The Republican Recovery Plan

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.

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.

CURSE YOU, DARKNESS!

After the board election (and why should you the reader be even faintly interested in the nasty internal politics of somebody else's apartment complex? Because the complex is subsidized by your money, you, the taxpayer, you. YOUR MONEY!!!!, and is trying to cash in, without giving you any of YOUR MONEY back, employing tactics that would do a Rove or a Corleone proud, most instructive to students of Machiavelli and anyone else requiring proofs of the duality of human nature. That's why),

We thought a relative peace would reign. No more fliers slipped under our doors with headlines like:
Well, we haven't had more of those, but we've had something better: a newsletter from our state senator, declaring his devotion to us. Very exciting! He's never felt the need to communicate with *Muttonchop City residents by you-the-taxpayer-funded newsletter before. But here he is, with the *Muttonchop City Report, a First Edition:

It's a little hard to read, I apologise, and also for the obsessive/compulsive nature of the little bits of paper taped all over it. This is the last item in the newsletter, which spends two thirds of itself advertising the funds Senator *Neville (I thought I'd give him a name that's in the air recently) has obtained for our fair complex. The first line is: "Acting in response to an alert given him by Muttonchop residents.....

The "alert" would be a letter-writing and calling campaign by *Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, Copyright, the pro-priva----well, it's a dirty word, I can't say it, but it ends in "--atization" group. That's the group started by personal injury lawyer, too-rich-to-live-at-Muttonchop-City, has-a-second-home-in-the-Hamptons, *Toby Mugg:and the other lawyers, real-estate agents and brokers who make up the core of *Muttonchop Rights.

Senator Neville knows how to count votes. That's what made it worth his while to risk playing quite the fool:

So Senator Neville co-sponsored the bill because he was "led to believe" it was a 7.5% flip tax, NOT a 75% flip tax! MmmmHmmm. His name was placed on the bill by evil gremlins. But NOW he knows better.

So you the taxpayer get to pay for Senator Neville's apologia for signing on to a bill that would return some of your tax money to you--the taxpayer.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

MUTTONCHOP CITY ELECTION SPECIAL

another all-too-true tale from the vertical trailer park Mrs. Polly calls home

confronting the phalanx of goofs

While North Carolina and Indiana were going to the primary polls, *Muttonchop was in the throes of its annual Board election. Why should anybody be interested in squabbling shareholders at an apartment complex in New York? Because we're squabbling over stealing away with YOUR TAX DOLLARS (Mrs. Polly, your author, is anti-theft).

Also, because the pro-theft, pro-privat--- well, it's a dirty word, but it ends in "atization" group, Muttonchop Rights, could give Grover Norquist and Karl Rove lessons in mendacity and dirty tricks.

Above, you see the gantlet Muttonchop voters must run (or roll) to get to the Community Room and vote. Note the three types waiting to pounce on the hapless voter at left with more of the fliers that traditionally blanket Muttonchop City during board elections.

THE GOOD GUYS PROBLEM, CLEVERLY IF AMATEURISHLY ILLUSTRATED

as indicated by the sentiments on the three fliers, left to right:

1. 
   
   "Vote Me"--- Mrs. Mamma runs every year, independently, as an anti-other ethnicities candidate. She never wins, but her children, Dominique and Dom-boy, are very proud of her.


2. 
   
   "You'll Be Rich"---Muttonchop Rights has a simple message everybody wants to hear. Three sweet syllables. It's false, of course, or only true for a minority of people (the lawyers and brokers in Muttonchop Rights)


3. 
   
   "Ask for More Information,and You'll See That You Won't Be Rich Because You Need to Live Somewhere So You'll Have to Buy a Place Unless You Already Have One And Besides They Count the Same Money Three Different Times And Besides It's Wrong to Take Something You Benefited From and Leave Nothing For Anybody Coming After You And Within Five Years Maintenance Will More Than Double But Not Right Away And They'll All Be Gone And We'll Be In The Hole"

You see our problem: our message is not sound-biteable, it's indigestible. True, but indigestible.

Our group is led by Mr. Polly and *Vincent Piano, a courtly gentleman who speaks and writes in baroque, elliyptical flourishes that seem to have no foundation nouns or verbs. We spend hours snipping the verbal furbelows off his speeches.

Vincent fancies himself the soul of civility and bonhomie, squeezing shoulders and slapping the backs of the pro-priva**za***n board members, willfully unaware that they hate him:

titular head of Muttonchop Rights Toby Mugg, Vincent Piano, and Board President Will Waskoal

Vincent should be called "Pianissimo," for his reputed years of deft, unctuous behind-the-scenes manipulations on the Board. He's from the Old Neighborhood, where old pols pulled all the strings of everyday life, and he has the aura of those old-time pols. Nobody will ever be able to suss out his ultimate motivations, probably including Vincent.

But he has come out solidly, even heroically, against *Priv***za***n. As a member of the anti-theft minority on the board, he rises to object to virtually every motion through a chorus of groans. It's a useless formality, since every "open" board meeting is preceded by the real meeting, which takes place at Wil Wascoal's apartment, and excludes Vincent. There the real business is decided, to be subsequently presented to the minority as a fait accompli.

Despite his present powerlessness, Vincent is regarded with the sort of fear usually accorded those whose images don't show up in mirrors and other classic cartoon villains:

from our Lovely Neighbors at Muttonchop Rights, Inc

a treatise in civility

Now here is an official, complex-wide acknowledgement of our Sheeplike status, and a death threat, or at least morbidly wishful thinking. This kind of jumps out at you:When I decided to call our housing complex "Muttonchop City," it was to emphasize that we sheep are about to be more than shorn, we're going to be dinner. I wanted to not get more death threats, hide from the search engines of my lovely neighbors,and from the sue-happy lawyers of Muttonchop Rights:

Mr. Toby Mugg, Esq., the titular Head of Muttonchop Rights, and counsel for:
Mr. Lonnie Angler, Esq.,the lawyer who sued a 92-year-old lady for slander. For 2 million dollars.

I have duly noted Muttonchop Rights' irresistable desire to tell the whole fable, right up to the Wolf's demise.

Pulp Non-Fiction: the Muttonchop City Election Guide

What if Ahmed Chalabi, Kathy Lee Gifford, Travis Bickle and Fredo Corleone ran for the board of the same apartment complex? You'd have election season at *Muttonchop City, the development for middling-income people where Mr. Polly and I all too really live. How awful is it? We escape from the tension by following the national election. That's how awful.


Muttonchop Election season heralds itself when beauties like this are slipped under Muttonchop doors:

from Donnie Angler, the lawyer who sued a 92-year-old lady for slander, this solid block of 4 point type completely filled the legal size paper. It didn't fit on our scanner.

Donnie Angler

One of New York's most colorful (single color, that is) neighborhoods moved almost as a single unit wholesale into Muttonchop, where they ran smack into another Ethnic group. Which Ethnic group? Doesn't matter--it's not the right one. Enough said.
From a proud mother of two, whose husband's name might have been---

oh, I don't know----Dominick?
Dom Boy, over six feet tall without his gelled hair spikes, stood up one Candidate's Night and thundered at the little Ethnic candidate: "ARE YOU GOING TO WORK FOR EVERYBODY, OR ARE YOU JUST HERE FOR THE ETHNICS?"

Finally, we have this from Toby Mugg, Esq., Personal Injury Lawyer, Titular Head of Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, and counsel for Lonnie Angler, the lawyer who sued the 92 year old:

Note: the use of the word "NORMAL"--as in *ko-ops where people who haven't accepted subsidies can sell them for market rate. Muttonchop City IS subsidized----by YOU THE TAXPAYER. We pay 10% of the property taxes YOU pay. Mr. Polly and I pay $562 a month to live in a one bedroom, with balcony, including electricity and cable. We paid $25,000 for this *ko-op apartment in New York City, in a great location. We needed it, we qualified, and we are grateful and happy. YOU THE TAXPAYER made a difference in our lives. Now, if we sell our apartment for over ten times what we paid, don't you think YOU THE TAXPAYER should get your money back? YOUR property taxes are higher to cover the taxes we don't pay, year after year after year.Whew. Excuse me.

Mr. Mugg never uses the dirty word priv---oops, I can't either, it's that dirty, but it ends in "atization". I don't use it because I don't want my neighbors to Google this blog---we get death threats enough already---but Mr. Mugg doesn't want people using it because it sounds bad, it sounds so, so, so-----PRIVATE. So he uses "Normalize". And "Reconstitute." For convenience, we'll say "Monetization." But you know what we mean. When a lawyer tries to recast the language, you know he's up to something.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.