It's Halloween

Has Halloween become overcommercialized? There's only one group of pundits who could answer that question. The Onion: In The Know


In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?


AAAAAAaaaaaahhh!

OMG. Scary crisis. In this chair.

That would be the emotional crisis I experienced in my living room chair watching Sunday afternoon football. Yay, the Eagles won. Yay, Washington won. Damn, the Steelers lost. And more damn, I kept on seeing this extremely stupid - I mean scary - McCain ad.

Think about it. Obama's experience is legislative. Not executive. Now McCain's experience is... let me think a minute. Oh yeah, legislative. And military. Not executive. But that means no matter who we elect, our next President will be without executive experience when facing his first crisis in The Oval Office Chair! Da-da-da-dum!!

Now I'm really scared. We need a President with some serious executive experience. Presidential type executive experience. OMG, now it is so clear that the safest person to elect as president would be a past president. No, wait a minute. They're all too old. Did the Reagans have some kids who grew up to be executives? If Chelsea becomes an executive and then later wants to run... stop, get a grip. Who can save us now?

Okay, really. Calm down. The Vice President might have some influence on the man in The Chair. Maybe we can find an experienced mayor who earned the confidence of the common Joes back home in say, Alaska. Oh! Oh! I know one! Damn again. In other news today The Anchorage Daily News endorsed Obama. In fact, the executive skills of the executive from Alaska are so mavericky, so roguey that she doesn't inspire the support of own campaign team. I don't think madame executive diva is exactly who we are looking for.

Wait, wait, I've got it. We can look at the executive decision-making skills being used by the candidates right now, while they are campaigning. Let's take a look at their campaign strategies.

Obama is using the skills that just might win an election or say, lead a nation. Stay calm under attack, offer us ads that define the issues we need to face and propose intelligent solutions.

McCain is using the scary name-calling-making-stuff-up skills that just might win against Bart Simpson in a spooky Halloween smackdown.

It's alright folks. I think it is clear which candidate is ready for a crisis in that chair in the oval office. Now we just have to elect him.

Little gaffes, sad sick stories and a moment of substance

OMG. Did Joe Biden really say FDR talked about the depression on television in 1929 when he should have said he was on radio in 1933? Read all about it. Or don't. Because...

OMG. Did Holly Todd, college student from Texas, really tell Pittsburgh police that a great big Black man who was an Obama suppporter assaulted her, punched her in the back of the head, knocked her to the ground, told her “you are going to be a Barack supporter,” and kicked her while threatening “to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter." Did she really say that he then sat on her chest, pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched a backward letter “B” into her face with a dull knife? Um, why would anyone go to the trouble of scratching a letter backwards? But if you were a very sad case of a person, cutting the letter B into your own cheek in a mirror, wouldn't the letter B come out backwards? Read all about it.

Yes. Both of these things are true. Except one is not such a big deal. TV. Radio. 1929. 1933. That would be Biden's mistake. It was a dumb gaffe, but Biden knows what FDR did, said and stood for. The backwards-B-mugger thing is a horrible, sad, sick story. Holly Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students to the McCain-Palin campaign. "I don't know, McCain is down in the polls, maybe this is a boost to get him up a little bit," said Mark Billings. "I don't know, maybe she had some personal problems or something."

And tonight Sarah Palin showed up to campaign in my high school alma mater. Big crowd. Cheers. As far as I can tell, her talk was mostly about Joe Namath and Bill Ayers and wanting a president who spent 30-some years in the military. Thankfully we got a little more substance this week from another Vietnam vet, General Colin Powell.

I need a LOST fix

and if you do too, go to the abc LOST site and let the new short videos run,

or let Doc Artz take you straight to the Season 5 promo.

For me, it's all about Ben, Locke, Michael, Rousseau and Alpert. Glad to see that the show is still about more than Kate-Jack-Sawyer. Because come on. In that triangle, it's all about Sawyer. I knew that when I was 16. And I met my Sawyer when I was 19. And my Sawyer still comes home to me. Sawyer is a consistent hero - and he's funny, too. If I need a doctor, I can make an appointment. I don't need a husband or a TV show for that.

The economic crisis explained!

Ah-hah, now I understand...

An economics lesson, father to son

An economics lesson, man to man

And just ahead, the collapse of the most stable sector of the economy.


Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Reality on Main Street

Let's visit two Main Streets, just to make sure that we are all getting a little dose of reality.

First, a visit to Main Street in Wasilla, Alaska.



Now lets visit the main street of my hometown of Beaver, Pennsylvania. Oh, look who showed up to get in touch with a little reality on main street. We have big news in our little town of Beaver. That's my sister's blog. She still lives in our hometown. Yep, the main street of our hometown is a two lane road, a few traffic lights, lots of churches, and a park that has a lovely gazebo. The tallest buildings are 3-4 stories high and a few cars wide. There's also a historic revolutionary war fort, Ft. Macintosh, along River Road.



Beaver, PA, a real American small town with a real main street. 4,775 people. 96.44% White, 2.64% African American, 0.88% Hispanic or Latino, 0.27% Asian, 0.13% Native American, 0.27% from other races, 0.25% from two or more races. Median household income $42,113. Median family income $57,208. Males had a median income of $43,198 versus $26,709 for females. Per capita income $24,003. About 3.7% of families and 4.9% of the population live below the poverty line. Small town, predominantly white, working people. Fought in every American war beginning with the American Revolution.

Here's the whole speech, in our lovely main street gazebo, beginning with a dose of reality from some small town steelworkers.

It takes a worried, but hopeful, man

Stumbling around the internet this morning I found this campaign ad for Obama. Virginia bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley has been around, knows what's what, and gets right to the point.

Click To Play

Which led me to some Stanley Brothers music. First, live with Alison Kraus singing O Angel Band. About the hard-to-understand-but-must-be-funny opening banter: Youtube commenters who were at the concert say that Stanley tells Kraus, "It's good to have you." She replies, "oh, it's good to be had."



And here's the Stanley Brothers doing It Takes a Worried Man on Rainbow Quest, Pete Seeger's 1965 tv show.



One more, here's the same song, same show, but with a young Johnny Cash and June Carter.



There's lots more of this show on youtube, including June telling the story of their trip to entertain the troops in Asia. In Korea, she did her usual trick of tossing out the mike and pulling it back to her. But this time... Well she tells it best right here. Then they sing their favorite Native American protest song.

Bein' country and supportin' the troops ain't necessarily bein' conservative. (Wink, smile.) And that's our history lesson for today.

What's bugging me today? The imaginary elitist unAmerican Washington.

Sarah Palin says Washington is full of elite insiders who need a touch of "main street Wasilla." Really? Guess what, Madame Governor. Members of Congress, the White House staff, lobbyists, and federal bureaucrats aren't city people from Washington. They come from big and small towns all over the country. Geesh. Duh. How dumb can... oh, never mind.

But if Sarah Palin says one more time that Washington (and New York, California, Boston, New England...) is out of touch with "real" America, I'm gonna scream. Oh wait, I don't have to! Thank you, Joe Biden, for saying that we are all tired, tired, tired of this crap. Just how much of America does she not like? How much of America does she not count as "real"? How exactly would that work as Vice President?



So here's a bit of Washington reality for Main Street. Washington residents are regular people, living in an American city. Politicians in Washington are elected legislators who work here and live somewhere else. Anne Applebaum wrote a nice response to Palin's anti-Washington talk in the Washington Post.


"Although there are plenty of native Washingtonians working as doctors or cabdrivers or bank managers, most of the people who actually control the city's most famous institutions -- Congress, the White House, the federal government -- weren't born in Washington. Like Sarah Palin, they are from "in the heartland," in places like Wasilla, and it is the values of the heartland and Wasilla that they must be therefore presumed to embody." read more...

What happens in Washington when there is a political shake up? Well, right now real Washingtonians are watching as a pack of visiting, elite, political insiders from Texas go back home.

Karl Rove the primary author of President Bush's two successful national campaigns and perhaps the most influential and controversial presidential strategist of his generation, became the latest Bush adviser to head for the door, announcing that he will resign Aug. 31.

Alberto Gonzalez' departure means that almost none of the Texans who came to town with Bush still hold influential positions in the administration. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, his education adviser in Texas and a former White House staffer, is the most prominent exception.

David Dunn will be leaving his position as Chief of Staff to the U.S. Department of Education effective October 3, 2008 to serve as Executive Director of the newly formed Texas Charter Schools Association (TCSA)

Lawrence A. Warder will be leaving two positions he has held—acting chief operating officer of Federal Student Aid (FSA) and chief financial officer—effective October 10 and returning home to Texas.

Buh-bye.