My work here is done

A screaming comes across the sky

That's how Eugene Robinson, quoting Pynchon, describes the Iowa caucuses in his retrospective on the 2008 Presidential campaign, titled: "Last chapter of a storybook campaign." It's perfect, isn't it?

If you look closely at the video clip of her [ed: he means Sarah Palin] appearance on "Saturday Night Live," when she's in the hallway talking to Alec Baldwin and SNL honcho Lorne Michaels, a man dressed like Abraham Lincoln is in the background with what appears to be a llama. That's the kind of year it's been.

"That's the kind of year it's been." Talk about an understatement, especially coming on "Backwards B" day.


I had planned to just walk away from the blog after a death in our family a little more than a week ago. At the funeral luncheon, I got into a heated argument with a cousin I seldom see, who's accepted all the PUMA's booga-booga, "Obama scary Muslim Black man" crap. It was like a Hill Hag bomb went off in my brain, and I verbally unloaded on her with 6 months of pent-up PUMA anger.

Take THAT - for Admin!

And THAT! - for confloyd!

And THAT! - for Flowbee!


Man, did it ever feel good - much as it humiliated my mom, who already thinks I'm obsessed with politics.

But then I got to thinking about how maybe I was taking the election a little too personally, and I decided to take some time off. I even went to a WalMart - and it has always been a matter of personal liberal pride to me, never having set foot in a WalMart. But this past Saturday I walked through the door with my sister, strolled around for a while and even bought some knicknacks for the kitchen.

I didn't mentally call them an evil empire not even one time - and I realized how good that felt. Politics should not be the be-all and end-all of a person's life, especially if they're not an actual candidate. But when you care as much as I do, and my readers do, and other bloggers and volunteers do, you can't help but get obsessed because you want things to be "right," for lack of a better word. And then I realized that the only reason I've been able to let it go like I have in these past few weeks, is because deep down I'm finally convinced that very soon, it's going to be "right" again. We'll be in good hands.

As I said above, I had pretty much decided to just walk away from this blog without explanation - afraid that if I came back at all, they'd "pull me back in," as Michael Corleone would say. But after I read Gene's column today, my decision felt bittersweet, and I had to pay him homage here because he's summed up my feelings perfectly.

We're now at a bittersweet point that's analogous to reaching the middle of the final chapter. We want to race ahead and find out what happens. We want to know if our hero -- Obama or McCain -- is victorious. But we also know that when we finally get the answer, we'll have to exit the alternative reality of narrative, atmosphere and emotion that we've inhabited for months. We'll be bereft.

We'll have something to savor, though. After Election Day has come and gone, we -- at least those of us who bother to vote -- will know that the time we spent obsessing about the campaign was worth it. That's because we'll be the ones who decided how the story ended.

And now off I go to enjoy being a bystander again. Thanks to everyone who's been along for the ride, I had a blast.

We interrupt this program....

I'm going to be kindof out of the box this weekend, I've got my sister's kids (a pre-teen girl and a sulky teenage boy) for the weekend due to a family emergency on my brother-in-law's side of the family that involved a trip out of town.

I spent the evening playing Risk (I got creamed) and eating pizza. Couldn't sleep when they finally conked out, so I got up, poured a glass of wine and decided to catch up on my blog reading.

It'll be interesting to spend a weekend mostly offline. Tomorrow (erp, that would be ... today) I get to be a "Volleyball mom" and general chauffeur.

Woooo Hooo !!!

NOTE TO SELF - Reminder, this is why you never had kids ... they're exhausting.

(Just kidding, I love my niece and nephew ... but you knew that. )

I hate "folksy"

And I hate that little winky-wink she does when ya just know she's gonna lay a real stinger on ya, dontcha know? Yah. (Sorry, I watched "Fargo" last night...)


Okay, seriously - she hardly ever answered the questions she was actually asked. I know that happens in debates, but the candidate usually pays lip service to the question before going off on their talking point.

"Can I just go back to energy for a minute, Gwen?"

She kept repeating the same slogans and platitudes over and over, and hardly ever - no, scratch that, she flat out didn't ever - give specifics in any of her answers. The closest she came to a "specific" was when she repeated almost verbatim an answer to a question on energy that she had given in her Gubernatorial debate.

How do I know that? Am I Palin-tologist? No, because Keith Olbermann played that exerpt on Countdown right before this debate began.

And now at the end she's lapsing into St Ronald of Reagan's "there ya go again" and "shining city on a hill." And did I hear something about a river of blood? I think I'm gonna puke.

Oh, and she lied about almost everything in both McCain and Obama's records.

Not that it made much difference.

We got the "Meh" - she didn't drool, she didn't start speaking in tongues. There were a couple of uncomfortable silences after she was asked a question a couple of times, and you could almost see her straining to remember a snappy comeback.

Bottom line? Two people were on that stage. Only one of them is qualified to be Vice President - let alone, President.

And he wasn't wearing a skirt.

Everybody liquored up for tonight?

Gonna stop for some Chardonnay on the way home from work.

Box wine, cuz I'm cheap like that. Plus, the cardboard box doesn't take up as much space in the recycling crate as bottles do. Less noisy, too.

I haven't decided on a drinking word/phrase yet. I was going to go with "the American people" - but I've got to work tomorrow. My liver cast the deciding vote.


I figure tonight's debate could go one of three ways:

• Meh - boring, no gaffes or high fives for Biden or Palin

• OUCH, Palin - she says something really stupid - on a par with the shit she's been saying to Katie Couric for the past week, only now 60 million people are watching.

• OUCH, Biden - Joe doesn't take my advice to STFU and says something stupid that everyone will be talking about Friday, instead of anything minorly stupid Palin might say.

Here's something to chew on until the debate begins - TPM's Palin Greatest Hits.





Let the games begin!

This is how you talk to white folks about race

Hat tip platypus.

Only white folks can bring the shame to other white folks on the subject of race.

This guy gets it right.




I have to say, I'm really starting to feel like Barack is going to pull this off.

It's a good feeling. A really good feeling.

Rolling Stone throws down the gauntlet

Any article about a candidate's life story that begins with this exchange?

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Probably isn't going to make that candidate very happy.

I haven't heard any squawking about it by the McBush camp, so either they haven't seen it yet (?!!!), or they're not going to touch it with a 10-foot pole because it's mostly true, and therefore too damaging to call attention to.

Far fetched? Well, you've never heard them debunking the "Cunt" story, either, have you? That supposedly happened in front of reporters, too, but so far it's been rattling around the fringes of the political subculture, and hasn't made it to the mainstream.

The entire article long, but is really, really, really worth the time to read. I never would have thought so, but Rolling Stone has been kicking ass this election cycle, they've done some really solid work.


I knew there was a reason I disliked John McCain - he's a snake, and everything in his public persona is a lie.

No, even worse - it's the exact opposite of who he really is.

Obama's lead solidifies

Too bad our poll-obsessed PUMA deserted us, I would have loved to hear her take on today's results.


From DemFromCT at Kos (hoping the formatting holds up via email....):


NOTE: The original table formatting didn't hold, and my attempt to "fix" it by manually pasting the text into a table I created in Word, and then into Blogger, made it uglier, if more readable. Fuck it, I'm leaving it.

	Obama	McCain	MoE +/-	RV/LV
Today
Research 2000	51 (51)	41 (41)	3	LV
Rasmussen	51 (51)	45 (45)	2	LV
Diageo/Hotline	47 (47)	42 (41)	3.2	RV
Gallup	48 (49)	44 (43)	2	RV
TIME	50 (46	43 (41)	3	LV (data in parentheses from 7/31 - 8/4)
Pew	49 (46)	43 (46)	3	LV (data in parentheses from 9/9 - 9/14)

Here's the best quote:

For McCain, the most troubling sign may come not from the details of the poll, which are grim for Republicans, but from the historical context. No Democrat has crossed the 50% threshold in the general election since before Ronald Reagan was elected, let alone done so a month before the election.

Had to include this too - so true, as we found out during the primary against Hillary:

Rule One: When a campaign starts attacking the media, things aren't going well.

Rule Two: When a campaign says the polls are wrong, things aren't very good.

Rule Three: When a campaign says "the only poll that counts is the one on election day" usually means a campaign is about to lose.

Now we could probably add a new one: when partisans start saying let the candidate be the candidate, it means things are off course.

UPDATE:

I totally forgot about the Quinnipiac swing state polls from this AM - Barack has hit 50% in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

What reminded me of that was this from The Page, h/t alexforobama from Kos:

Time/CNN conducted Sept 28-30th

	Obama	McCain
Florida	51	47
Minnesota	54	43
Missouri	49	48
Nevada	51	47
Virginia	53	44

I'm getting a little better at the table thing-y. You learn something new every day.

What an asshole

I found the link at JMart's blog (oh shaddup, Ben Smith calls him that) at Politico, here is some footage of McBush talking to the DesMoines Register editorial board.

Jonathan posts this clip:






Which is bad enough.

But I found this one, where he's asked about having been on the taxpayer dole for his healthcare all his life, to be even more asshole-y.

Is that a word? Well, it is now.





Or how about here, where he insists that Barack wanted to teach the little ones about Teh Dirty Sex.





"Straight Talk" - my ass.

I think I've figured out who McBush reminds me of lately. His eyes go all squinty and he twitches, whenever he's asked something he feels it's beneath him to be asked to answer.






"Insect Politics" kindof fits, doesn't it?

In what respect, Charlie, redux

Thursday's debate is going to be GOOOOOOD.





Transcript, for those of you on dialup (emphasis mine):

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

I'm still waiting for the video where she's asked to name a Supreme Court case besides Roe v Wade, and her response is . . . crickets.

So, I'm older than the Democratic nominee for President, but this is the first time I've been able to say that I'm smarter than one of them. I know what the Bush Doctrine, is, too - and I'm not even a Republican!

Sen Biden, I'd advise you to just shut the fuck up on Thursday night, and let Gov Palin say anything she wants to say.

She'll do the rest.

You knew this was coming, right?

Another wrong move from the Apple Dumpling Gang on the right:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.

“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”

McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.

At this point, when the McBush team is brainstorming ( ??? as if that wasn't a contradiction in terms... ) - you know, throwing around "What should we do now?" ideas - whatever they finally decide on?

They should do exactly the opposite.


As for my own take on today's meltdown, I agree with Rena here. A pox on both your houses, the market was waiting for you to act, and both the far right and the far left threw a hissy fit.

And finally, soundbite of the day award goes to Barney Frank, h/t to Comrade John at the newly functional and stable Balloon Juice: