Happy Halloween: My New Art Project Edition

FVK by the Bad Brains.

Obama for President

"Obama For President" by David Peel.

Angel Dust

Tom Delay is, without a doubt, the leading asshole in the country, and high, evidentally.

Peanut Butter and Communism

Barack Obama and everything he learned about dialectical materialism, he learned in Kindergarten.

Hilarious.

That Wacky Right Wing

I've been wondering what right wing bloggers would be doing since they've decided to eat their own, and are now tearing the GOP asunder?

I mean, what would I do if I discovered that my most fervent articles of faith turned out to be an utter disaster, and my neighbors started figuring out that the outrageous things I say aren't provocative, but stupid and counter-productive.

What happens when, all that I hold dear, is discredited? When my worldview is thoroughly discredited?:

"If Obamunists take over the government, we will know how Romans felt when their city fell to barbarians."

Ah...insults...

I suppose this genius some how likens himself to Augustine of Hippo, who thought the end of the world was at hand as the Vandals sacked Hippo, in Roman North Africa.

Except that, of course, those Romans, like these "Romans" brought it on themselves, though hubris, through dreams of empire, through Christianity, through greed.

But I guess he never would liken himself to Augustine, since the St. of Hippo was African...and you know what that means.
But whatever.

Bono is a Douche Bag

And I'm glad, finally, I'm not the only one not dazzled by Bono's pyrite Halo:

"I noticed that this article from this past week didn't get diaried, and it definitely should have. Bono's going to be joining the NY Times's op-ed page.

I'm not a particular fan of Bono's music (sorry, I know it's technically well done), and even less of a fan of his politics. Sure, he goes around talking about poverty, but he seems much more interested with letting people feel good about their wealth than actually solving the crisis.

Take his (red) brand, for instance, which was supposed to raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. It's nice, and with each item sending 10% of the profits to charity, it was a spin-off of those yogurt companies that give several cents a yogurt to fight breast cancer.

But, as AdAge reported last year, it didn't even come close to making up for advertising costs associated with promoting the idea. Instead, we were treated to Oprah declaring that "shopping is giving," running around to stores buying up (red) iPods and cell phones to promote the brand.

Then there's his status as a tax exile..."

Chabot and Driehaus

The Steves stopped by French Hall on UC's Main Campus to gladhand and spread the bullshit, as well as political swag (beer cups?).

Chabot's hair astounds, and Driehaus is smooth, showing up with a camera crew.

To tell the truth, I didn't trust either one, but it was cool for the students to ask some pointed questions.

Update: Here's the video. Look for a magic user, standing in the back, looking bored, at around :36.

Joe

Joe, starring Peter Boyle in the title role, is a film about a fat cat business man Bill Compton (played by Dennis Patrick) whose daughter gets caught up in drugs on the Lower East Side. In his rage at the counter culture, he meets an angry, paranoid, reactionary working guy, Joe, and, realizing the Joe is just unhinged enough to commit violence, decides to exploit him to do his dirty work.

I think the ridiculous humping of "Joes" isn't so much about the regular working guy, but about pandering to a particular variety of "regular guy" and for the last chance to avenge the sixties.

Parallels...parallels...

They Love Us for our Morons

Wow, I guess Obama wasn't the only candidate to get a high power endorsement:

"'This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. 'Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush'."

So when is the McSame Bullshit Express stopping at the Gates of Hell?

Maddow's Law

Godwin's Law, as you may know,asserts that the longer a thread goes, the possibility of a Hitler or Nazi comparision increaseas. This is applicable:

"... especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions."

Last night, Rachel Maddow made reference to it last night while describing the latest, lamest,and most desperate of GOP talking points: The Obama is a Socialist (or today, a communist). One only has to troll any political website, and this fact has been abundantly truth for months.

Because Obama is not a socialist or a communist, as any socialist or communist would tell you, I propose a new law, which I suppose we should name after Maddow, who noticed the analogy:

Maddow's Law states that the longer any open discussion of the political position of Democrat, the liklihood that a Limbaugh dittohead will post anonymously and state that said candidate is a socialist or communist increases to the point of certainty.

This applies to the inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with socialists, communists or various Leninist/Stalinist/Maoists or their actions, especially on the campaign trail-thus, feeding the dittoheads in a closed system.

Blood in the Water: The Ditch Mitch Edition

One has to wonder how the pounding McCain and the Republicans are taking is trickling down here to Kentucky. Survey Says:

"SurveyUSA. 10/18-20. Likely voters. MoE 4.3% (9/21-22 results)

McConnell (R) 48 (49)
Lunsford (D) 48 (46)"

The defeat of McConnell would make that sweet sweet day even sweeter, so sweet. It's looking like a possibility.

Oh yeah....

The Powell Endorsement

I don't know whether this does any good or not, but Powell offers a pretty damning assessment of the McCain Campaign's full on dry humping of Rove style smears:

“'The really right answer is what if he is?' Powell said, praising the contributions of millions of Muslim citizens to American society.

'I look at these kind of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me', Powell said. 'Over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party has become narrower and narrower'.”

Nice Try

But it won't work this time:

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters. "

Tikun Olam

Sometimes, you hear so much weird, wacky and scary stuff concerning religion, one forgets the compassion of faith when separated from fear.

Thus, my friend and mentor, a pedagogical warrior and feminist force of nature, Susan B., on healing the world:


"Holiday in Philly

Yom Kipur remains the most emotional holiday I know, a holiday I remember from the years when I was a tiny child praying with immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants, the young and the very old who had lived through who knows what and refused to talk about it. In my early twenties I ended one Yom Kipur with ceaseless tears, a great letting go with heavy sobs all the way back on public transit home trying to stop and not succeeding. Another Yom Kipur in my early forties I watched the light change through synagogue windows as morning turned to afternoon turned to evening and finally to night.

A few Yom Kipurs I stayed only for an evening service, Kol Nidre, the most sacred night of the year, and decided not to return for the emotional roller coaster of an eleven hour service the next day.

Yom Kipur is the Day of Atonement, a day for getting right with G?d, for counting sins past and blessings present, a day to begin again, to return, as the rabbi sings, to the home of your soul. In yoga, it's like the third eye, the light that shines within, which my NYC yoga teacher has explained, is true nature.

Although I'm rather beyond the point of magical thinking, I do appreciate moments of reflection in times of struggle-- and this year happily brought many amazing opportunities, perhaps the most inspiring of which was when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in sunlit mid-June. And these last several days in Philly were another.

Yes, there was praying and lots of it-- praying until my heart hurt and praying until my heart seemed to break free of hurt. On the Wednesday evening of Yom Kipur, a congregant whom I did not know, had handed me two Obama stickers with Barak Obama spelled out in Hebrew letters that I was able to read phonetically-- with glee and a rare feeling of ethnic solidarity. On Thursday morning, a bird, a sparrow, had flown in the window of the church where we prayed and moved softly all morning through the sunlight coming in the stain glass windows. By afternoon she was gone.

Steve and I took a break in mid-afternoon to walk outside in the remarkable October blue sky air, leaves changing and autumn flowers opening to the sun. We had broken our fast earlier in the day and enjoyed a late lunch at the cafe up the hill from the church.

We had lived in this neighborhood off and on for five years in the 1990's through summer of 2001 and it has been a second home to us ever since. But the cafe was relatively new to us and we hadn't spent much time there before. The neighborhood had gentrified since we had been away and was wealthier than when we had lived there. On the salaries we made when we lived in Philly, we probably couldn't have afforded to stay.

Back at the church for the late afternoon service, we took part in the traditional reading of the biblical story of Jonah in a most decidedly nontraditional way. The service leaders (the rabbi sat at the side taking a short break from her service-leading marathon day) divided the congregants into five different groups each of whom were responsible for acting out one scene from the story.

Our group performed the scene in which a terrified Jonah is thrown into the storming sea by a group of even more terrified sailors. We acted out our scene to the tune of "what do you do with a drunken sailor." I was Jonah and my role involved singing out a curse that the sailors sang back to me in refrain. Having cursed publicly in synagogue on the holiest day of the year, I was relieved that the audience laughed-- and that I was not struck by lightning.

The rabbi offered a vastly moving commentary on why the story of Jonah points to the necessity of performing Tikun Olam-- the repair of the world. Tikun Olam is the spiritual belief that helped me turn back to the Yom Kipur service this year-- my closest tie to understanding what is beyond my understanding.

After still more prayers and a lighting of candles the service ended and Steve and I stepped into the lobby for a breath of air.In the lobby, a rabbi, an organizer from California for rabbisforobama. org, asked us if we wanted to campaign for Obama in PA the next day. We were thrilled to say yes.

In 2000, we had rallied in Philly during the republican convention with police helicopters hovering over us in the air and a heavy police presence on the ground as well. So having the opportunity to work for Obama in our long ago forsaken city felt particularly gratifying.

The next day we assembled with our cell phones in an inner-ring suburb of Philly to make phone calls. Jan Shikowsky, the Congressional representative from the district I where I spend most of my childhood in Illinois was campaigning for Obama as well and came in to speak with us. After sitting outside in the sun all afternoon making phone calls, we found a ride back to the train with another volunteer with whom we spoke about Obama's chances in PA and in general.

At dusk that evening we walked through the Independence Hall National Park area in Old City and the air was embracing and soft. We went to see "Trouble the Water," an extraordinary documentary about Hurricane Katrina, then took the train back to our friends' home in New Jersey where we were staying. We sat outside with our friends talking in their Sukkah, the open air booth that they had build on their deck for the harvest festival of Sukkot which follows Yom Kipur. We could almost see stars through the corn shuck roof and the light pollution from across the river in Philly.

The next day, our final day there, I woke up early and walked to the farmer's market under the commuter train tracks and bought locally grown pears and locally baked bread. The autumn chill buoyed my steps-- as did the woman who was handing out voter registration forms for the election. Then Steve and I caught a ride back to Philly to take the two connecting commuter trains home to New York.

I know this sounds like Susan's Hippie Heaven Weekend Retreat and it really was. But it was bittersweet too. In addition to the gentrification of our old neighborhood, we saw many folks who truly seemed to be hurting, the real casualties on the front lines of the economic downturn. Macy's, the flagship store in the Gallery-Market East Mall-- in Center City had closed down and the store space was empty. The sign for Strawbridge and Clothier, the locally own department store that had occupied that space for most of the twentieth century, was gone and only a faint imprint remained-- local history erased, living wage jobs abandoned.

Other storefronts on Market Street were empty and compared to the Friday night hustle of New York, the Market East shopping district seemed subdued and abandoned. There were more folks than I remembered on the street, men particularly, ill or hungry, who asked us for money. As elsewhere I've visited in the US this year, the deep divide between the poor and the much wealthier was particularly striking.

I think I had initially seen Philly through the rose-colored lenses of when we last lived there, at the turn of the 21st century, when the economic outlook was more hopeful. But that changed very quickly. The world of hurt that has at last reached the middle class continues to affect the poor with the most difficult struggles of all.

I was moved in Philly-- moved to begin again, as the reflection of Yom Kipur implores us to do.The light is there-- it is hard work to find our way to it-- it hurts us and beckons us at once. The sparrow glides toward the closed window, using her wings to sense the sunlight and to find a way out when there seems to be no way at all. Her fluttering wings beat in rhythm to the prayers of our heart and become one as we learn to make sense of-- and failing at that, to begin to change-- the discordant sounds of worldly fears that cannot now-- not ever-- keep us from moving forward."

Update: Apropos of "Progress", G_d knows we need it.

The Last Debate

What's gonna happen tonight? Thoughts?

Update:

Pathetic. McCain reeked of desperation. How many times did he invoke Palin's disabled baby, and what was the relevance? The eye rolling, the smirking, the barely controlled anger, the scars.

It's funny that, for a guy who's scars came from war, he's tying them to his time in Washington.

By the way: The Joe Plumber thing was about the most condescending thing that both candidates could have humped last night.

[Update II: Ladies and Gentlemen...Joe Plumber. ]
[Update III: Whoops...]

Hardly sexy, but I think we are watching Obama play prevent defense now. I'd rather see him put this away, but I rather he win more...

Progress

In less than three weeks, this long process will come to an end.

In less than three weeks, we will know what janitor we have hired for the lunacy ahead.

What has emerged in these last weeks is not only the whole sale defection of the electorate for the Senator from Illinois, but the shocking endorsement of the leading lights of the conservative movement-the son of Buckley, the arch-est of conservatives, no less. The rout appears to be on.

Here's the thing; Americans are willing to give any idea a chance, even one that is well past its sell date, and this was true of the anti-intellectual whoredom that conservatism became, is. Like the cool jeans, conservatism became an emptied signifier behind which any fat cat capitalist, neo confederate, end timer or white supremacist could hide, peering around the lapels of St. Reagan, beyond reproach.

What happened as the result of the Reagan revolution reflects not so much on Reagan the man as the Republicans as a party; When the party of Lincoln went South, it absorbed all the evil latent in the aristocratic pipe dreams of the Antebellum, and its vicious re-invention in Jim Crow-ism. All the superstition, all the religious hypocrisy, all the unshakable belief that, someone, this worldview is the mere recognition of natural law. For people who tend to err on the side of Flintstones Theology, this notion of the righteousness of a permanent underclass smacks is social darwinism in its absolute form. Graft this onto the practical need for the poor as a source of cheap labor and...poof. The Grand Old Party reinvents itself as tradition.

At this moment, the Republican went from laissez faire to ideological. Ronald Reagan, as a standard bearer, was a much more pleasant and polite face than the dark horse irrascibility of the movement's conscience, Barry Goldwater, who had no use for the diluting influence of the bible, nor dreams of the South Restored. Reagan, if any of this belongs on his shoulders, recognized the need to build a coalition within the party, which coincided with the rise of the religious (Southern) right, and, needing those votes. Reagan's culpability in this disaster is the unwillingness to condemn the far right elements seeding his party.

Now, as this campaign wanes, we see the strange fruit on very public displays; Death threats, "Barack Osama" signs, dipshits with Curious George dolls (at least the doll is curious), racial slurs from the crowd and coming from the inbred offspring of that iniatial GOP group grope; Sarah Palin, in the role of a quasi retarded Regan to McCain's Lear, spewing the festering contents of the sore that is Old Mean America, the America of the "Natural Order", of Aristocratic Pipe Dreams, the necrotized fruit of bondage and money, the America that fears the future because it exposes its sins to light and reason, sanity and sense.

The lights are on, and now, everybody sees it. It is one thing to, for example, to disagree with Abortion as a Christian, Jew or Muslim; It is quite another to align oneself with the forces of repression, darkness, violence, and hatred in order to do so. In the version of a very Good Book I read, there is nothing about violating some or all of the rest of the Commandments in order to prevent one. There is nothing about ignoring the spirit and intent of the life of Jesus Christ in order to focus on one tiny segment of His Word.

One cannot see this evil and not be appalled. One cannot hear this venom, this slander, and not be outraged.

The other thing about Americans is that, innate in all but the most corrupt of us, is a sense of right and wrong, and the determination to act as an Avenging Angel for righteousness.

That time is, perhaps, finally at hand.

Kinda a Big Deal

Debate, sme-bate...Lawrence O'Donnell over at the HuffPo writes that an Obama endorsement by Colin Powell is imminent.

Have at ya! :

"My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

Cheap as Beasts

Execration for sale, and now McCain realizes the red meat Yukon Barbie's been chucking maybe, oh, I don't know, dangerous:

"What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama 'launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist'. He is 'palling around with terrorists' (note the plural noun). Obama is 'not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.' Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops."

Others have noted the viciousness of the hatred, and the GOP willingness to resort to most obvious forms of paranoia in an attempt salvage the disaster that is the McCain campaign, while the "Mav'rick", ever the Lear, only now begins to recognize the horror that is unfolding in his name, the sinking realization that not only has his ambition come to naught, but his legacy will be ignoble and dishonorable. His hell will be regret, and the knowledge that they way for him to win was to be the man who was so ruthlessly smeared by the very Atwater drones he now employs to smear him again.

Evidentally, it's not really working all that well.

The Debate: Round 2

While the actual debate itself was substantive, and, as such, a little on the dry side, it was at the very end of the debate that I feel is most telling.

On MSNBC'S coverage, the McCains and the Obamas met, shook hands, and then shook hands with the crowd. The McCains shook a few hands, and decamped.

[Mike from the Vine has corrected my faulty recollection: "The McCains and Obamas did not shake hands. Michelle and Witchypoo did, and when Barack went to shake St. John's hand, McCain indicated that Obama should shake with his wife. Obama did so and turned back to McCain, who had already turned away to speak to an audience member."]

The Obamas shook every hand in the room, taking the time for pictures and words with the audience, smiling, listening, interacting. It was unfortunate that, while Tweety et al. were droning on about the meaning, lack of fireworks, etc., they missed this small moment which was so telling.

Wonder why McCain was so eager to get out of there? I thought that the Townhall was his forte?

Funny

via Kdoug at the Kos

Sputtering Sentence Fragments

ARE YOU READY FOR A DUMBFUCK?
A THURSDAY NIGHT DUH-BATE?
JOE BIDEN GOT YUKON BARBIE IN SIGHT
CUZ ALL MY INTELLIGENT FRIENDS ARE HERE
ON THURSDAY NIGHT!

9:08 pm: Moose in KC lights.

9:10 pm: Ritalin and right wing cliches don't mix.

9:30 pm: East Coast Politicians...

9:37 pm: Traditional Definition of Marriage.

9:40 pm: Hate us for our freedoms....

9:56 pm: NuKular War...Afghanistan? WTF?

10:06 pm: Contemporaneously...Must be the arugula. AND HE KNOWS WHAT EVIL IS...

10:16 pm: Wait...she's Cheney with tits?

10:21 pm: Palin's first intelligent comment. "He's (McCain) the one we need to Leave!"

10:29 pm: Fight For Freedom. Proud to Be an American. It's the media fault. She talks about freedom, and there is no irony here.