Brother Can You Spare a Clue

A transcript of John McCain's acceptence speech can be found here.



He starts is right off with a big fat myth-making lie:

In my life, no success has come without a good fight, and this nomination wasn't any different.

The only reason his sorry plane-crashing ass wasn't kicked into a Navy brig was because his father and grandfather were admirals. That's also the only reason he even finished at the Naval Academy, graduating fifth from the bottom. By the way, whatever happened to those other four guys who finished below him? Are they senators, too?



As always, I'm indebted to my wife, Cindy...

Yes, we know. Speaking of indebtedness, how about your old sponsor Charles Keating? He should get a mention, no?

I'm not in the habit of breaking promises to my country and neither is Gov. Palin.

Well, that's obviously another lie. McCain recently broke his promise to abide by election-spending laws when he reneged on his agreement regarding use of public campaign funds. And Palin ran for mayor as a fiscal conservative, then ran up $22 million in debt for her little town of 6,000 people. Promises mean nothing to these people, at least not for you and me, because we don't represent giant oil, banking, and development interests.

I've fought lobbyists...

McCain's campaign co-chair is a lobbyist. McCain's senior policy adviser is a lobbyist. Campaign spokesman Charlie Black is a lobbyist, as is Mike Dennehy, a McCain senior campaign advisor. McCain's campaign is run by lobbyists.

We believe in low taxes, spending discipline and open markets.

Well, NO. He believes in shifting the tax burden from the very rich to everyone else, borrowing money up the Chinese wazoo, and no-bid government contracts for war-profiteers.

We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench.

He just means that he hates "teh" gays, etcetera. It's red-meat blather that the brain-dead religious-right likes to hear. He says these things because he knows they'll open their wallets upon hearing this nonsense.



We have dealt a serious blow to al-Qaida in recent years.

How?! By increasing their recruitment? By leaving Saudi Arabia and bogging ourselves down in a senseless middle-eastern war, as Bin Laden demanded of us in his 1998 fatwa? Some blow.



Then he goes on and on in non-specific and grandiose verbiage about how he's going to do this and that and Obama isn't. Then he reminds us that he was a prisoner-of-war. Like we could ever forget that. It's all he's got, really. Then he says "fight" a lot. The end.

Then the Democratic base donates a few million bucks to Obama/Biden, on top of the eight million they gave after the Palin speech.

Springtime for Palin

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her six years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

I first came across this, written by Anne Kilkenny in The LA Progressive. Kilkenney is a real person and it's been verified that she actually wrote this and sent it to about forty people on her e-mail list, then it rose to national attention.

A long time ago I read about then-governor George W. Bush in The Bush Files put out by the wonderful Texas Observer. His character flaws, policy muffs. and total disregard for fiscal responsibility were things that I tried, in my own small way, to warn people about.

Now some of us are trying to issue warnings about Palin. Her story is an unsavory one. But then, modern American politics is divorced from reality, and Republicans are very good at spinning lies and fantasies into support for their new fascism.



I fear that the same folks who brought us Dubya will now give us McPalin. They will not be happy until they make all of America look like a poor neighborhood in Cuba or Bangladesh. But with flat-screen televisions everywhere touting Fox News.

Even then they will remain unsatisfied. Everything must be ruined. It's their religion, really. A crazy belief that after ultimate ruination, everything will get better.



It didn't, did it?

Alarm Systems

Cue Ringing

I posted this thought over at The Crack Den in a comment thread that was going on while Joementum was at bat. I thought of this myself, but if someone else should have had the idea somewhat contemporaneously; well then, that would be odd.

WEDDING BELLS!!!!

I hear things sometimes.

Like this one time years ago the person I had been seeing romantically said that they thought we "should try dating other people" and I thought I heard them say "sell my VCR and keep the money."

Anyways:

What if Levi is in Minnesota because it's been arranged for him to go down on bended knee before Bristol, present her with a ring, and ask her to marry him?

In front of the whole congregation. On TV.

The family welcomes him into their arms. The crowd roars. Balloons drop from the ceiling.

I should get paid to think up this stuff.

This Is Better Than the First One, Even, and It Removes All Doubt

The ice bridge is a difficult subject for me to think about, too.

Governor Sarah Palin Vlog #1

My new most favorite politician, ever. In the history of the world.

So True

One picture is worth a thousand words.

Or billions of dollars. Whatever.

Hat tip.

The End Again

Who could foresee that disasterous weather would strike the Gulf coast?

Because I believe in the future, I am politically progressive. Conservatism doesn't work if you refuse to accept that apocalypse is next week. Of course, conservatism and end-times dominionism are pretty much interchangeable terms these days.

There's no need to work and plan ahead if you buy the story that rapture will make all this, the world around, moot. If there's truly no reason to consider the earthly long term, then there's really no need for government, is there?

During the Reagan years, dear James Watt wanted to allow drilling for oil off the beaches of California. If that beautiful stretch of sand and sea were destroyed by slicks; well, so what? It was all going to go up in a big godly puff soon anyways. Or a flood.

Friday News Dump

Wasn't there a political party convention or something this week?

Place Mats

Any Idiot Can Make a Decision

Over at the Atrios Cafe, somebody wondered aloud "so who's going to pick McCain's running mate for him?" and there was this:

the north vietnamese will pick mccain's running mate because he is after all still a fucking POW!!

POW POW POW

911 911 911
Syd B | Homepage | 08.25.08 - 11:54 am | #

And this nugget of wisdom:

Domino's is to pizza what Fox News it to journalism.
Caepan | 08.25.08 - 12:26 pm | #

Furthering the discussion of possible Chinese origins of pizza:

Marco Polo brought it back to Italy, along with angel hair pasta, after his visit to China.
Lime Rickey

That HAD to take longer than 30 minutes. He better have gotten it for free.
Roadmaster, Guild of Atrios! | 08.25.08 - 12:40 pm | #

I suspicion is that the same people who pick out McCain's meals for him will also pick the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Food. VP. Whatever.

Which reminds me: Cheney, when tapped by Bush to look into choosing someone to fill the VP slot back in 2000, boldly picked himself, demonstrating my title claim.

Sunday Poetry: Schumann and Weick, Brahms Never Married

Robert Schumann

Hardly a day passes by I don't think of him
in the asylum: younger

than I am now, trudging the long road down
through madness toward death.

Everywhere in this world his music
explodes out of itself, as he

could not. And now I understand
something so frightening, and wonderful-

how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing
through crossroads, sticking

like lint to the familiar. So!
Hardly a day passes I don't

think of him: nineteen, say, and it is
spring in Germany

and he has just met a girl named Clara.
He turns the corner,

He scrapes the dirt from his soles,
he runs up the dark staircase, humming.


Mary Oliver
(From the collection Dream Work published in 1986.)

Clara:

AC Filters

Change of Shift Report

Mary: "So why's he here, then?"

Kay: "Shortness of breath."

Mary: "Well yeah, he did try to hang himself. Shortness of breath is kind of the goal there, isn't it?"

Kay: "And he said he had chest pain."

Gary: "From doing crack and crystal."

Kay: "That'll do it."

Gary: "And he's only got one kidney."

Kay: "Old gunshot thing."

Mary: "Oh. What's he in jail for?"

Kay: "Attempted murder."

Gary: "It's do bad he didn't do a better job of hanging himself. He could have saved the taxpayers some money on his hospital bill."

Kay: "But then his family would have sued Sheriff Joe for another forty million bucks."

Gary: "Yeah, probably."

His Horse

"Trigger."

This one's still coltish:

I Thought It Was a Good Day as I Left At the End of the Shift, Then I Recalled This and I Thought "Well, That Totally Sucks"

"Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
`Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town..."




"The realisation that I had an incurable disease, that was likely to kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock. How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this? However, while I had been in hospital, I had seen a boy I vaguely knew die of leukaemia, in the bed opposite me. It had not been a pretty sight. Clearly there were people who were worse off than me. At least my condition didn't make me feel sick. Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself I remember that boy."




“In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.”




"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

"Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

"When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies - that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.

"So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."




"Symptoms, then are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering organs."



I had a little trouble with the neuro resident who ordered the electromyography test. The family members said that the patient hadn't been walking at all at home; not for months, and he was sort of a big guy. Close to three hundred pounds. He tended to pitch forward when we tried to get him up, and I wondered if it was unsafe to put him in a chair and haul him out of the hospital. I don't think the resident realized how difficult this might be.

The neurologist said we didn't have an electromyelogram machine on the premises, just in his office. The nurses over at the neuro ICU said that they did them at bedside. The resident didn't much care, and he said "just get him up in a chair, wheel him over to the office (outside the hospital but close by,) put him on the table and do it." Well alrighty then.

Different people, different answers, no easy solutions.

We did it the hard way. I'm just lucky he didn't tip out of the flimsy wheelchair and plant his face on the pavement on the way over. It took three big guys to jack him up onto the exam table for the EMG.

I walked back to the unit and did a half hour's work before the neurologist called and said they were done. When I got there he was explaining to the patient and family members that it was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. They weren't surprised.

I noticed that the EMG device itself was smaller than an EKG machine and could have been rolled over to the hospital very easily. It was a little thing on wheels.


Whatever. (Sigh...)

The patient and family chatted away as we crossed the parking lot on our way back to the hospital. He hadn't seen much direct sunlight lately and he said he liked the brightness and heat. But when we got to his room he started crying. Loudly.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said "I wish I could do more," and he thanked me; for what, I don't know.

The Hearings

This is a true story, as related to me, with very minor elaborations and details slightly changed to protect privacy.


The light turned green and Betty let off the brake, engaged the clutch on her late-model Corolla, and gave it a little gas, edging out into the intersection. The radio was sounding out the slow movement from the Brahms first piano concerto. The weather was sunny and hot. Betty was going to the store because they were out of half-and-half and the dogs needed a bag of kibble.

A sporty white sedan ran their redlight and crashed into Betty's driver's side door. Her Corolla spun around and was clobbered into an oncoming car, which again spun her vehicle, this time up over the curb onto a patch of grass in front of a corner gas'n'go.



Betty began to hear voices. Before she could see through the gray blur which clouded her eyes, she heard other car doors slamming and the voices of people calling "Are you all right?"

She also heard children, as if their questions were emanating from the back seat of a van. She could not discern all of what they said. She heard "Mommy, is..." and then the clear voice of a woman complaining "God dammit. Fuck an arab. We're already late."

The buzz of a cellphone dialtone and then the sound of an emergency operator, taking the call of a man who was imploring the operator to send an ambulance NOW. The woman asked him for location and Betty heard him tell her "7th and Indian" and then she heard another voice, then voices, coming from the background.

Someone cursed and said "Now we're stuck. We can't back up" and then a woman interrupted and said "Just pull in here." Others joined the mix, overlapping. "Fuck, I hope nobody's hurt," said one, and "motherfuck ran the fuckin' light." A fast-food cashier asked "is everything alright" as a customer answered "I think there's been an accident out there."

Then sirens. Actual sirens. And the calm, gentle sound of a woman: "May those spirits that work such things please help the people involved in this accident. Amen." She repeated that phrase, or perhaps it echoed as if in a second space. Upon repetiton Betty knew that if she ever heard that voice again she would recognize it.

The emergency crews closed off the scene. Betty was pulled from the wreck, and as she lay on a gurney, police directed cars around the accident and through the intersection slowly. Someone had wiped her face and she could see the goings-on around her. The crew was securing her to be lifted into the ambulance. Betty heard the last echo of the prayerful voice and out of the corner of her vision she glanced at the license plate, down low at her own level, of a passing car, but she could not see its occupants.

Betty spent difficult months in the hospital and rehabilitaion center. She tried to hear the voices again but could not summon them. Eventually she recovered fully and went home.

They bought a new car, and her frequent trips through that intersection brought forth memories and the visceral shock of remembrance, but quiet.

One day during morning coffee she was talking to her husband Vaughn about it and they did a computer search for the license plate. Betty thought she'd seen the car with that tag in the store parking lot the previous day, but she wasn't sure. It was gone when she came out with the groceries.

Vaughn came up with a name and address for the tag. It wasn't far from their own neighborhood. Betty drove there, parked, entered through the gate, and pushed the buzzer.

From behind the condominium door an immediately familiar voice asked "Who is it?"

His Explanation

This happened decades ago in or around Clifton Park in northern, that is to say "upstate," New York. I used to read the Albany Times Union regularly. It was a big story then, but it occurred so long ago that routine internet searches don't pop up anything on it.

I think her name was Dawn Cruikshank. She had a step-father, or perhaps it was her own father; whatever, who sexually abused her. Maybe there was a younger sister involved too. So this guy pulls his car into the garage of the house one day, and she's waiting for him with a shotgun or something and she blows his head off.

She got twenty years and I've occasionally wondered "where/how is she now?"

Another big story involved the infamous Schenectady police. Some officers picked up a woman for drunk-and-disorderly. One of the salient details was that her blouse or jacket was torn open in the scuffle and the police did not give her any assistance in covering herself up.

While she was waiting in a jail cell, one of the policemen forced her to perform oral sex on him.

She did not swallow the semen. She saved it and spit it out into a folded paper drinking cup. It was that evidence that led to the prosecution and imprisonment of that officer for sexual assault.

Again, I sometimes wonder where she is now; same for that officer. Over thirty years have now gone by.

Another story: About two weeks after a nasty snowstorm, passing drivers notice a car that had driven off the Northway. Melting snow allowed it to be exposed. The bodies of an elderly man and woman, husband and wife, were found in it.

Back to now or thereabouts:



Lin Hao, nine years old, leading the Chinese Olympic team into the stadium during opening ceremonies, accompanied by the somewhat taller Yao Ming. Hao was in school when the recent Sichuan earthquake destroyed everything around him.

After crawling out of the wreckage he went back in and retrieved one of his schoolmates. After that, he went in and got out another. When asked why he performed these acts of heroism, he said that it was part of his responsibility. He was the hall monitor, he explained.

Pot Holder

Circuit Breaker