"Palin's not a real feminist, you know. She's just a token."

Or how about this one?

"She's not a real mother; after all, who could leave a 3-day baby at home and go to work?"

I got this one from that bunch at the children's table at DailyKos.

"She's actually the grandmother of that child. The Down's Syndrome baby is really her daughter's."

Here's a good one written by a Brit that I pulled from the Times online site:

"It figures you dumb Americans would pick someone from Hicksville, USA."

These quotes are a compilation of the Left's sludge I went through this morning. Even at this point in the election, I'm amazed at the venom and vituperation of our opposition in the blogosphere.

Most interesting is their preoccupation with experience. Since these people are incapable of carrying on a conversation with actual points and rules (they have no background), it is silly to debate the experience issue by comparing their presidential candidate with our vice presidential candidate. Their tiny minds don't and won't understand the differences.

First of all, unlike these bloggers, these citizen journalists, most of whom are totally inexperienced in delivering news and commentary, Governor Palin was elected to her post, not self-appointed. I have to laugh at the temerity of them calling the Governor inexperienced--like they're all Edward R. Murrows.

Even I--coming from a career of corporate and legal writing--don't take myself that seriously!

Secondly, the feminists who believe McCain is trying to win them over by using the Governor? No. What he's doing is trying to win over the women and men in the rest of the country who can't bring themselves to vote for Obama and Biden, not because Hillary didn't get on the ticket, per se. It may be because many swing state voters don't like what they see on the Democratic side in any case: that the Left has hijacked their party. At least with Hill on the ticket they trusted somehow the Left wouldn't be as prevalent. Not many feminists in that group, maybe. Women for Hillary are not the target.

Frankly, we've been hoping some feminists can see their way clear to acknowledge there are different kinds of feminism, not the strident, ball-breaking, family-destroying mess that they foisted on women in the 70s. The old feminists are the tanks, the dinosaurs who can't believe that today's women do things quite differently which might be the reason people will actually vote for Governor Palin.

I worked for women who hated women who"made" it, especially if they thought those women got there because they were lucky. These bloggers, many of them young males, remind me of them. They show a unpleasant, unwarranted disregard and hostility for women in their party. I find it odd that the younger Democratic Party power males are allowed to be so conservative and blatantly sexist. Maybe this is a backlash from the feminist ideals of their mothers whose lives didn't include a father to help them learn manners and respect.

Then I remember the dumbed down speech given by Michelle Obama, a lawyer in her own right, someone who is successful on her own. She allowed these boys to make her stupid because they were afraid to show her for what she really is while we listened to her husband tell us anything was possible...except for that pesky part about being president and that were just kidding with the 18 million cracks.

So, really, the feminists should have a beef with the Democrats, not us. At least we put our money where our mouth is.

A token?

I'd say this is just another case of Democrats' sour grapes. The big fems couldn't get it done in their party, could they? But like the woman scorned, they're not going to allow any other woman to do it. Hypocrites.

Thanks for the read.

Yeah, Barack Obama. Your daughters can do anything "that the boys can do" and "in heels"... except, of course, become PRESIDENT of the United States!

Good heavens, he sure did sound like the stereotypical Republican, huh?

Except real Republicans give women real opportunities and always have! The first woman rep was a Republican (Jeannette Rankin) and the first woman senator was a Republican (Margaret Chase Smith from Maine) and they didn't inherit their positions either like the Democrats seem to do. They were actually elected.

Come to find out, the Dem heir apparent was simply offering the usual surround sound for some of the most blatant, public, most embarrassing and most obtuse sexism we've ever seen sans comments from the press, i.e., the selection of the Democratic Party's candidate for the President of the United States.

Absolutely unbelievable. I can't believe our young women can even see it because they're so wrapped up in the black man having his time in the sun. I can now see our work has gone for nothing. I wish I had saved my breath and my pride. I hope my peers feel the same way. I'm ashamed of my younger sisters as they sit and listen to these outrageous sexist statements. They're like falling stars on a summer night.

Save the babies!
So I won't worry if no one covers up the ears and eyes of my granddaughters. I just hope they don't get a mixed message through his condescending, cheap statement, "we need them."

Oh yes, he actually said it.

This is ridiculous. I've never seen a more grandiose, self-conscious, uninformed exercise in my life as the Unity, New Hampshire make nice fellowship with Obabbba and Clinton.

Following is the conversation between my granddaughters and me:

"Grandma, why does that nice lady in the teally pantsuit suddenly like that nice black man?"

"Well, Sweetie, it's because the nice black man said she had to, and so did a whole bunch of a lot of other turncoat people for the good of their party."

"Oh, is it because he's a man who has more power and he won the game?"

"Yes, Honey, sort of."

"Oh."

"What's wrong, Honey."

"Nothing, Grandma. It's just my black girlfriend told me I was lower than her because her man won the game and the white lady lost. And my white girlfriend said that the white lady won more popular votes. So I don't know what to think. And because my parents are Republicans I'm a loser anyway."

"Talk to your mommy and daddy, Sweetie. You might consider getting a horse."

My roses need planting
Yes, I know I'm extremely late this year...I'm about to leave my mind for the garden now. The strangeness of American politics gets to be this way around June--especially during presidential years. Perhaps if I just think of gardens and frogs and beautiful flowers

Did I tell you about the bumper crop of hibiscus I was having? They really are beautiful.

Some things, thankfully, never change.

Thanks for the read.

Face it, Barack. I'm just not that into you.

The Obama surrogates keep saying as an old white woman I can't get past the race thing. By the way, that's what Obama's surrogates automatically respond with when people say anything about race. "Well, they are older, you know. That's something they learned in the old days." Thanks.

That is the "post race" rant they've decided on. The argument is ridiculous to the point of madness in its lack of depth as it refuses to acknowledge there is value is discussing the differences and the past, what drove the behaviors of bigotry and the expressions of hatred. Instead, the new generation, with it's government education wants to proceed with: blinders on, past is past and let's move on, unless we're talking about Republicans, who are mired in the past, cannot grow up and can be forgiven to a certain point.

What prigs. They just continue to piss me off on a daily basis. Good grief, they're ignorant; and, no. I never was that ignorant, of which they are so quick to accuse me and in a general way anyone with whom they disagree.

It's Obama and his arrogance. But immediately, another attack on Obama is registered in the Do Not Touch column of the Do Not Touch Book. It's not his color. It is so insulting to hear that. It's his politics and mostly him. The way he treats people. The way he acts. Kind of like THEM. How quickly they assume it is about race. Politics. Left-wing politics. Are they crazy? Does anyone in the room not think the GOP would love a guy like this in our party?


However, I've noticed his people are making him all nice and sweet now. Trying to make him a real, sweetheart to old broads like me. The cross and Obama's likeness across it may show up in a hologram somewhere soon.

Divine intervention might bring Obama into the hearts and minds of a few grown ups, but I doubt it. Go to MSNBC.com and watch the life story in the right hand sidebar, if you can stand it. It absolutely JFKesque, even down to the second to last slide with the 3/4 pensive face shot.

I told ya it would be a Kennedy summer. This is the beginning of the wave if, and it might be a really big IF, Obama succeeds as the nominee. I still don't believe it. And because I don't I'm a racist...follow that logic, if you want. It's very strange, I'll admit.

Meanwhile, the rest of you can join us on Planet Earth. If McCain can play off Obama's freightening foreign policy inadequacy, even more frighteningly sparse resources in that area, the Fairness Doctrine issue, among a few others, the polls will drop Obama quickly before the Dem Convention and then the Hillary Machine will crank up.

So. Where's Bill? He's got a campaign for co president to run! Watch for the deus ex machina for Hillary. I just...I just feel it. Don't you? Kinda? Maybe?

This is a woman who runs on power and her engines are revved up. She's got something up her pantsuit leg.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house
I see Republican men are still stumbling around wondering what to do. They'll go and bomb something, I'm sure, which always works. They gotta be careful as to the timing. Of course the big problem is McCain's got no pals. So they've gotta get some boys into position. That's the problem with being a maverick, you don't get to make the big calls when you need them.

After they settle on the who, what, where, when, they pick the nominee and if McCain lives long enough...

They'll have a drink, cigar and talk about women and then golf, compare their drivers, then go home to the wifie. Just like they did fifty years ago...and fifty years before that.

That's called power and machismo. When asked why they do it every time, they answer the same way: "Because we can." They said "yes we can" lots earlier than old Barry. And they're much better at it.

We'll see if either of them needs Viagra. I don't know who'll win this man contest. Hillary or the guys with the army. Meanwhile, Barack is kind of weak, if you know what I mean.

*sigh*

Thanks for the read.

High Noon-Thirty in Washington (the Clintons are always late).

This is theater or rather a movie, Bill's favorite, I'm told.

This is made for America's need for drama.

I still don't believe she'll drop out even if she says so. She's in. Till the last dog is dead. Her presidency is coming in a few years in any case.

Later...

She's graduated from politician to statesperson. Her speech today was stupendous and full of emotion and exhortation to the faithful.

Get the presses ready, Boys.

Thanks for the read.

McCain can choose anyone he wants for VP--as long as she's black ...

plays a mean, almost naughty Warsaw Concerto...

loves pro football as much as I do...

and can take Obama to the cleaners and back on foreign policy.

Oh my goodness, could you contain yourselves?

I have nothing more to say other than exhort the Republican males to look at the Obama juggernaut before them.

This is like it was in the JFK-crazy 60s. If they ignore it they do so into oblivion.

And then there's Hillary comin' round the mountain when she comes. The fat lady has yet to sing, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the read.

Obama's 3/5ths of a man? Is that what the Florida and Michigan Primary voter count turned into?

What an embarrassing development for a bunch called The Democratic Party at a time when they're about to either nominate a woman named Hillary Clinton or a black man named Barack Obama.

Thanks for the read.

Hey, Dems! Nice display of pseudo fascism at the Florida-Michigan DNC meeting.

Nevermind that most of you ignored the votes of a couple of million people. They didn't sign on to your stupid rules.

Your "unity" is on review, along with your organization. You're beginning to look more like a group that is not as happy as the old Democratic Party, the inclusive, more accepting one.

Let's count the ones you've disenfranchised in your party so far in this primary:

1. The 2.5 million in Michigan and Florida;
2. The many huge numbers of white women voters in the swing states;
   
3. The blue collar swing state white voters; and
   
4. The rural swing state white voters.
   

Those are millions. Those are an awful lot of people that Mrs. Clinton says is a popular majority.

What is the party thinking?

Poor Democrats. Now that Obama's black liberation consciousness-raising pastors are popping up again, their party leader has got another fire to put out. What's next? An emir from Indonesia, for Allah's sake? No. I can't take it! When can he start establishing himself?

If it isn't a pastor it's the bitter remark reminding people he's a such snob. If it isn't an angry old white woman like Ferraro whom he dissed because she said something unacceptable to the fascist new party leaders--wow, is she miffed--it's another flareup from someone like an old radical hippie couple like Bill Ayres and Bernadette Dohrn for cripes sake. I mean, no one hangs out with them. Try to explain that to the guys at the VFW Hall who lost a leg in Nam.

All of this reminds folks of Obama's rather radically eclectic and mysterious connections. That's not all it does. It causes folks to wonder, one more time, what's up with this guy? Now people are starting to know Obama. Hillary and I have known him for ages now, by the way.

Even Oprah's gone off the deep end getting herself into some New Age weird religion thing and at the same time endorsed Obama. She lost some 2 or 3 million viewers immediately. Again, a hint at a decline in both images...

After initial or second impressions, independent people start thinking critically. Enough "bad" "negative" Obama news might be enough one day that in November, old guy with a young running mate might look pretty darn good to them. The drum beat...

It just a matter of time before voters hear that Obama helped Father Phleger get $300 thousand for his Peace Center from the government. They were buds back when Obama was an organizer in South Chicago--there's that nervous word again--which recalls words like union, left wing, socialist.

But the Democrats are stuck with Obama because they're all successful lawyers and acting like Republicans and suddenly the rules rule in a party that is not very rulable. All at once they hear no evil, see no evil in their their fantasy political club.

Personally, I can't imagine squandering Dr. King's dream on the likes of Obama.

The problem is no self-respecting Dem can live with any of this once they get their blinders off. I agree with Harold Ickes who said they simply don't know what they're doing. They must be out of their minds. Some worm has entered their brains. They are 30 people who are speaking for 2-1/2 million people about the destiny of a popular vote in a primary...a hugely different application than a national electoral vote.

Poor Harold, hung over from a late night arguing with these intractable pols who could not, would not give up the ghost and do the right democratic thing by seating all delegates. Does it seem to anyone strange they would seat half, but not all? What an odd group of people these Democrats are.

(smirk)

I don't know what the Democrats will do since they have before them an unelectable candidate in Obama. Fortunately, they do have a choice, a nuclear option in the Super Delegates.

I do know what Hillary's going to do, however. She'll see everyone in Denver...just like I said months ago. I wonder if she'll go to Disneyland first.

You gotta love her!

We'll see if the Republican male leadership will respond to Items 1 through 4 above. Don't hold your breath; they are Republican white males after all.

Thanks for the read.

RECOUNT: Just another attack on the GOP (and a personal one on Katherine Harris) So what else is new?

Oh well, no one said the entertainment elite was ever fair or even historically correct. People have figured that out by now.

Contrary to what the producers and actors say in the movie, Recount which premiered last night on HBO, and will be repeated today, the only votes not counted in Florida were those in the panhandle which seemed to trend toward George Bush. Until tonight's viewing it was my understanding that the military votes were not counted and they had been dated correctly and certified. I think that is a fact worth rechecking.

Recount is a big production--another election year pro democrat production. This is what Hollywood does every four years or so. You might like it.

Great big characters and self important dialogue complete with Al Gore's I-actually-was-raised- in-a-Washington-hotel-not-in-Tennessee voice, in addition to stereotypes about pragmatic and GD Republican white men, coldblooded like a supersizeme Jim Baker played by Tom Wilkinson and others probably made the veteran producer Sidney Pollock feel he was keeping the piece balanced against his leftie coproducers Jay Roach and Kevin Spacey. It didn't work for me, never does because I've watched these people for too many years. But for those who don't read or follow the facts, the appearance of balance comes off nicely for the most part.

Offhanded profundity after profundity about the American democratic process from staff underlings pepper each scene in the campaign war rooms. Important speeches are delivered by good old fashioned liberal actors like Laura Dern, Kevin Spacey, Ed Begley Jr. Familiar others you'll recognize as this thing slouches to its utter and ignominious end.

Look for the good casting in lookalike characters--Clarence Thomas, Ginsberg, Scalia--on the Supreme Court and in more than a couple of other scenes throughout.

If you're a Dem, you'll appreciate, no, you'll dig the underdog, college days Democrat realpolitik feel of it. You might even feel kind of young again. However, the storyline is annoying if you take it too seriously or from a historical POV, although it has more energy and modernity to it than All the President's Men. For one thing, it's HD. It's typical Spacey, warts and all.

I think the movie fails completely and finally when Dern's portrayal of Katherine Harris becomes gratuitously evil and the writer obviously holds her responsible for Gore's loss. It is here that the entire story falls apart.

Harris was not the problem in Florida. The Dems would love for everyone to believe that. There were hundreds of issues at play in Florida. Regardless, the need for the writer to take this final plot turn removes any chance this script had to redeem itself, although it was on life support up to this point, from becoming 100% pure Democrat propaganda.

I'm not surprised that the writer got away with this and it is kind of funny. However. This was awful, just awful, in its lack of honesty. After the denouement--Katherine did it--we're left with a crestfallen, but philosophical Spacey talking to Al Gore on the phone, about never giving up or some such nonsense.

Other than that, I sort of enjoyed it; except I'm getting tired of being beat up on for being a Republican. I wish these guys would pull back some. Can I help it if the old white guys don't have any imagination and can't put a decent movie together?

If I wanted to and had the money I believe even I, little ole me, could put a little screenplay together, maybe another high falutin script about the exact same shenanigans that are pulled on a daily basis in the very area from which the current candidate of their party comes: the shining south side of the city of Chicago. I'd be very careful if I were these high-talking Democrats.

Yes. So pure. So clean. So high minded. Uh huh. Pretty personal stuff when it comes to Harris, high minded Democrats.

Who the hell do they think they're kidding?

Thanks for the read.

Media punishes Hillary for RFK gaffe; shows clear bias for Obama

They're punishing Mrs. Clinton for her factual and tactless remark about RFK which has brought the politically incorrect topics to about eight now, hasn't it, in the Democratic presidential campaign?

1. Barack Obama's background.
2. Jeremiah Wright.
3. Bill Ayres.
4. Surrender comments in Iraq he considers off limits.
5. Michelle Obama's officially not to dissed.
6. Barack Obama's grandmother.
7. The bitter and gun comments.
8. RFK assassination.

I'll keep a running tab of things we Americans cannot talk about in this land of the free, home of the brave.

For Pete's sake, and with due respect, let's move on.
Hillary's acknowledged it was tactless. What a bunch of dweebs. No wonder the immature media types can't function past their own navels.

I suggest this is why we do not enjoy meaningful and positive political discourse in this country. The playing upon people's emotions for political gain and money is the reason. This is a fairly new phenomenon in America. I say fairly new because the Hearsts and yellow journalists were always on the periphery.

Alas. The Fourth Estate has been bought. It's now just a matter of who is the highest bidder and if his politics happens to be on the side of freedom. There are just a few players, you know. Anyway, pray to God whoever wins this communications war is on the side of your freedom because that is the only thing that stands between us and tyranny.

So, now that's Hillary's screwed up with the RFK--in the old days, that wouldn't have got out of the newsroom until after her administration--she's in their crosshairs. I'm just amazed at the hysteria this morning at the mere mention of a name and an act that occurred how many years ago in a historic context? Forty. Forty years ago!

Not gods--not even demis
Amazing that the children of the people who were most affected by the Kennedy assassination could hang on to the Kennedy mythology so long. I told ya it would be wall-to-wall, somehow, one way or the other, didn't I, when the Ted Kennedy news hit last week?

I just don't want to go through this whole lie again with my country about the sacrifice and godliness of the Kennedys. Please. No more needles in my dilated irises at midday.

I've been aware of the Kennedys and their aura since I heard about them when I was a kid in 1958 while I was watching the Democratic Convention. I saw Jack Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy and thought she was nifty and wished I looked like her. I dressed like her. That was about it. As far as the rest of them. Eh.

This is who the Kennedys are. They're people who wear really nice clothes and have lots and lots of money that their families made for them so they could wear those nice clothes, go to cool schools and look great so you could act like an idiot and go ooh and ah over them. After so much oohing and ahhing, they knew they would become powerful and great in the eyes of men.

Here's who they really are. Just like every other family who choose to do what they do and there are many in this country: They are politicians who signed up to be public servants...not gods. Just people. Not gods. No different than a guy who gives his life on the front lines of a war in Iraq. Not gods. Yes, he did give his life. But so did that guy in Iraq, remember? No different than a man who serves in a prisoner of war camp for 5 or so years and gets his bones broken. Not gods. They know what happens when they become public servants, that they may get killed because they're not gods.

I hate to seem provincial, but it also bothers me that none of the Kennedys have ever worked an honest day in their lives. They never had to. Philosophically, theoretically, practically, really. Even in the back of their minds, if they eschewed every penny, and took an oath of poverty, they knew they could get it back at any time because money was always, always there. In that sense, it is the closest thing to God that the Kennedys get.

That may mean nothing to a lot of you. But to me, it means a whole bunch. Not everything, but a lot. Unless a person knows what it means to work for a living and to care for other people, I can't imagine he can know what life's really about. I didn't get it till I had such an experience of the total responsibility of feeding my family by myself--alone. It's a view that would take a long, slow argument to talk me out of considering the pain I suffered in finally understanding and finding a decent role of breadwinner. It changed my world view.

Yes, Robert Kennedy was a brave warrior and we grieve for the loss of him (I cried like a baby at both assassinations) and the many other brave warriors who have given their lives for America on Iwo Jima, Omaha Beach.

I just can't help but think. Isn't singling RFK out somehow wrong and using his memory to inflate Mr. Obama's importance in this campaign hypocritical? What about the process?

I'm also wondering if it is also erroneous to tiptoe around a historical issue and if Senator Kennedy would approve of such pussyfooting considering that peppery nature of his!

Sorry to bring everyone back down to earth.

Get ready, kids, this is probably going to be a maudlin, Kennedy summer--kind of like the one I had in 1968. I'm not looking forward to it. In fact, a condo on Coronado is looking sweeter every day. It's something to work harder for. I'll have to with the new taxes I'll have to pay.

(sigh)

Thanks for the read.

Barack says Iran's just a tiny country. So was Germany; just ask Einstein.

One of the reasons FDR was so hot to trot on The Manhattan Project was because of the strategic interests of this tiny country--Germany--having a nuclear bomb. Einstein sent the famous letter that alerted F. Roosevelt of the urgency of an atomic bomb project to respond to the fascism that Adolf Hitler offered Europe, and that this little faction of Nazis would find a way to rule to world with their own bomb.

Amazingly we face almost exactly the same scenario in the middle east while we again sit our kids down and answer questions like, "But, why do we have to actually hurt them...kill them, Daddy? Isn't that? Well...Jennie and all her friends says it's mean."

Obama and his followers are factually wrong and philosophically wrong. He's wrong, wrong, wrong. He knows nothing of life and nothing of the world. More importantly he has the wrong information. They're also weak.

Look at the correlation I've just placed before you and think. Things and people don't change.

Also, Cindy McCain: release all your tax returns immediately. Gotta do it, girl.

Thanks for the read.

I wrote this email to my subscribers today along with the above blog.

Subject: I had lunch at the Hotel del Coronado today

They say there's a ghost there, you know. I wonder. I certainly wouldn't be surprised.

Coronado Island is a turtle's throw off San Diego available via the famous Coronado Bridge. I had their fabulous cioppino while I watched the hotel guests ooh and aah over our gorgeous weather out here in sunny CA. We are blessed. Every time I'm there I feel almost like a tourist because when the tab comes I've spent as much as being on vacation.

At the table next to me were affluent Czechs and Russians also spending money like crazy. I had to laugh to myself that I would be seated next to a bunch who remind me of rather lugubrious time in my life when my ex-husband of three months, the Czech who married me for US citizenship (I didn't know).

It was during that courtship and strange marriage that he embellished our relationship with the horrors of communism--his father was a party leader. I also found out about how Eastern Europeans have a tendency to get anti Semitic after the fourth Vodka, in the morning.

Because of their high status, my hubby's family had a chauffeur and a phone, and a four room apartment, a pride over which this American couldn't quite show enough appreciation in his opinion. However, considering the basis of our union I don't think a little extra effort would've made any difference. I can say my heart overflowed when I first viewed the see-through coffin lid in his father's funeral pics. Top notch.

Absolutely top notch. I had to admit I'd NEVER seen something like that in my great American family. WE just went for average walnut, oak if we wanted to put on airs.

I couldn't top this one. That's for sure. No sir. I hope that I had finally shown enough respect for his Slovakian roots. Indeed. I could not top an ivory acrylic coffin lid that very closely resembled a canopy cover that was probably cut down from some fab 50s OC design manufactured at by one of our guys out here in sunny CA. It was just too ironic.

My ex had run off to Sweden in the 70s to a Beatles concert, then off to Canada and never returned. Then, lucky me, it was off to Orange County and the rest was...I guess we can say it was his bad. If it hadn't been for the inconvenience and the notching part, I suppose I could just forget it. But there is that notching part that everyone seems to have to do. "How many is this now, Honey?" This question usually came from my mother's most competitive sister. The one my mother hated.

Anyway. He never thought he'd see his mother and sister again.

Now, I was sitting next to an entire group of rich children of communists.With their parents, and my ex husband's parents, they didn't stand a chance. They wouldn't be having lunch here. They'd be in a one or two bedroom apartment working for the state.

Reagan saved their lives. I knew that as sure as I was sitting there because of what I heard happened there in each of their daily routines and lives under communist rule. I'm so, so happy for those eight people and their children. They were having the time of their lives.

I shake my head. I have to ask myself a lot of questions about what if? What if we hadn't listened? It's so tempting when you're tired.

So, then on the way home, I tuned into Huge Hewitt and thought more about appeasement. . We just can't give in to weakness.

It's about where Iran is now (strategically)...now. So I wrote this. Hoping I could still change a few minds.

www.Planetcalifornia2008.blogspot.com

Thanks for your support and pass it on if you like it, dump it if you don't.

Wall to wall coverage for Kennedy seizure? Why?

Please, networks, please don't do this to us again. Please. Don't play into the Democrat's PR machine again.

Now you want to expand the mythology into the next generation of Democrats somehow by memorializing him by tying him into a deliverance theme with Barack Obama. Very smart. Good timing.

Oh, Dems, the visit from John Kerry to the hospital? Nice touch. Phony. But a nice touch. They love that stuff in Massachusetts.

He's not my senator. Twenty-four hours of it?
I'm in California. I really don't care what's going on with a senator from Massachusetts. Really. I don't. Other than a small paragraph or two about his progress, nothing else is required. I believe there are many, many others who agree with me.

We Americans put up with the media's Hollywood-style, infantile aggrandizement of the Kennedy clan for decades starting in the late 50s and into 60s and 70s while the gaga press at the three networks acted like fan boys at a film festival. Hard news became a byproduct of their style news.

So are today's networks going to pull the same thing again with another of the Democrat's bought and sold images? Has anything changed? Probably not. Even though newsrooms are run by a whole different group of people, they still consider themselves way left of center politically, if not further to the left.

However, even Fox News felt compelled to pull in their big guns to do the "I remember him when" routine with Brit Hume, likely as a result of competition. I wonder who's listening. I couldn't believe someone actually brought out the ancient Ted Sorensen with his ancient lies. God, I thought these myths were finally, blessedly buried and gone. No such luck. It's as if we all have to go to our friend's grandfather's parlor and listen to the same tired lies again. You know they're lies, but you'll do anything to get that homemade ice cream at their summer picnics.

I'd rather put needles in the pinpoint of my irises at noon than to listen to Ted Sorensen lie to me--again--even now that I'm 63. Good God. Is there no rest for people like me? I thought the man had passed away years ago. I thought that when I confessed all my sins I wouldn't have to sit through this again and again...oh well.

Be the Greatest Kennedy, Ted
I've been in the midst of publicly paying my dues for my monumental wrongs and have been for the past ten years with no end in sight. By that I'm saying there are new revelations of my having missed the mark every day. Major ones.

Maybe this is where you are, Senator. I hope it is. I don't need to tell you that life's tough; life is earnest, so you'd best get cracking because it doesn't look like you've got much time. I'm a lot younger than you, but I've lived as hard as you, although I don't think I've killed anyone. Thank God for that. Considering how much I drank at one time I sure could have.

Oh, and you networks? Cover this--the truth about Mary Jo Kopechne, why dontcha? Go back to being the Fourth Estate. Stop being the Kennedy lapdogs. Find out about the mythology behind Obama. Do your jobs. The rest is just politics.

I guess I expect too much.

Thanks for the read.

P.S. Get well, Senator Kennedy and God bless you. Really.

Barack over reacts to Bush appeasement sentence in Israel speech.

Senator Obama: you've done exactly what your opponents thought you would do. You've over reacted and turned inside out over a statement that should have been left alone. Why? Because you're an amateur who belongs in the White House in Haiti.

Are you saying you don't agree with the president?

Are you saying you agree with the president?

What is your problem with the statement exactly?

Why are you so upset?

Did President Bush call you a name?

While we're on this subject of qualifications, since you're showing your lack of them, did you ever attend an international relations course?

My husband wants to know if you've ever watched a TV Western.

Were you ever taught in a practical way how to handle these set ups? This was a set up, you know, Barack. You bit, big time.

Why are you trying to frame this as your foreign policy? Aren't you and your people more organized than this? Didn't you want to roll out something a little more comprehensive?

You're going to fail because suddenly you've got Israel as your fulcrum. Wow! How'd that happen?! You didn't want that, did you? Now you've got a problem. Now what? How had you planned to defend Israel from Iran, those folks you plan to talk to, those who consider them corpses, dogs, pigs, human excrement?

That's the trash talk you choose to ignore; in addition you consciously choose to ignore that our soldiers are being killed by them with their insurgents and munitions. That doesn't seem to bother you at all, does it? That reeks that you would be so open about that. You can consider meeting with these people and talk, while our soldiers get killed by their rockets.

Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk your brains out, kid. As Senator Clinton mentioned, "I think he gave a speech once."

Why, Senator Obama, the Iranian regime you're so anxious to have a cigarette with and appease -- I don't know what else to call it--what are you going to use to appease them with other than the State of Israel--may even pull a latter day Khomeini and Iranian student kinda move and keep you there your entire presidency! Better watch it.

Stranger things have happened. Just ask Ahmadinejad. He was one of the captors at the Tehran Embassy, after all when they kept our people for, what, 400 plus days while Jimmy Carter stewed? Good Christian that he is, the great man predictably let all those folks sit.

Moreover, you'd best choose a hawkish Veep. I advise you to take along some good reading--may I recommend treatises on state crafting and war and peace keeping?

But enough of this fun and back to reality, this simply looks as if you've reached for this event to demonstrate that your new best friend is really Israel (covering your old statements) by distracting what you said about talking directly to Iran and now attacking the president.

It is an opportunistic attempt to show people how strong you are. You have failed because you have shown yourself to be weaker and reactive. You should have waited.

You and yours are immature, ego driven and disorganized.

You started this discussion by stating that you would have direct, unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad immediately.The number one problem is we don't negotiate from weakness. If you're going to president, I can't imagine you don't know that and acknowledge the reality of power and keeping power. Who's telling you otherwise? George McGovern? What losers are advising you? Even the bosses in Chicago know that.

The other problem is that you are using false facts to back you up. You seem impatient, not willing to do the work and research. Lazy. More likely, you and your friends are unwilling to listen to truth if you don't like the sounds of it.

The third problem is you're clueless about diplomacy and how things work in the bad world or you're lying to your supporters and you're just a damned politician like the rest of em. The south side of Chicago is different that the Middle East. You're not a statesman.

That shows you are provincial, not ready for prime time.

By the way, we are in multilateral talks with North Korea for one reason only. We refused to talk directly with NK directly six years ago. Okay? Madeline Albright and Kim Jong Il danced on a stage in the 90s while the North Koreans happily thumbed their noses and built their nuke capabilities anyway during "talks." It indeed set in motion the North Korean nuclear program ten to fifteen years sooner than it should've been. It was a monumental failure in judgment on William Clinton's part.

You Obamas need to get this right before you use it. That's why the NKs are at the table. Until the other nations pulled the NKs to the table, did the US agree to participate. Got it? Your supporters and surrogates are out there flapping their cheeks about all kinds of foreign policy stands about which they are stupid--and wrong and ignorant, which is worse. There also incorrect about other historical facts using Nixon's, Reagan's and Ike's names in vain, which is funny because all of these men were hawks and anti leftists of the first degree. They'd have Obama in parody by now.

Anyway, Barack, you don't just pick up a book and learn this stuff by reading it...you live it, you learn it, you hear it and you watch it. For years and years. Then you listen to people who have done just that and have participated successfully in the process.

Then there's that darned arrogance of yours again.

We negotiate from strength in the United States as a matter of policy and to suddenly stop because of some freak of nature election which somehow allows fate to drop an attractive, ambitious, angry but deeply pitted Chicago revolutionary and his ungrateful, equally angry wife and thugs into the seat of world power in the White House would probably change our national landscape so dramatically that none of us will ever be the same.

"And this is why, my darling child, God and Democrats invented Super Delegates." And free will.

Thanks for the read.

Clarified Change we can believe in just arrived at 11:17 am PDT from the horses's mouth: Obama will meet with anyone and demand that all the things he demands must be met and we will then go from there.

Obama to hard working whites: It's because I'm black, isn't it?

First
Although officially the Obama camp has not used race as an official reason for his dramatic recent losses most of his unofficial people, especially black supporters are saying otherwise. As the national numbers accumulate, it is evident that Mr. Obama has a problem with electability. However, his supporters will misinterpret the results. They will jump to the conclusion that these are mostly racist votes and events will develop from there.

They would be wrong to jump that shark
No, Barack. It's not because you're black. It's because you and Michelle come off as insufferably rude and arrogant and people don't seem to like either of you. Maybe if they liked one of you...but both of you? What's up with that?

People don't like your staff or your surrogates either. They remind them of people who live in San Francisco and drink coffee with funny things in it. They don't like people who come into their towns and ask where the closest Starbucks is and then crack on them about not having one and then huff off in a rented car that costs more than they make in a year. It hurts their sense of self worth. They don't like how it makes them feel about their towns and where they live.

And naturally, it is that arrogance, by definition that keeps all of you from acknowledging this and so you reinforce each other's behavior.

Darn that vicious circle. It happens in all YOUNG political circles. That is one of the reasons we can't let you run the country.

Evita Mode
I watched coverage last evening as Hillary Clinton moved from playing the hungry lioness in jungle green to regal Evita in yummy watermelon when she happily and gracefully accepted what she fought so hard for--the prize of West Virginia in a place that looked like a union hall--a people's place where you get a coffee with cream and sugar--Equal if they got it.

Call it what you want, Barack. Old politics, whatever. She stooped down, did it and she did it well. She didn't curl up her nose, Barack. Obviously, she is happy to have West Virginia's people behind her today and she'll never forget them.

Bill didn't. And they didn't forget Bill.

They can't handle the truth
Barack Obama's surrogates sat at the desks of their interviewers steaming, pointing out that these people and their votes didn't count for much--Obama would make up for it in other "more important" states--(good start) that people just don't understand the new math, new maps, on and on.

One of the younger ones on CNN (Tanya Someone who supports Obama and the woman who represents Huffington's Blog) even laughed out loud at Lannie Davis when he mentioned the George McGovern debacle the Democrats had experienced in the 70s. Patting him on the head?

Neither of those young women were around at the time. I was, of course. But then, I was at the Spanish Inquisition. The Huffington editor was younger than my oldest work suit and Tanya was inconceivable. Ed Schulz, someone nobody's ever, ever heard of until two months ago when CNN ran a want ad, let out a chortle or two. Lannie did what everyone does with twits--gave up.

Caught up in the moment and the zeal gets them crazy. That's why the Democrats invented Super Delegates: because of people like them. Democrats treat people like children, remember.

Maybe they need to try tough love next time.

Just the facts
Let's get the facts straight. Out of the 41% difference, approximately one of every five of those votes was considered an outright racist, anti-black vote. That leaves a huge number of people who might have voted for Mr. Obama had he been a nice guy or if Hillary hadn't been around. Swing.

Kentucky, a Dem state, will be another blowout for Hillary. She'll not take it for granted out of respect for the people of Kentucky. But I betcha Obama won't even try, just like he didn't in the other swing states. That tells you what he really thinks of people. Psychologically that translates, especially post West Virginia.

Mrs. Clinton may not think very much of people either deep down, but she's learned how to do it right and show up anyway. If you're president, you gotta do it right and show up anyway.

Mrs. Clinton's speech last night to the Super Delegates was an astounding presentation of leadership. If the Super Delegates fail to acknowledge the reality of her continuing success as well as her outstanding abilities that far outweigh any individual on the world stage in the Democratic Party, then one can only conclude the Democratic Party has become a permanent party of fools.

It's the personality, Stupid
Put up person of color people truly relate to and we'd see a stampede of white working class folks to the polls to vote for him/her--but don't go pulling the race card on people. Hard working Americans of all colors don't like that.

Obama talks about post race, but his problem is he's gone posted onto the moon. Most American's aren't sophisticates. We relate to guys like Bill Cosby, Dennis Haysbert, Colin Powell not hoity toity guys with wives who'd like to tear ours heads off and talk down to us.

While we're at it, there are a few other things he or she probably should have: a portfolio of longer than three years in public service; a background that denotes participation in mainstream America and a true demonstration of high regard for America and her institutions. That's not too much to ask.

We've got on both sides of the political fence hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand of young men and women who are capable of becoming president. Why would the Democrats choose this poseur? I'll be glad when we solve that mystery.

Too bad. Once again, because of style and wanting to sell us something that's not there, the Democrats blew it.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Texas
As Senator Clinton clicked these states off last night in her speech, the goose flesh on my arms stood straight up and I realized this woman is headed not just for the nomination but probably for the White House if we Republicans don't get started on our own message.

Thanks for the read.

Mission accomplished, Barack? Hill sniffs blood in WV.

They all know that something is about to happen. Super Delegates still sit on their hands

Feinstein knows something's up. Understanding the stakes, the Senator had coffee with the Hillster to determine if there's an October surprise, which she prays to God there is come May or June because she knows darn well Obama hasn't got a prayer in November and she doesn't want to do this the hard way.

God knows Dianne would rather be home with her puppies up listening to Chris Matthews get all happy and excited about patriotic liberals like JFK and guys like that. How she hates this dissension. All she wants to do sit down and be still for a while. These people. Where is Hillary, anyway?

The drumbeat against Obama's inevitability will begin soon. Small things. Everyone will run for cover then when the surprise hits, everyone will say, "Gee, who knew?"

I love politics. They're so real.

Why should Hillary Clinton drop out?
But the rank and file Dems who support Obama, the ones who don't know any better and aren't in the loop want Hillary to quit. There are still five or six states left and two others that won't be counted! If I were a Florida or Michigan Democrat I believe I'd find a way to sue.

Isn't this just typical of Democrats? They want her to leave the fight before it's even over. Sound familiar? Put their donkey logo next to the word "surrender" in the dictionary. Eee aww.

Like if they don't get their man in right now, they'll miss their chance. Why don't they let this race play out?

What has driven this (ahem) elephant-in-the-room mentality? I've watched most networks, including the public ones and they all seem to shy away from race and whisper it as if it's a dirty word...until just lately. It's really neurotic. For such open and liberal minded folks, they sure are reticent and shy, especially the usual suspects at MSNBC. CNN has been right out there, however. Fox is stepping up a bit, little by little.

The R word
If Obama is the person he claims to be this is an ideal time to talk openly about race--not after he's in the White House, after he's said for nearly two years he's never even given reparations and special empowerment to blacks a thought, or he never saw Reverend Wright in his life and Bill Ayres is a Chicago Bulls basketball player, isn't he, and then pull some big switcheroo with a Democratic controlled congress? Quick and dirty, but it would take care of a lot of the problems the Democrats think they have.

Bring up the truth about America and slavery again. That's what your new politics should be about. Why do just half truths? Let's get into the whole, dirty business. How can we get past something if we don't talk about it? Don't they tell us we have to recognize our problems to fix them?

Well, I don't see a whole lot of white guys running around patting black guys on the back saying, "God, I'm just real sorry what my kin did to you back 150 years ago..." or "...that Jim Crow thing sucked...what can I do as a white man to help you through it?"

Nor do I see black guys responding to the white guy by saying "Man. You know, you white folks sure were wrong, but sh+t happens. Hey, Man. I forgive ya."

That's the race talk we could be having, I suppose, backed up with lots of money.

The real R word? Reality.
Obama cannot win the national election. He is unelectable. Why? Because no one knows who he is. It's not like he's Condi Rice, Vernon Jordan, Colin Powell. What America will find out by November is he's a two-bit, Richard M. Daley Chicago Machine-spawned hack run by a bunch of hard ass pols. Once we do get to know this "organizer' (I've never known anything good that comes out of the word "organizer"), we'll see how far left this guy really is.

America is not a socialist country--we don't swing left; we swing center. Everyone is kidding everyone else because of the race issue. Perhaps it's the Bradley Effect compounded with other issues that we're not familiar with yet. This is all new.

Of course, it needn't to have been this way if we all just acted like Americans instead of hypenated people.

That was last week
Today is election day in West Virginia. The Obama people have had their week in the hard working white communities of the coal producing hoots and hollers of the state that gave us Senator Robert Byrd, the ex-KKK member, the so called "Conscience of the Senate."

A reported response to phone polling was "Hang the darkey from the closest tree," when asked what the caller thought of Senator Obama. Numerous such answers were said to trouble the out-of-town professionals who were part of the Obama campaign, according to a NY Times article this morning (find it on Drudge).

I feel compelled to add, however, that these hard working white West Virginian Democrats have shown tremendous social growth when a Hokey can now bring himself to refer to his African-American neighbor in the more politically correct form of "darkey."

This election is the result of a long, long laboratory experiment gone bad.
I've said and have written that the Democrats are reaping what they've sown for the past forty or fifty years in their insistence upon grouping and regrouping and subdividing of human beings in every aspect of life. Now they have one faction against a faction, sub against sub, who can no longer even communicate with basic human language: words that are simple and used in context like white, black, hard working. It's seems awfully hard to me.

Democrats. Look at yourselves. You can't even talk to each other without fear of offending one another. That's not real. And that's what you've always said you wanted. Your kids must be confused.

Thanks for the read.

You're against progress if you ask about my background, according to Obama

Obama lets Americans know that to ask questions about his past is standing in the way of America's progress and he won't put up with it. He issued this warning to his "opposition," whoever we might be. Fill in the blank; it might be the press, the Clintons, the Republicans, the man on the street after Obama's in office? After all, this is the new politics.

Will Barack then go deaf and mute if we can't ask about him? He might as well because so far he has yet to talk about any action, detailed items on his expansive, change-we-can-believe-in agenda we've been hearing so much about for fifteen months. Nor have we heard about sources of revenue for those long terms programs.

Deny. Distort. Distract. Attack.
Obama's ridiculous speech last night in North Carolina put all of us on notice that if we attempt to bring up any unpleasantries about his associations, e.g., Wright, Ayres, it is simply politics of association and destruction. And he's mad as hell and won't put up with it anymore.

Let me see. Whose play book did this oft used campaign tactic come out off? It's an old Leftie ploy used by Democrats for years. The Clintons used it hundreds of times.

Well, I've now finished polishing my opinion of Obama
I gave it three months.

In my opinion he's a Jimmy Carter-style disaster, but worse. I have yet to hear him make one substantive position which doesn't sound like a redo of the last forty years window dressed in green and 21st century style protectionism.

I printed and reviewed a few foreign policy opinions from his website which are of course neophyte, suicidal positions. I can't think of anything worse than an Obama foreign policy or lack of.

I already know that his voting record is pretty far south of Hillary's on the Liberal Meter, so I don't have to ask about abortion and judges. What else is there?

I've already stated he doesn't take national security seriously enough for me to even consider him as a candidate.

No, it's more than his policy positions, which should be enough for me not to vote for him---not to mention the fact I'm a Republican. More importantly, it's how he takes criticism. In fact, his whole campaign staff simply cannot take any criticism from anyone. Yet they claim to appeal to all.

It's his smugness and arrogance that says to the rest of America who doesn't see things their way, his way, Michelle's way, "Now, finally, you don't matter. How's that feel?"

It feels an awful lot like payback, Barack.

BTW, Barack, that kind of "don't ask don't tell" treatment you seem to require from everyone who speaks to you is relatively new in our Fourth Estate and our free and open society. Thank God some of America's journalists are still doing their jobs.

I don't like this man and I don't like the gang behind him. Neither does Hillary.

Thanks for the read.

Hillary: Watch her roar!

My lion metaphor may take her all the way to the nomination.

Hillary's hair's been recently tipped into a subtle blond mane. In Indy tonight, she's wearing clothes that suggests she's on the hunt: a jungle green pant suit, a scarf wrapped around her neck to look like a lioness's ruff. Green and gold, black and brown. A little red. Those are her power colors these days. Her coloring fits the role.

Meanwhile, Bill even used my exhortation to "watch her roar" as he continues to stump to get the old girl what he promised her so many years ago.

Thanks for the read.

Obama and Wright: why should America waste precious emotional energy on the latest civil rights flim flam men?

These two are not doing our nation any good. Some in the black community who trusted Senator Obama may not think too much of him this evening when they wrestle with his excuse-ridden, day late dollar short "explanation" for not responding to the Rev's traveling tent show over the weekend. Wright must have a Pope Benedict Complex.

Others might be shrugging their shoulders and some are thinking the media's out to get the black man and puffing up and getting angry. Who knows? We've never been this close before. That's why I was so insistent we did this "first black person for president" thing right. See what happens when you have phonies?

I wish the Obama/Wright language would not include things like "It's personal--Rev. Wright did this to me" in so many words and "Reverend Wright did this to my campaign." Sounds like a black man grudge. I don't think it plays well with the rest of the country and turns off voters to the point that they don't want the experience to happen again soon.

He's not ready for the job
I think Obama is a phony.

From the beginning I've thought he's been groomed by a bunch of behind-the-scenes people who thought he'd be the one no matter what. Some of the older, more impatient and blacker members of this bunch insisted that regardless of his problems he be sent to the front of the line despite promises made to Hillary and Bill during their first presidency. I knew he was inauthentic (not in their eyes). I've been writing about it for weeks.

Here's why I think people should not believe Obama
If Obama has not heard about Reverend Wright's sermons after having served 20 years in that congregation, then two things are going on:

1. He is not an active member of that congregation, active meaning attending the church more than two times a week in a service function, not including worship and choir. Anyone who has served in any church can tell you that if the pastor had said the U.S. Government started AIDS in his sermon, it would get talked about over Wednesday's potluck supper. It's just ridiculous to be asked to believe that he didn't know about this. Absolutely ridiculous.

2. He heard the sermons. How could he not? Barack is making a terrible mistake again in not admitting his first mistake then showing he still has lousy judgment and doesn't want people to know it.

I had lousy judgment and made lousy calls when I was a young person; I didn't want people to know it, but they do anyway. Thus, I'll never be anything more than a blog writer. Those is the breaks. Lots of better people than I and Barack Obama (he's not the Messiah, folks) have made major life changing life choices that have ruined their chances at becoming something special.

But then, if my entire life goal were to be president of the US, as we hear Obama's was since age twenty or so (some say five) things would have been vastly differently for me. I definitely would have been more careful. You can't hang around people who think the government kills its own people by flying airplanes into skyscrapers in its big cities.

Obama had seven long and calculating years to pull away from Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ when he heard of the infamous sermon about the chickens coming home to roost post 9/11.

Senator Obama, you're the real flim flam man here!
I take it back. Reverend Wright is just doing what he always does: preaching the Word of Jesus Christ as seen through the UCC doctrine, one the Senator and his wife signed onto twenty years ago.

Not only has he denied his church and his preacher, but he's denied his own faith. Let's hope his public denials finally end here. I hate waiting for the fourth crow of the cock like this. This is becoming too painful for everyone. I wouldn't want to be Barack Obama for anything in the world right now. Not because of the election, but for his insides and how he feels about himself. Why do you think Wright's being so hard on him? He teaching this kid a lesson.

BTW, Mrs. Clinton rented the movie, "Hoosiers" earlier this evening to relax for her interview with Bill O'Reilly on Wednesday. I have a hunch they'll get along quite well.

Thanks for the read.

Chris Matthews and his Sunday morning pals

(I feel guilty. I should be in church.)

Joe Klein, the brilliant writer with Time Magazine; Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal Constitution; and Patrick Healy of The NY Times. They were all there. It was a Libs compadre moment. I was probably one of among ten or so to watch it. Here's a summary what they had to say.

"That Clinton woman is taking the presidency away from the black man and she is really a bad person to do it."

Those darn Dems. They just kill me. Like there's something wrong with talking about her opposition's electability.

What's on next?

All politics all morning
Okay. I know NBC's slant. Let's get another take. What do these Dems really want? And most importantly to this Republican, can they get it?

Of course, what I think they really want is nothing more than a total and complete change in our nation's psychology and approach to American life and politics. In other words politics--what we civilized people use to keep from killing each other--is bad and we need to change how we practice them.

I've been listening more than usual to a bunch of rich 40-year olds during this election season. They're the ones who seem to have the Democratic party by the you-know-whats these days--the ones who claim they can and must do politics their way lest the entire world fall into an abyss because of policies of this barbarian, George W. Bush and his predecessors, all of whom are bad inherently.

The "New School" people--the real radicals, the big money--are convinced (as is every generation) if they can just grab hold of the reins of power this time they can somehow use their own inimitable wisdom and superior intelligence and accompanying technology which those who have gone before them did not somehow possess because they, themselves are so very special this time. This time is different. This time. We all say that, by the way. This time.

Let's look at ABC.

Local Yokels
I tuned in just in time to watch a local city councilman, Democrat Richard Alarcon as he was insisting upon a surtax on the 270,000 millionaires in Los Angeles who live in homes over 5000 square feet. "They'll never miss it." That's the kind of change they believed in.

Next up came one of the Latino super delegates for the Dems, about 35 or 40, who announced he regards the use of "negative ads" as one of his guidelines for choosing the nominee. No, seriously. This is a man who is participating in grown-up American politics, no doubt his first time. His other criterion was "electability." I thought it was noteworthy that this imbecile listed it as second on his list and mentioned Mrs. Clinton as having "...stuck her toe into the negative ad category." He read that somewhere and decided to use it--the "toe" part.

I resisted the urge to commit Hari Kari out of frustration that people could actually be so idiotic, that critical thinking abilities could have not been fully developed in this individual, then I realized he was instructed in Los Angeles schools. I've thought of taking up a hobby which doesn't involve handling sharp things.

Next popped up another one of the Dem super delegates who is Nancy Pelosi's forty-year old or so daughter, a rather sandpapery person who evidently was rubbed the wrong way again when asked if her mother and Mrs. Clinton were still friends. Her response, "What a silly question," to a seasoned journalist took her appearance from important to twit in just four little words. Shrugging off a legit question may have seemed kewl to her Marin County buds, but it is simply impatient and stupid to non-California voters. Even Hillary Clinton learned that such a tin ear can get you tossed out on it if you're not careful, almost too late.

During these commercials, I have to include in my Sunday morning's assessment the opinions of the usual suspects, bad pennies and some retreads whom I heard over the week. They must keep turning up because we're living longer, we had no draft and we had great medical care and medicine in the last generation. These overgrown, professional students always wanted revolution and I guess they've settled for their organic one. Slow, ain't it, Dudes? Well, when you're comfortable in places like Santa Monica, the oppressor ain't so bad, especially when you make the kind of money most of them pull down. Shaking things up has been very good to them.

What's on CBS? Good. More Dems.

Between their ears
Rebels are boring as hell because they all look alike, act alike and sound alike. I decided to switch the channel just in time for a new guest on another local LA political Sunday program that no one watches.

Did you know that there are black people and women among the Dems who want to forge some sort of a union? That's a good thing, I guess; however, they're almost beside themselves because they see the Barack-Hillary thing as a competition. I just didn't know there was that big of a schism. Who knew?

That's what Lizabeth Gant-Britton, Ph.D from UCLA said. Dr. Gant-Britton, a beautiful, about 45-year old tiny, blond, light skinned African-American who co-authored a few books about fascinating black women, one of whom was Frederick Douglas's wife, was most candid about her fears that the Dems will blow this whole thing. It was apparent that she had a real investment in this election as she patiently explained this historic opportunity for women and blacks. It seems as if the parties don't trust one other. I'm not sure what Dr. Gant-Britton will do because she's black, white, a woman and has two names. She's really in a bind.

Redux: Moyers and Wright on PBS
I had to watch that again. And again. I had other choices as Rev. Wright had been speaking nonstop to many groups the whole weekend. Who could miss him or Senator Obama?

It was Rev. Wright's appearances that reminded me about something else that's happening in this election. Suddenly, it's okay to be a Christian--if you're a Democrat--and the right kind of Christian, preferably black.

I don't recall ever seeing so many campaign speeches made in so many churches, namely Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party who have campaigned in church after church after church. Democrats keep a straight face and dare to talk any Christian about separation of church and state in our courts and in our schools? Their hypocrisy as they speak of state business behind pulpits is in direct conflict with the rest of what they say on Monday and is the biggest civic joke of the century which no one seems to get but me. Or I've missed the discussion.

Get me my epee, quick.

What's a dreary relativist to do?
There was very little subtlety as the Sunday am Dems spoke openly, resigned and wistfully of the immediacy of what's ahead because of what they've perceived as their party's odd locus--black man and white woman, religious folks and secular progressives, rich moguls and poor streets folk. How could god, if there is one, grace our beloved party with this embarrassment of riches? We want it both ways. We don't want to take a stand, to make a choice.

In the Democrats' world which values non competition, non judgment and complete separation of church and state, ideals they've grown up with their entire lives which is demonstrated by their own vague gray scale of life, their internal ambiguity and personal angst must be killing them as they are presented with these huge contrasts in real life. Watch how they choose. It will be dirty, desperate and ungodly as hell. Let me add here there ain't nothin democratic about any of it.

I hope there's enough Xanax to go around should things not work out--especially in Obama's favor. God knows I'm going to need it just to get through the fall out.

Or maybe I'll just go to church next Sunday and let those other nine viewers watch Matthews.

Thanks for the read.

Bill Clinton: The Old Lion puts Dems on notice

Former President Clinton was off his game back there for a while. It happens to in-between folks, as he calls himself, especially those who have had quad bypass surgeries. But that doesn't mean people go completely dumb or become someone else. Maybe he just wasn't motivated what with being on the sideline and all. Things were looking grim.

Today in PA though he seems re-energized. He's out there as the ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who is out to get his wife what he promised her--a shot at the presidency.

Show me the votes
Watch the super delegates begin to lean toward Clinton after Hillary's Pennsylvania win. I think it will be a big win. Regardless, she won't quit. Things will go south for Obama and he won't last past May, June at the latest.

What Bill Clinton is doing right now is what I've been hoping for. Clinton, the powerful lion, yawning and cleaning his refined paws, has waited for the young and stupid, clumsy, falling-apart and inexperienced cub with too big feet, surrounded by a pride of minor lions to make his fatal mistake. Sure enough, Obama has come close. Oh so close. The next time he'll be mortally injurted when he slips again say, this time into something like a Russian bear's den. The Old Lion has seen plenty of lairs and dens, drank vodka with the head bear himself. He's laughing at Barack now. So am I, frankly.

Now that Bill can show that Obama's not ready for prime time, the Party's scared as hell. Not willing to give up the Party for anyone, the old pols like Kennedy, Dodd, all the Eastern libs, are going to swing back to Hillary, but not too obviously too fast. They don't want to be called racists, after all. Remember, this is about what looks right.

Then, they're going to get rid of Howard Dean, that idiot.

Meanwhile, the first black president, Bill Clinton is owed much more than just a pat on the back by that turncoat bunch of black bosses and self appointed reverends without churches. I predict even many of those chips will fall toward Hill long before the convention in Denver where it gets hotter than Hades that time of year. Hot and high.

By golly, I have to agree with the president on this one. Just who do these ingrates think they are? Why, by just moving his office to Harlem Bill managed to single handedly up their local economy by some $471 million. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren't about to forget what the national black community owes them and they shouldn't. Not by a long shot. Why, it's just good manners, if nothing else, to pay back what someone owes you.

The Obama people should have listened when Bill told them Obama wasn't ready. Even Gerry and Hillary gave Obama an out. He could have been veep and a contender for president. Now? Probably not. Not of America. He and Michelle have pissed off too many white people, but you've already heard about that from me in a tongue-in-cheek way in other posts.

It's such a cruel hoax. On that very basic issue, the amateurs running his campaign have made a stink over the fact that people want to know more about the man who will be running the world.

Psst. Kids. That's not a sleazy attack. As usual, newbies take things way too personally, another sign of their arrogance and inability to handle power. That is the precise reason I think Obama's over and now no one wants to face it and/or doesn't know how to handle it. With so much emotional investment, how are they going to report this?

I should feel sorry for Obama but I don't. I think his lack of sincerity and his hostile treatment of his grandmother was so out of line that I would rather ignore him. The black community was duped by this guy and that is something I can't forgive.

Another Lion in Winter
What's stunning is to watch the raw professional political power of Bill Clinton. His appearance on the campaign trail today was a big lay down for Hillary's win in Pennsylvania tomorrow. He's showing up now for himself and for the honor of his wife. Hard as it is for many to believe there is profound human dignity, love and grace in this dance.

It's the dignity of trying to regain and retain his dignity, I suppose; it supports the idea that hope (there's that word again) really does spring forth eternally. Such theater or displays have accompanied our world's politics for millennia. It's fascinating to witness these forces of nature who are willing to become the actors and dancers in our prosaic lives. The good ones and bad ones--I have to wonder what goes on in their psyches and hearts as they become the fulfillers of our destiny.

In the meantime, the rest of us are privy to a deeply personal moment for Bill and Hillary Clinton, like them or detest them. He has stepped up to rescue her honor after showing shocking neglect and dereliction to his loyal lioness mate. Historically, there is much more to this period in than a spoiled young woman from a forgettable place in California in a blue dress and beret. Neither you nor I will be around to editorialize on the margins.

Watch this story as it unfolds. It is perfect and heartbreakingly beautiful if you love politics as much as I do. Or drama or Shakespeare or...

Thanks for the read.

Prince Barack of Indonesia and Hawaii speaks of Small Town, PA

Senator Barack Obama made these statements at a fundraiser in San Francisco when describing those pesky xenophobes in Pennsylvania.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Town and towns between miles!
I was eighteen when I saw what was to me a phenomenon as I drove in the western part of that beautiful state. In other states, like eastern Kansas for instance where I grew up, a person could ride for fifteen, heck, probably even thirty miles before you got to another town. For a place to have a berg after every turn or hill in the road was just too strange. Pennsylvania, with its old towns and different sounding people and many cultures was a lovely new experience for me.

Though I didn't realize it then, I had Pennsylvania DNA all over me. Darn near all my American family began there many years ago. As I went through some genealogical research later in my life, I discovered many names of other families in census records who also had parents born in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots of them.

If individuals desired to get to Ohio and Indiana they had only a few "civilized" choices in 1812, such as they were: one had to go through Pennsylvania and many Indians to get to four or five traces (roads) if you lived in the Southern Atlantic area of the colonies, you could take the routes up through the Cumberland Gap out of North Carolina and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. Neither choice was exactly a super highway with a Motel 6 keepin' the light on for ya. The way through to the Northwest Territory from the Atlantic Coast was PA. There warn't no toher choice. If ya git ma drift.

Back to those cultural and elitist misspeaks from Obama, my American family's story is not very special or very unusual...by a long shot. I suppose that is why I'm so put off by this latest "missed" analysis by Obama.

There actually are American groups (black and white) who have kin who lived in PA for a century or so before they were able to come West. That, or they made it big and stayed; and others immigrated into PA for the reason of moving on. Amazing as it is, Pennsylvania has somehow handled it. These are data Senator Obama should know before he spews sociological opinions about the place, comparing them to the midwest.

It's a big old place and yes, somehow the state has survived, with guns and religion, from all the stress that strange and different looking people and cultures and immigrants have brought over and over and over again. It embarrasses me to see a presidential candidate make such a gigantic error in knowledge about a major force in our American history. It's astounding to me.

It would behoove Mr. Obama to pick up a few Pennsylvania history books plus 49 or so others, and actually read them. I have a few here in my own library, if he'd like to borrow them. Or he could ask his younger researchers to do it, if they could disconnect themselves from a rap song long enough.

The Keystone State
Back to my trip my first exposure to the bucolic part of beautiful PA was when I met and fell in love with my Aunt Jane's and Uncle William's beautiful four-story stone home built in the 1700s outside of Centerville. I had vowed to myself that I was to be married in that house someday. I'll never forget that lovely place and the feeling of "being at home." It sat on a working farm, above a lea with small lake, a spring house as I recall and among rolling hills. Washington, Pennsylvania, the home of a pretty fierce labor guy isn't far away.

And in the lowest depths of that same lovely home are hidden the secrets of the most compassionate, remarkable courage of some Pennsylvanians who carried out the Godly tasks of righting a few of the wrongs in our nation: a stop on the famed Underground Railroad--doubtlessly fortified with guns and religion. I don't even know their names. I think their clinging to guns and religions might have been a good thing.

It's on the other side of Pennsylvania that my Quaker grandfather was born on the Delaware River in 1670 in Chester, now Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. The Society of Friends members were abolitionists, and some even died for those unpopular beliefs. I guess that would be the "religion" Obama refers to so flippantly as part in his little offhanded remarks he made to elicit money from his supporters while they drank bad wine (and didn't know it).

I have to mention, if only to demonstrate the breadth of Pennsylvania's people and culture in their small towns, the Irish Protestants in my family who came to this country after losing their own ancestral homes to the British. They probably didn't have guns to cling to so they escaped with their lives and came to America to get away from the British.

They settled in the Parsippany area where many of my kin still live. One, my great grandfather many generations ago, lost a leg at the Battle of Yorktown. I can't imagine people like them being caught up in the bitterness this Mr. Obama speaks about. They've been through these downturns quite frequently in the past few hundred years.

I'm pretty sure sons and daughters of the Revolutionary war don't get bitter. They just go on with their lives and figure out other ways to get through. Cling to guns? I don't know about that. Maybe on a cold morning and if the deer haven't shown up yet.

Cling to religion? Yes, for sure. Admittedly, faith does mean quite a bit to families there or they probably would've quickly converted to keep the ole Irish barn.

There are millions of Americans like me whose roots are in Pennsylvania and like me, are spread across this country, a fact that is not lost on Mrs. Clinton. Nor on Senator McCain.

Guns and religion
Someone needs to tell Senator Obama that the steel industry's closings and rearranging of the state's economy probably has little to do with whether Pennsylvanians continue hang a gun over their doorways or go to church. When deer and other wild game become extinct and when God really is dead, we'll talk.

These new Democrats clamor they want someone who's been around, who's been somewhere. Well, Barack's been somewhere. He's grew up on an island that is predominantly Muslim for four years with his Mom and then went to be a Dude when he was ten in private schools in surfin' Hawaii on Waikiki. That's being somewhere. Then he was airlifted into Chicago to learn how to be black. That's being somewhere.

But he hasn't been to the places I've mentioned evidently for any quality time or anywhere else that does not have a vast ocean around it. In other words put this man on a Greyhound with a ticket across America and he's lost. He looks at a group and sees a labor union or a voting block or calls Reverend Wright or one of the over-the-hill NAACP pals in his fave fives in Atlanta and yells for help.

Back at the center of the universe in San Francisco
I could see him in my mind's eye as he's holding a nice Cuban cigar in one hand, highball in the other (he's learned from the con artists in Atlanta to expect good bourbon straight from a Waterford glass to get respect from the white man), speaking to a ring of sycophants; explaining these Pennsylvanian "natives," that he and Michelle actually lived among some quite like them in a place called Chicago, observed their mating habits, gathered and kept their "scat."

Mr. Obama's friends and he don't realize that others are listening while they ridicule the real people who have built this country, the very ones who have made them extremely rich.

"Damned xenophobes. Guess we'll just have to eliminate their guns and religion when we get our power. Good grief, what's next? Rain dancing? How charming. I'll have to tell my wife when she returns from freeing the Tibetans."

They (princes) talk like that, you know--the kind we Americans ran away from centuries ago.

Of course, what Mr. Obama hasn't got the experience or brains to know yet is this: big money goes away as fast as it seems to come in when you have these kinds of slips. I don't think he has another one in him. I heard Mrs. Clinton just gave the go ahead on that order of pastel pantsuits from the biggest department store in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for the read.