Happy New Year!

Okay, Sarah Silverman, and her Great Schlep, has just gone up a couple of notches in my estimation.

And this is my prayer for the new year, both Jewish and Gentile...

I heart Jack Cafferty

The man is correct. Anyone who votes for McCain with this in-waaaaayyy-over-her-head wingnut saddled to his campaign really needs medication and a good therapist.



If, God forbid, McCain gets elected, he better get a food-taster.

Sarah Palin and her Witch-hunting Pastor

Ah... Just what I love to see - more complete ignorance from the religiously-retarded.

Sarah Palin's pastor, Thomas Muthee, the guy who managed to chase a woman from a Kenyan village claiming she was a witch, laid hands on Sarah Palin a while back and prayed for Jesus to "make a way" for Sarah.

In addition to praying that Jesus remove all witchcraft from her path, he had this little tidbit to say in that same lovely sermon:

The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today.

Yes, Israelites.

Lieberman loves it, but will it play in south Florida?

P.S. Israelis and Israelites are two different things.

An Educational Comparison of the Candidates

After all that has gone on over the last eight years, I still am staggered by the blind insistence that some feel they cannot vote for anyone other than a Republican. No matter how rash that Replican is. No matter how alarmingy dotty he is. No matter how monumentally unqualified his running mate is.

But forget that the man has survived (so far) four - FOUR - different kinds of skin cancer, some forms are quite serious and tend to recur in time. Forget the increased likelihood that (God forbid) in the event McCain becomes ill and dies in office if elected, we will be saddled with someone who is entirely incapable of running a country. But forget all that, let's look at their education, shall we?

Obama:
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 out of 899 (Like George Bush, McCain was at the bottom of his class)
Crashed five aircraft as a Navy pilot

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University- 1 semester
North Idaho College- 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

I don't want a president I can sit down and have a beer with; I want him or her to be waaaaaaaayyyyy smarter than I am.

Who's on welfare now?

The party of "small" government, my left tit. Funny how it's okay to ensure that big corporations and their officers don't have to be held responsible for their debts, but the little guy has to suck it up.

Anyone who bitches about "welfare mothers" can expect an earful from me.

And this is why...

...I fear Sarah Palin may be president in a year or two should McCain win the election (God forbid).

I've been holding out hope that McCain as president (God forbid) would revert back to the real maverick he was in 2000. But his medical history is a serious concern.

I don't wish anything bad on McCain, but there are certain realities about skin cancer, as well as the other conditions he's being treated for apart from his advanced age, that I think many Americans have to pull their heads out of their asses and take a serious look at. Caribou Barbie wants to be president and this might just get her there:



Joe Liebermann may be optimistic, but his M.D. credentials, as well as his grasp on reality, are seriously lacking.

Competence

It is precisely about competence. Do I trust a dottering warmonger and a "hockey mom" with a bachelor's degree in journalism? Or do I trust a Constitutional Law professor with an advanced degree from Harvard (whose ideas about handling Iraq and Pakistan are currently being employed by Bush and company) and a 35 year member of the Senate whose foreign policy experience is exemplary?

Elect part of the problem or part of the solution.

I choose competence over lying, so-called mavericks.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Doggie Hospice

Veterinary surgery to remove a jaw with a malignant melanoma and accompanying chemotherapy: $5000

Veterinary surgery to "debulk" a malignant melanoma only to see it rapidly grow back: $1500

Enjoying the last few weeks (maybe month or two) with my sweet dog surgery/chemo-free: Priceless

I called the vet today after spending nearly a week not dealing with my nearly 17-year-old Ricky's diagnosis. I needed a bottom line: "What would you do if it were your dog, Doc?"

He wasn't there, but I spoke with the angelic Andrea, the Vet Tech, who knows Ricky. She very gently and sweetly related what experience she's had in dealing with this and listed out what I could expect with the three options I had to choose from:

1. Radical heroic surgery to remove the jaw, then four vaccines and chemotherapy. Caveats: surgery risks/anesthesia issues/recovery in a geriatric dog, discomfort, feeding issues.
2. Not-so-heroic surgery to reduce the size of the tumor to help with making eating easier. Caveats: Same surgery risks, but the tumor is aggressive; debulking would not slow its growth, it would grow back rapidly.
3. Do nothing and let nature take its course, making Ricky comfortable in the meantime. Caveats: The tumor may grow to a point where Ricky will not be able to chew his food or drink, so he may begin to starve before this kills him. (This will be the cue to make that last trip to the vet.)

Nothing that I hadn't already heard from my vet and the veterinary oncologist.

I said to Andrea, "I'm not sure what which is the right way to go. Andrea, bottom line it for me. If your dog was nearly 17, had a cancerous tumor in his mouth, a tumor in his lung, severe arthritis in his spine with neurological and motor deficits, and a bad heart, what would you do?"

Andrea replied kindly, "If it were me, I would enjoy every minute I had left with him."

And I burst into tears as I steered my car onto the entrance ramp of the highway. Decision made.

I Wish I'd Thought of This

This is just hysterical! Thanks to Zaius Nation!

McCain is No Longer in Charge

Where is McCain? He's disappeared from his own campaign. It's Palin right-wing nutjobs are fawning over. And his campaign people are quashing every ethics investigation that was in progress in Alaska. Media are not allowed to ask legitimate questions of her. We're to trust McCain's people on this? This is Bush-Cheney all over again. I thought you were about Change, John?

Seems Frank Rich agrees with me.

I love Jon Stewart and his writers. Here's a little reminder that McCain isn't McCain.

Phyllis Schlafly, Only Younger

Shamelessly stolen from the LA Times Op-Ed Page:

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

By Gloria Steinem

September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."


She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

Yes, a GOP Congressman Used the Term "Uppity"

I know all Republicans aren't racist, but why do they let their elected officials get away with such crap?

Caribou Barbie: Taking My Cue from the Queen

THE UNITED STATES IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION. It is a nation of Christians, but THE FOUNDING FATHERS DELIBERATELY WANTED THIS GOVERNMENT TO BE SECULAR BECAUSE THEY KNEW WHAT HAPPENED WITH NATIONS RUN BY RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY.

Honestly, if a person seriously believes that a nation run by Fundamentalist Christians is somehow morally superior to a nation run by Muslim Fundamentalists, I have to question his or her judgment.

Since last Friday, when McCain announced his pick for veep, I've been engaged in serious shadenfreude. What a stoopid selection. Does Grampy McSame hate Mitt that much? Or Tim Pawlenty? Or Kay Bailey Hutchison? There is no doubt in my mind, the real John McCain has had the maverick bleached out of him by his own party.

I had a LOT of respect for McCain eight years ago. I actually thought he would make a great president, but I don't know who this guy is. As far as I'm concerned, he's completely incompetent and incapable of running his bank account, let alone a nation. Take his running mate. Please.


MYTH: Palin has more executive experience than Obama.
REALITY: Going by that gauge, she's more experienced than John McCain.

MYTH: The media are sexist.
REALITY: They are doing the job of vetting his running mate the McCain camp didn't do. Sadly, this 'blame the media' bullshit tends to work, as the Right has done a fabulous job of convincing good people the Fourth Estate is biased against them, when in truth the mainstream media (as it had been at the time Reagan launched the right-wing war on the free press) has been defanged. Only now, when legitimate journalists like Campbell Brown miraculously ask legitimate questions such as "Please give me an example of when Sarah Palin made a foreign policy decision while governor of Alaska" and McCain's response is to cancel an appearance on CNN in retaliation, I have to pray the MSM stands up to his dottering POW ass.

MYTH: Sarah Palin is ready to be president.
REALITY: Oh. My. God. No. If she thinks GOD wants a pipeline for Alaska, what the fuck is she talking about? God's will be done for Alaska? Come on.

MYTH: Sarah Palin was a reformer in Alaskan politics.
REALITY: If you're meaning she is a strong supporter of Alaska's secession from the Union, that would probably qualify her as something of a reformer. She may have switched to the GOP, but there is strong evidence she is still aligned with Alaska secession. How best to attain that goal than to get involved in a mainstream party.

As far as being a reformer in GOP politics, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her 20 months as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, the largest per-capita request in the nation by far. Only when the famous Ted Stevens "bridge to nowhere" was ridiculed nationally, she eventually rejected it and as we've seen she now proudly claims she told the federal government "No thanks."

MYTH: Children and families should be off-limits.
REALITY: Children and families should be off-limits for Republican candidates only.

There is so much more, and I'll say much more, but firstly, I have lost complete respect for the Republican Party, save Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy. Sadly, they are the only two high-profile Republicans who have managed to be honest about Palin's selection. "Polical bullshit" and "cynical". Of course, I wish they'd said this knowing their mikes were on.

Not a word from this shrew's mouth in her speech about health care, not a word about the middle class, not a word about the housing crisis. Just sarcasm and empty rhetoric.

Perhaps it's best to hear from people who know this twit best: Check this out.

Caribou Barbie is a dangerously incompetent choice. And McCain's judgment in picking her should be very revealing to people of common sense.