former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer who said she dated Clarence Thomas from 1979 through the mid-1980s, told The Washington Post in an interview that Hill's long-ago description of Thomas's behavior resonated with her.

"The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then," said McEwen ..."

Whatever Ginni's reason, I wish I could've been a fly-on-the-wall in the Thomas household when the news broke of her phone call to Hill. Clarence couldn't have been very happy to have his name connected to sexual harassment and dragged through the news again.

He probably got a new lock for the liquor cabinet...

(Better late than never, since BlogHi was down for a few days)

"In three weeks Californians will vote on whether to legalize marijuana. Which means that three weeks and one day from now thousands of stoners will say, "Oh crap, that was yesterday?" –Jimmy Fallon

"Did you watch the debate withChristine O'Donnell, you know, the anti-self pleasuring, witchy candidate in Delaware? She wasn't that good though. She's not really a master debater.'" –Craig Ferguson

"Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are President Obama's 10th cousins. Which means they are secret Muslims." –Jimmy Kimmel

"Christine O'Donnell is trailing in the polls by 20 percent. She'll need a miracle to win. Or a very good spell." –Craig Ferguson

"The debate was moderated by Wolf Blitzer. It got very intense. At one point, O'Donnell turned him into an actual wolf." –Craig Ferguson

"California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has released a new TV ad in both Mandarin and Cantonese. This is part of her effort to reach out to the Asian community. That's how California works, where a white woman from back East, trying to replace an Austrian governor, runs an ad in Chinese to explain to people why she hired a Mexican maid." –Jay Leno

"The Obama administration had lifted the six-month ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, provided that the oil companies follow the new safety regulations. For example, there has to be at least one sober person on the rig at all times." –Jay Leno

"The midterm elections are in a few weeks, and the Democrats are at a huge disadvantage, and I'll tell you why. They don't have a witch running." –David Letterman

"People are saying that everything is Obama's fault – he hasn't dug us out of Bush's recession and two wars fast enough. That's the problem." –David Letterman

"Rich Iott, the Republican nominee and Tea Party-backed candidate for Congress in Ohio, has admitted that he dressed up in a Nazi uniform for a Nazi reenactment. He said he was just following orders. His campaign slogan: 'In your heart you know he's Reich.''' –Jay Leno

"A Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio, a guy named Richard Iott, photos have surfaced of him dressed in a Nazi uniform. He would go to Nazi reenactments dressed as an SS Stormtrooper. He said he only dressed as a Nazi as a bonding ritual with his son. Really? Any other kids do that with their dads? 'I don't want to fish, I don't want to play catch, Let's dress up as Nazis!'" –Jay Leno

"New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's pit bull, Duke, bit another dog during a campaign stop this week. People who were there said he was growling, foaming at the mouth, and completely out of control. And so was his pit bull." –Jimmy Fallon

"The Nobel Prize in the fiction category went to Christine O'Donnell's resume." -David Letterman

"Christine O'Donnell's new ad says she didn't go to Yale, like her opponent. I don't think she really needs to tell us that." –Jay Leno

"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie canceled a tunnel they were digging from New Jersey into New York. Apparently, New Yorkers found out about it." –Jay Leno

"It's now being alleged that Lou Dobbs had illegal immigrants working for him. The good news, he's now qualified to run for governor of California." –Jay Leno

"Jerry Brown has apologized to Meg Whitman after a campaign aide called her a whore. Let me tell you, that is totally out of line. Politicians don't become whores until after they're elected." –Jay Leno

[gathered from about.com, laughlines, and newsmax.com]

Well, at least he isn't running against Chris Coons

SPRINGFIELD -- The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards -- about half in predominantly African-American areas -- and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.[..]"

Look at it this way .. he could pick up a lot of misdirected Tea Party votes ...

Who else has a problem with the idea that an electronic ballot cannot be changed weeks before an election?

If there's one thing we know about electronic voting machines by now, it's that you can make them do whatever the hell you want ON Election Day.

Welcome back miners! Sorry you had to put up with such a raw deal. Welcome back to your fresh air freedom .. welcome back to your families, friends, decent food, sunlight, the sound of rain, starry nights, sex and sanity.

I’m sure someone will catch you up with Dancing With the Stars if you ask.

The whole world was riveted by this story, watching on TV, computers, even cell phones .. cheering as those 33 Chilean miners were rescued from the San Jose mine, where they have been trapped more than 2,000 feet below ground for 69 days .. the first 17 days nobody knew if they were even alive.

I listened more than watched - being severely claustrophobic - but every time a miner was freed and hugging his family I watched with tears in my eyes.

My heart was in my throat every time they lowered the capsule to get the next one .. please get them all out, and the rescue workers too .. the thought that one of them might get stuck halfway up haunted my dreams.

I was very impressed with Chile's national solidarity .. the way they all stick together. (Well, except for the wives and mistresses.) They've had this and the earthquake within a year of each other .. it’s been a tough time.

I was impressed with Chilean president, Sebastian Pinera .. who was on deck and in charge .. doing everything he could to speed along the rescue process. The way that many Americans felt that George Bush should've done with Katrina .. the way Barack Obama should've done with the Gulf oil spill.

Pinera drew on the expertise of miners, geologists and drillers from all over the world. He consulted US space agency NASA for advice on how the miners would react psychologically .. how best to feed them, how best to build the rescue pod.

It was a US company's drill rig that bored the rescue hole .. a US company who developed the specialized drill bits that ground through a half-mile of tough quartzite and silica .. that can easily send drill hammers off course. The rescue cable came from Germany .. Japan supplied the video equipment, etc.

Yes, the rescue effort was truly extraordinary .. but the fact is, the mine should never have been open in the first place .. the Chilean mining industry has a history of lax safety standards.

We can only hope that while this story has the world's attention, the media will ask some of the tougher questions about why the mining industry worldwide remains so poorly regulated.

We don't know if any of these rescued miners will return to mining .. but others miners will, because the mining of copper and other raw materials account for about 60 percent of Chile’s exports ...

Read more about the rescue here.

They wait at the gates
in flannel shirts and heavy denim pants.
They wait for the gates to open,
the whistle to blow
signaling change of shift.
They wait for the mill jobs
to come back, with wages
that will feed a family,
wages to be proud of.
They wait in the parking lot
where one-stop-shoppers
now, twenty-five years later,
look through them like ghosts.
They wait in a rain
of gadgets and plunder,
companies from somewhere else
picking their pockets
trying to sell them everything
they don't need at bargain prices.
They wait for the world
to make sense again,
where calluses grow on your hands
and the soreness in your back
means you're worth a damn.

By Gary Lark

Poem: "Men at the Gates" by Gary L. Lark, from Men at the Gates. © Finishing
Line Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

Oklahoma has earthquake .. confused residents seen outside wandering around with cameras .. unsure of what to do.

From Tulsa World: "A 5.1-magnitude earthquake shook Oklahoma just after 9 a.m. Wednesday, and tremors were reported everywhere from the Kansas state line to the Red River.

...In Sapulpa, Martha Dilday felt the quake from her recliner. She said the shaking, which lasted a few seconds, woke up her husband, who was sleeping late.

"All of a sudden all the doors on all the cabinets started rattling and then the chair started shaking back and forth," said Dilday, 80. "Then I realized the whole house was shaking."

..."I was in my La-Z-Boy at the time and it went left to right," the man said. "I've been here five something years and never felt anything like it." [..]"

Boy, for a minute there I thought some tea-bagger went and blow'd up some gu'mint building.

.. it's not over by a long shot, legal wrangling will continue. But the day is getting closer .. the day when men and women who are prepared to give their lives to defend my freedom will be able to enjoy their own, and no longer forced to live a lie.

The AP reports that a federal judge issued a worldwide injunction "immediately stopping enforcement of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, suspending the 17-year-old ban on openly gay U.S. troops."

The judge's milestone ruling "also ordered the government to suspend and discontinue all pending discharge proceedings and investigations under the policy."

Hurray! A woman! This decision took great courage.

The Pentagon is pissed, saying this should be decided by Congress .. but sometimes a decades-old, consensus policy is so odious that it must be chucked by any means necessary.

This is a matter of Civil Rights .. period.

The courts have always been way ahead of Congress - Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade - the only way a minority can protect its rights is through the Courts.

Congratulations to all who have waited for this moment. It didn't come by the best and most direct route, but the day has come. Civil rights will always triumph over inequity, if enough good men and women insist on it.

The very idea that the United States military, in the 21st century, while fighting two wars, would kick out able-bodied, well-trained, patriotic volunteers because they don't want to lie about who they are, is indefensible.

Yes, the DOJ can appeal and defend the odious policy of discrimination .. but President Obama should be thankful that Judge Virginia Phillips did what he should have done in the first place.

BTW - I am hopeful that Obama will push certain policies more aggressively after the mid-terms .. and I suspect if he gets re-elected, he'll be free to accomplish wondrous things in his second term.

Carl Paladino, that's who - the Republican candidate for governor of NY - for his recent gay-bashing comments. He said that children should not be "brainwashed" into thinking homosexuality was "an equally valid and successful option."

Only I'd bet my last dollar that the only thing he's sorry about is saying how he feels out loud and getting in trouble for it ...

And it wasn't really an apology .. Paladino just said that he "should have chosen better words."

The words he did choose were outrageous and inexcusable .. spouting them during the same week of brutal attacks on gays in New York .. not to mention a rash of horrible gay teen suicides across the country.

I can remember a time when crazies like Carl were an embarrassment and shoved off to the fringes of society to live out their poisonous lives. They were usually ignored in polite society .. no one ever took their ranting seriously.

If someone had a crazy uncle, they'd keep him hidden away in an attic, but these Tea Partyers are proud of their hateful crazies and bring them down to the parlor to parade them around.

Sad that this kind of venom has become acceptable, popular even, with rightwing Republicans .. they don't try to hide it any more.

That tells me volumes about their movement .. it doesn't have much going for it but venom.

So .. the only upside I can see to the whole Tea Party movement is that, while they have walked among us and kept their bigotry to themselves, the election of Obama has forced them out of the dark crevices and into the light, desperately searching for others of their kind. They must have thought everyone felt as they do but just didn't speak of it publicly.

They are making fools of themselves as they find out that they are the new minority.

I predict -- this is their last gasp, they'll be virtually extinct soon, sliding back into total irrelevance .. hopefully after the next election.

Read about Paladino's "apology" here.

A person off-screen reaches their hand in and begins vigorously scratching the cat's "secret spot" -- the junction of a cat's back and tail. The cat lifts its head and begins to open and close its mouth, as many cats do when scratched in that particular location. But instead of whatever noise the cat may or may not be making, the soundtrack has been replaced with the Trololo song. As the scratching stops and starts, so does the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60hDft_YOGg

.. who's the craziest one of all?

Well dang, all of a sudden 2010 became the Year of the Crazy .. with Tea Party crazies every "witch" way you look.

We have Christine O'Donnell, US Senate candidate (DEL), an anti-masturbationist who has to tell her constituency that she's not a witch, who thinks there are mice with human brains.

We have Carl Paladino, NY candidate for governor, who threatens reporters with bodily harm, declared his dog Duke his chief of staff, and is now trashing gays .. he thinks they brainwash children and don't deserve equal rights.

We have Rich Iott, a House candidate from Ohio, who likes to play Nazi .. dresses up in a German Nazi Waffen SS uniform for World War II re-enactments.

We have Rand Paul, US Senate candidate (KY) who's says he's not a racist, but wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, and the 14th Amendment.

We have Joe Miller, US Senate candidate (AK), who wants to abolish Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Insurance .. but has taken advantage of every government handout he or his wife can get their hands on.

We have Ken Buck, Colorado US Senate candidate, who would like to ban birth control, firmly opposes abortion rights and would force rape victims and 14-year-old incest survivors to give birth to their rapists’ babies.

We have Meg Whitman, California candidate for governor, a billionaire who wants to get tough on employers of illegal aliens, but employs her own illegal aliens.

We have Carly Fiorina, US Senate candidate (CA), a failed CEO who touts her "executive experience", but ran HP into the ground .. who shipped 30,000 jobs overseas. Jokes are going around that it's China funneling money through the US Chamber of Commerce so that Fiorina can create 30,000 more jobs in China.

We have Sharron Angle, Nevada US Senate candidate, with her "Second Amendment remedies" .. which means? .. draw yer pistol and shoot whoever goes agin you?

We have Linda McMahon, Connecticut US Senate candidate and wrestling mogul gone wild (she once physically attacked a scantily clad lady who she thought was her husband's mistress) who thinks we should cut the minimum wage.

Okay, my fingers are tired of typing .. but there are many more .. I didn't even get to the Chicken Lady ...

Thing is, there are plenty of disgruntled voters who might not investigate these candidates enough, and give them some serious seats in state and federal government.

So .. if the worst happens and these nutcases take over in November, and the US is reduced to third world status -- and it will be -- let's try to look at it from a broader perspective.

Yes, we'll have hit rock bottom .. the political pendulum will have swung all the way to the right and will start to slowly swing back to the left. It happens all the time.

Yes, people will suffer, but we're a strong nation and we'll have an opportunity to rebuild. Sometimes you need a crisis in order to overcome a virulent infection, and the crazy rightwing Taliban is as virulent as it comes.

Once the economy gets back on track -- and it will -- once we stop the bleeding of our hard earned dollars into two useless wars, the Tea Party distraction will be phased out of the mainstream Republican Party. The GOP moderates will refuse to be bullied around any longer by the Palins, Angles, Pauls, Palladinos, McMahons, Bucks, O'Donnells and Millers of this world.

They'll all be just an interesting blip in America's history.

I grew up at the end of a dirt road
on a creek you've never heard of
off a spur, that if you drove up it
you wouldn't know why
when you got there.

Daddy drove cat for old man Stimpson
until he rolled it down the mountain
and broke his back. They said he was lucky,
being thrown clear. But Daddy said
pain talked to him every day
and he didn't like the conversation.

I started picking ferns, barking chittam
and selling mushrooms; made spinners
and tied trout flies; got used to getting by.
We ate venison and rabbit, nettles,
quail and grouse, trout and crawdads.
I learned to drink thunder water
on the spine of Mitchell hill.

When I was grown, Mama gave me a hundred dollars
she'd saved; told me to go to town.
Get a job, she said, make a life.
But I didn't want to change tires,
stock shelves, or join the army.
She withered up after that
tending her little patch of flowers
along the path to the spring.

Forty years later, I'm still getting by.
I've planted trees and cleaned toilets
for the parks, but I never left the woods,
even when I had to sleep in my truck.
There's still a place or two left
to pick mushrooms, and I get along
alright with the dope growers.

I'll deliver illegal smoked salmon
if you get word from one of my regulars.
And when you hurry your kids along
in the grocery store, I understand;
I won't be there long.

By Gary Lark

Poem: "Getting By" by Gary L. Lark, from Men at the Gates. © Finishing Line
Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

(Forgive me, his language is salty, but what he says is true.)

"In today's world five times more money is being spent on drugs for male virility and on silicone implants for women than is being invested in research for a cure to Alzheimer's disease. This means that in a few years the world is going to be full of old women with big t*ts and old men with stiff c*cks who won't be able to remember what they are used for." Drauzio Varella M.D., Brazilian Oncologist

I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.

We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.

The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.

The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.

My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.

Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.
And she never mentioned the hurt
they had caused - just came home
and parked the Buick in the shack.

by Gary L. Lark

"Driving Nails" by Gary Lark, from Getting By. © Logan House, 2009. Reprinted with permission

Saturday Night Live has found a new play toy .. Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, and she provides even more comedy material than Palin.

C'mon, how could SNL not parody her when she ran the now infamous, "I am not witch" campaign ad in Delaware.

Kristen Wiig plays O’Donnell in this mock ad .. here's the full full script video.

"Hi I am Christine O’Donnell and I am not a witch, I am nothing like you’ve heard. I am you, and just like you I have to constantly deny that I am a witch.

Isn't that what the people of Delaware deserve? A candidate who promises first and foremost that she's not a witch? That's the kind of candidate Delaware hasn't had since 1692.

And that’s why, if elected to the human Senate I promise to fly straight down to Washington – on a plane – and do exactly what you would do, not spells.

Besides, if I were a witch, why wouldn’t I just cast a spell making all of you forget that I am witch. It’s certainly not because the spell requires one newt per person, and I lack a sufficient number of newts.

I know the problems facing our nation, because I have been living among you, since I moved to Delaware from the black forests from Germany almost three thousand years ago.

So this November 2nd, vote for Christine O’Donnell, aka Sereda the Enchantress. Because I am not a witch. And if I am, do you really want to cross me, I didn’t think so.

Paid for the Coven to Elect Christine O’Donnell, who is not a witch."

Very good SNL .. still not as funny as "I can see Russia from my house"

"Donald Trump is running for president. He's not the kind of guy that would stage something like this for publicity. I know it's official because today, Trump threw his hair into the ring." –David Letterman

"Lady Gaga was ahead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Forbes' list of the most powerful women in the world. I'm not saying Pelosi's jealous, but today she showed up to work wearing a meat pantsuit." –Jimmy Fallon

"Carl Paladino's pit bull, Duke, bit another dog during a campaign stop this week. People who were there said he was growling, foaming at the mouth, and completely out of control. And so was his pit bull." –Jimmy Fallon

"President Obama has moved a 12-day tour of India and Asia to right after the November election. I can't imagine why he would want to leave the country right after the midterm election." –Jay Leno

"Obama is going to tour India and Asia. I guess he wants to check up on American jobs." –Jay Leno

"Christine O'Donnell has a new commercial where she says, 'I'm not a witch.' Isn't that exactly what a witch would say?" " –David Letterman

"Donald Trump is running for president. He's already got a short list of running mates. He's thinking about Cyndi Lauper, Hulk Hogan, Melissa Rivers, Sharon Osbourne . . . He's ready to go." " –David Letterman

"Trump refers to the White House as a '200-year-old tear-down.'" –David Letterman

"There are rumors of an Obama/Hillary ticket for 2012, though some insiders say Obama doesn't feel he needs Hillary on the ticket. At this point, I don't think Hillary feels that she needs Obama on the ticket." –Jay Leno

"Donald Trump may run for president. Wouldn't that be exciting? We haven't had a president who wore a powdered wig since John Quincy Adams." –Jay Leno

"Christine O'Donnell has a new ad in which she tells voters, 'I'm you, I'm just like you.' Of course, a lot of people are going, 'Really, you're me? Well, I don't belong in the U.S. Senate either. I want somebody smarter than me, and that's not you!" –Jay Leno

"The latest Gallup poll gives congressional Republicans the best poll numbers they've ever had. They say this could be the biggest Republican year since 1894. So for the second time, John McCain could be swept to victory." –Jay Leno

"President Obama wants community colleges to produce an additional 5 million graduates by 2020. People in community college were like, 'Whoa, you want us to finish in only 10 years? Stop with the pressure.'" –Jimmy Fallon

[gathered from about.com, laughlines, and newsmax.com]

DC Starbucks switches to gender-neutral restrooms.

A sign of things to come? First Wash. DC, then New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles .. Tulsa?

I'm female and don't mind sharing a private stall restroom with other genders, or transgenders .. I just don't want men pissing all over the seat.

So Starbucks better keep 'em clean .. I have mistakenly entered a men's restroom and all I can say is EWWWW!

All establishments need to get rid of those smelly urinals all together .. so everyone can pee in the privacy of their own stall.

Read about it in this piece by Amanda Hess -- Starbucks gender-neutral restrooms: No plans to expand beyond D.C.:

"Last week, Starbucks locations across the District of Columbia began the process of making their restrooms gender neutral. Fifty-two District coffee shops will be removing the "Men" and "Women" signs on their single-stall facilities this month in order to comply with gender identity protections in the D.C. Human Rights Act. Bonus: San Franciscans are already jealous of our coffee chain toilets!

"Should've happened here first," declared SFist's Jay Barmann, before congratulating D.C. LGBT activists on the win. "[I]t's a little surprising this didn't happen in San Francisco first, given that we have one of the largest and most concentrated transgendered populations in the country."

Other things to think about are those dads who have kids in need of a changing table .. because most of them are in the ladies' rooms. And transgender people are often harassed or thrown out of public restrooms.

But unisex restrooms aren't just for transgender people, they're handy for disabled people with opposite-sex assistants .. and parents, guardians, and babysitters with small children of the opposite sex.

So, the availability of gender neutral restrooms at businesses is a really good idea.

Hey, all you "colored people" .. have you gotten all your free stuff?

A 90-year-old woman (she said) called into C-SPAN's Washington Journal during a discussion on Wall Street. She tests the professionalism of one of the show's hosts, Robb Harleston, who is black, by saying she was just calling in to ask "the colored man," why colored people aren't more thankful for everything whites have done for them. When he politely reminds her of the topic at hand, she assures him she's not a racist.

I start my day with Washington Journal, and I'm constantly impressed with how the hosts handle the crazy opinions of some of the callers - it's part of the fun - and this is a marvelous example.

CALLER: I’m 90 years old and I just wanted to ask the colored man, why don’t colored people instead of saying what we did to them, why don’t they say what we did for them? They talk about the slavery but since then they have been given welfare, free medicine, free everything.

HARLESTON: Ma’am I think this is more of a conversation about the relationship between the administration and the people on Wall Street and not necessarily one that’s based on race.

CALLER: Oh, okay. I’m not a racist. That was my comment. Thank you.

Yep, "I'm not a racist .. but haven't we done enough for you colored people?"

Oh boy, I actually know people like her ... they, mostly, are a product of their raisin', of the times they lived in. I wish her a long life, but after that generation dies out, I expect their young descendants to hold a more inclusive view .. I see signs of it already.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHKhB3-EmZM

The mid-terms are just weeks away and Democrats were lagging in some of the congressional and gubernatorial races around the country, but recent polls show that they've jumped back into contention.

Like I said, while Republicans trained for the marathon, Democrats trained for the sprint.

Dems have recently stepped up aggressive campaigning and advertising .. maybe energizing enough listless Democrats to wake up and make a difference in key races.

Hopefully, Dems, who aren't political junkies and haven't been paying attention, are finally being scared into action by the realization of what would happen if Republicans get their hands on both the House and Senate.

It's one thing to be fed up with incumbents in Washington .. it's quite another to (as Obama says) give the keys back to the same guys who drove us into the ditch in the first place.

I'm doing all I can .. except for dressing up like Paul Revere and wearing funny tea bag hats, or standing on the street corners with a sign that says how much I hate other people ...

It pisses me off that we live in a time, and in a society, where politicians don't take responsibility for their actions .. there's no self-examination, no accountability.

We were sold down the river by the Bush administration in too many ways to mention .. but they, and all those who supported that administration, have taken no responsibility for the mess we're in.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that they're too bigoted and/or partisan to help fix the problems.

Additional insult to injury is a Democratic party that sometimes comes off as the nerdy kid on the play ground constantly getting a wedgie. Yes, they have passed some important legislation, but they needed to flex more muscle, ignore the bullies, and get the freakin' job done.

See, I'm not happy either .. I'm just not willing to reward the clowns who got us into this mess .. I'll fight every way I know how to keep them from getting elected.

Republicans doubled the national debt under Bush .. perhaps they'd like to triple it the next time.

My bottom line is what's good for the country. Yes, the country is on a bad path, but it was Republican voodoo that put us on it. Surely, many voters agree with me.

That's why these predictions of a Democratic rout in November seem so overwrought. Sure, Democrats will lose seats -- but I'd bet good money that the majority of voters don't want to return to the crazy years.

South of the bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
day a motorcycle with engine running
as it lay on its side, ticking over
slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.

I admired all that pulsing gleam, the
shiny flanks, the demure headlights
fringed where it lay; I led it gently
to the road and stood with that
companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.

We could find the end of a road, meet
the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about
hills, and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.

Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale-
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me good man, roared away.

I stood there, fifteen.


"Fifteen" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. ©
Graywolf Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission.

"Christine O'Donnell released a commercial in which she says, 'I'm not a witch.' That's pretty good, though not as effective as her opponent's slogan, 'I'm not Christine O'Donnell.'" –Jimmy Fallon

"Donald Trump may run for president. Is that a good idea? Haven't enough Americans already been told, 'You're fired'?" –Jay Leno

"Well, at least there would be someone in politics with worse hair than Joe Biden." –Jay Leno

"Yesterday President Obama told voters that he's a Christian. But you see how Fox News reported it? They said Obama admits he's a follower of the bearded radical from the Middle East." –Jay Leno

"The wife of Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino said she accepts that her husband had an affair, that he has a mistress, and the mistress had his baby. He actually convinced her this is no big deal. Guys, let me tell you this, don't try this at home. This guy is a lawyer, a real estate developer, and a politician. That is the trifecta of professional liars." –Jay Leno

"The White House has issued an alert for American tourists traveling in Europe over fears of a terror attack. But the joke's on you, terrorists. We can't afford to go to Europe." –Jimmy Fallon

"Obama has finally been getting on the campaign trail trying to help [Democrats]. Their big plan is a series of what they call backyard visits where the President speaks to people in their backyards in Middle America. Because nothing calms the fears of Middle Americans like having a black man suddenly appear in your backyard." –Bill Maher

"Rick Sanchez was fired after saying that Jews control the media on a satellite radio show. Had he said it on his show on CNN, he wouldn't have been fired because no one would have heard it." –Jay Leno

"The State Department has issued a travel warning. They've warned Rick Sanchez not to travel to Israel." –Jay Leno

"A Senate has passed a new bill that requires TV stations to lower the volume level on commercials. This is great, a hundred of the most powerful people in the nation have managed to do the same thing my remote does." –Jimmy Fallon

"The Senate has decided to limit the volume of TV commercials. Who says Congress doesn't get anything done?" –David Letterman

"Today we found out that a third college that Christine O'Donnell said she attended has no record of ever knowing her. I'm starting to wonder if she ever really went to Hogwarts." –Bill Maher

"I feel bad for my part in this, and then the feeling passes when I imagine her in the Senate introducing the masturbation prevention act of 2012." –Bill Maher

"Meg Whitman, our own candidate for governor of California, is running on a platform that's as tough as nails on illegal immigration. We found out this week she had an illegal immigrant working in her house for nine years. Today Meg Whitman said she's willing to take a lie detector test to prove that she didn't know that she had an illegal alien cleaning her house. You know what, if we wanted a governor who swears they have no idea what's happening in their house, we'd move to Alaska." –Bill Maher

"That is not the only election shocker to come out of this state. Jerry Brown checked his personal records and found out he died in 1991. That's a hell of a choice we have." –Bill Maher

"Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, is quitting. He said he loves it in Washington, he just wanted to spend more time with his f*cking family." –Bill Maher

"Meg Whitman's campaign for governor of California is in trouble after it was disclosed that she had an undocumented alien working in her home for 9 years. The maid is now being represented by Gloria Allred. How about we let the maid stay and deport Gloria Allred?" –Jay Leno

"President Obama has been meeting with voters in what he calls 'backyard chats.' He's held these in real people's backyards. You know something, I think all politicians should talk to people in their backyards. Then you could take what they say and spread it on the lawn." –Jay Leno

"Republican Senator Tom Coburn said yesterday that Christine O'Donnell, if elected, will be able to combat the stupidity in Washington. So I guess they're going to fight fire with fire." –Jay Leno

"It's getting very nasty in Louisiana in the Senate race down there. The Democrat that's running has a two-minute TV ad about Republican Sen. David Vitter, which features the hooker that Vitter paid $300 to. It's a two-minute ad. And here's the embarrassing part for Vitter: the ad lasted a minute longer than he did." –Jay Leno

"South Dakota Senator John Thune says he's talked to his wife about running for president in 2012. And of course his wife had the same question that we all have: 'Who are you again?'" –Jay Leno

"The good news is that scientists have found a giant Earth-like planet, and it may support human life. Whatever you do, don't tell British Petroleum." -David Letterman

[gathered from about.com and newsmax.com]

No, not smoking it, silly .. not that there's anything wrong with that .. I mean using it on the ballot to help get some of them elected.

I refer to an interesting thing happening in California -- Democrats are polling ahead of Democrats in other states, and party strategists think it's the state’s marijuana-legalization initiative on the ballot that's energizing young voters.

And polls are predicting higher youth-voter turnout in California this year than in other states.

So, maybe Democrats should consider putting the same pot initiatives on ballots in swing states in 2012 to boost young-voter turnout ...

It's a little embarrassing that young voters would be more motivated by drug legalization (which I support) than getting equality for LGBT citizens, protecting a woman's right to choose, saving the environment, or ensuring healthcare for all ... but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Wouldn't be the first time pot has saved a lagging party ... ba dum ching!

Besides, Republicans have been playing this game for a long time -- stacking the ballot with cultural wedge issues to drive the rightie base to the polls. For example, fundie religious organizations busted their tails to put gay marriage referendums on the ballot in 2004 .. saved George Bush's second term.

Fine with me if the Democrats want to play the same game of using cultural initiatives on the ballot to attract more young people to the polls. Legalization is something that the youth vote cares about. Gay marriage has also swung the other way. Cultural issues could now help Democrats more than hurt them .. as it did in 2004.

Yes, it would be a miracle if marijuana were legalized in several states .. they just don't realize the tremendous boons to be had from tax revenues and less burdened court and penal systems. Not to mention the damage to drug cartels .. legalized marijuana would destroy their largest market.

Ah well, if California does get pot legalized, and makes scads of money off of it, and gets out of debt, maybe the rest of the country will sit up and take notice.

Seems that Papa Grizzly Palin got mad when Sarah's Senate candidate, Joe Miller, wouldn't endorse her for president .. so Todd shot off an angry email that got leaked .. by, some say, Huckabee friends on Miller's staff.

See, when someone endorses you for Senate, you have to endorse that person for President .. everyone knows that's how the game of politics is played .. even if that person doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell to be elected.

Obviously Joe Miller has no idea how *hard* it is to post a status update on Facebook .. poor Sarah, slaving away all morning for someone she thought was a friend.

How dare Miller waste Palin's precious Facebooking time! Doesn't he know how much time and effort it takes to be a successful Facebook celebrity?

Here’s Todd’s e-mail (PDF):

"Joe and Tim,

Hold off on any letter for Joe. Sarah put her ass on the line for Joe and yet he can't answer a simple question ‘ Is Sarah Palin Qualified to be President’. I DON'T KNOW IF SHE IS.

Joe, please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided.

Sarah spent all morning working on a Face book post for Joe, she won't use it, not now.

Put yourself in her shoe's Joe for one day.

Todd" ... Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

In her shoe's what, Todd?

Seriously, this is the first real evidence we've seen that shows Palin is really considering a run for the White House.

See Democrats, dreams CAN come true! Oh please, oh please ...

But, my moderate Republican friends say the Tea Party Queen Bee is not as much as she thinks she is, or wants to be. That, even with Fox News cramming her down everyone's throats 24/7, she is great for getting $$ and crowds together, she would be great as RNC head .. but President, they don't think so.

Can you imagine her talking to foreign leaders on Twitter?

Read more here: The Mudflats.

.. bein' a witch ain't one of 'em.

Everybody's laughing at Christine O’Donnell again .. this time it's her very first campaign ad in her quest to be voted Senator Tea Party Princess of Delaware.

In the ad Christine immediately sets us all at ease by pointing out, "I am not a witch” .. probably a first for a political ad.

See the ad here.

It brings to mind a SNL skit, or a Monty Python skit .. or maybe Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook."

Imagine having having a constituency that has to be reassured that you’re not casting any evil magic spells on them ...

Not that the whole “witch” silliness is her only problem .. the name Christine O’Donnell conjures up anti-masturbation, evolution-denying, anti-bill-paying deadbeat, resume-padding, fear of mice being implanted with human brains .. oh yes, and a father who's a part-time Bozo the clown. No kidding.

Making her just like you and me.

Well, maybe you.

Boy, the Tea Party Republicans have driven over a cliff with this one .. and Sarah Palin was the one who led them over it.

Christine O’Donnell is a colossal embarrassment .. she's getting creamed and declaring “I’m not a witch” in this weird ad won’t help. Whoever was behind this ad must have been a Democratic saboteur masquerading as a Republican.

But, just to be sure .. keep that bucket of water handy ...

Disney may yank this off the Internet .. so catch it while you can.

Talking about a cartoon mishmash of Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck on Rightwing Radio, very skillfully spliced and dubbed .. extremely clever and well worth watching.

Almost as hilarious as the cartoon are the Glenn Beck supporters in the comments section complaining that Beck's quotes were taken out of context.

Jonathan McIntosh of Rebellious Pixels took dozens of segments from the cartoon archives, and dozens of voice clips from Glenn Back, to create a brilliant cartoon satirizing the American rightwing.

Just one thing -- Obama shouldn't have got the "blame" for TARP.

Thank goodness we have a liberal set of copyright laws. Here’s the YouTube blurb:

"This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930's to 1960's. Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.

"This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. "Right Wing Radio Duck" by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License – permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfuwNU0jsk0

Glenn Beck is an opportunistic self-professed clown who is really a carnival barker looking for marks to believe his lies and buy his books and tapes ..

I would like to write a poem
About how my father taught me
To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,
A poem in which he was tired
And I was scared, unable to disbelieve
In gravity and believe in him,
As the fireflies were coming out
And only enough light remained
For one more run, his big hand at the small
Of my back, pulling away like the gantry
At a missile launch, and this time, this time
I wobbled into flight, caught a balance
I would never lose, and pulled away
From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,
A poem in which I said that even today
As I make some perilous adult launch,
Like pulling away from my wife
Into the fragile new balance of our life
Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,
Still hear that strong voice telling me
To embrace the sweet fall forward
Into the future's blue
Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,
Still wearing his white shirt
And tie from the office, the air around us
Sick with scotch, and the challenge
Was keeping his own balance
As he coaxed his bulk into a trot
Beside me in the hot night, sweat
Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame
Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped
And I fell, again and again, entangled
In my gleaming Schwinn, until
He swore and stomped off
Into the house to continue
Working with my mother
On their own divorce, their balance
Long gone and the hard ground already
Rising up to smite them
While I stayed outside in the dark,
Still falling, until at last I wobbled
Into the frail, upright delight
Of feeling sorry for myself, riding
Alone down the neighborhood's
Black street like the lonely western hero
I still catch myself in the act
Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,
I must also say that this summer evening
Is very beautiful, and I am older
Than my father ever was
As I coast the Pacific shoreline
On my old bike, the gears clicking
Like years, the wind
Touching me for the first time, it seems,
In a very long time,
With soft urgency all over.

"Like Riding a Bicycle" by George Bilgere, from The Good Kiss. © University of Akron Press, 2002. Reprinted with permission

I see red when they call themselves "feminists" ...

Remember when GOP politics was boring? Well not this year, with so many Tea Party women playing starring roles.

We've had everyone from Sue Lowden the chicken lady (who talked about bartering chickens for healthcare), to Linda McMahon the Wrestling mogul (who physically attacked a buxom, scantily clad woman thought to be her husband's lover), to Christine O'Donnell (who's fascinated with witchcraft and masturbation).

Republican men show support in public .. saying whether you agree with them or not, these tough Republican women say exactly what they think, and the women voters love it.

But do they?

Because, the harder the Republican Party tries to sell its hot Mama Grizzlies, the polls show it's mostly men - not women - who are buying.

Rightwing men are always talking about the "babe factor" .. Rush Limbaugh goes on about Sarah Palin's sex appeal, and those Fox News guys go on about Christine O'Donnell being "easy on the eyes" .. one even issues a "Babe Alert" before an appearance of Palin or O'Donnell.

But then, Fox News viewers are predominantly wingnut male .. who must've really loved it when Fox showed that YouTube video of unflattering images of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton to the tune of "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

The GOP will have to wait until Election Day to see that all this catering to extremist women candidates alienates mainstream women voters. Moderate women who care about equal rights, equal pay and the control over their own bodies .. who are tired of a bunch of old white guys deciding whether they should have babies or not.

Polls show that rightwing radical women adore Palin and O'Donnell, but they're a very small group. They just make more noise than anyone else.

It was surely Palin who inspired a record number of Republican women to run for office this year .. 80 or so were defeated in their House primaries, leaving 47 still in the running. In the Senate, 17 filed to run, but only 5 won.

This is going to be one of the most exciting mid-terms ever.

Old Guard Republican women tend to be more moderate than the men -- Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- but this new crop of extremist Tea Party women, these "radical crusaders" like Christine O'Donnell, would force rape victims and 14-year-old incest survivors to give birth to their rapists’ babies.

Moderate women are more likely to support an active government role in their lives, because it's women who benefit more from things like childcare subsidies and family leave, and they rely on Social Security to protect them from poverty in old age.

It really sticks in my craw when the radical Pink Elephants call themselves feminists .. hearing Palin use the term "sisters" makes me crazy.

I mean, we feminists have fought so hard for the women's movement .. and now, suddenly, it's being claimed by the very people who would love to destroy it. Gender alone doesn't make one a feminist .. these Tea Partyers only want to advance conservative values and roll back women's rights.

Christine O'Donnell has said that allowing women to attend military academies "cripples the readiness of our defense" ...

I remember reading that fewer women voted for McCain/Palin in ‘08 than Bush/Cheney in ‘04 .. let's hope that the majority of women will continue to vote for their own interests, not just for their own chromosomes.

CNN fired their host Rick Sanchez after he went on a rant about Jon Stewart being a bigot and Jews running the news media.

Well, he *was* the frequent butt of Stewart's jokes .. and Stewart was always showing that clip of Sanchez getting tasered. Sorry, but it's funny.

So now the Jew card beats the Hispanic card? I can never keep up .. pretty sure the Black card still beats everything though.

Dang, one day, that was quick .. they didn't even give him the chance to resign "to spend more time with my family."

Now maybe they'll hire a real journalist to replace him .. he never had any journalistic chops.

Since he also complained about "elite, Northeast establishment liberals" .. who wants to take bets on how fast he gets hired by Fox News? Maybe six months .. after the heat cools down?

From Politico: "Rick Sanchez lost his job at CNN on Friday, a day after giving a satellite radio interview in which he called Jon Stewart a "bigot" and suggested that Jews run CNN and the news media in general.

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company," CNN said in a statement. "We thank Rick for his years of service, and we wish him well." ...

The move comes a day after Sanchez did his final guest hosting in CNN’s 8 p.m. slot, which will be taken over by the new show, "Parker Spitzer," on Monday.

Sanchez has been the frequent butt of jokes on both the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," which have mocked him for stunts like submitting to being tased on the air. ...

During an interview Thursday with Stand Up With Pete Dominick, he complained that Stewart and Colbert are "elite, Northeast establishment liberals," and added "I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot." ...

When Dominick pointed out that Stewart, as a Jew, was also part of a minority, Sanchez, who is Cuban-American, retorted: "Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people. Please. What, are you kidding?"

"I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority. Yeah." [..]"

Seriously, betcha it wasn't because of his anti-Semitic rants - but because of his low ratings.

Yippee, can't wait to see how the Daily Show handles this.

It's a vast and fertile land. Soybeans and corn grow in this soil.
Wheat and tobacco. A little sorghum. It's not dramatic terrain
with ocean waves crashing against the cliffs. It's mostly gently
rolling plains. Long stretches of prairie. You know you've entered
it when the signs along the highway begin telling you what God
wants you to do. Those who live here regard it as their duty to
make these things known. Otherwise the rest of the country
would be left in the dark. The bibles in this region are larger than
elsewhere. Most weigh over a hundred pounds. It takes two strong
men to lift them into a pickup truck to haul off to church. All the
women dress up on Sundays. And all the white men shake hands.

by David Shumate

"The Bible Belt" by David Shumate, from The Floating Bridge. © University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2008. Published with permission.

I'm not a Bible person, but these are the good people who raised me .. and these "gently rolling plains and long stretches of prairie' will always sing in my blood.

"The Democrats ... are unbelievable. They are giving up on their tax cut for the middle class until after the election. They have the worst salesmen in the world. They could not talk Lindsay Lohan into a rum and coke." –Bill Maher

"The United Nations is appointing an official space alien greeter to meet and greet any aliens that may visit Earth in the future. Well, how does this make Mexican people coming to America feel?" –Jay Leno

"President Obama said today that education is the key to our economic turnaround. He said once Americans start getting smarter, the economy will start to improve. So you know what that means: we are screwed." –Jay Leno

"Christine O'Donnell was caught lying about her educational background. She may not believe in pleasuring herself, but she thought her resume needed massaging." –Craig Ferguson

"Christine O'Donnell didn't go to Oxford. It turns out she took a class from something called the Phoenix Institute, which happened to be renting a classroom at Oxford. That’s like saying you're a TV star, but really you're just on CBS during the middle of the damn night." –Craig Ferguson

"Rahm Emanuel is leaving the White House. Is he really quitting or just pulling a Leno?" –David Letterman

"At the UN, President Obama called on other countries to help us track down and eliminate radicals and extremists. But they told Obama, 'Hey, the Tea Party is your problem, buddy.'" –Jay Leno

"These Tea Party groups are very conservative. In fact, 58 percent of Tea Party members now believe Joe Biden is a Muslim." –Jay Leno

"Bob Woodward has written a book which states that the White House agonized over the decision to leave Iraq. Too bad no one agonized over the decision to go into Iraq." –David Letterman

"The Republicans released their 'Pledge to America.' It's 21 pages of phony charts and bad ideas. Sarah Palin got a copy, and she said, 'How am I supposed to fit all this crap on my hand?'" –Bill Maher

"It was a very good week for getting absolutely nothing done in Congress. They blocked, the Republicans did, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We thought this was going to be a done deal. I don’t know what their problem is with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Even if it is repealed, there will still be a major American institution where gays are still forced to hide in shame and secrecy: The Republican party." –Bill Maher

"They're giving up on their tax cuts for the middle class until after the election. … Have they seen the polls? Planning to do this after the election. This is like a condemned man asking for a doggie bag at the last meal." –Bill Maher

"President Obama's approval rating dropped again. Things are so bad, Muslims are accusing him of being Christian. " –Jay Leno

"Sarah Palin was considering running for president, until she heard it was a four-year deal." –David Letterman

"House Minority Leader John Boehner says he has never been in a tanning bed and that he gets his dark complexion from his mother. Either he's lying or Snooki's a lot older than she's telling us. " –Jimmy Fallon

"Bristol Palin has denied rumors that she's dating The Situation from 'Jersey Shore.' If The Situation becomes Sarah Palin's son-in-law, he'd still have the most normal name of any boy in the family." –Jimmy Fallon

"There's a new opera about Bill Clinton. I don't know how it ends, but I bet it isn't with the fat lady singing." –Craig Ferguson

[gathered from about.com, NYT-laughlines and newsmax.com]

she came out at 9:30 a.m. in the morning
and knocked at the manager's door:
"my husband is dead!"
they went to the back of the building together
and the process began:
first the fire dept. sent two men
in dark shirts and pants
in vehicle #27
and the manager and the lady and the
two men went inside as she
sobbed.

he had knifed her last April and
had done 6 months for that.

the two men in dark shirts came out
got in their vehicle
and drove away.

then two policemen came.
then a doctor (he probably was there to
sign the death certificate).

I became tired of looking out the
window and began to
read the latest issue of
The New Yorker.

when I looked again there was a nice
sensitive-looking gray-haired gentleman
walking slowly up and down the
sidewalk in a dark suit.
then he waved in a black
hearse which
drove right up on the lawn and stopped
next to my porch.

two men got out of the hearse
opened up the back
and pulled out a gurney with 4
wheels. they rolled it to the back of the
building. when they came out again he was in a
black zipper bag and she was in
obvious distress.
they put him in the
hearse and then walked back to
her apartment and went inside
again.

I had to take out my laundry and
run some other errands.
Linda was coming to visit and
I was worried about her seeing that
hearse parked next to my porch.
so I left a note pinned to my door
that said: Linda, don't worry.
I'm ok. and
then I took my dirty laundry to my car and
drove away.

when I got back the hearse was gone and
Linda hadn't arrived yet.
I took the note from the door and
went inside.

well, I thought, that old guy in back
he was about my age and
we saw each other every day but
we never spoke to one another.

now we wouldn't have to.

by Charles Bukowski

"the way it works" by Charles Bukowski, from What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire. © Black Sparrow Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission.