Where are you, Joe?

How's he gonna catch bin Laden if he can't even keep track of Joe the Plumber? Maybe Joe was out using his new found celebrity to lay some pipe.

An Open Letter to John McCain

Dear John,

We both know the road to the White House goes through Pennsylvania so let me give you a few tips about convincing a key demographic that you need to win over, semi-literate, working class white boys. As a card carrying member, let me clue you in as to how we think and how to get our votes in these last few days before the election and, more importantly, target ad campaigns to different areas of the state. I've lived in eastern , western and now central Pennsylvania. You need to figure a 5 point IQ drop from east to west per zip code as you move across the state, a 5 point drop south to north, and then a 50 point drop off when you hit the West Virginia border. But you probably already have WVA sewn up. Here's my tips:

1. Scare the white people! This is absolutely essential for success. It is a time honored Republican strategy and one you have to embrace yourself rather than simply farming it out to Sarah. Bill Ayers ain't going to do it. Wrong shade of terrorist, if you catch my drift. We sure aren't going to be scared of some skinny white hippy, even if he's got a bomb. We know you got Rev. Wright in the bag. Time to let him out. Now there's a bogeyman that will get us worked up.
2. Don't worry about calling us racists and don't ever apologize, ever, for anything (unless you get drunk and are gone all weekend and have to explain it to Cindy). Calling a coal cracker a racist is same as telling him he has a nice truck. It's a given and he don't care. Murtha will be reelected by a landslide. Learn from him. And don't get tangled up in the punchline. It makes you look like John Kerry.
3. Keep up with the Joe the Plumber stuff. And, for Christ sake, don't get all huffy about the media digging up dirt on him. The more we find out about his unlicensed plumbing adventures, his failed marriage and his back taxes, the more we can relate. And the more you can talk about Obama taking Joe's dough (even if he doesn't really pay any) and giving it to crackheads the better it will be. Even though we can't balance our checkbooks we feel qualified to expound on the merits of Obama's tax plan, just like Joe. And even a guest appearance on "The View" is better than unclogging toilets. We all figure he found his ticket out and we don't blame him for that. Next stop is "Who Wants to Marry a Plumber".
4. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY! If you want to set up private accounts save it for after the election. A lot of us got our 401K statements and we're wondering why we didn't just buy a truck when we had that money. The free market system has let us down. We are not used to having money that we put away disappear. And don't mention Medicare. If Mom and Dad get wind of your health care proposals you will lose the all important cranky old people vote.
5. Don't mention your enlightened stand on immigration. It's all about the brown people, bro. We're more scared of them than anything. We think they're after our jobs. I mean they would be if we had any jobs left out here.
6. Send Sarah to every godforsaken bingo hall in every godforsaken borough in this godforsaken state. Just keep that red leather jacket halfway zippered and if someone asks you about her qualifications just wink and say "Would ya?".
7. Here's the tricky one, but the one that will put you over the top. Distance yourself from everyone in the current power structure. Blame the president, the congress, the democrats, the republicans, even your running mate for the problems we are having. Remember that you have to convince the majority of Pennsylvanians to vote against their own self interest. This will take a certain amount of creativity. Have a highly placed yet anonymous party operative feign fury at your betrayal of the Republican party. Let the media smugly and gleefully out him as Karl Rove. A masterstroke: you will be able to publicly sever the tie to Bush and at the same time carry on the same Bush policies unnoticed. People who feel kind of bad about being suckered into 2 terms of a Bush presidency will have a reason to believe that you will be different. While the media is doing a post mortem on the Republican Party you slide right into the White House. It'll work, dawg. Trust me.

Good luck and bless your heart,

Scripto

A Glossary of Palinese

First the results of the poll:

57% of you feel that Sarah Palin's witch hunting ways disqualify her for the presidency.

43% of you are stupid.

I predict that in the last 10 days before the election stupid will trend up to around 48%

What she says:---------------------------------What she means:

Bless your heart -----------------------------------------Fuck you
Bless his heart -------------------------------------------Fuck him
Bless her heart ------------------------------------------Fuck her
You betcha ----------------------------------------------Damn straight
Doggonit -------------------------------------------------God damn it
Can I call you Joe?----------------------------------- Fuck you, Joe
Real Americans------------------------------------------Rednecks

Elites------------------People who try to figure out what I'm saying

Yeah, we get it

"Sarah Palin was on the verge of inciting a race riot in Northern Florida yesterday. At her rallies, the Republican faithful mob hurled a racial epithet at a black sound man, and screamed "kill him" and "treason" at Barak Obama.
"Boy, you guys just get it." Palin responded."

From the Nation on
Sarah Palin's Florida appearance

Suck It Up - America!

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Quit yer whinin'. The political process is not irretrievably broken. It's just bent a little. How bent it is is inversely proportional to how well your guy is doing. And right now I feel pretty good about the process. It ain't over yet and I'm sure there is a lot of swift boatin' coming our way but gosh darnit, I'm going to enjoy this fleeting moment of bliss. It's been 8 looonnng years in coming. I don't know if Pennsylvania is the next big state to be abandoned by the McCain campaign but I've noticed a curious lack of 527 style attack ads coming our way. Maybe T. Boone Shitkickins has decided to invest his money in trying to save our country instead of destroying it. We are the land of the second chance.

Look at the bright side. This time we don't have to choose from two rich guys from Yale. We got an aged war hero and his babelicious running mate and a black senator with a Arabic name and his running mate, the man who should be President. How cool is that? And how bad has the current administration fucked things up to make this even a possibility? The potential for measured political discourse is always there. We saw it in the two interviews on September 11. Both men gave thoughtful, insightful answers and I came away with the feeling that either one was capable of holding the office. Of course, the feeling went away when McCain realized he could really lose this thing and begain pulling out all the stops in a hysterical attempt to turn the tide. Palin? Sweet Jesus in the morning! What was he thinking? Of course, I also came away from the last vice presidential debate impressed by Cheney's calm demeanor, so I am no judge of character. I thought even if Bush wins maybe this guy can keep him from doing something really stupid. Little did I realize he would become the Dark Lord of the New American Imperium and preside over the wholesale destruction of the american economic system. Oops.


Everybody complains about the quality of the candidates but I believe those that survive vetting by an aggressive press are for the most part brighter and more able than their predecessors. Even our thieving politicians are a little smarter. Boss Tweed, Jimmy Walker and Huey Long wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in the public arena nowadays. Secret ballots didn't come into use until the end of the 19th century, blacks were effectively disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws, women didn't get the right to vote until 1920, you could get beat up by club wielding poll watchers for coming out of the booth with the wrong colored ballot stub. And things aren't better? Where was this mythical land of sturdy Cinncinatuses (Cinncinati?) casting well reasoned votes free from rancorous party politics?

Results of the Sarah Palin Fit to President Poll are just in:

14% felt that she did not have sufficient grasp of the issues
14% thought that having a nice rack and being demon free was not sufficient qualifications
42% thought it was a joke
28% prayed it wasn't happening
and 2% must have disappeared somewhere into the interwebs.

I took a lot of flack for not including a positive response in case some of you are actually brain damaged enough to think that she is presidential material. So I be running a new poll just for you.

Preparing to Believe - Man Arrives

I'm stuck on Jesus. On songs about Jesus, anyway. The 14 year old Sony receiver in my pickup will only scan the Word FM. As the manual tuner is inaccessible I'm going to have to take this as a sign. To my tin ear the songs sound like any other top 40 station, only they're right with Jesus and every hour or so Ken Hamm breaks in with a short creation science moment. There's rap about Jesus, country about Jesus, alternative about Jesus. It's all good and very positive. There are even lists of businesses that are right with Jesus. So it occurred to me that this change in worldview will be easier than I thought. There seems to be a whole other independent American way set up. I can get my car fixed by Christians, shop for groceries at Christian stores, buy a house from Christians, get my science at the Creation Museum, send my kids to christian schools and then to Liberty Baptist University. If they're smart enough, they can go to Patrick Henry and help rule America. It's a whole big blanket of God insulating the believer from the things of this world. Once I manage to weasel my way into the community of believers it will be very hard to fall away. Everything's right there. Far better than the so-called "community" of non-believers. I don't see any atheist auto body shops in my area. Bunch of bitter drunken know-it-alls. Hitchens, bah! I bet Ken Ham wakes up feeling better on Sunday morning. Today Ken said that if there was a worldwide flood we would expect to find millions of dead things buried in the ground. And what do we find? Millions of dead things buried in the ground. Take that, Stephen J. Freakin' Gould. Hope you get Around the World with Ken Ham while you're roasting in hell!

While wading through Genesis I found one thing that puzzles me:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

"Our" image. I kind of wanted to join a monotheistic religion. Who's this "us"? And are just men created in God's image? Or is it women, too? Is God trans or maybe supra gender? I'm confused.

More Cornpone, Please

Doggone it, what can I say? Maybe I watched a different debate. Grumpy old politico Pat Buchanan and pretend everyman Joe Scarborough are convinced that Palin nailed it. Biden was "boring" (i.e too many factual presentations of actual policy proposals) and Palin spoke directly to the people. She sounded to me like Ned Flanders channeling Ronald Reagan. Hot diddily doo. Every wink into the camera reminded me of an Amway presentation selling guaranteed pure products like "freedom", "jobs" and "lower taxes". And just like Amway, it's a sales technique to get us to pay too much for a product we don't need. Trickle down economics is a pyramid scheme and a McCain election will guarantee most of us staying at the bottom. Sarah Palin's job is to sell these Republican products and get us to vote against our own self interest. I found the whole folksy, wink-wink Mr. Deeds bullshit belittling and condescending. We are not that stupid and we have had enough of that shit with Bush and I'm hoping we don't fall for it again.

I am a working class guy and I can tell you guys like Buchanan and Scarborough don't get it. Their contact with working people is limited to picking up the dry cleaning or dropping their car off for an oil change. If you are a waitress or a nurse or a mechanic or a construction worker or a factory worker you know what I mean. I used to deliver redi-mix to homeowners, usually lawyers or doctors or accountants, and this was their big once in 10 a year moment to do some really heidi-ho blue collar manual labor. I'd hear how great this kind of work is. No, it isn't. Try it for 15 years. Otherwise you don't have a clue. And quit feeding us bullshit, we're full.