the rix mix

Labels: Grandma Palin, holidays, media madness, video

I like to think that most of our presidents in fairly recent history, & even the unsuccessful candidates, admire them or not, had resumes establishing why they merited the position. Nixon believed he merited it too much, but his qualifications were undeniable. That makes Sarah Palin's appeal to a large part of the right wing a puzzlement to me. An honest resume from her would have to include her high school employment, it's so thin. She has no intellectual distinction, a lousy grasp of language, no success in business or as a legislator of any importance. She's untraveled & uneducated because she lacks curiosity. It's obvious she's never been much of reader. WYSIWYG, although Palin continues to blame "media" for making her appear as the person she clearly is. Now she can add Oprah to the list.

Harry Truman, from a most modest background, had learned the nuts & bolts of government at the county level before serving ten years in the Senate. It was only by comparison to F.D.R. that Truman seemed unqualified for the White House. He was. Roosevelt may not have confided in his V.P. , but Truman knew what the president's job entailed.

I don't understand why conservatives want Palin to be president. Why do they want to do it to a nation that elected their hero, Ronald Reagan - who took office with experience & stature, & decades of deep interest in national issues & policy? Do they hate America?

Labels: Grandma Palin

Is it fair to compare Sarah Palin with Eunice Kennedy Shriver? Yeah. While it is hyperbole to call Shriver "the queen of humanity," as one mourner did at the funeral, one expects it in eulogy. Palin is "The Queen of Negativity." What has Palin done, with her real political power & influence, in any way comparable to the positive accomplishments of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who, even with her name & wealth, faced the limitations of a woman in her generation? Eunice also was an outspoken pro-life Christian. Look at what she did to promote life; she drew an entire segment of our society into the open & toward the mainstream. No one now expects a special needs child to be hidden away or warehoused in an institution. In the not-so-distant past, few outside the families cared what happened to those children, their families assuming a lonely burden of effort & expenses. Eunice Shriver did much to change our attitudes, broaden our compassion, expand social services, & raise expectations of what "special needs" people can accomplish. In 1984, conservative President Ronald Reagan presented liberal Eunice Kennedy Shriver with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sarah ought to consider what she can do to earn the Medal. She won't earn it with her mouth. Has she even offered a tribute to Eunice Kennedy Shriver?

Labels: Grandma Palin, obituary

Apparently, Russian immigrants have completely taken over American competitive professional show dancing. I don't get the connection. Was this a popular thing in Russia? I was watching a PBS show of the Latin dance competition. During a break in the contest, there was an exhibition by the Junior Division champions. The girl dancer was announced as 13 years old, looked a leggy 21, & she & her 15 year old partner clearly engaged in an artistic simulation of the sex act, from passionate foreplay to intercourse. She actually lay down on the floor for the latter, with the guy on top. They were Russians, too. The audience loved it.
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Why would anyone now believe Sara Palin has the character & emotional stability to handle the Office of President of the United States? It's mind-boggling. She's unaware that we can actually compare her with other powerful, successful women. It doesn't freak me out that Nancy Pelosi & Hillary Clinton are respectively second & fourth in the line of presidential succession. Hillary has everything one needs to be president, I would've easily voted for her over John McCain, & it wouldn't have mattered to me if Obama had picked her for VP, had he figured it was the only way he could win.

For all the nasty stuff I've written about George W. Bush, I never called him, or perceived him as, a quitter. That he was made by Karl Rove & placed so much value on Dick Cheney tells us his presidency couldn't have been any better. But the man absorbed all the punishment accompanying the job. It didn't drive him back to drinking, although he could act like a dry drunk. The Presidency would hammer Palin into pieces.
***,
Pathmark was madness. The supermarket has a mix 'n' match 10 for $7.70 sale to get the .77 individual price, & a lot of other stuff on sale at higher prices ending in 7. It probably works out alright elsewhere, but in my Pathmark it's too much to expect customers to read simple instructions, understand the concept of mix 'n' match, & count to ten. I was only there for bananas, green peppers, & coffee.
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Labels: Grandma Palin, potpourri, shopping

Only 2 1/2 years as governor, never having faced a single serious crisis while in office. No help at all to John McCain with independent voters. No evidence of a keen intellect or desire to learn. Third rate education. No substantial "career" before entering politics. & somehow, between now & 2012, merely by campaigning & fund-raising among the far right in the lower 48 & appearing on Fake News every other day, Sarah Palin makes herself qualified for the presidency?

She's trying to short circuit investigations. She won't need to take the blame if Alaska's economy goes really bad (unlikely), or credit Obama for improvements. Her approval ratings could be terrible by 2010; they've dropped 10 points over the past year. Be even riskier if she ran for reelection with Alaskans knowing she'll be spending more time in Iowa than in Alaska. Despite her Hockey Mom crap & basketball analogies, this is not a woman with Hillary's multi-tasking skills.

& tell me, just who was making fun of Trig? Can't put that on Letterman.

All the stuff she said she didn't want to do, the official trips, trade missions, etc., are how governors build up their national credentials.

One TV commentator said, "Her credentials can't help but get weaker now, as time passes."

As for rumors there's a big scandal about to pop, an indictment, that could explain it, too. I hope not. Sara & her devotees are so screwball & so divisive that Democrats could hardly hope for a greater affliction upon Repugs.

Labels: Grandma Palin

“Saturday night, Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter’s penalty box.”

Conan O'Brien, 10/08/08

Olive Garden (Darden Restaurants, Inc., also owner of Red Lobster) denies they are pulling ads from Dave Letterman's show, I don't think they can until the contract ends without losing the money they paid. & it'd be dumb. Dave's ratings went up, way up among Leno's older audience. The Late Show can easily make up the ad revenue with Viagra commercials. & as you see in the graphic, Darden stock is doing fine.

Your blogger used to patronize full-service chain restaurants, when I had girlfriends. Probably like most people we went while we were driving back from somewhere, or on impulse. They're convenient, predictable, everywhere. Avoided them on Friday & Saturday evenings, minimum hour wait for table at TGIF.

I met one girlfriend in Blimpie's. She worked there. I didn't patronize the place much, but when the mutual attraction became obvious I got very good sandwiches on my lunch breaks & frequented it more often. Later, she waited tables at a Ground Round, which had decent food & o.k. atmosphere if you went late when the children's parties were over & kids weren't flinging the free popcorn. I thought free popcorn was a bad idea, too filling. They were franchised, the owners had some menu flexibility. She received free dinner-for-two certificates from her boss, which we cashed in at the Ground Round in Toms River because it served fresh seafood, she'd have lobster or daily special fish, & I'd have crabcakes or steak, & we left huge tips & came home with doggy bags of appetizers, sometimes stuff we hadn't even ordered. We also stole cute, small ceramic coffee cups from Denny's. Oh, we were rogues. She's still remembered fondly by some older WFMU DJs for temporarily transforming me into a sociable, out-going human being.

I haven't been to an Olive Garden. Never had the opportunity. The faux Tuscany gourmand cuisine wouldn't stop me, or that it's promoted as a multi-generational family tradition, like ordering a Maruca's Tomato Pie during vacation in Seaside Park. I've been to many Pizza Huts, most of the food there is awful even by my standards, always disappointing, yet I couldn't stop myself. But then, the typical pizza you find in a Jersey downtown is wildly overrated by Sun Belt expatriates.

Labels: Grandma Palin, in the news, love, TV

Dave Letterman's two jokes about Sara Palin's daughter during the governor's recent New York trip really were disturbing. I was aware that 14 year old Willow Palin was the only daughter along for the trip, apparently Letterman's writers were not. So I was taken aback by the jokes, which involved Elliot Spitzer & Alex Rodriguez. But I was pretty sure Dave thought the jokes were about Bristol.

Having to explain that misunderstanding in an apology isn't much of an apology. I don't think Dave handled it well, if there was any way to handle it at all. He may have handled it better if Palin hadn't called Letterman "sexually-perverted."

But Sara Palin is slutty-looking, & a moron, Todd the Bod is there for stud service & she rides the guy like a horse, on top of course, wearing spurs & a moosehide vest. Might even fire the shotgun.

Another oddity: Craig Ferguson thought one of his staffers was the sister of North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, & figured the connection gave him license to joke that Hoeven is an "evil dictator." The staffer is Hoeven's cousin.

Craig loudly proclaims how much he dislikes jazz. Meanwhile, Letterman books & enjoys mainstream jazz artists such as Wynton Marsalis & Diana Krall (Mrs. Elvis Costello). Ferguson's little program & stage would be a great showcase for him to learn about this "American" music he has so much difficulty appreciating. He also doesn't seem to notice that the house bands on four other late night network talk shows can play jazz.

Labels: Grandma Palin, sex, TV

Now John McCain proudly says, "I'm going to Washington & I'm bringing Joe the Plumber with me."

Are we freakin' idiots? McCain gets hold of something, he can't let it go.

First, Senator, you aren't going to Washington because you're from Washington & you've resided there for the past 30 years when you weren't at one your 6 or 7 or whatever homes elsewhere.

You inflict Sarah Palin on us & now you want to bring along as an advisor some knucklehead you stumbled over on the campaign road. Why? So he can walk around the White House saying, "Nyuk Nyuk" like his inspirational hero, Curly from the Three Stooges? Are you running for President of Moronica?
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If the poll numbers hold up & even break a little toward McCain, as they probably will, Obama will carry New Jersey by at least 10 points, a landslide. Which means there are now "Obama Republicans" rather than "Reagan Democrats." Or maybe we should call them "Al Gore Republicans." Gore rolled over George W. Bush here with Ralph Nader on the ballot. Jersey has hundreds of thousands of Repugs contemptuously labeled "country club" & "Rinos (Republican in name only) by the national party insiders & our own homegrown wingies. It's obvious nobody listens when Tom Kean & Christie Whitman speak to their national party. Yet they're expected to defend the indefensible, & unfortunately too often do. Obama is clearly the sort of politician former Gov. Kean prefers; moderate, neither dogmatic nor vindictive. Kean knows Barack isn't a "socialist" & isn't particularly a city liberal.

John McCain ought to be popular here, but his selection of Sarah Palin was both a sellout to the far right & a bad personal decision. His chances of carrying Jersey this year were almost nil anyway. Yet it seems he didn't even consider that if suburban women here wouldn't be fooled by a "hockey mom" without the common sense to slip condoms into her sexually active daughter's pockets, she'd be a tough sell in suburbia in plenty of other states.

Labels: culture, Grandma Palin, New Jersey politics, THE election

I don't begrudge Sarah Palin her $150,000 wardrobe / beauty upgrade paid for by the RNC. She's the star, & she isn't rich. Always sneaking family expenditures into her governor's expense account. Sarah speaks at political fundraisers where other women are wearing at least that much money head to toe total. Why should she play the proletariat beggar, a trailer trash mouthpiece for billionaire war profiteers? In the event Sarah loses this race & concludes she can't be President of the United States, or it'd be too much of a hassle to try, it's possible she won't even run for reelection as governor, keep everybody guessing about her national political future to maintain her celebrity status, & when money from the book deal, FOX TV contract, & speaking fees roll in, she'll move to the lower 48 & own more shoes than Imelda. Because that's what she originally wanted before she ran for mayor: media celebrity, the all-purpose, I'll do or say almost anything for money celebrity that encompasses personalities as distinctly different as Anne Coulter, Pamela Anderson, Rachel Ray, Paris Hilton, & Marie Osmond. She'll be charging $25 grand just to say grace at prayer breakfasts.

What disappoints is that Sarah didn't choose her new wardrobe. It was purchased for her by a Repug operative named Jeff Larson. Could anything be more frustrating for Sarah than to be denied shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus, Saks, & Barney's? (Barney's men's section is also popular with wealthy dykes, so I've heard.) If you're old enough, you'll recall the grand prizes of 15, 10, & 5 minute toy store shopping sprees Mickey Mouse Club used to have, those winning kids knew exactly what they were looking for, & which aisle; all high end toys. Sarah would have done the same kind of research. But everybody wants to see Sarah & hardly anyone wants to see John, so they got her running around nonstop.

Still, we're a long way from VP candidate Dick Nixon's 1952 "Checkers" speech:

Well, in addition to the mortgage, the 20,000 dollar mortgage on the house in Washington, the 10,000 dollar one on the house in Whittier, I owe 4500 dollars to the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., with interest 4 and 1/2 percent. I owe 3500 dollars to my parents, and the interest on that loan, which I pay regularly, because it's the part of the savings they made through the years they were working so hard -- I pay regularly 4 percent interest. And then I have a 500 dollar loan, which I have on my life insurance.

Well, that's about it. That's what we have. And that's what we owe. It isn't very much. But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she'd look good in anything.

Any aspiring male politician who needs to look good in a conservative suit should invest in good conservative suits, & own at least two better than he can afford, & take that attitude as far as he can. Which reminds me of the guy I knew whose fiance advised him to get a fine suit, so he did, but it was a fantastic Italian design completely inappropriate for employment interviews. We all agreed he looked terrific. He didn't really want a corporate job, & eventually started a screen printing business out of their garage.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

From a Scranton PA newspaper report of the Palin rally held there:

Cindy Castellani, 33, of Lakeville, was wearing a red sweater and pushing her 9-month-old daughter Lilian, also wearing red, in a stroller.

Ms. Castellani was attending her first political rally. She said, "I want to hear Sarah speak in person about how she's going to change Washington. I was not convinced about John (McCain), but it has everything to do with Sarah now."

Sentiments like that along with hot sales of Sarah Palin '08 buttons could make one wonder just who is running for president on the Repug ticket. The party base Palin "energized" doesn't trust John McCain, maybe doesn't even respect him much anymore, & a large portion of that base certainly views him as the vehicle for his VP candidate to become president, preferably as soon as possible. God has it all worked out; there's no other way to explain why Palin's on the ticket instead of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an evangelical conservative who would have played well to broader demographics, is less polarizing, & whose experience, education, & family would not have become major issues. He is not meant-to-be. Sarah Palin is.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

The morning after she was worse than she appeared last night. Coached to run the time out in a format that wouldn't pressure her to answer the questions. We've watched debates in which the candidates were frustrated because they couldn't hit & explain all their points. Not only was Palin trying to avoid answering questions (& largely succeeding), she often got her information wrong when she did answer them. If our expectations are that a candidate ought to be able to give a good account of her knowledge & experience, whatever her actual views, & not simply survive the 90 or so minutes without saying something undeniably bizarre, there's almost nothing good one can say about Sarah Palin's performance. She was awful. On reflection, a lot of people must be thinking that this morning. How can one pass a test by refusing to take it?

I'd like to see an interview where Palin is asked all those questions again, assured that she won't be rebutted, but that she'll have all time she needs to answer them, & we're willing to wait until she does, even if there are long moments of silence while she gathers her thoughts.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

Although I spent the debate in an online chat with other liberals & found plenty not to like in what Sarah Palin said & how she said it, I couldn't find anything that would upset me if I weren't predisposed to loathing her. A TV debate favors canned answers. Joe Biden, expectedly, was better at making his sound a little less scripted. Obviously there wasn't much depth beneath Palin's statements, she really was sliding on the surface, & there were moments when if she had another minute I think she would have run out of factoids & phrases & babbled something really stupid. Her ramble around the topic of education was especially frustrating because that's one area where she ought to have shown off some personal knowledge & not ignored the question. So while she didn't know much about anything, or bother to pretend she did, nobody thought she would, & she showed confidence & poise in saying whatever she wanted to say regardless of what she was asked (she's not as insecure as liberals believe). Those rather than policy points are what stick. Both she & Joe came across as what they are; a young pro & an old pro. Overall I'd guess she "lost" the debate; that is, she won't bounce the poll numbers either way but she can still hurt the campaign. The only "win" for her is if media turns off the spotlight, & I doubt that will happen. But in the meantime we're back to McCain vs. Obama.

The stories of all VPs who suddenly became president are the same ( except LBJ, who had big ears & x-ray vision); they were pretty much clueless when they took the oath. Other men closer to the president were more prepared, but they weren't in the line of succession. Presidential candidates don't choose running mates on the assumption the VP will take over. If they did, they'd usually choose better. They wouldn't choose Andrew Johnson or Harry Truman, who were among the least "qualified" available. We're very fortunate that many of our presidents completed their terms, even when they were mediocre presidents. If Palin expects to learn on the job, I don't think McCain is inclined to teach her. There isn't a darned thing he'd turn to her for, he doesn't look comfortable with women, & I think she'd be merely decorative in his administration. But then it's remarkable that we've had two VPs in a row who weren't kept out of the decision process, the current VP arguably a decision-maker.

Maybe one Palin negative I couldn't pick up on was this: If she came across as genuinely "small town," even people from small towns might sense that she's probably still too small for the job she's seeking. If you've known small town mayors, you'll know it would take a very, very long climb for them to reach the White House, & Sarah left Nowheresville only two years ago.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

Joe Biden has a delicate balancing act ahead of him Thursday night. He has to be superior without being a bully, demonstrate his knowledge without cramming everything he knows into a response, & most of all, resist his tendency to tack on the sort of personal "off-the-cuff" remarks that are taken as "gaffes" (on closer inspection, they're rarely gaffes at all). Supposedly, Palin did quite well in her Alaskan campaign debates, a slicky. Be careful. A debate is not an interview.

What is reasonable for a VP candidate to know is less than Biden knows, but far, far more than Palin apparently knows. We don't expect a governor to have the same kind of foreign policy chops as a long term sitting senator.* But we do have a pretty good idea of how accomplished governors should sound, what they understand, or need to understand, about education, health care, energy, trade, economic development, agriculture, complex budgets. The Alaskan economy is so lopsided toward oil (80%) that I doubt if any governor of that state could obtain the well-rounded expertise of the other 49 governors. Palin has been governor for less than two years. So even if the questions focus on what Palin ought to know as governor, she'll still sound uninformed, if the questions are sharp but fair. Vague "reform" won't cut it - a few hirings & firings & redirections of the oil money stream. Any mayor of a medium sized city in America has tougher "reform" tasks than Palin faces. The mayor of Fairbanks probably works longer hours & with more daily headaches.

What standards should we apply to Sarah Palin? These:

Christine Gregoire, Washington

M. Jodi Rell, Connecticut

Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas

Janet Napolitano, Arizona

Ruth Ann Minner, Delaware

Jennifer Granholm, Michigan

Linda Lingle, Hawaii

Seven other accomplished current governors who happen to be women. Heck, to lower the bar I'll even toss former two-term Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman into the mix. Never especially popular, or even that competent a manager, as head of the EPA she quickly alienated her White House bosses by warning them about global warming, & was purged from the Bush administration after two years on the job. Just be as intelligent & informed as those women, Sarah, worthy of being on that list. I don't believe you are, I don't believe you have the capacity. If McCain really was a maverick, he would've gone for the Republican, female, Jewish, prochoice, childless, twice divorced Governor of Hawaii with the cum laude journalism degree from Cal State. The lady wearing the lei.

* Or Supreme Court decisions. Couric stumped Palin on that question. I read a detailed book on the history of religious freedom in America, The Lustre of Our Country by John T. Noonan, Jr., & can generally discuss a number of important decisions without being able to recall an interesting one as Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, which I just looked up. I filed it away in my mind as "The Case of the Commie Church." But she shoulda said she disagreed with the decision in the one between fishermen & Exxon over the Valdez spill, & agreed with the one that overturned D.C.'s gun ban. Those two came down this year.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

The McCain/Palin campaign would collapse overnight if a video were discovered of Sarah Palin speaking in tongues. The vast majority of Americans have never personally witnessed the phenomena.

There are many anti-charismatic fundamentalists who consider speaking in tongues a dangerous & demonic form of worship & not at all an expression of the Holy Spirit. Here's a page titled Chaos with sound, from from ultra-fundamentalist website.

From a pentecostal website, an 8 minute RealAudio file, Mystery of Tongues, with some examples along with Holy Ghost preaching. Google turns up videos.

You might think, "Sounds like they're just having some fun." In a way you'd be right. They meet together by common consent. Some meetings are more intense than others. It would be downright disappointing at many churches if someone wasn't flopping in the aisle, & there are congregants who can be expected to stand up, get out there & fall down right on time every week if nobody else does. Other places it's a special event, they'll bring in guest preachers who specialize in moving the unmoved, even the children do some moaning & writhing.

As someone who has listened to & enjoyed religious trance music & sound from all around the world, I accept the practice as human. However, in pentecostal protestanism, speaking in tongues accompanies doctrines & theologies I find unsophisticated at the least. The Holy Spirit has plenty of creative means to exert itself, joyfully, poetically, & in community, without resorting to babble. Even the Klingon language that developed out of Star Trek has linguistic substance. Nobody knows what tongues mean unless the speaker provides a translation. I would imagine angel communication is either telepathic or as orderly & expressive as Classical Latin or Greek. Some tongues sound like poor imitations of Latin. Many orthodox Christians of literal minds explain the Pentecost as possibly xenoglossy, a paranormal event during which the Disciples miraculously learned the languages of the countries they would evangelize. Following the Resurrection, this would be a wondrous thing but an almost minor miracle by comparison. Speaking in nonsensical syllables or angelic language would have been no help to them. I prefer to believe it was the moment when they collectively comprehended what they had become in community, because they would have lost heart & faith had they not carried a strength & spirit of community with them as they went their separate ways.

Labels: Grandma Palin, religion, THE election

We know now that Sarah Palin is an A List celebrity with the Repug base and a B or C List celebrity with everyone else. She has good public speaking skills learned for a possible TV career, but take away the VP thing & she's no more interesting than Michelle Obama & Jill Biden, & in some respects not even as accomplished as those two women, with no advantages as a working mother & definite disadvantages in her education. It's altogether probable that Jill Biden knows more about just about everything than Sarah Palin, & what she doesn't know she could learn quickly. Even moose stew. If Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, so is Jill Biden.

Rachel Maddow made a case that Palin is nasty & dishonest enough to qualify as the next Dick Cheney, but I wasn't convinced. Cheney is an evil man of long government experience & extraordinary deviousness. You can't train Palin to replace him in a matter of months. Palin hasn't demonstrated that she has the skills to manipulate a president behind the scenes, destroy reputations, while insulating herself from accountability. Whether or not it is possible to learn these skills as the governor of Alaska, I don't know. Certainly not in less than two years on the job. She has no proven successes yet. For a start, she has to get off-the-hook on Troopergate.

So Sarah will continue to draw the adoring crowds at partisan events, & others will have a look at her out of curiosity. Perhaps the quasi-libertarians will wake up & realize she isn't Barry Goldwater with a vagina, she's a nutty pentecostalist who believes in demon possession. Conservative is inadequate to describe her. Staid Southern Baptist women who wouldn't dream of speaking in tongues are more tolerant & understanding of gay men just from regular contact with their local hairdressers, not to mention having better taste in gospel music, most of the Bible committed to memory, & an attitude that sin is sin & Satan more likely to manifest himself through a bottle of whiskey than via any supernatural forces.

When Jill Biden comes to town campaigning, quietly, meeting with smaller groups, women will immediately recognize her as the rock she is; a mother, grandmother, homemaker, teacher; a "Christian woman" if that's important. We have to compare Sarah with Joe. & it's no contest - Sarah wins on looks, Joe on experience, & they both enjoy the spotlight. But if Sarah is also running on her credentials as a "family values" mom, then she's running against Jill Biden, & comparisons are appropriate.

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

Oh, & did I say I think McCain's choice of Palin is fucking brilliant? So far. Brilliant like a Hail Mary pass from the enemy's end zone that's caught way down field & the receiver is zig zagging toward the goal line & about the only hope the opposition has is that the receiver will trip.

This is the most astonishing campaign I've ever seen. I believe it is the last gasp of presidential free elections in America & we could blow it. I've believed since December 2000 that we were two national elections away from that point, & that was before 9/11. I think the next administration, using "election security" as a primary rationale, could game the system in ways that can never be repaired. That's how frightened I am by the prospect of Palin/McCain. Why? Because Americans are willing to toss away any rights we don't personally need or use. As somebody said, "You don't understand liberties until you try to take a few." & liberty for most Americans can be distilled to a few rights, the most important being the right to consume resources; essentially a right to shop & a right to be entertained. The economy? It'll get better, it just goes in cycles. Iraq? We'll win there eventually, hardly any Americans are killed now. Reproductive rights? Nobody has a problem getting condoms & birth control pills. Free speech? If you really love America, you never say anything bad about her & have no reason to worry about what you do say. Gay rights? I don't care what they do in private. Congress? Doesn't do squat, let the president decide that stuff - as long my rep brings home some pork. Education? We have to stop other nations from educatin' their kids better than we educate our kids. Religion? What's the big deal? You're either a Christian or a Jew. Just choose one & shut up. No law says you have to go to church.

McCain represents the financial & military corporate interests, Palin the big energy & conservative Christian interests, & there you have the team & the tent. Wrap loosely in a mild "reform" or "maverick" package - The same but different, Buddhists say - give frustrated white folks a number of excuses not to vote for the black man with the strange name - because a lot of white folks just don't want to vote for a black man with a strange name even if what he says makes sense & he sounds mostly like he plans on doing the right thing.

An established empire doesn't have to produce or compete. An empire has to threaten, conquer, exploit, & demand tribute. Citizens must be placated before they become mobs. Give us cheap grain & the occasional victory parade & let us play in our backyards with our tech toys, barbecue grills, & little doggies, & Caesar can dress the "Republic" anyway he wants. We won't care about the legions "guarding" the polling places.

Tell me why it couldn't happen.

Labels: bully pulpit, Grandma Palin, THE election

Scene: Governor's office, Juneau. Picture window of snowy mountains. Desk. Phone.
Sarah Palin wearing a camouflage outfit, out-sized rimless glasses, Marge Simpson hair, bright red heels. She's standing by desk holding a military assault rifle in one hand, phone in other:

Sarah: "Gotta run, Arnold. Let's get together soon & discuss the Inauguration BALL." Hangs up. Polar bear appears at window. Sarah shoots at it. Presses intercom button:
Sarah: "Bristol?"
Bristol voice : "Yeah mom?"
Sarah: "I just saw another freakin' white thing. Endangered, my ass. & try to reach that guy Rove again, I'm ready to speak boobly babbly here, they're asking all kinds of stupid questions now. Bush doctrine. Moose stew. Legal marijuana. "
Bristol voice: "Yeah, mom."

Sarah paces, muttering: "Juneau, Phoenix, Little Rock, Sacramento. No, Montgomery, Juneau, Phoenix....."

Wriggling salmon appears at window. Sarah shoots at it.
Sarah: "Mindless sex, that's all those fish want. They're like teenagers."
Sarah paces back & forth. Goes to to intercom.
Sarah: "Bristol?"
Bristol voice: "Yeah, mom."
Sarah: "You all alone?"
Bristol voice: "Yeah, mom."

Door opens, man enters wearing coonskin cap, enormous rubber boots. He is unshaven & filthy from head to toe, smeared with crude oil, a bloody fur draped over his shoulder, which he throws at Sarah's feet. A cameraman follows him through the door.

Sarah: "Whoa, careful with the Lower 48 shoes, my handsome carnivore. Are we filming your Alaskan reality show or mine? Oh, it doesn't matter."

Band plays.

Todd sings: "Lay Lady Lay, Lay across my big brass bed. Stay Lady Stay.."
Sarah, frozen & staring at him, interrupts: "You had got me on lay big fella." '
She backs toward desk & drops rifle as she lays down.
Sarah (to camera): "My friends, anyone peekin' in that window just gonna see
my hands holdin' my ankles & a pair
of red heels wavin' in the free
& glorious State of Alaska where
more than 80% of the revenue action
is derived from petroleum extraction."
Todd ambles toward desk, reaching to open the desk drawer.
Sarah: " Hey, Hemingway, no environmental protection, just drill, baby, drill."
Bristol intercom voice: "Yeah, mom?"

Fade out to instrumental version of "Lay Lady Lady. "

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

There once was a lady Alaskin
who on the Repug stage was baskin'.
"Here's my salmon & mooses,
my guns & papooses,
a qualified mom multi-taskin'."

***
A CNN viewer commented that Sarah Palin is like the dancing baby commercial.
See it once, maybe twice, it was either amusing or, as I found it, freakish. Then they kept running it. Sarah Palin is boring. She has an irritating voice, silly hair, beliefs & avocations I try to ignore. Although I'd love to take the popular boat trip up the Alaska coast, & have a mild curiosity to see Iceland, I have little interest in cold climes. I like soft-peaked green mountains with wide farm valleys, the Shenandoah & parts of northwest New Jersey. I look at Palin & wonder how she avoided having ten children & I don't want to learn the answer. She's surrounded with dangerous beauty in Alaska & yet there's no poetry in her. She may be grace-filled in a protestant sense, but she isn't graceful. Or gracious. She's a person I have no desire to know or know about. She's not sexy; that's a rebuttal to the Tina Fey comparisons & to those who can't imagine pillow talk so entertaining it makes you want to do it again. My reaction to Palin is basically, "You don't belong down here in the Lower 48, or Hawaii. You're a fringe character, & that's fine, there's all sorts of cable shows we can watch about you. Go home."

Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election

It is pathetic that what gets the Repug base fired up is a hope that their presidential nominee is elected & then kicks the bucket so that the truly sanctified agent of the almighty on the ticket, a Sarah Palin, ascends to the office.

This is actually blind White Goddess* devotion by the most goddess deprived religious demographic in America, conservative Calvinist protestants. Their natural hunger to fill their tremendous spiritual vacancy is both touching & frightening, & should have been predictable. They were ready to defend their goddess & die for ther before they even knew who she was, so deep their desire, so great their relief. Perhaps McCain, who views his entire life as that of a willful, rebellious warrior-leader out of Greek myth, was unconsciously in need of a goddess protector, & intuitively moved to find one.

Her first appearance over the weekend was in her fertility/birth manifestation, which was conveniently deflected on to the minor daughter goddess with the swelliing belly; distasteful for this crowd to dwell upon the implications & images. She had no time to demonstrate her love manifestation, & politically risky to do so, but had to move directly to her death manifestation, in her speech to devotees incapable of comprehending a complete goddess of seamless spiritual fabric. The dilemma arises when the cyclical meaning of the White Goddess is wrenched into the linear-historical mode, a dimension that destroys her, with death becoming disconnected from fertility/birth & the cycle broken.

To speak of these matters to these people, of wholeness, of the beauty of eternal return, requires that one become apostate. Culturally, they have nothing but deep & troubling Appalachian songs they no longer acknowledge or understand, wonderful poems in which they dream of defying gravity, yet the men in them praise goddesses as they murder mortal women, then grovel in the ground, comparing themselves to moles.


*Book by poet Robert Graves proposing a lost prototypical supreme goddess predating the various god pantheons that have come to us from historical antiquity, particularly those of northern Europe. Reading it won't hurt your poetry. Might inspire peculiar political commentary.

Labels: Grandma Palin, religion, THE election

Fewer N.J. women receiving prenatal care

The number of women receiving early prenatal care in New Jersey has declined slightly during the last decade, largely because many do not have regular access to doctors or cannot afford to pay medical bills, according to a report released today.

The Prenatal Care Task Force report, released by State Health Commissioner Heather Howard, found teens, minorities and unmarried mothers are at higher risk of poor birth outcomes, including low birth-weight babies. Yet they remain less likely to receive early prenatal care, according to the report.

Uninsured mothers in New Jersey had the lowest rate of trimester prenatal care - 73 percent - while women with private insurance had the highest rate - 96 percent - across all racial and ethnic groups.

The overall average for prenatal care in New Jersey was 89 percent, according to the report, based on birth and infant death certificate data from 1990 to 2004.

These are troubling statistics. Successful early prenatal care programs would show a continuous steady rise. We can guess at a few of the causes. One would be that poor women & teenagers wait longer before confirming a pregnancy, from denial or any number of reasons. Another would be the fear many undocumented women have of entering the public health care system & calling attention to themselves. Prenatal deportation? Sounds cruel, but it's happened. It could be up there on the right wing agenda along with overturning Roe v. Wade & ordering teenagers to stop having sex or else suffer the consequences. Let's call it the Sarah Palin Agenda until we hear otherwise.

These numbers are discouraging, but they they don't have to stay that way. The expansion of SCHIP to all uninsured children & a greater attention to child health in schools will bring many more families into contact with regular health care, & those families will become accustomed to using the resources & more likely to urge others to do the same. For those families, we need more family care clinics conveniently located in the neighborhoods where they are needed, not two bus rides away on the other side of the city, phasing out hospital emergency rooms as primary care providers.

Labels: Grandma Palin, in the news, New Jersey