Remember Who We Are...

My parents, grandparents and great grandparents lived through the horrific days of the Great Depression. Though I was born 20 odd years after its beginning and 10 odd years after the beginning of World War II, I was colored by their experiences and stories of the hardships they faced and how they managed to survive both through the sacrifices they were willing to make.

Today we face similar circumstances and we stand at a turning point that will determine whether we move away from greed and fear and selfishness or whether we embrace those self destructive values.

While listening to the "town hall" Presidential debate, one woman asked the candidates what I believe was the central question we face today. A child of that Depression, 78 year old Feora from Chicago, asked via the Internet.

"Since World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to help our country except the blood of our heroic men and women. As President, what sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we are now in?"

McCain meandered around the question, went to his talking points and talked, in broad terms about eliminating waste.

Obama talked about how 9/11 and how the country came together and how Bush missed the opportunity to utilize our willingness to sacrifice by telling us "to go shopping." He mentioned we need to think about how we can reduce our energy needs and talked about expanding the Peace Corps. All good answers but still, in my mind, he missed the point Feora was making.

What neither did and what disappointed me about both was to make a direct call to Americans to get involved on a local, regional, state, national and world-wide basis. That is exactly what my family and yours did. The results of their sacrifices gave us the world we inhabit today.

And we have become lazy and focused on a consumer driven life style rather than dedicating ourselves to building a world of compassion and selfless dedication to others. Rather than ask "What's in it for me?" we should be asking "What can I do to help those around me?" and "What are my responsibilities to humanity?" The corresponding sacrifice is that we ask for help when faced with seemingly overwhelming situations. I have never asked that I did not also receive. And I have gained that measure of humility and sense of belonging that comes with asking for help that allows me to be a human being and part of the world around me.

We took the gifts our families sacrificed to give us and transformed them into a society which comprises five percent of the world's population and consumes 25 percent of its resources. We have become addicts of a soul-stealing lifestyle we can no longer maintain. More things are not the answer. Sacrifice and care for the people around us and the world beyond our borders can and will ignite a world where ignorance and hate and fear will not consume us but a world where compassion and integrity and dignity will feed us.

Our choices today will determine whether we as peoples of the world will survive or whether we will doom ourselves to extinction. The choice is ours. I know what my choice is. What is yours?

President Palin is Danny Elfman's "Greatest Fear"

McCain's chances in hell approaching zero - on 236.com

A playful McCain acts out his latest poll numbers...







The media all knows the election is over, but there's only so many ways they can describe how John McCain's campaign is going and what his prospects for winning are.
The New York Times today goes with "increasingly dire."
First Read goes with "running out of time."
The Los Angeles Times decides it's an "uphill slog."
The Arizona Republic goes with "chances appear dim," and the "political vultures are circling."
Even The Corner knows what's going on, with Rich Lowry taking a break from, uh, enjoying Sarah Palin speeches to call McCain's chances "grim."
But there's still eight days left in this thing. The media don't like writing the same thing day after day, but McCain's prospect don't seem to be in flux. So how should the media describe his campaign this week?

Felons can serve in Congress... Are you surprised?

"...he can continue to hold his seat because there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress."

An excerpt from The Huffington Post about Alaska's US Senator Ted Stevens' conviction on corruption charges Monday.

I AM NOT surprised...

The latest McCain/Palin Yard Sign | from my friend Peg Laird

Ten signs that your Congressperson is Un-American

A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican | as posted on The Huffington Post

by John Gray

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican's would still be sitting in the dark.)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host's keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don't need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I'm a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have".

The Group Behind Prop 8 | Stuart Whatley in The American Prospect

Ultraconservative legal organization the Alliance Defense Fund is backing a California marriage ban with rhetoric about "defending" family and children.

by Stuart Whatley | October 22, 2008

In her October column on ballot initiatives, Dana Goldstein points out conservatives' tendency to employ language in their initiatives that is antithetical to their intended goal. Ward Connerly's "civil-rights initiatives," for example, seek to quash affirmative-action programs. But perhaps no group has demonstrated greater dissonance between rhetoric and reality as the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). The ADF is a primary player in the push to pass the California Protection of Marriage Act (Proposition 8), which calls for the explicit revocation, not protection, of the gay community's new-found right to marry.

Following the ADF's defeat in California's In re Marriage Cases in May, when the court ruled that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, the ADF found reinforcements in other conservative groups such as ProtectMarriage, the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on the Family. In the following months, this conservative conglomeration successfully garnered over one million signatures to place Prop 8 on the ballot with hopes of overturning the court's ruling. The ADF's role in the case was to "defend" its position on the legal definition of marriage -- that it is exclusively between a man and a woman -- under the aegis of traditional Christian family structures.

The ADF is a Christian conservative consortium of lawyers, founded in 1994 as an answer to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Its stated purpose -- to "defend the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation" -- reflects an underlying paranoid worldview entirely antithetical to reality: that Christians in America are persecuted by the government and secular society. Given the ADF's incessant litigiousness and efforts at national ubiquity, this puts their defensive posturing somewhere between farcical and downright mendacious. The reality is that the ADF is a legal powerhouse that spends over $20 million a year to project its paranoid argument into courtrooms across the nation.

The ADF's main prerogative is to defend the Christian majority's "right" to suppress respective minorities' liberties. Glen Lavy the group's head of marriage litigation, claimed in May that the ADF was not challenging same-sex couples' right to marry, but rather "defending" the traditional Christian notion of marriage as a necessary condition for children's healthy development. Following the court's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry, he told reporters that "the government should not, by design, deny a child both a mother and father." Thus, the ADF spins its efforts as defensive in the interests of children rather than offensive against the interests of the minority gay community.

This, of course, is a compelling argument for those who share the ADF's traditional Christian values, and maybe even for some moderate voters. However, the "we're defending children" rhetoric is quite obviously an obfuscation of the initiative's true intent. In fact, in an April 20, 2007 memo to Congress, Lavy provides valuable insight into his actual beliefs by expressing his support for groups and individuals who consider homosexuality to be "physically and psychologically harmful" as well as "immoral."

Having lost its legal battle in May, the ADF has since redirected its efforts to guaranteeing Prop 8's passage in November. Specifically, the group has attempted to finagle the initiative's language, controlling how it will be read by voters at the ballot box. In early August, ADF lawyers filed an appeal with the court to reverse state Attorney General Jerry Brown's decision that changed the words "limit on marriage" to "eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry" in Prop 8's title. While the modification is much clearer as to the initiative's true intent, ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco seemed to realize that such clearly worded language would turn off moderate voters. By arguing that "election ballot titles should be neutral and not intentionally prejudice voters," while at the same time advocating for vaguer language, Infranco perhaps revealed his own suspicion that Prop 8 must be misrepresented in order to pass. However, the court denied the appeal, affirming Brown's new wording.

California's judiciary has thus far demonstrated immunity to the ADF's rhetoric. Unfortunately, however, the organization does not limit itself to waging just one war at a time. Elsewhere, beyond California's same-sex marriage debate, the ADF held an event called Pulpit Freedom Sunday on September 28, under the banner of Free Speech, to brazenly violate the federal tax code that prohibits such political activism by tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organizations. Pulpit Freedom Sunday, or the Pulpit Initiative, fulfilled the ADF's goal of recruiting pastors to explicitly discuss partisan politics. All told, 100 pastors were willing to participate, and the ADF selected a third of them. With each pastor endorsing a presidential candidate "on the basis of Scripture," abortion and same-sex marriage were elevated from marginal culture-war issues of this election to the paramount concern. One need not have been in each of the 33 congregations on Pulpit Freedom Sunday to guess in which direction the partisan winds blew.

Furthermore, the ADF intends to send the IRS a copy of each sermon transcript as a direct instigation. As of this writing, the IRS has not revealed its course of punitive action, which will determine if the ADF wins its day in court or not. The ADF's ultimate objective is to spur a U.S. Supreme Court battle over what it considers to be a pastor's prerogative to determine "the proper role of church in society" and to have the law thrown out for good.

In a September 9 press release, ADF President and CEO Alan Sears goes as far as to suggest that such tax-exempt demagogy is not only a First Amendment right, but also the historical foundation for "many Americans' attitudes and actions toward slavery, child labor, civil rights, and even the American Revolution."

Like "protection of marriage" and "civil-rights" ballot initiatives, the ADF's rhetoric here is basically opposite its intent. The end of slavery, child labor laws, the civil rights movement, and the American Revolution were driven by Enlightenment calls for democracy, human equality, and liberalism -- not the exploitation of an organization's charitable status to endorse its favorite politician.

However, mirroring the campaign in California, the ADF's disingenuous representation of its true motives has drawn skepticism, if not outright condemnation, from others in the legal community as well as religious leaders. Notably, Reverend Eric Williams from the United Church of Christ in Ohio, partnered with former IRS lawyer Marcus S. Owens, regard the ADF's actions as ethically questionable and doubt that the Supreme Court will sympathize with its retrograde position.

The Pulpit Initiative appears to be more extreme than past actions and may be the beginning of the end as the organization loses clout, and possibly its tax-exempt status, from its unbridled ambition. While 33 pastors participated in the event, more than 180 are participating in an Interfaith Alliance pledge that seeks the exact opposite -- to uphold the separation of church and state by promising not to discuss partisan politics in their sermons.

So far, this election cycle has shown that the ADF's deceptive rhetoric may not be as effective as it's been in the past, mirroring Ward Connerly's recent failures to pass anti-affirmative-action measures (only two of the five target states have chosen to participate in his "Super Tuesday for Civil Rights"). With a larger trend of dubious claims from the right this election season, it is reassuring to see indicators that the public and judiciaries are growing wiser to dishonest political charades. One can only hope this response will continue through November 4.

Another Invitation to Abuse - Editorial in The New York Times

The New York Times - Editorial - October 18, 2008

Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently issued new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use a range of intrusive techniques to gather information on Americans — even when there is no clear basis for suspecting wrongdoing.

Under the new rules, agents may engage in lengthy physical surveillance, covertly infiltrate lawful groups, or conduct pretext interviews in which agents lie about their identities while questioning a subject’s neighbors, friends or work colleagues based merely on a generalized “threat.” The new rules also allow the bureau to use these techniques on people identified in part by their race or religion and without requiring even minimal evidence of criminal activity.

These changes are a chilling invitation for the government to spy on law-abiding Americans based on their ethnic background or political activity.

Mr. Mukasey has promised that investigations conducted under the new rules will be consistent with the Constitution. Clearly, the Bush administration cannot be trusted to find the right balance between law enforcement and civil liberties. Even before this administration the F.B.I. had its own long history of abusing its powers to spy on civil rights groups and antiwar activists.

Critics also warn that the new rules could impede legitimate law enforcement efforts by alienating communities whose cooperation the F.B.I. needs and by distracting agents from focusing on genuine criminal activity and national security threats.

Mr. Mukasey and Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, refused requests from several senators, including Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, to delay the new rules until Congress and the public could thoroughly review them. Instead they rushed to put the changes in place before President Bush leaves office.

The next president will have to order a full and transparent review of this latest change, and all of the Bush administration’s policies that threaten Americans’ most fundamental rights.

Upper Class Pillaging - Mike Garibaldi-Frick in The Huffington Post

by Mike Garibaldi-Frick

October 19, 2008 - 01:07 AM (EST)

Even today as the U.S. Treasury is being pillaged by corporate America, there has been an absence of any significant economic middle class(*) backlash here in America. As the wealth gap between the middle class and upper class has increased more than any time in our history, Americans seem to be mostly helpless in stemming this trend toward inequality.

Will the tide finally turn during an Obama Presidency? After analyzing Obama's economic positions (including health care, tax policies and budgeting), most economists say "yes!"

After eight years of the Bush Presidency, McCain style deregulation and tax policy that favors the rich, the American middle class has been taken hostage and told they will lose everything (trickle down financial ruin) if they do not bailout the big banks, investment firms and insurance companies. Bush & Cheney have perfected the panic mode wealth transfer that Naomi Klein describes so well in "The Shock Doctrine." This multi-trillion-dollar parting gift is their payback to the upper class that helped orchestrate their election.

The U.S. Treasury gained support for the bailouts by promising stricter rules on grossly excessive executive compensation. But now we find out that financial workers at Wall Street's top banks -- the greedy ones that got us into this mess in the first place -- are going to receive payouts worth more than $70 billion and, according to the Guardian, "... a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash."

Last year, for instance, Merrill Lynch's chairman Stan O'Neal took a golden parachute deal worth over $160 million, after announcing losses of nearly $8 billion at his firm. Did Mr. O'neal's labor bankrupting Merrill Lynch really justify $159,935,000 more dollars from society than a teacher or fireman?

The politics of capitalism attempts to fool us into believing in extreme individualism --e.g., that every man is an island. But, the truth (starkly exposed by Mainstreet needing to bailout Wallstreet) is that we are closely interconnected even if worlds apart in wealth and influence. Mr. O'Neal taking $160 million out of the money system to spend on extravagances, does effect the teacher and fireman via the national debt they will incur to bailout Mr. O'Neal / Merrill Lynch.

Where did the billions of dollars lost by the banks go? Did the money just evaporate? No. Most of it went to these huge CEO and executive payouts to expand the obscene wealth of the upper class. Someone has to pay for the mega-yachts, extravagant parties, multiple mansions and other extravagances of the rich. If you want to see where your money is going, just tune into "Lifestyles of the Super Rich."

Once again, responsible hard-working citizens are paying for the lavish lifestyles and reckless financial abandon of the upper class. How ironic that the same institutions that have been feeding off the middle class like leeches for decades (via unreasonable fees, large interest rate spreads, insurance rate hikes, hyped-up investment schemes, etc.), are now begging for more blood money.

The middle class and poor get crumbs from measly "bailouts" such as the lackluster sub-prime mortgage assistance program and a tax rebate check for $600; while the rich get more tangible bailouts to the tune of billions. Capitalism for the middle class, socialism for the rich, indeed! This is what you get when corrupt Republicans and the Corporate sociopathic personality rule the economy. One of the ways to change this dynamic is to remove corporation's status as a separate entity unbound by individual consequences and place more responsibility on the executives that direct corporate actions.

We need to end the the welfare era for the rich via tax cuts, Halliburton / war "no bid" handouts, oil company gouging and corporate bailouts. Instead, the American government needs to lift the middle class with investments in education, job training, energy independence (from domestic oil companies too!), health care and economic programs such as small business development and tangible mortgage assistance.

The only choice for fiscal conservatives in this election is Obama. By electing Obama POTUS and other fiscally sympathetic representatives, the middle class can then exercise its newfound power over insurance companies, corporations and bankers. You want us to bail you out? Here are some of our demands:

1) Corporations and the rich need to pay higher taxes, period. We are tired of hearing that higher corporate and upper class taxes will increase the jobless rate and slow the economy.

Even Warren Buffet (an Obama supporter) says that our current tax system unfairly puts more of the tax burden on the working class than the rich. The rich pay more taxes as a total collected, but much less of a percentage as the middle class.

Mr. Buffet goes on to say, "There's class warfare, all right," Mr. Buffett said, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

2) We want tougher consumer regulations on the insurance, credit card and banking industries along with fair mortgage lending practices. It's time for Wallstreet, insurance company's and banks to forgo some of the excessive profits we have seen in the past and pass savings along to their clients.

3) Middle class and small business tax cuts. It's time for some "trickle up" economics.

When Obama becomes President of the United States with a Democratic Congress, the middle class will once again have a strong voice in national politics. If you were advising Obama as he begins his Presidency in 2009, what policies would you suggest he initiate to stimulate and strengthen the economy and middle class (instead of corporate bailouts)?

(*For this blog's purpose I'm referring to the "middle class" as everyone who is not in the "upper class." Even though the "upper middle class," "lower middle class," "working class," and "lower class," combine to make up 99% of the United States population, the remaining 1% owns about one third of private wealth.)

The GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil - Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal

Suddenly Republicans are against market values?

By Thomas Frank

OK, let me get this straight: The central axiom of conservative Republicanism is that government is inherently corrupt and can't do anything right.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list -- tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn't even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Yet now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn't work.

That is the advice of Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential nominee, in last week's debate with her Democratic counterpart, discussing the dread prospect of universal health care: "Unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds."

Conservative misrule, prompted by conservative disdain for government, proves that government cannot be trusted -- and that the only answer is to elect another round of government-denouncing conservatives.

"Cynicism" seems too small a word for this circular kind of political fraud. One reaches instead for images of grosser malevolence. It's like suggesting that the best way to recover from pneumonia is to stand in the rain for three hours. It's like arguing that the way to solve nuclear proliferation is by handing out weapons-grade plutonium to everyone who asks for it.

Consider also the perverse incentives that such a logic would establish. If we validate Mrs. Palin's thoughts on federal bungling by electing her to the high office she seeks, we are encouraging her to bungle everything that comes her way. After all, by her thinking, such bungling will not discredit her doctrines but rather confirm them, demonstrate the need for more Sarah Palins down the road. We will be asking for it, and it's not much of a stretch to predict that we will get it.

In the three-ring circus of conservative blame-evasion, however, that's only one act. Over in the House of Representatives, a new breed of Republican idealists spent last week dazzling the faithful by taking a bold stand against the Wall Street bailout. The administration's plan was a "slippery slope to socialism," declared their leader, Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

One might have admired their pluck but for the breathtaking opportunism of their own counterproposal, the "Free Market Protection Act," which is described on the Web site of the Republican Study Committee. True, it is not a "slippery slope." It is a headlong stampede over a precipice, a running leap out a skyscraper window.

It starts by calling for "voluntary private capital" to solve the problem of bad mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Several sentences later it asks for a "mandatory" fee to be levied on all MBS, good or bad, and apparently without regard for whether it's held here or overseas, where American law doesn't apply. I asked William Black, the University of Missouri-Kansas City professor of economics and law whom I quoted last week, what he thought of this scheme. He replied, "This is significantly insane as a matter of finance -- and unconstitutional as a matter of law. This clause would cause a world-wide financial panic were it implemented."

Back at the study committee's Web site, I see conservatives call to "Suspend 'Mark to Market' Accounting." Suddenly our "free-market protection" gang has decided it's unfair to make companies value their MBSs at . . . the market price. Somehow the all-seeing market has gone irrational, and so companies must be allowed "to mark these assets to their true economic value," meaning, one might say, to mark them however they please, a practice that, to put it shortly, is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Space prevents me from discussing the plan's provisions to temporarily suspend capital gains taxes and repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. But I will note that, in discussing the derring-do of Mr. Hensarling and his hard-core colleagues, the New York Times chose to refer to them as "populists" -- friends of the common people. As an indicator of the confused state of our political discourse, the signals don't flash any brighter than this.

Years ago, conservatives realized that to destroy the legitimacy of your adversary's concepts is to destroy your adversary. Today we are surrounded by the wreckage. Much depends on our success in rebuilding.

Write to thomas@wsj.com

Swampland, Embarracuda - Joe Klein, political columnist for Time magazine

October 6, 2008

Posted by Joe Klein at time-blog.com

I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putrescence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.

But since we are dealing with manure here, I'll put the rest of this post below the fold.

It is appropriate that the prime vessel for this assault is Sarah Palin, whose very presence on a national ticket is an insult to your intelligence. She now has "credibility," we are told, because she managed to read talking points off notecards in the debate last week with unwitting enthusiasm.

Over the weekend, she picked up on an article in The New York Times, which essentially says that Barack Obama and the former terrorist Bill Ayers have crossed paths in Chicago, served on a couple of charitable boards together, but aren't particularly close. To Palin--or her scriptwriters--this means that Obama has been "palling around" with terrorists. Now, I wish Ayers had done some serious jail time; he certainly needed to pay some penance for his youthful criminality--even if most people in Chicago, including the mayor, have decided that he has something of value to say about education. But I can also understand how Obama, who was a child when Ayers was cutting his idiot swath, would not quite understand the enormity of the professor's background. (I got to know Alger Hiss twenty years after the fact--he was a printing salesman then, a friend of my father's--and thought of him as a sweet old man, if a good deal more liberal than dad's other friends.)

In any case, this is rather rich coming from Palin, who is married to a man who belonged to a political party--the Alaskan Independence Party--that wanted to secede from the union. (I should add here that the Times may have been overreacting to the McCain campaign's attack on its fairness here: the Ayers story was a nothingburger, but it was placed prominently in the top left hand corner of page one--a position that would seem to indicate that it contained important news, which it didn't.)

Then we have the ever-reliable Bill Kristol, in today's New York Times, advising Palin to bring up the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Palin, of course, believes that's a darn good idea:

“To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

So then, I'd guess, it would be appropriate to bring up some of the nuttiness that passes for godliness in Palin's religious life. Leave aside the fact that The Embarracuda allowed herself to participate in a cermony that protected her from witchcraft, how about her presence--she didn't "get up and leave"-- at a sermon by the founder of Jews for Jesus, who argued that the Palestinian terrorist acts against Israel were God's "judgment" on the Jews because they hadn't accepted Jesus.

Speaking of Jews, the ever-execrable Sean Hannity has been having intercourse with a known Jew-hater named Andy Martin, who now wants to expose Barack Obama as a Muslim. According to the Washington Times:

In 1986, when Mr. Martin ran as a Democrat for Connecticut's 3rd Congressional District seat under the name "Anthony R. Martin-Trigona," his campaign committee filed papers saying its purpose was to "exterminate Jew power in America and impeach U.S. District Court of Appeals judges in New York City."

Calling all Podhoretzs! Where's the outrage? I mean, don't the hateful doings at Palin's church and Hannity's perfidy deserve a lengthy exegesis from Pete Wehner or Jennifer Rubin or one of the other empretzled ideologues over at Commentary?

As I said, I'm of two minds about this. I don't want to give currency to this sewage, so it will remain below the fold. And I'll try to devote the lion's share of my time to the issues--the war, the economic crisis, the fraying health insurance system, the environment--that should define this campaign. But what a desperate empty embarrassment the McCain campaign has become.

A McCain Fan

A teacher in Jackson, Mississippi asked her 6th grade class how many of them were McCain fans..

Not really knowing what a McCain fan was, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for Little Johnny. The teacher asked Little Johnny why he decided to be different ... again.

Little Johnny said, 'Because I'm not a McCain fan.'

The teacher said, 'Why aren't you a McCain fan?'

Johnny said, 'Because I'm a Democrat.'

The teacher asked why he was a Democrat.

Little Johnny answered, 'Well, my Mom's a Democrat and my Dad's a Democrat, so I'm a Democrat.'

The teacher asked, 'If your Mom was a moron, and your Dad was an idiot, what would that make you?'

Little Johnny replied, 'That would make me a McCain fan.'

I am an elitist...

I'm an admitted elitist. Yep, me, John Ater. I believe in elitism. And here is why.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word "elite" as "a group of people considered to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth."

And I would add because of their intelligence, common sense and abilities.

Life, even for us simple folk, often proves to be very complicated and presents us with myriad choices that often change the courses of our lives. In my older years, I have come around to the belief that those choices hold no moral weight of "right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil" but hold a more karmic and immediate weight of consequences.

We are watching the consequences of our choices play out in today's world. The consequences of electing senators and representatives and presidents who allowed financiers to regulate themselves finally arrived at our doorsteps in the past few weeks. The consequences of electing (or rather having a Supreme Court elect) a president who decided (probably at the urging of his vice president) that the Constitution of the United States did not apply to his presidency are now abundantly clear even to most of his die hard supporters. The consequences of blindly following that same president's lead in a "war on terror" played out in an unrelated war with a country which we know now had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11th. Those consequences we all have watched play out on the news in body counts and human rights violations and loss of respect for what our country once meant to those around the world.

I could not agree more with Bill Clinton's words.

"People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power."

But Dr. Martin Luther King said it best.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

As I have aged, I have learned those lessons, finally. And in learning them, I have become a believer in the elite; the elites like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, W.E.B Du Bois, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, Hillary Clinton, Maya Angelou... The list is too long. You know. Those elites.

For our nation, I want an elite as president. In fact, I want elites running this country and the world. I want the best and the brightest, the smartest, the ones who have character and some common sense, the ones who can and do actually think beyond their own lives and bank accounts, who consider seriously the consequences of their actions and how those actions will affect the people who sent them to office. I may not agree with them. I may even oppose them. However, because they are the elites, I will know they believe in their choices and they will think beyond their own selfish interests and those of their rich friends.

We are standing at a turning point. We, as individuals and as a people, will live with the consequences of our choice in this presidential election. No matter who is elected, the president will make mistakes. That is the curse and the blessing of being human. What I desire is not someone who blames everyone else for the mess but a person who can own up to those mistakes and chart a course out of whatever quagmires those mistakes create. Give me an elite. Give me someone who is smarter than I am. Give me someone of character and of thought and of compassion. Give me someone who is willing to shoulder the weight of the world and give us their best shot.

Call me an elitist. I can think of no more honorable a title.

She either is or she isn't...

In a quote to Politco.com from a McCain official about Sarah Palin and tonight's debate...

"This is going to finally put her back into a position where we see her like we saw her the first couple weeks," a McCain official said. "She was herself. She was authentic, and people related to that. ... Tonight, she'll get into a rhythm. You're going to see her in a way that you haven't seen her yet."

Well? Which is it?