Keeping It Real and Other Guilty Pleasures

Debate III has come and gone, and it was not pretty. One hopes nothing in this campaign - however it is run and whatever its outcome - will prevent John McCain from being rightfully remembered as a great American and a genuine hero. But this past Wednesday, he could have saved himself a lot of effort by simply showing up at Hofstra with a big sign that said, "I am desperate." Choosing Bill Ayers and Joe the Plumber reflected on McCain about as well choosing Sarah Palin.

Still, I can't help but to think how lucky we are this election season, even as I walk through the ruins of our economy, stepping over bodies. Previous presidential campaigns have generally been what I sometimes call "death-by-fire-or-death-by-water" elections. (Bush or Kerry? Gore or Bush? Puh-leeze!) This time around, that' s not the case. The heat of the battle (and the occasional horrifying running-mate selection) notwithstanding, this year we've had the best choices we've seen in a long time. Yes, like everyone I end up preferring one candidate over another, but when you come right down to it, I'd have at least some comfort level with either Obama, McCain or, for that matter, Hillary winning. That's a pretty good position to be in.

The Democrat who can't list Obama's electoral shortcomings isn't being honest with himself and misunderstands the realities of the election process. Ditto the Republicans and McCain's electoral shortcomings. I'll even include Biden in this. (Palen supporters, with the exception of comedy professionals with a vested interest, are a breed unto themselves and aren't included in this.) It's a search for the lesser of two, or three, or however many evils, and perfection is not an option.


Unrelated Item 1: The Times They Are A-Changin'

Do you remember that very funny "This Land Is Your Land" clip made for the Bush-Kerry election in 2004? It turns out that the folks at JibJab, who created it, have come up with one for Obama-McCain. It is with great pleasure (and great thanks to the friend who sent it to me) that I include the link here. Just so you know what everyone is talking about at the water cooler tomorrow.

http://www.peteyandpetunia.com/VoteHere/VoteHere.htm


Unrelated Item 2: Aye, Lad, Just Do It

This past Thursday, the news reported that Waterford Crystal would be laying off almost all the workers at its famous plant in Ireland and moving its operations "overseas." We're not sure yet where that is exactly, but the thought of the world's finest crystal being churned out by underpaid young children in sweatshops, one table over from the kids making Nike sneakers, is more than a little disturbing. Oh wait, they're not young children. They're 16. Sorry, I forgot.

You Gotta Believe

One of the headlines on the AOL Welcome screen today read, "Father of Bristol Palin's Baby Shoots Down Rumors." I can't possibly be the only person who read that and wondered if he did it from a helicopter.

Ok, with that off my chest, now for the real topic. Regular readers may remember I love movie quotes, and though it's not among my favorites, this one has got me thinking:

"I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days." (Crash Davis [Kevin Costner], "Bull Durham," 1988)

Ok, so I'm not Kevin Costner. There are still a few things I believe in and, for whatever it may be worth, this seemed no worse a time than any other to compile them. In no particular order:

1. Small pieces of birthday cake are a waste of everyone's time.

2. The vast majority of mankind's problems eventually trace back to some form of trying to get something for nothing.

3. I want what's mine, and I don't want what's not mine.

4. I don't accept pieces of paper that someone in the street tries to hand me, regardless of how they're dressed. Similarly, I don't speak to people with clipboards who try to stop me in the street.

5. Love is like any other form of comedy: it's all in the timing.

6. Love, friendship and other forms of familiarity are not an excuse for discourteous behavior.

7. ALWAYS buy a handmade poppy when you see a veteran selling them for donations.

8. The secret to a successful long-term relationship is this: do whatever you have to do never to find out what your spouse talks about with his/her best friend.

9. I believe in charitable giving. Just not at traffic lights.

10. When we find ourselves trying to decide how far we're willing to go in treating a segment of society like human beings, it's time to stop and take a deep breath.

11. The people who make the biggest show of saying they don't take crap from people are usually the ones who make it a point to give other people the most crap.

12. There's a special place in heaven waiting for seeing-eye dogs and other animals whose entire existence is devoted to service.

13. There's a very hot place in hell waiting for the guy who invented the four-way traffic stop. (Someone I mentioned this to suggested traffic circles too, but in Jersey we're just used to those.)

14. Someday they're going to give a Nobel Prize for baking, and it's going to go to the guy who invented parchment.

So what do you believe?

Changing All Those Changes

The pieces begin coming together as transition gradually becomes improvement. A few items to note, done in the hope of making it easier to post comments:

• Posting comments will no longer require that irritating word verification. (That's the 60's-acid-flashback lettering you have to input to prove you're not a computer sending out spam.) Thanks to Cathy for a great suggestion on that.
• I've opened up the ability to comment to anyone, anywhere, who has a computer. Since hardly anyone has a computer and the widespread use of the Internet is still years away, I'm figuring it's safe to do that.
• Since, in the time it took to type the previous bullet-item another 600,000 sociopaths, miscreants, and other people with IQ's that would embarrass a slug have made their way onto the Internet anonymously, comments will be subject to review by the moderator before appearing on the site. Not to worry - the moderator's a reasonable guy, and he's looking only to filter out the spam that the first two bullet-items subject the site and its valued readers to. It is not intended to filter out dissenting opinions, though I can't imagine there could be any anyway.
• The above notwithstanding, the moderator's tolerance for anonymous letters (which are permitted by the system when it's opened up to everyone) is very low, so you won't be suffering through a lot of those either.

And there you have it for now!

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

This will be but a brief test to make sure I can post to the new site.

I'm looking forward to posting new content soon and, since (if I've got this right) folks from any ISP will be able to view the site and post comments, expanding to heretofore unexplored corners of the globe.

So what do you all think?

Observing

As I enter the beginning hours of the Yom Kippur fast (only 20 hours and 48 minutes of air diet to go!), thoughts of trying to atone for past sins lead naturally to the current campaign for president. It's the magical season when Americans of all viewpoints come together in a common celebration of what joins us as one nation; specifically, the willingness to forget for a few weeks that they're all liars and crooks.

Presidential debate II has come and gone, and the most striking thing to come out of it was that for the second time in a row, the two men who think they can lead the free world got beaten in the ratings by their vice-presidents. (Maybe people thought Biden was debating Tina Fey.) Although the debate did put Obama and McCain one step closer to coming to blows, which you have to admit would be kind of exciting, I thought they stayed pretty even throughout. The pundits tell us this is not good news for McCain, though it seems to me it's still far too early for anyone to think Obama has this won. Republicans have repeatedly shown themselves to be effective campaigners who can take full advantage of the first mistake the Democrats might make in the remaining weeks. Look who they got elected the last two times around.

It's still not clear if Palin was a profitable choice for McCain. She's enormously popular among many hard-core Republicans, but so is Bush, so how much is that really saying? For the rest of us, the jury on her may still be out, but they're keeping themselves amused heating up the tar and plucking the chickens. I'm starting to think McCain's numbers might have gotten a bigger boost had he picked Cloris Leachman as his running mate.

I saw a poll question the other day: aside from McCain and Obama, who would you like to see running for president? I haven't come up with anyone yet, but it did get me thinking I'd like to see Dan Quayle running for vice-president. Think about it - how wickedly delicious would it be watching him and Sarah Palin debating one another? People would think they were watching a Saturday Night Live sketch. My other thought was that the guy who's judgement I'm seriously questioning at this point isn't even John McCain; it's Palin's husband, Todd. Seriously - after hearing her interviews and the debate, can you imaging living with this woman?

On more important topics, I've received tonight an e-mail from AOL regarding the transferring of journal content to another system. After I go over it, I'll post the information about where things that are better left unsaid will soon be found. Your visits to this site, wherever it resides, are appreciated.

 

I'll Give Up My Journal When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers...

...and maybe not then either. I'll see how I feel.

The late-night e-mail from AOL said that as of October 31, they will be shutting down all journals. They don't give a reason, but they didn't need to: it's a transparent attempt by the Bush administration to silence me. An effort by a failing president to still the voice of change and create the illusion of relevance so desperate that they've forced AOL to shut down everyone else's journal just to eliminate this one.

Well, it's not going to work.

According to the letter, AOL is putting together some kind of journal bail-out package that will transfer journal content to another provider. We'll see. Just to be safe, I'm going to contact my congressmen and tell them to stop wasting time with small things like rampant bank failures and people's life savings, and focus on important matters like my journal.

More to come, dear readers. I'll keep you informed.

 

 

 

   

Dueling Bracelets

The DAR ladies will be downstairs shortly for a meeting. I figure I should hide up here in my office or they'll eat me. This turns out to be a good thing since it gives me a chance to write and, just as important, they usually leave good snacks after they're done.

With McCain having decided that it might be a good idea after all for the president to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, the first debate of the election season is now in the record books. Everybody's offering post-debate analysis, so here's mine.

First, as with so many debates in recent years, the first thing we seem to obsess over is, "who won?" I've never understood that. It's political punditry for people with MTV attention spans, focusing on some imaginary number of points scored while forgetting all about the details of everything that was said.

Last night's debate was a good one for both candidates, though I doubt anything said changed anyone's mind. Obama and McCain were both solid, and the points, counter-points and fact-twisting seemed evenly divided. Both candidates pointed out they were wearing bracelets in honor of a fallen soldier, proving the line between compassion and demagoguery can be a thin one indeed. Kudos to Jim Lehrer for repeating questions when they weren't answered the first time, something most political reporters seem unwilling to do.

Thursday's vice-presidential debate should be as cynically entertaining as it will be informative. It will be the longest Gov. Palin has been exposed to those pesky questions without her script. After her less-than-impressive (a nicer phrase than "occasionally insipid") performance in her interview with Katie Couric, it should be interesting to see how she manages against the formidable debating skills of Sen. Biden. (My son's recent comment on the previous post said it better than I could ever hope to. I'd written at first about Palin that only time would tell if she would stand up under closer scrutiny. His elegantly concise response: "Time told. :-(" )If nothing else, we can keep ourselves amused by counting how many times she says you can see Russia from Alaska while claiming to have opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere." At first I had thought her candidacy would, if nothing else, give credibility to wearing glasses, the way Ronald Reagan once made it fashionable to wear brown suits in the business environment. Now that we're getting to know more about her, even that's not working out.

A final thought as we prepare to watch the remaining debates. Around this time of the election season, we frequently hear how most people who watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates on television said that Kennedy won, and that most who listened to it on the radio said that Nixon won. I wasn't there, or at least wasn't listening at the tender age of 1, but I can accept it as probably true. What I don't accept is the point people usually are trying to make when they bring it up, that Kennedy's "win" was due primarily to his good looks. I don't know about you, but when I'm hiring someone for an important job, I don't just want to hear what he's saying. I think it's just as important to see his eyes when he's saying it. Think of serving on a jury and only hearing what a witness is saying. Now think of how much more you have to work with if you get to see him saying it. I don't expect this will put that Kennedy-Nixon thing to rest because people seem to like it too much. It's just something we may want to consider as we make an important decision we're going to have to live with for a long time.