MR. TOO SOON AND MR. TOO LATE

Joe B. and Sarah P. were sharing a room at the hospital. They came from very far away, from very different places, and were under light sedation awaiting surgery for the same strange habit: it seems they both had a penchant for swallowing their own feet whole. They both wore designer hospital gowns that didn’t quite cover their behinds.

They began to mumble at each other. At first, it sounded friendly enough. But of course, with their feet halfway down their throats, and drowsy as they were, a lot of what they said was unintelligible or sounded plain silly.

Here’s what was pieced together by forensic experts from their recorded conversations:

1. Joe B. and Sarah P. both claimed to have new jobs working for a man named Mr. On Time.

2. Joe B. said this was impossible. He and Sarah P. were total strangers. He’d been in Crazyrotten Town for a long time, and his Mr. On Time just blew in and gave him a job as second in command. His Mr. On Time was going to be the new sheriff of Crazyrotten Town, because he could fix everything that was broken in the entire world just by thinking really hard and speaking magic, hypnotic words.

3. Sarah P. politely but firmly replied that she was second in command to the real Mr. On Time, who’d been in Crazyrotten Town for almost 30 years. Her Mr. On Time was going to be the new sheriff, because he already knew how to fix everything in the entire world by standing up against the wind, scowling, and just scaring the problems away. In fact, her Mr. On Time didn’t have to think at all--it was all second nature to him by now.

4. Joe B. said, joking, that he knew her Mr. On Time well, and she was mistaken. Her boss’s real name was Mr. Too Late: after fighting the wind for 30 years, he was acting pretty old and tired, and should have run for sheriff four years ago.

5. Sarah P. didn’t think the joke was funny, and her grunts became more heated. She said Joe B. didn’t know what he was talking about: her Mr. On Time actually went with the wind at least 90% of the time, so he had plenty of energy left. Then she said that Joe B.’s boss was all talk, and was too new to Crazyrotten Town to really know how to fix anything—his real name was Mr. Too Soon.

6. Joe B. said well, even if her boss did have something new to offer Crazyrotten Town, he was still Mr. Too Late, because most people wanted his Mr. On Time to be sheriff.

7. Sarah P. said Joe B. had it wrong again. Even if more people wanted Joe’s boss at first, now about the same amount of people want her boss to be sheriff. She joked that Joe’s boss was Mr. Too Soon two different ways, because he was an empty suit and also peaked too soon.

8. Joe B. didnt like her jokes either. He become so angry, he nearly spit out his feet.

9. They growled at each other loudly, angrily, incessantly.

10. The hospital staff tried to intervene and restrain them both, but the staff ended up arguing among themselves, taking sides about who was the real Mr. On Time. But after what seemed like forever, they all agreed they couldn’t stand the noise anymore, and didn’t know who to believe. They negotiated with each other right then and there--without preconditions--and came to a peaceful solution: they agreed to postpone the surgery indefinitely, put Sarah P. and Joe B. into a deep sleep, and moved them to separate, soundproof rooms.

P.S. We posted this before we read the latest embarassment from Sarah P., reported at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/29/campaign.wrap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview:

Palin accuses Obama of ties to second 'radical professor'

Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said Sen. Barack Obama has ties to a Columbia University professor who she said is "a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."

Not "had", "has"--but then she uses the past tense:

"It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years," Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Here's her "proof" that she's "calling him out on his record":

In April, the Los Angeles Times published an article about a going-away dinner for Khalidi that Obama attended in Chicago, Illinois, in 2003. Khalidi was leaving to become a professor at Columbia. The paper reported that a young Palestinian-American woman recited a poem at the farewell party that accused the Israeli government of terrorism for its treatment of Palestinians and was highly critical of U.S. support of Israel.

Oy...by the way, Obama also palled around with the conservatives while at Harvard.

Look, we know both sides are full of it, but everytime we try to look at this thing in some balanced, rational way, and listen to and weigh what the GOP has to say, another burning bag of flaming turd shows up on the front porch.

Like we've said before, he's John McCain and he approved this message.

P.P.S. Comedy Central "stole" our lines again....last night, Steven Colbert used the "flaming turd" reference when talking about the Rebublican campaign.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/189700/october-29-2008/the-word---i-endorse-barack-obama

SMELL FAMILIAR?

Toilet Paper on the GOP Shoe

Here's a particularly odious gem from today's Daily Beast:http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-26/why-obama-staffers-are-secretly-worried-and-other-dispatches-from-the-campaign-trail/2/#

In the past several days we've had Joe the Plumber, Wardrobe-gate (and the subsequent back-fill), Bid-rigging Gate (waiting for the back-fill), and now this. This is the direct legacy of Nixon's CREEP and the disquieting aroma of a 2000 election decided by a whisker in a state coincidentally governed by the President's brother. And more recently, the phone jamming anecdote we've heard from convicted felon Allan Raymond's TV interviews to sell How to Rig an Election (haven't read it yet).

These episodes, and this hateful letter, symbolize the toilet paper insolubly stuck to the GOP's shoes.

Politics is dirty, and neither side has a halo, but here we are a week away from the most important election in our lifetimes, and we're still waiting for comparable revelations about the democrats. Liberal media squelching the dish? Where are their convicted election cheaters?

If you told this history to third graders, they'd conclude that these GOP guys don't like to share and don't play nice.

--------

Some Doubt Remains, But Basic Doubt Removed

We've struggled, we've had our doubts--still have 'em. Will Obama, if elected, give us a redux Jimmy Carter? That would be very very bad.

But the more we've learned, the more we're repulsed by the Republicans and propelled toward Obama, we've warmed up to the idea and ideals of a President Obama.

We watched the PBS program last night about McCain and Obama. Extremely illuminating. Two honorable, admirable men, similarly driven by ego and ambition. For each, this election is the last "to do" on a long-held agenda. McCain, undoubtedly more balanced to the center than he must appear to appease potential Republican voters. Obama, surprisingly and demonstrably more conservative than ordinarily portrayed.

For McCain, however, the virtually pre-ordained, paint-by-number tragedy documented here (Monday, October 13, 2008-THE JURY MAY BE OUT, BUT THE EVIDENCE IS IN...), and by way smarter people elsewhere, is nearly complete. A good, forthright man, who was incontrovertibly maverick on many important issues, is gradually strangling himself in the entangled logoed scarves of his morally threadbare coalition.

Obama has by every reasonable measure kept closer faith with his values, and has disassociated from those who, formerly inside the tent, attempted to smuggle dishonor in (for example, Rev. Wright and more recently ACORN, although that still rankles).

So we take the wisdom wherever we find it. And thank the darkness, for without it, we would not be able to distinguish the light.

McCain is hanging (by a thread) in this race because of race. Period. McCain may still win (it reads like a tossup, no matter what the polls say), but by the great preponderance of evidence, his victory would be far from honorable and would promise nothing resembling a new day for America.

Thanks to the GOP and their minions for the recent reminders, and for at least clearing up all doubt as to who must get our votes now.

Time to drain the swamp, and mourn for the fallen Mr. McCain.

FUNDAMENTALS BAFFLE FUNDAMENTALISTS

“Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.” --Barry Goldwater

As the drama and tension builds for the election (can’t we have it tomorrow?), we see a nation under stress. Unremitting stress is dangerous: people tend to fray around the edges. Some unravel. Some act out.

Here are a couple of revealing, unrelated-but-utterly-related, fresh news items:

------------
Christian right intensifies attacks on Obama
Conservative activists escalate 'doom and gloom' rhetoric as Nov. 4 nears
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27369927

…Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine, a Pentecostal publication, titled one of his recent weekly e-mails to readers, "Life As We Know It Will End If Obama is Elected." Strang said gay rights and abortion rights would be strengthened in an Obama administration, taxes would rise and "people who hate Christianity will be emboldened to attack our freedoms." [Emphasis ours.]

Separately, a group called the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has posted a series of videos on its site and on YouTube called "7 Reasons Barack Obama is not a Christian." The commission accuses Obama of "subtle diabolical deceit" in saying he is Christian, while he believes that people can be saved through other faiths. [Emphasis ours.]

But among the strongest pieces this year is Focus on the Family Action's letter….Signed by "A Christian from 2012," it claims a series of events could logically happen based on the group's interpretation of Obama's record, Democratic Party positions, recent court rulings and other trends.

Among the claims:

·A 6-3 liberal majority Supreme Court that results in rulings like one making gay marriage the law of the land and another forcing the Boy Scouts to "hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys." (In the imagined scenario, The Boy Scouts choose to disband rather than obey).

·A series of domestic and international disasters based on Obama's "reluctance to send troops overseas." That includes terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that kill hundreds, Russia occupying the Baltic states and Eastern European countries including Poland and the Czech Republic,
and al-Qaida overwhelming Iraq.

·Nationalized health care with long lines for surgery and no access to hospitals for people over 80.

The goal was to "articulate the big picture," said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family Action. "If it is a doomsday picture, then it's a realistic picture," she said.

-------
Missouri Students Face Punishment for 'Hit a Jew Day'
Saturday, October 25, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444006,00.html

ST. LOUIS — At least four students from a suburban St. Louis middle school face punishment for allegedly hitting Jewish classmates during what they called "Hit a Jew Day."

---------

Compare these tidbits to the following passages:


How the Spanish Inquisition Worked
by Shanna Freeman
http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/spanish-inquisition1.htm

…To maintain its authority, the Church suppressed heretics. The Church had a very specific definition of heresy: A heretic publicly declared his beliefs (based upon what the Church considered inaccurate interpretations of the Bible) and refused to denounce them, even after being corrected by the authority.

…Many prominent citizens were concerned about their country's religious diversity and had bigoted attitudes toward non-Catholics. Jews were subjected to violent attacks known as pogroms and isolated in ghettos. Many were killed…. Many Jews converted to Catholicism. These converts were sometimes called marranos (Spanish for "pig" and a very derogatory term) and accused of secretly continuing to practice Judaism. They became targets of the Inquisition.

… Muslim converts to Catholicism, called Moriscos (Spanish for "Moorish"), were targeted for the same reasons as Jewish converts. In the late 16th century, Protestants, mainly Lutherans, also became the target of the Inquisition.

***

Every Spanish Christian over the age of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) was accountable to the Inquisition. Those who had converted from Judaism or Islam but who were suspected of secretly practicing their old rites; as well as others holding or acting on religious views contrary to Catholicism were targeted. Anyone who spoke against the Inquisition could fall under suspicion - as did saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. To stem the spread of heresy and anti-Catholicism, Torquemada promoted the burning of non-Catholic literature; especially the Talmud and, after the final defeat of the Moors at Granada in 1492, Arabic books as well. Tomás de Torquemada, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada

------

AND NOW…THE HCO RANT

Handing Over the Keys?

If the United States was handed over to these fundamentalist folks, and we gave them unfettered “freedom”, what might the country look like?

The country could be run under Christian theology…the political and judicial systems could be subservient to the decrees of religious leaders. Everyone could finally be on the same page here…no more noise from those pesky unsaved, un-savable un-Christians, who by definition are going to burn in hell anyway.

This isn’t such a bad idea, right? It’s working...for Iran.

Just like Carrie Gordon Earll, the goal here is to “articulate the big picture…if it’s a doomsday picture, then it's a realistic picture.”

[Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Circa 1933: British actor Matheson Lang is chained to a cross during the Spanish Inquisition in a scene from the film "The Wandering Jew."]

Now We’re Getting Really Mad

From what unfathomable feculent well of ignorance does this stuff spew? Who is teaching this stuff under the cloak of Christian morality?

Does this stray flock ever ask what Jesus would do? Really, is this what Jesus—arguably the greatest liberal of all time—would do?

These perverted religion-laced messages are indistinguishable from those we decry in the militant Muslim terrorists who have vowed to kill all of us infidels. The “freedom” they pursue, in their extremity, would license them to blindly, wildly swing their fists regardless of where the other guy’s nose happens to end.

Barry Goldwater lost by a landslide.

The Fundamentals Baffle the Fundamentalists

These folks have it tragically backwards. Their messaging is not about freedom, it’s about suppression of freedom.

Oddly, this twisted mindset reinforces the fundamental (if possibly unforeseen) wisdom of our all-white (some slave-owning), Christian Founding Fathers in separating church and state. This fundamental, which apparently baffles and eludes these fundamentalists, separates our own unreasoning, fearful—and often savage and tribal—natures from overwhelming the better selves, the higher plane, that our “real American” ideals point to.

(BTW, let’s not get crazy ourselves. We’re all for menorahs and nativity scenes side-by-side in schools. This is part of learning about others. And we’re okay with “In God We Trust” on the money.)

These guys ever read the plaque on the Statue of Liberty? Perhaps not…it’s in New York Harbor.

Quiz

Which is consistent with the highest aspirations of the “real American” ideal (pick one):

(____) Making room in our spacious tent, room at our abundant tables, embracing and understanding with “mild eyes.”

(____) Burning dissenters at the stake.

THE WOULD-BE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES

Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used.—George Bernard Shaw [lifted from an Anna Quindlan article]

This $150,000 designer clothes issue has been gnawing at me since I read about it. There had to be another side to the story, something other than what the liberal mainstream media gleefully reported. Something that would clarify it all for us.

And then it came, via the AP:

Palin denies accepting $150K in designer clothes:Brendan Farrington, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 24, 1:19 am ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081024/ap_on_el_pr/palin_clothing;_ylt=ArHpPXIrYpXdGSzFe2Z1P1dh24cA
Here are some excerpts from the story and the HCO take on it:

Sarah Palin is blaming gender bias for the controversy over $150,000 worth of designer clothes, hairstyling and accessories the Republican Party provided for her, a newspaper reported Thursday.

"I think Hillary Clinton was held to a different standard in her primary race," Palin said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune posted on the newspaper's Web site Thursday night. "Do you remember the conversations that took place about her, say superficial things that they don't talk about with men, her wardrobe and her hairstyles, all of that? That's a bit of that double standard."

There is a double standard. In this predominantly sexist civilization, women are often judged on their looks. In crass retail terms, women generally spend (must spend?) more on their clothing than men (or perhaps the men who price the clothes exploit this societal fact by charging more). But Palin misses the point here. The point is that, as far as we know, Hillary spent her own money on her own clothes.

Palin, who is John McCain's vice presidential running mate, said the clothes were not worth $150,000 and were bought for the Republican National Convention.

This makes it better, somehow? That approximately $150,000 was spent (this was not denied by either McCain or Palin), but that they weren't "worth it"? Or that instead of buying a wardrobe that she "needed" for a months-long campaign, they were bought so she could have multiple fashion options for a four-day event? And why did they have to shop for the Alaskan governor in New York City for an event in Minneapolis-St. Paul?

Most of the clothes have never left the campaign plane, she told the newspaper.

Because some clothes were left on the plane, and she didn't use them, that means she didn't "accept" them. The Couture to Nowhere.

"It's kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported," Palin said. "That whole thing is just, bad!" she said. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are."

In light of the revisionist expense report glitch (Trig on official state business!), the cynics might say she's complaining here that $150,000 was too tight a budget for wardrobe. No, this must mean that that they'll return the stuff that wasn't used…

News of the purchases of designer clothes, largely from upscale Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, contrasts with the image Palin has crafted as a typical "hockey mom."

McCain was asked several questions on Thursday about the shopping spree - and he answered each one more or less the same way: Palin needed clothes and they'll be donated to charity. [HCO: He also said this was the plan all along.]

Dare we ask which ones?

-------

So let’s try to pull this all together into a cogent lesson. First, some perspective:

1. $150,000 buys this cute house in Wasilla:

1. 

2. Let's say I'm running for office, and other people are paying for my wardrobe. I go out and buy high-end, perhaps even custom-made stuff…I'd spend something crazy-over-the-top like this:

$ 5000 Shoes (10 pairs at $500 each)
6000 Ties (20 at $300 each)
45000 Suits (15 at $3000 each)
6000 Shirts (20 at $300 each)
$ 62000 TOTAL

I'm looking rather fly, and with the money I have left, I can buy this (very) modest log cabin in Wasilla:

Here we go now…

• The objections to the spree at Needless Markup are not SEXIST…they're EXCESS-IST. We recognize that Palin can't wear her lit-up reindeer sweater to campaign in…but c'mon! Her governor clothes weren't nice enough?


• This is the party that hammers on the point that they will trim the pork and end the excesses of the elitists. They'll take care of other people's money. (As if it were their own, we suppose.)


• McCain and Palin have taught us that the un-American elitists live in New York (we guess here they mean New York City, not the good real American folks upstate). Booo on the elitists! Boooo on New York City! Except for the shopping part, the Neimans and Sakses and what have you.

And the big finish…

This wardrobe point, overall, seems too trivial to harp on. But it's one shard in a mosaic that's been assembling over the past few months about the Republican side—and it fits the picture.

This episode flows out of the same addled mindset that brought us McCain's superficially charitable remark that Obama isn't an Arab, but a decent family man. And that Ayers was/is--and by extension the secretive Obama might well be--a terrorist, but those who bombed abortion clinics were not.

How else can can you say it? For this team and the organization surrounding them, their actions simply aren't matching their words about who they are, or their core values. (Joe the Plumber's throwing in with these guys?)

At this point, which rings more true: That Palin boarded the Straight Talk Express? Or hopped on the gravy train with the same drunken disregard for common sense--and for the inherent trust that comes with power over other people's money--as the spa-loving execs from AIG?

This campaign isn't just testing character, it's revealing it.

HOW MUCH FOR THE LIPSTICK?

Have fun reading these juxtaposed headlines:

Palin: I'm a "Redneck Woman"
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/22/palin-im-a-redneck-woman/

Palin Charges Alaska for Kids' Travel http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/21/palin.travel.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

$150,000 Wardrobe for Palin May Alter Tailor-Made Image http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23palin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

McCain: Palin's Wardrobe Will be Donated to Charity
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/22/mccain-palins-wardrobe-donated-charity/

In Sour Economy, Some Scale Back on Medications
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/business/22drug.html?em

He's John McCain, and he's approved this message.

WHAT’LL YOU HAVE? VANILLA? CHOCOLATE? ROCKY ROAD?

The tireless and tiresome gyrations of the presidential campaign has left me hugely unsatisfied. And has led me to question everything.

Here we have two guys beating each other's brains out, and we're doing the same to each other, when neither is an ideal choice to lead this country out of the dank thicket we're in.

No, it's more than that: I am confident as I can be that neither of them is the BEST choice to lead.

Let's think about this…

When we roll down the cereal aisle at the supermarket, we're assaulted with a pulsating kaleidoscope of choices—from bland and arid shredded wheat to colorful candy you eat with milk. At the ice cream parlor, we have scores of flavors and options; we study the menu with Talmudic intensity.

Why is it that in politics, our menu of meaningful options is limited to only two—Republican or Democrat?

To revert to the food imagery, what kind of ice cream parlor gives you only vanilla and chocolate? (Draw any parallels and read in any symbolism you like here.)

Years ago, when I was teaching my daughter to how to dress herself, she would argue with me about what she would wear. I learned to put out two outfits and let her choose one. That way she was happy to think she had freedom to choose, but I had controlled the range of choice to two acceptable outcomes.

This election leads me to wonder why I've been given the same narrow choice as a three-year old—between two arguably UNacceptable outcomes. We're not voting for one guy, we're voting AGAINST the other guy. This is the best our win-lose, scarcity-centric culture can do.

This endless national embarrassment has been heaped with unconscious yet apparent relish onto the fetid effluent of the past eight years, delivering repetitive and bruising insults to instinct and intelligence. As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

From here, it looks like Rocky Road.

SAY IT ISN’T JOE THE PLUMBER

Now, they're fighting over Joe the Plumber.

Would he or wouldn't he be devastated by Obama's proposed 3% tax bump for those making over $250,000?

Let's assume for the sake of argument that he was ready to buy the plumbing business from his retiring boss. This means that he would have his own plumber's license, because he could no longer operate under his boss's shingle.

The next questions are:

1. What's the purchase price?
   
2. Is he buying assets or stock?
   
3. How is he going to finance the purchase? Is his boss going to take back paper or will he go to a bank?
   
4. If he goes to a bank:
   
   

   a. Will he qualify for a loan? (His back taxes might hurt his creditworthiness.)
   b. If he can get over the credit hurdle with the bank, will the business assets be sufficient to secure the loan? Does Joe have any other assets to give as security?
   

Next, assuming Joe has found a way to finance the buy, if he has any sense he'll form a business entity to own the business and protect him from personal liability. That entity is likely to be an "S" corporation or a limited liability company.

Why is this significant? Both entity types are "pass-through" entities; this means that all income and expenses, and all gains and losses, of the business are passed through to Joe. In other words, Joe can personally write off all of the business expenses, including the salary and bonuses he pays himself and the costs of his health insurance.

If his accountant does his or her job properly, the net-net is that for tax purposes, Joe would "make" fairly close to nothing. If for tax purposes he reported $250,000, chances are that in reality, he's pulled down twice that.

So if Joe is actually making $500,000 but pays taxes on $250,000, the tax bump is more like 1.5% maximum--$3,750, $312 a month, about $10 per day. Instead of $40 per hour, Joe might have to raise his rates to $41 per hour.

The fundamental question, then, is whether this price is too steep for Joe—who can now drive around in his company-owned Hummer—to bear?

WORDS COUNT - VOLUME 2: JUST FOR FUN

1. Ooopsie for the Writer's Writer's Editor

All writers are haunted by the specter of typos (especially those that fly under spell-check radar). Here’s a recently unearthed, ironic nugget from The Golden Thread, the AWAI newsletter for copywriters (Issue #301, October 29, 2007):

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS,
COPYWRITING LEGEND…Mary Had a WHAT???!!!

The unaware communicator may face a major curse -- his or her own education. This can lead these smart cookies to call upon a vocabulary that does not match their prospect's … (Think "stochastic" or "obfuscatory" or "insidious" or "fustian"!)...

...causing them to ignore one of the tenants of effective communication...

Those who know the big words may know the little words, but those who know the little words may not know the big words.

HCO is squarely aligned with the legendary Mr. Lewis: effective communication is really really good, and no tenets should be evicted…except for the supercilious ones.

2. Close Enough for Those Who Don't Know the Big Words Anyway

On the cover of the Office Edition, Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary (Revised Edition)- The Foremost Webster's Paperback Dictionary (c) 1996:

OVER 60,000 precise definitions

And, we superciliously assume (since we still use the old thing), only a few of the imprecise ones.

WHY THE RAYS WILL WIN IT ALL - COLBERT PICK UPS THE VIBE

Yesterday, we wrote this joke:

Worst to first in one year with essentially the same youthful personnel...ascending ineluctably toward baseball heaven.

There's only one plausible explanation (other than everyone being one year more mature) for this wondrous turn:

Until this year, they were the "Devil Rays." They have risen because they exorcised the "Devil"!

Last night, Steven Colbert made the same joke (although his version is way funnier, with higher production values):

Wednesday October 15, 2008
Sport Report - Lame
Sports Edition
The Tampa Bay Rays show what's possible when your baseball
team renounces Satan. (04:29)http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/188586/october-15-2008/sport-report---lame-sports-edition

This makes two days in a row that Comedy Central shows echoed something on HCO....coincidence?

COMEDY CENTRAL ECHOES HCO

On Saturday, October 11, 2008-"WORDS COUNT - VOLUME 1," we wrote (really, my wife's instant insight, not mine) that when John McCain said Barack Obama wasn't an Arab but a "decent family man," McCain was actually making a slur on male Arabs.

Last night, the Daily Show caught this too. Check out the video:

An Arab Family Man: Aasif Mandvi is sure that being an Arab and a decent family man are not mutually exclusive.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=188474&title=an-arab-family-man

THE JURY MAY BE OUT, BUT THE EVIDENCE IS IN...

The initial blog entry on HCO made the argument that the real John McCain had lost himself, gone adrift, sold his soul for this election. Since then, echoes on this theme have sounded from all quarters, left and right. For example:

1. In the New Yorker: The Talk of the Town by Hendrik Hertzberg: "Going beyond the Palin", accessed today at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27159596:

...Early in the general-election campaign, Obama was accused, for example, of favoring “painful tax increases on working American families,” when in fact his tax hike would apply only to family incomes of more than a quarter million dollars a year...Obama was also portrayed as a libertine who demanded that kindergartners be exposed to explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse (when in fact he proposed only to teach them to recognize inappropriate advances) and as a sexist boor who called the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee a pig (when in fact he used a common simile that his opponent had a habit of using himself).

...[A recent negative campaign ad says:] "Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are [Obama’s voice] 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops, increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and congressional liberals. Too risky for America." Here is what Obama actually said, fourteen months ago: “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” He was calling for reinforcements, not casting aspersions....

...Enter Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman, now a college professor....Palin again, a few days ago: “Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.” At the end of the nineteen-sixties, when Bill Ayers was a leader of the New Left’s most destructive, self-destructive, and delusional splinter, Barack Obama was a small boy living with his mother in Indonesia. The fact that thirty years later Obama and Ayers sat on a couple of the same nonprofit boards tells us no more about Obama’s politics and character than does the fact that another member of one of those boards was Arnold R. Weber, the former president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and a donor of fifteen hundred dollars to the McCain campaign. ...

The Obama campaign has been spending money on negativity, too, of course...But there is no equivalence between the two campaigns. If there were, Obama’s ads would be “raising questions” about the other ticket’s “associations.” For example, Todd Palin was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party—to which his wife, as governor, has sent friendly greetings—between 1995 and 2002. Four years before Todd joined, the A.I.P.’s founder, Joe Vogler, declared, “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government,” and added, referring to the Stars and Stripes, “I won’t be buried under their damned flag!” (Sure enough, in 1995, Vogler, after being murdered in connection with an informal transaction involving plastic explosives, was buried in Canada.)...Ditto the fact that during the early nineteen-eighties John McCain sat on the advisory board of General John Singlaub’s U.S. Council for World Freedom—the American outpost of the World Anti-Communist League, a sort of clearing house for former Nazi collaborators, Central American death-squad leaders, and assorted international thugs. And, unlike Obama’s alleged palship with Ayers, these things are true.

...[The McCain campaign] has been late in having second thoughts. This became frighteningly obvious in recent days, as the rallies McCain and Palin have held around the country turned into bloodcurdling hate-fests. The shouts of supporters in response to the candidates’ attacks on Obama—“Traitor!” “Terrorist!” “Kill him!”—were uttered without rebuke.

...If McCain loses, or even if he wins, his campaign will be remembered as a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense, in which a hero is ruined through some terrible choice of his own....

2. On FoxNews.com, "A Buckley for Obama," by Bonney Kapp, 10.12.08, accessed at http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/12/a-buckley-for-obama:

...Buckley writes he’s known John McCain since 1982 - written speeches for the guy. He once thought, “God, this guy should be president someday.” He continues, “But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed.”

Buckley argues the campaign has changed the man he used to think was authentic. “A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence....

3. New York Times, 10.11.08, "Concern in G.O.P. After Rough Week for McCain," by Adam Nagourney and Elisabeth Bumiller, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/us/politics/12strategy.html?bl&ex=1223956800&en=9129ef63b50f6f1c&ei=5087%0A:

...Tommy Thompson, a Republican who is a former governor of Wisconsin...[was asked] if he was happy with Mr. McCain’s campaign, [and] Mr. Thompson replied, “No,” and he added, “I don’t know who is.”

4. The Associated Press, 10.12.08, "GOP frets about McCain's strategy, prospects," by Liz Sidoti, accessed at http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gLBaEUjMtevno3eCncjjLYuozYVgD93P69GG0

...On Friday, McCain called for the temporary suspension of the requirement that older investors liquidate their retirement accounts — and defended Obama as "a decent, family man" the public shouldn't fear. That day, McCain's campaign also came out with its hardest-hitting ad yet."

...[McCain] has an opportunity to step up and be a forceful leader during these challenging times," said Ron Kaufman, a veteran [Republican] party operative who also worked for [Mitt] Romney. "McCain got the nomination because that's what his brand is, but somehow it's gotten muddled."...

...There's been backlash to the negativity [in McCain's campaign]. "He is not the McCain I endorsed," former Michigan Gov. William Milliken told The Grand Rapids Press, calling the tenor disappointing. "He ought to be talking about the issues."

---------------------------

There is no joy in citing these pieces. What they illuminate is the tragedy the New Yorker talks about...

Once upon a time, there was a man who by all measures was good, honest, and sincere, and who had given long and commendable service to his country. He was, in fact, a hero to many. In 2000, he tried to become President but lost. He never got over it, because he believed the job was rightfully his. This haunted him constantly, and the pain was made even worse because the man who had defeated him and become President did a terrible job and hurt the country very badly. Eight years later, he decided to try again--and this time, he was determined to do everything possible to win.

He surrounded himself with expert advisors, many of whom had helped the current President win in 2000. They told him: "We know how to win! If you do exactly as we say, you'll win this time."

But the expert advisors knew only the same wisdom they had given the bad President, and blinded and crazed by their arrogance and pride, failed to realize that the world had changed drastically in eight years. So the good, honest, and sincere man, at his oracles' urging, said things that had indeed worked for the bad President, but weren't true to himself. Saying these things tormented the hero, but he was unwaveringly determined to win. In fact, he said and did everything his sages told him to, even things that contradicted each other and confused and angered the people.

Before long, the hero's true self got lost. So lost that even when he tried to find himself again, the people did not believe him: in his contradictons and obfuscations, the people lost sight of the hero and saw only that he was acting almost the same as the bad President.

And in the end, he lost the election...again.

But he didn't lose because he was a bad man. He lost because of his fatal flaw: wanting to win at any cost. And in the end, the cost to him was everything: his hard-earned reputation, himself.

FINE

WORDS COUNT - VOLUME 1

Fresh today:

1. Comcast reports as follows in http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-politics/20081010/Obama/:

At a town-hall event Friday in Minnesota, McCain took the microphone from a woman who had called Obama an Arab. McCain said, "No, ma'am," and he called Obama "a decent, family man."

What’s behind the words: an insight into a mindset. This well-intentioned statement is actually a prejudiced slur on male Arabs--if you are an Arab then you're not a decent family man.

(Just for fun, try substituting the "n" word.)

2. At a diner, my brother and sister-in-law are waited on by a Hispanic. My sister-in-law orders a Spanish omelet. He brings her a spinach omelet.

TRAPPED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR

This post builds on the foreign policy threads in the previous one.

Here’s my argument:

1. As it relates to foreign policy in general, and the Iraq war in particular, the mindset of our leadership has been dangerously backwards for a long time.

To illustrate this point, I offer a flash back…to the September 18, 2005 issue of TIME magazine—no longer topical, but still instructive. In Joe Klein’s article “Saddam's Revenge (Iraq: Are We Losing?),” I read, re-read, and re-re-read, the following astonishing passage:

The soldiers wanted to try diplomacy and began reaching out to the less extreme elements of the insurgency…The diplomats took a harder line, refusing to negotiate with the enemy.

There it was: we’d gone through the looking glass, directly into Wonderland, where rabbits wear big hats, soldiers advocate diplomacy, and diplomats lust for blood.

This was more than red states versus blue. It signaled the cold death of wisdom.

2. John McCain is ideologically tethered to the Bush (thus Republican) war machine.

McCain’s rejects dialogue with actual or potential adversaries. Like wearing white after Labor Day, it’s just not done.

If we can take McCain’s statements at face value (if he means what he says), he offers us scant hope of moderation, let alone reversal. And severely undermines his self-proclaimed status as maverick and reformer.

3. It would be dangerous for us to vote this inverted and inflexible mindset into power for four more years.

The world has changed, and as the eight thousand drums in Beijing thundered to us, the game has changed. Economically and thus politically. No longer can we fecklessly throw our weight around, and then scramble to clean up after ourselves.

McCain assures us he knows how to win the war in Iraq (and the other one, too). Even if we forgive him—the guy who always puts country first—for keeping this a secret at this critical time, his version of wisdom sounds just like the bad old Bush gang. This is the wisdom that forecloses learning anything new…and is proud of it. The wisdom that impels McCain, in his exertions to appear presidential, to claim he knows it all.

McCain echoes the statements in TIME three years ago. How scary for us if we find ourselves trapped behind the looking glass for four more years of this unabashedly un-reformed, and un-reformable, tea party of turpitude.

WHY I MUST VOTE FOR OBAMA...even if I didn't want to at first

This is the inaugural post for this blog. You can read the creedo to see why the blog's here in the first place.

On October 2, 2008, on Real Clear Politics, http://comments.realclearpolitics.com/read/1/215127.html, Charles Krauthammer wrote in "Obama Passing the Reagan Threshold" that Obama's first-class intellect and temperament should get him elected.

But there's much more to it. It's McCain's apparent compromise in values that have kept me in a state of simmering outrage for a few weeks...inspired by Mr. Krauthammer, here's what I wrote:

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOHN McCAIN?

A few years back, watching John McCain on a late-night talk show, my wife and I got excited. He had a sense of humor, talked straight, and made a whole lot of sense. He ducked questions about switching parties, running for president. Both of us, lefties, nevertheless turned to each other and said in jinx-style synchronicity, “I’d vote for him.”

What happened to that man?

We all know what happened. To get this job, he sold out. No—worse. He sold his soul. A few weeks ago, BP—before Palin—I thought, okay: I get it…he HAD to smudge the boundaries of the real McCain to get the nomination. To get elected, he HAS to hide the boundaries, at least for now. The real McCain, the straight-shooting reformer we saw back then, and the one we keep hearing about, has simply gone into suspended animation while in outer space. Once he gets elected and beats the inexperienced and inscrutable Obama-come-lately, then the real McCain will be revived and save the country, the world, the planet.

This is what we’re being sold. Then came Palin.

McCain asks us to believe that Obama is too inexperienced to lead, but Palin’s callowness is a breath of DC fresh air—a masterstroke for the madcap maverick.

Palin is what she is, and that’s fine. But here’s what went wrong: McCain had made inexperience a central issue. Now, he had to grow another mouth overnight: Obama is too inexperienced to lead, but Palin’s callowness is a breath of DC fresh air—a masterstroke for the madcap maverick.

I really wanted to like McCain. I really wanted to want to like Palin—not as the charming home-spun hockey mom who heeded the call to public service only to do what’s right—but as potential Presidential timber.

McCain has noted that the Republicans are the party of Lincoln, of Reagan. Well, it’s also the party of Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. The same guy McCain (as the maverick reformer) is pedaling away from, furiously. McCain is saying, in effect, “The party was great, the party now sucks, so vote for the party.” Huh?

There are other messages, equally strange and strained. On foreign policy, and by all sensible measures, McCain has been in ideological lockstep with the now-disowned Bush gang over Iraq. McCain gets points for recognizing that the surge would “work.” But the fundamental point is that it’s not a just war; motivation aside, skewed and deadly decisions were made. Decisions that changed the global game, opening the door for Iran, neglecting Afghanistan (the just war in this tableau, if there is one), straining our resources, putting us into inextricable debt, costing us credibility in the world community, and gelding our protest over Russia’s adventures in Georgia. We’ve lost the high road.

McCain, deploying the Republican penchant for winning the labeling game, says his policy will lead to victory in Iraq, Obama’s to defeat. Last night, Palin said that McCain knows how to win a war. How is this so? Because McCain supported the surge? Or because he was a POW in Vietnam?

What would McCain’s victory look like? Likely not a banner on an aircraft carrier, but surely not a signature on articles of surrender or a treaty. How would we know it when we saw it? Did we win in Vietnam?

What would Obama’s surrender look like?

They would look about the same. An inglorious and untidy draw-down over time, with fingers crossed that the factions who have hated each other for centuries don’t start dismembering each other the second we leave. And there’s Iran to deal with; unless they cave in, we’ll have to shoot them up too.

On foreign policy, McCain's approach to the new globe is not just old school. It's the unlit one-room schoolhouse.

McCain, the reformer, says we can’t talk to our enemies. Why? Because you can’t. This is not just the old school approach to the new globe, it’s the unlit one-room schoolhouse. These days, don’t we teach our children that when we have problems, we should talk about them? That communication is the key to learning, to understanding?

If there’s truth cowering in a dark corner, how can we suffer by exposing it to the light?

McCain's no tax and spend liberal...these guys don't tax—they just spend, baby. They’ve run a system that encourages consumers to buy on credit to drive the economy, then talk about fiscal responsibility, then mortgage our children to the Chinese.

On the domestic side, I’m happy to know that McCain will fight, fight, fight the special interests and lobbyists. It must be hard to ask them to leave your office, turn down lunch. But then hire one to run your campaign while apparently still a principal of the firm? Enlist them to get the bailout passed? A mixed signal.

On economic policy, there’s an unbroken conservative cable from Regan to Bush to McCain. They’re triplets joined at the brain. The free market eventually resolves everything: you feed the capital.

These guys don’t want government intruding everywhere, like the tax and spend liberals do. These guys don’t tax—they just spend, baby. They’ve run a system that encourages consumers to buy on credit to drive the economy, then talk about fiscal responsibility, then mortgage our children to the Chinese.

These guys don’t want government intruding everywhere. But they’d unravel the Fourth Amendment. They’d legislate a moral compass in our libraries, schools, and bedrooms—but not in our boardrooms. They talk about faith in God, but have helped crown money as our one true God.

McCain suspends his campaign. He expects us to suspend our disbelief.

The best candidate for President is not on the ballot. That’s the candidate who can galvanize enough momentum to throw all the truth-shaving cowardly bums out and devise a zero tolerance policy for any more bums. Until then, we can’t bank on McCain, who is complicit in this gargantuan cascading mess, to regain consciousness. He suspends his campaign, he expects us to suspend our disbelief.

I have to vote for Obama, even if by default.