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