BOO!

HELLO JOE, WHERE DID YOU GO?

Can't you just hardly wait for the post-mortems on the campaign of poor Calamity John?

The scandal that the News Media will not pick up on for today is the 4,000 schoolchildren bussed in to fill the empty seats at this political rally. The entire Reliance, Ohio school district was apparently enlisted to revivify the McCain campaign's image. Perhaps he should have simply gotten down to brass tacks and asked for some blood. Or platelets, anything!

The absence of one newly-minted living talking point celebrity isn't nearly as meaningful. OTOH, it is funny.

An Overflowing Cup of Joe

Unlicensed plumbing contractor and McCain Foreign Policy Advisor Joe the Plumber was opining again on the danger of Obama: would an Obama presidency be the death of Israel? "I'll have to go along with that," said Joe, who did, to be fair, caution people to make up their own minds and not just base their decisions on his seconds and seconds of intensive reflection.
He was okay with himself even after Shepherd Smith of Fox (!) gave him every chance to back away from his cheerful, unmalicious, unthinking, devastating slander of a major public figure.

He has happily embraced the same media that McCain and Palin have been demonizing, finding the "media filter" suits him fine. He always has a word or two for whatever microphone sticks its tempting self under his nose. He was a familiar caller to right-wing talk shows in the area.

Joe used Barack Obama for his chance at the Big Time, and it worked. He saw Obama in his neighborhood, made his way through the crowd and asked a set-up question, since the answer was supposed to make Obama look bad and didn't actually apply to Joe. Now, McCain is using Joe and Joe is using McCain. Joe's PUBLICIST is angling for a book deal and a RECORD CONTRACT.

Everybody was using everybody except Obama, who simply tried to answer the guy's question seriously, and ironically will end up cutting Joe's taxes. Obama was nice to Joe, who is too full of himself and his own opinions to absorb any outside information.The glory of this incredible year: just when you think they've hit a new low, they dig down and come up with a lower low. From Sarah the winking Serial Liar to Joe the Singing Unlicensed Plumber.

ALERT! JUST IN-A FEW FUN FICTS FROM THE MAVERICK

Fun, because they are fictional facts, so lets jump in on the neologism-coining craze and call them FICTS. These are courtesy of intrepid newshound Larry King at CNN, the Network that Said NO to Obama's paid infomercial, and replaced it with a free infomercial for McCain: John Sidney McCain III is from humble beginnings. Although he is the son and grandson of admirals, flew and crashed one airplane after another, fortunately not onto the airfield that bears his own name, and was admitted to elite schools and programs on the strength of his last name, intrepid newshound Larry King managed to worm out of him that he came from humble beginnings. There's a scoop for you.

Another scoop is his plan for the economy: he's going to grow it. And there you have it, my friends, the detail you 've been craving that Obama's afraid to give: John McCain will GROW the economy right out of this mess.

Thank You, and Good Night.

Oh, you want more? Okay.

He will give tax cuts just like Reagan did, and that will grow the economy. Intrepid newshound Larry King did not point out that Reagan left the economy wobbling around carrying the biggest honking deficit it ever had to heft, or that Reagan didn't come in looking at a deficit there aren't enough zeroes in cyberspace to express.

The third and final scoop of the evening: he's delighted with Sarah Palin's maverickiness, and whenever she's around, he finds her presence uplifting. Oh, there are a lot of comedians who are grateful to him just for that last sentence. She's going to drag him up to ANWAR and show him how she dresses those meese.

That's more than enough scoops from McCain for one night. Apologies to Stephen Colbert, whose concept "truthiness" has had every damn body on the Internet trying to come up with a better neologism. There is no better neologism, but "Ficts" fills a needed gap, I think; while truthy things seem like they ought to be true, Ficts are obviously truth-challenged, if not truth-deprived, and depend on the kindness of strangers (like intrepid newshound Larry King) not to challenge their existence.

Dangerously Stupid Minds

Mrs. Polly Foils a Plot?

"Secret Service," the young man said. "Look, it's a comment on the Internet, I want to make it clear," I said. "But someone on the Huffingtonpost just made a threat against Obama."

I was on the phone with the New York Field Office of the Secret Service on Sunday. They pick up on the first ring, BTW, even though this is their busy season. Of course, should Obama win, the next eight years will be their busy season.

The Huffingtonpost is a one-stop-shop for every kind of Freeping, wingeing, blustering, petty, juvenile, gleeful trolling that its mostly liberal articles can inspire. Regulars needle each other joyfully, like the old guys in the back of a coffee shop, and interlopers set off cascades of derogatory comments. The stories on Huffingtonpost are given provocative titles designed to set adrenaline flowing into the good red bloodstreams of its viewers, and the comments on the stories frequently overwhelm each other, streaming in with such force that it's useless to try to keep up.

This commenter, though, was new. And he minced no words about what he wanted to do to the Obamas. Both of them. And with what weapons. When he was dumped off the site under one name, he came back, newly registered as something else, saying, "Think you can get rid of me that easily?"

That's when I looked up the Secret Service. I posted on Huffington that I was calling them, figuring that the commenter could be found even if he immediately stopped commenting. It's not like the telephone; you can't just hang up.

All that FISA spying ought to be good for something!

The young man heard me out, and said, "I'll have Intelligence call you back." Which they did, immediately. I told "Paul" about the comment(s), which was difficult since I don't use the "N" word, or the other ones--- when and where it occurred, and he and I both went to the Huffington Post to find the comment.

FLASH: the Secret Service doesn't spend a lot of time on the Huffington Post. "I've never been to this site before," said "Paul", sounding perplexed by the assortment of screaming headlines, multitude of categories, and the ever-flowing stream of comments. It took some time to find the Commenter, partially because my computer is agonizingly slow, partially because clicking within certain sections of the Huffington Post will send you off to the far reaches of the known universe.

We did find him, though. In case you think mere typing to an unseen entity will never amount to any problems for you, know this: "Paul" said, "All right, I'm calling Headquarters about this, they'll talk to the site owners, find the guy's IP, and we'll look into it."

Then yesterday, two skin/knuckleheads were arrested by the ATF for concocting a loony plot to assassinate not only Obama, but eighty other African-Americans, beheading some for good measure. They were going to start off their spree by robbing a gun shop, and were going to rob a neighbor, but were scared off by a dog. And, they met on the Internet. I can't help hoping that one of them was the disgusting gooberhead who posted on Huffington.

And remember the ATF? These are the guys whom John McCain's friend G. Gordon Liddy recommended shooting. And gave his own home recipe for where and how to shoot them.

This whole election has been upside-down-land: conservatives screaming about sexism, liberals condemning mothers who work, and Mrs. Polly teaching Secret Service guys how to navigate the Huffington Post. It's tiring living with all your mental furniture on the ceiling.

But our mental furniture has been rearranged so often in the last eight years that now we should be used to the room twisting around like Fred Astaire's in that famous scene from Royal Wedding. How agile will we be the next time the room shifts again?

UPDATE: You Guessed It

TO WANT A BRAWL

This is terribly sad. This cherubic young girl, Ashley, a McCain volunteer from Texas, evidently attacked outside an ATM in Pittsburgh. She said that the attacker threatened her with a knife, took $60, and had stepped away from her when he saw the McCain bumper stickers on her car, became enraged, knocked her to the ground and carved this B on her face. Backwards.

It's sad on many counts: that this young woman is suffering these injuries, that many young women suffer injuries like this, and that it's probably a fake.

(2:16 PM- she's confessed: http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628)

All the features of this story are fuzzily familiar: the attacker is of course 6'4", of course black, and of course Ashley doesn't want to go to the hospital. Why would a 20 year-old be interested in a plastic surgeon repairing her scarred face?

The backwards “B”, besides being the dead giveaway, illustrates an old, sad, joke: Q:What’s the difference between genius and stupidity? A:Genius has limits. The crime itself is so very illogical and melodramatic it mirrors the cheap-novel gothic mind of a disturbed freshman: After getting sixty dollars,a pretty good haul, the mugger’s that outraged by a McPalin sticker? He hasn’t gotten used to seeing McPalin signs in Pittsburgh?

Instead of getting the hell out of there, he gently incises the more difficult of Barack Obama’s initials into her face, without leaving any ragged edges or even breaking the skin. Why not an easier O?

Self-mutilation through scratching is a not uncommon practice among teenage girls. Nor is texting, and she texted her search for an ATM to a group site she participated in with unusual devotion, carefully noting her transit to the Wrong End of Town. (the "wrong end of town" turns out to be a heavily white Italian neighborhood, the scene of the crime a busy intersection) Does downtown Pittsburgh have no ATMs? Downtown Manhattan is nothing but bank branches. Of course, many of them are failed banks. But the ATMs still work. Mostly.

So we have her placed in the Bad Section, a little Texas girl's prefab nightmare, and up pops the six-foot black man, who in classic bogeyman fashion, can't leave well enough alone by absconding with his loot, but has to turn back to attack the heroine. And I’m no expert in how blacked eyes heal, but this happened when, a couple days ago? The white of the blackened eye is clear.

For the first and probably last time in my life I have to write that I agree with Michelle Malkin on this. Which makes me breathless and sort of uneasy, but there you are. Hoax.

It certainly was:

• Her FaceBook page, which was screencaptured before it was taken down, has a statement about how much fun it is to lie.
• She called the McCain campaign office BEFORE she called the police.
• Security cameras showed she wasn't even an ATM customer.
• Here is a photo from her flickr page, showing her holding a sign she lettered. That "R" sure looks familiar! http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeinthefield/2962501339/

This poor addled race-baiting nincompoop is looking at some charges, I think, like filing a false police report, for one. (But what about the race-baiting nincompoops like Sean Hannity and members of the McCain campaign, who eagerly bit on this rotten story that even Michelle Malkin could see through? And can we now please recognize the go-to black bogeyman story employed by sad-sacks like Ashley for what it is the next time it's dragged out of storage among the other racist toys in their attic?)

THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING

looking cheap at any price

This scandal is so plump, so tasty, how best can we excise every glorious morsel and not miss a single tidbit?

The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion editor missed all of it. She wrote a piece about Sarah Palin's unassuming, fashion-free middle-class "non-assertive" outfits.

She didn't notice the red leather jacket (Jon Stewart accused Palin of borrowing Michael Jackson's "Thrilla" jacket)? Or the dominatrix boots, or the Judy Garland over-the-bridge-to-nowhere-red-spangled-F-me-pumps? Or the chartreuse raw silk jacket? Or the bell-sleeved fitted jackets, with the little bow at the waist?

I assumed they'd fancied Sarah up, but even I had no idea. I thought they just had a few little half-blind children in the basement running up RealAmurkawearTM for her night and day.

GORDO THE PLUMBER

G. Gordon Liddy with his favorite party trick: demonstrating what a sick puppy he is by holding his hand over an open flame and leaving it there until his dinner partner begs him to stop. You want to talk palling around with terrorists? Alrighty, let's do:

G. Gordon Liddy, on his show August 26, 1994: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a xxxx (I know this quote is widely known, but I am not going to further disseminate the handy agent-killing tips Liddy is handing out)shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests....They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. xxxx shots, xxxx shots.... Kill the sons of bitches."

John McCain on G. Gordon Liddy's show in 2007: "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family....It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Contrast the the repeated statements of friendship and support between McCain and G.Gordon Liddy (who on his radio show advocated shooting Federal Agents, recommended methods for doing so, and never apologised for doing so) with the limited, formal contacts between Obama and Ayers.

Liddy is even now living off the notoriety he got for his crimes. He continues to have extremist views, but because he's an entertaining old sociopath, he's given a pass, even sought out for validation. One of the sicker aspects of humanity is that people seem to get a thrill from feeling they're accepted by a man who boasts that he's capable of murder.

Ayres went back to school and became an expert in the field of education. He's lived a non-radical life quietly contributing to society for the past thirty years, working with prominent Republicans like Walter Annenberg. Ayres does not live off of or benefit from having been a criminal, the way Liddy does. There are good reasons why he would be on a board along with Obama, none of them having to do with his radical past. The focus was on improving education.

There are no good reasons to associate with G. Gordon Liddy. He offers no expertise, has done nothing to rehabilitate himself, and openly flouts the law by keeping firearms though he is a convicted felon (Registered to his wife, but kept under his side of the bed). But he does have a radio show. The focus of his and McCain's association is mutual self-aggrandizement.

This tactic is not a winner for the Republicans. McCain and Palin are pointing out the speck in Obama's eye so as to draw attention away from the log in theirs.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Matthew 7:3

SAY IT AIN'T JOE!

Living talking point salt-of-the-earth Plumber Joe is neither a Plumber nor a Joe! http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/joe-in-the-spotlight/?hp

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is a registered Republican non-plumber who owes back taxes. And--developing---may be related to, (and pardon me for enjoying this so much)-------

CHARLES KEATING!

Perhaps he really did happen to see Obama campaigning in the neighborhood and just decided to pin him down. And perhaps the new darling of the New York Post betrayed something extra when complaining about the answer Obama gave him: Sam---er, "Joe", complained that Obama tap danced "like Sammy Davis Jr." Now let's pause while Republicans dust off their "Obama's playing the race card", their go-to, dog-eared, time-worn, battle-scarred, defense of racism.

FLASH: THIS JUST IN, NOTJOE ALSO NOT A KEATING

Just another darling of local right wing talk-radio hosts, whose father, Robert Wurzelbacher, happens to share the same name as Charles Keating's SIL, Robert Wurzelbacher. But NotJoe Wurzelbacher, of the Ohio Wurzelbachers, does have an ability to spout right-wing talking points, engaging hapless reporters not only on his hostility to Social Security, but the necessity for offshore drilling, a true bread-and-butter Ohio issue.

PLUMBING THE SHALLOWS

McCain was as pleasant as usual, which is to say he acted as if Obama was something that needed to be scraped off the bottom of the national shoe. And if ever there was a time to advocate for retiring the use of finger quotes, it is now. Using finger quotes around "health of the mother" is the worst McCain faux pas, maybe ever! Well, in the last twenty-four hours.

The worst faux-pas since "We Have Got Them Right Where We Want Them!" :

Yes, having our opponents 10 points ahead of us allows us to keep an eye on them, the sneaky Arab bast**ds!

Mr. Polly thought McCain had won, just, with the fabulous "I'm not George Bush" line. If this was the best line of the night, it was a pathetic night, say I, Mrs. Polly. Remember the old apocryphal story about LBJ calling his opponent a child molester, and after an aide points out the opponent isn't a child molester, LBJ says, "I know, but I just want to hear him deny it."? Well how is it a zinger for McCain to have to deny he's George Bush?

Of course, I couldn't bear to look directly at the event; as usual, I read about it as others live-blogged, while Mr. Polly gave me updates. I'm easily nauseated, and tonight I'm still a delicate, Dresden China-frail blossom, having had oral surgery. So add the debate to the presoftened, lukewarm swill I require. Like much of the rest of America. But I had my gums sliced to ribbons, what's their excuse?

It's fun to see the pundits check each other in their peripheral vision, trying to get a read on what they ought to conclude about what just went on right in front of them, and adjust accordingly. Tonight, as for the first debate, several went out on a limb and called it for McCain only to have the focus groups and snap polls reprove them. And this after everyone, even Public Radio people, got totally obsessed with the CNN Wiggly Line of Damnation! The CNN Wiggles plainly favored Obama, particularly the female wiggles. How could anybody sit through 90 minutes of line watching and call the debate for McCain?

Well, time to take a Vicodin and go on the Oral Surgery Opiate Nod. Kids, remember to floss after every meal, snack, or accidental inhalation of particulate matter. It's important.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN WASILLA---- the Dairygate Follies, Part 1

That's all for now! But wait for our next installment, in which we find out how much cheese six hundred thousand dollars will buy, and meet a little girl who just happens to love cows.

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY

The Alaska Legislature has released the report of its investigation into Sarah Palin's firing of Walt Monegan, and it has found she abused the public trust. To, as John Cleese once put it, state the bleeding obvious.

My Favorite Scandal

Here she is, and I know more than a few Conservatives have already pictured her just this way, (ooh, starbursts everywhere!) Governor Sarah Palin, who loves a good bail-out, wink wink. This is my very favorite scandal, and nobody's talking about it. It has everything:

• Firings.
• Cronyism
• Gross but entertaining incompetence
• Bucolic setting
• Love of Cows
• Cheese Futures

Did you say CHEESE FUTURES? Oh yes I did!

Well if you want something done, sometimes you just have to do it yourself. The Mat Maid Dairy Scandal is a bit involved, so I will explicate it in comic-book form as best I can, considering my limited experience with either comics or cows. This is the first installment: here you see Alaska tax dollars, simply buckets of them, ready to pour into the Mat Maid Dairy by charmingly demented Governor Sarah Palin, whose very good friends happen to own cows whose milk is bought up by that same dairy.

I have depicted her on a field of Cheesy Orange which shows off her tanned shoulders. She looks great in anything, especially cheese. Cheese is her color.

Tomorrow, I will start the comic proper, and we will learn why the Mat Maid Dairy needed buckets of money, how badly it was failing, what Governor Palin did about it, and to whom she did it.

Johnnie Mac, the Intertubal Way

Now, this is the sort of partisan agitprop video with Profoundly. Melodramatic. Narration. In short. Urgent. Bursts. With Scary soundtrack. That. I. Don't like.

BUT it's about John McCain's temper! Which I am in a mood to highlight. After all, he two-facedly came out swinging at his opponent the day AFTER the match. That's not the MacNasty we need! But it seems that he can control himself if the opponent can hurt him back---aside from the contempt which leaks out of him in dribs and drabs. Is "That One" a drib or a drab?



Today, McCain and Palin continued to push the notion that Obama is a dangerous foreigner with terrorist ties, using half-truths, exaggerations and distortions. For instance, Obama served on the board of a charity with former Weather Underground member William Ayres. The charity was founded by Walter Annenberg, a conservative Republican and founder of Reader's Digest. But does anyone think he was a terrorist sympathizer?

At McCain and Palin rallies, shouts of "Kill him!" "Terrorist!" and "Cut off his head!" have been reported, but neither McCain nor Palin have said anything to calm down the mob mentality they seem to be cultivating. They simply repeat, "Who is Barack Obama?" as if it were Obama who'd been pulled out of obscurity five weeks ago and not Sarah Palin.

One day, people may deny that they were at McCain/Palin rallies the way older folks deny having been McCarthyites now. My folks once attended a McCarthy rally on a lark. Bad idea. My post on it: http://snarkopolitan.blogspot.com/2008/05/laughing-at-mccarthy-rally-bad-for.html

What does a hollow ex-hero's political career circling the drain look like? I think it looks like this. McCain managed to restrain himself, even attempt some false bonhomie (whew! excuse the elitist italics!), but his real contempt for Obama seeped out of his pores, his inability to even sit quietly while Obama spoke, and the moment where he jerked his thumb across his chest in Obama's direction and called him, "that one".

WHAT IS IN THERE?

What the H E double hockey sticks is in there?

Besides awfulness, Aqua-Net and ambition?

Today, the Governor attacked Barack Obama for "palling around" with terrorists. (Ayres, Wright, etc.)

All righty, so Secessionist Sarah wants to talk terrorist associations? We can talk terrorist associations.
Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Voegler:"The fires of Hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won’t be buried under their damn flag!"
The AIP insists Voegler didn’t die in a plastics explosive deal gone sour, but that’s the official story. And Sarah’s message to the AIP? "Keep up the good work!"

People who live in glass igloos..... shouldn't be Palin around with terrorists!

YOU BETCHA!!

Only in this teledadaist, reality-unencumbered, common senseless, cowardly, faux-objective goofball pomo world could any pundit look into the camera and say with a straight face that Sarah Palin even participated in a debate, much less ponder on whether she or Biden won it.

I have a procedure for handling these debates. In order to not fall on the floor and foam at the mouth, or spend ninety minutes projectile vomiting, I avoid looking directly at the wreckage; Mr. Polly does instead, while I block out sound with a Walkman tuned to a hip-hop station. I sit at the computer and read live-blogs, and drink. I have to circle around an event, and have it fed to me pureed.

No amount of pureeing, or other distancing divice is enough to make Sarah Palin digestible for me. The day-after montages of winks and mavericky high-kicking homespinning cowpatty-shoveling charm mongering made me want to push an ice-pick into my own brain, just to finish what Sarah'd started.

Once you have a new low in American culture, it doesn't take long to breach it. George Bush was a ridiculous figure, pathetic, gross, choking on his pretzels, massaging Angela Merkel, invading Iraq because why? According to Bob Woodward, only tonight, Bush said, "Because they're assholes." How can you bottom that?

With the relentlessly adorable runner-up, Miss Wasilla "I may not answer these questions the way you want" Governor of Alaska. And her stack of answers, written on index cards, from which she read her answers to Gwen Ifill's gentle puffball questions, those she didn't directly ignore.

Snarkopolitan has exclusively obtained a couple of Sarah Palin's answer cards :

I especially liked the Wh. Fl. of Srdr.

NO CLOTHES! NO CLOTHES!

The empress has been buck-naked from the get-go, pardon the folksiness. Her same canned speech, broken up and written on notecards, dispensed in small chunks after she declared her intention to ignore the moderator, made the fear that she would be wired under that beehive completely superfluous. Why bother simulating being knowledgeable? She's, like, only been at this for what, five weeks! She can bring her notecards to her next sit-down with the G-8. Angela Merkel will melt once she's been winked at. But will she wink at Sarah Palin?