McCain/Palin: Mary Mitchell Proclaims Herself A 'Sick -Hater' - Steve Huntley - The Last Person Writing

The hamster on Mary Mitchell's brain wheel jumped off years ago. She is proving to be a metaphor of print journalism's willingness to favor the equivalent of cock fighting over opera.

Mary Mitchell spews this about Governor Sarah Palin with her usual 'nuanced' approach to writing:

Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama's mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt.

I hate that she makes Joe Biden look like John McCain and John McCain look like the maverick he is not.

It plummets from there and mocks Biden's own childhood affliction:

I hate that Palin reminds me of Susan Sarandon's feisty character in "Thelma & Louise." I loved Sarandon in that movie, yet I couldn't stand Palin's feistiness at the Republican National Convention.

Sarah Palin makes me sick -- not because she may speak in tongues -- but because she is a fast talker.

Not even ABC's Charlie Gibson can slow Palin's mouth.

I disagree with the people who claim Gibson caught her off guard during her interview when he asked her whether she agreed with the "Bush Doctrine."

"In what respect?" Palin fired back without so much as a stutter.

Jesus, Biden's gotta love that! No matter to Mary - Joe Biden is a white devil who deserves a good old machete marinade like Bob Mugabe's lads dish-out. That is Mary Mitchell's America! The Sun Times is Okay with it as well.

The Chicago Sun Times values Mary Mitchell in the same way that a Carnival Barker values the acephales,freaks without a complete head system or having no part of the body specially organized as a head. Mary Mitchell gives out race-hate, conspiracy myths, and self-improvement tips from her brushes with the law.

She is sick and she hates - see Mary's words above - now that is nuance!

Steve Huntley* is the only opinion left at the Sun Times. Unlike Marins, girl's dish-lunch-confab-assortment tosses, Steve Huntley goes to work.

Mary Mitchell's Sideshow will pave the Sun Times strut to oblivion.

As McCain's campaign has grown sharper, Obama's has tended to flay about. It has not figured out how to handle McCain's dazzling choice of Sarah Palin. Obama focused on her term as a small-town mayor and ignored her work as governor of Alaska. He came off as belittling a woman's accomplishments while reminding voters of his dismissive remarks about small-town people that damaged him with working-class Americans.

His camp tried to play the abortion card, saying Palin's pro-life belief is unattractive to women. Yet as governor, she never pushed that cause. And, as a woman who balances the responsibilities of elective office and motherhood, Palin's story resonates with women of all political persuasions. Democratic operatives and media friends piled on by questioning her ability to balance both responsibilities, reminding women of the sexism they saw plaguing Clinton's campaign -- sexism coming from, of all places, the liberal heart of American politics. You've got to wonder if Obama regrets not making Clinton his vice presidential nominee.

Democrats who gleefully jumped on McCain when he misspoke, as in seeming to confuse the Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq, must have been stunned when their man had his own misspoken moment -- Obama's referring to "my Muslim faith" in a TV interview. He is a Christian but, because of the Islamic background of his father, has had to fend off rumors about his faith.

A long campaign remains to be waged, with debates, speeches, unguarded moments and chances for embarrassing slip-ups and brilliant political strokes. McCain's folks may be riding high now and Obama's camp at sixes and sevens, but the dynamics still favor the Democrats. Yet, this race is up for grabs, and that's a far cry from June, when Democrats, and not a few Republicans, thought Obama had it all but sewn up.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/1152545,CST-EDT-hunt09.article

Civil Truth on Sarah Palin from Civil Truth Himself!

My Pal Civil Truth who posts for And Rightly So and Red State ( with whom I parted ways for sticking up for John McCain during the Immigration Days in Exile with GOP purists - Good Lads One and All!) wrote a sober and sensitive piece on Governor Sarah Palin that I post and link here.

Sarah Palin’s character distilled into a moment of time
Posted by civil truth on September 8th, 2008

Copyright © 2008 And Rightly So!


On the day McCain announced her selection as his running mate, Palin thanked Clinton and Ferraro for blazing her trail. A day later, Ferraro noted her shock at Palin’s comment. You see, none of her peers, no one, had ever publicly thanked her in the 24 years since her historic run for the White House.

When I read these sentences, I was just stunned, almost like the sky had opened up. And a tear came into my eye.

I mean, imagine all the pain that Geraldine Ferraro must have been enduring this past quarter century, that since her unsuccessful run for Vice President, that no one from among her supposed supporters had ever publicly thanked for her historic run, almost like she had contracted a social disease.

And then, when she had faded into public obscurity, the unexpected vindication - and that coming not from the ranks of her own political party, but from the mouth of a women from the Republican party, thanking her for her labors during her first address to the nation after getting the nod as that party’s candidate for Vice President.

I mean if you have ever been in a somewhat comparable position, then you know the joy and relief that we feel when some one says “thank you” in recognition, tell us that we matter, that we are appreciated. I know such at times in my life when I’ve poured out my heart and was wallowing in self-pity, the healing power that hearing “thank you” has had.

And it takes a noble spirit, a generous heart to cross partisan lines to say those simple, and yet all-so rare lines - “thank you”.

This simple act says more about about Sarah Palin’s character than reams of analysis. Sarah, you’re gold!

Read the whole article: it’s most perceptive in explaining the astonishing impact the Sarah Palin has had on people who never before have entertained the thought that the Republican party might better represent their interests, at least a Republican party that chose Sarah to be one of its standard bearers.

GOP - Screw- Pooch Adviser Mike Murphy (MSNBC Shill) - If Palin's a Loser, Let Her Go!

As a bartender of many years, I listened to marinated mopes go through the stages of Drunkenness:


1. Witty and charming (part 1)
This is after one or two drinks. Mr. Booze is coursing the old brain pan and you are now Robert Wagner. Often Self- deprecating at the on-set to show what a sweet-natured but with it guy you are! "C Students Make the World Go-'Round!"

2. Rich and famous
By the third drink, " Hey, I can get You in to See Daley! No Kidding, I Know Cheeks Malone on the Mayor's Detail!"

3. Benevolent
Here's a twenty for your bar-maid, Pal. She's single Mom I hear too. It's only money.

4. Just one more and We'll eat Boys -On Me!
a stall tactic

5. Are We Men or Campfire Girls ? Fornicate Dinner ! A Round, Chief! Everyone,from the Street to the Shithouse!Just one more and then we'll eat!Honest!

6. Patriotic
The war stories Begin " Yeah, I was One A, but They Never Called me Up For 'Nam! I'da Gone Too!"

7. Warm up the Enola Gay !

" I'dA Gone To 'Nam But I Had a High Lottery Number
"We would have won in 'Nam, but..."

8. Invisible
You flip the finger to the Biggest Biker in the Bar - "No Dude! The Librarian Behind You!"

9. Witty and charming (part 2)
"You know, I Like a Girl with a Head on her like a Boulder in a Roy Rogers Movie"

10. Bulletproof
" Ged On Yer, Triscull, Na'cy boy . . . You go ta Carmuhl? . . .Hi' me agun 'n see what happens!"

GOP - Spin Doctors are Stage 10 on Palin!

GOP Political Operatives want Sarah Palin's pelt on the door before the Congresional Races of 2010 get started. Palin will be a huge influence. Murphy and Harp Harpy Noonan are Palin Drunk and Bullet Proof. Watch the Dipsos chase the pink elephants!

Chick Magnet and MSNBC lap-dog Mike Murphy is the loudest. The geek Mark McKinnon with the Miami Vice thing going on Butch Maddow's show is good too.

MSNBC cuts checks to people who will read their scripts.

Here's Mike Murphy:

"Professional operatives keep their eye on a broader horizon and understand, without independents and swing voters, she can't win," Murphy said. "She's a stone-cold loser in a general election. . . .Some blame sexism, though again there is sharp disagreement between Palin's supporters and detractors. Some think the former beauty queen has always been hurt by her looks, whereas others think her appearance has helped her considerably. "If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?" Murphy asked."

Sarah Palin will draw Democrats and grass-roots Republicans and Independents to vote out Congress Bozos in 2010. Hell, folks like her! I like her. She's like the Moms on my block and like them could run government like Eamonn Coglan.

Mike Murphy and other over-paid GOP loser advisers are pooping themselves like a DQ Soft-Serve dispenser on an August Night in Gila Bend, Arizona - that's hot!

Girls, if Sarah Palin is such a loser, why all the fuss?

Sarah Palin's Genuine Decency Confounds People Like Couric

Governor Sarah Palin confounds the phonies and the mediocrities who dominate public debate.

Sarah Palin connects with Americans in a way unseen in politics since Truman and IKE. They too were sneered at by the Madly for Adlai pipe-smokers.

Truman vowed to punch a 'delicate' music critic in the mouth over an unnecessarily snotty review of his daughter's piano debut. He also 'Fired' the American Caesar for insubordination to the Commander in Chief. The artillery Captain fired the big general.

Sarah Palin is a force that the louses in public debate can not touch, but with whom Americans connect with ease.

Katie Couric, for all of her chipmunk cheek chirpiness, is a typical passive aggressive punk trying desperately to right her sinking career- a career that requires a dearth of talent and cargo of aggression.

The MSNBC Doublemint Twins of Propaganda Olberbore and Maddow have not the wit nor the substance to disarm Sarah Palin.

Change has come and it is long overdue in American Public Discourse. Sarah Palin brings back decency.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2008/10/debate-biden-exudes-charm-class-but.html

McCain/Palin: Eric Zorn's EZ Guide to Why Progressives Are Such Pencil Neck Geeks! - Palin Talks Funny!

Hot on the heals of Joan Walsh's Salon piece that attempts to imply that Governor Sarah Palin pronounced 'Nuclear' as 'Nucular' Chicago Tribune's Size 7 1/2" Collar and Original Thinker Eric Zorn* gets hot under his tiny suburban collar!

In her first tough TV interview, GOP veepee nominee Sarah Palin several times referred to "nucular" weapons instead of "nuclear" weapons.

We fussy people cringe at this the way we cringe when we hear people say "ek-setera" and "liberry."

( Intrusive Narrator Hickey" Kick 'em in the Nuts! Gouge out their Eyes! Harrumph!) . . .
But at least three former U.S. Presidents -- Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- said "nucular" from time to time, and, of course, "nucular" has become virtually a trademark for George W. Bush. ( Intrusive Narrator - Note Eric's uses of The Progressive Smarm or the Ass Kicking Insurance)

Language experts tell us the reason "nucular" seems right to many speakers (and has even become an accepted pronunciation due to how common it's become) is that hundreds of English words end in "yoo-lar" --vascular, molecular, jocular and so on -- while very few end in the "lee-ar" -- cochlear and nuclear may be about it.

Is this a big deal? Obviously not. But Sarah Palin's handlers seemed to have thought so: In the script of her speech to the Republican convention, they spelled out the word phonetically for her: ( Instrusive Narrator: Did Michael Sneed write this last? Hmmmm? Lift 'Em? Print 'Em! Cash 'Em)

We're going to lay more pipelines {and] build more new-clear plants...Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons

Oh, Mercies Abounding! Did she Rah-lley Say That? Kewl - She So Whit Trosh! Murial Clair! That's So Not Kewl!'
Yep, and Progressives wonder why they can not get a like-minded fuss-budget elected anywhere more than 300 yards West of Lake Michigan.

Eric, my pencil necked pal, Governor Palin also pronounces herself to be a HAWKEY MAWM!

Eric, no one of the thousands of people in my neighborhood( Morgan Park/Beverly/Mt. Greenwood,TN) own a 'living room' - they all invite one another into THE FrunChroom. ' Tess, where's your Old Man?'
'In The Frunchroom layin' on the floor in his shorts watching the Sox at Comiskey ( Joan Cusack notwithstanding!).

Kids leave their bikes in the Gangway. A greenscape is a PRAYER-EE. Baptist, Jewish, Muslim and Atheist kids from Sutherland or Clissold Public schools will tell auslanders and reporters that they live in St. Barnabas, Caj-Uh Tens ( St. Cajetan) er Fisher ( St. John Fisher).

Eric we embrace diversity. Why is it that Progressives mock the richness and cultural rainbow that is our Global Village? Really. Eric Zorn and your sock-puppets really nail Governor Palin on the Issues!

Sarah Palin talks funny and has a Downs Syndrome Baby that she did not Abort. Sic her, Cupcake!

Hey, give Joanie Walsh of Salon her props. She called out Sarah Palin for all of you Original Thinkers!

* Ballad of the Progressive ( by Fred Blassie)
Till something happened, blew every thing to hell.
That night my daddy stumbled in, all pale and weak,
Said, "A woman up the block just gave birth to a geek."

Mom said, "Sell it to the circus, what the heck."
Dad said, "Nope, this one's a pencil neck.
And if there's one thing lower than a side show freak,
It's a grit eatin', scum suckin', pencil neck geek."

You see if you take a pencil that won't hold lead,
Looks like a pipe cleaner attached to a head,
Add a buggy whip body with a brain that leaks,
You got yourself a grit eatin', pencil neck geek.

(chorus)
Pencil neck geek, grit eatin' freak,
scum suckin', pea head with a lousy physique.
He's a one man, no gut, losing streak.
Nothin' but a pencil neck geek.

Soon the geeks were poppin' up all over town.
You couldn't hardly sneeze without knockin' one down.
After a nice juicy steak, if you need a toothpick,
Just reach for a geek, they'll do the trick.

One day we cut one up for fish bait.
Learned our lesson just a little bit late.
Soon as the geek hit the drink, the water turned red.
Next day, sure enough, all the fish were dead.

chorus

Most any night you know where I can be found.
Yeah, stomping some geek's head into the ground.
So keep the faith, 'cause in Blassie you can trust,
I won't give up 'til the last geek bites the dust.

chorus

They say these geeks come a dime a dozen.
I'm lookin' for the guy who's supplyin' the dimes.
Its gonna be real hard times for all of these
grit eatin',
scum suckin',
boot lickin',
drop kickin',
gut grindin',
nail bitin',
glue sniffin',
scab pickin',
butt scratchin',
egg hatchin',
sleazy,
smelly,
pepper bellied,
dirty, lousy, rotten, stinkin', freaks.
Nothing but a pencil neck geek.

Pencil neck geek.
Pencil neck geek.
Pencil neck geek.

Sarah Palin is a Happy Person and that makes Goofs Crazy - Governor, Stay Happy -Only Suckers Beef.

Sarah Palin must be the biggest threat to the corporate Progressive Machine, as the news cycle and the later-Goebbels on MSNBC, CNN and on the Big ( ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have worked this woman and her family over like they were characters out of Aeschylus*.

You are only as big as the enemies you have and Sarah Palin must be enormous.

Palin's Old Man, the kids, and even the grand kids are targeted by sad people like Letterman, Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Matthews, Schuster, Brown, and Maher -insignificant and self-absorbed people one and all.

These sad human beings, who make a great deal of money and have the attention of many not very bright people, detest Sarah Palin, not because she is Pro Life/Pro Gun/Pro Family/ Pro Free Enterprise, Republican, or pretty, or wildly popular. They detest Sarah Palin, because the woman is happy.

Not DL Hughley/Joy Behar/Kanye West/Alec Baldwin/Bill Maher or Katie Couric happy, but fulfilled, meaningful, centered and significant - happy.

When the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was on his death-bed he told his mother that he was never happier.

The Irish are generally a pretty happy people - I remember going to the wake of Man from County Clare; I asked 'what did he die of?' His young widow replied, 'Nothing serious.'

Happy people make other people happy, by giving us direction. Only suckers beef.

That dictum came from a wise bartender who refused to hear the drunken bile coming from louts who 'vented' about what bitches their wives were, or how disappointing their kids turned out.

Governor Palin, stay happy.

Mortimer Adler's lesson on Happiness Eudaimonia,a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous, as opposed to giddy, silly, aimless and vacuous, tells us that:

These matters, of relevance to the theory of happiness, are discussed in the chapters on ETERNITY and IMMORTALITY; and in the chapter on SIN we find another religious dogma, that of original sin, which has an obvious bearing on earthly happiness as well as on eternal salvation. Fallen human nature, according to Christian teaching, is incompetent to achieve even the natural end of imperfect temporal happiness without God's help. Milton expounds this doctrine of indispensable grace in Paradise Lost, in words which God the Father addresses to His Son:
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fall'n condition is, and to me owe
All his deliv'rance, and to none but me.

God's grace is needed for men to lead a good life on earth as well as for eternal blessedness. On earth, man's efforts to be virtuous require the reinforcement of supernatural gifts - faith, hope, and charity, and the infused moral virtues. The beatific vision in Heaven totally exceeds the natural powers of the soul and comes with the gift of added supernatural light. It seems, in short, that there is no purely natural happiness according to the strict tenets of Christian doctrine.

Aquinas employs the conception of eternal beatitude not only to measure the imperfection of earthly life, but also to insist that temporal happiness is happiness at all only to the extent that it is a remote participation of true and perfect happiness. It cannot be said of temporal happiness that it "excludes every evil and fulfills every desire. In this life every evil cannot be excluded - For this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils: to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite-; and to many penalties on the part of the body ... . Likewise," Aquinas continues, "neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For man naturally desires the good which he has to be abiding . Now the goods of the present life pass away since life itself passes away ... . Wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in this life."

If perfect happiness consists in "the vision of the Divine Essence, which men cannot obtain in this life," then, according to Aquinas, only the earthly life which somehow partakes of God has a measure of happiness in it. Earthly happiness, imperfect because of its temporal and bodily conditions, consists in a life devoted to God - a kind of inchoate participation here and now of the beatific vision hereafter. On earth there can be only a beginning "in respect of that operation whereby man is united to God. ... In the present life, in as far as we fall short of the unity and continuity of that operation, so do we fall short of perfect happiness. Nevertheless it is a participation of happiness; and so much the greater, as the operation can be more continuous and more one. Consequently the active life which is busy with many things, has less of happiness than the contemplative life, which is busied with one thing, i.e., the contemplation of truth."

When the theologians consider the modes of life on earth in terms of the fundamental distinction between the secular and the religious, or the active and the contemplative, they seem to admit the possibility of imperfect happiness in either mode. In either, a devout Christian dedicates every act to the glory of God, and through such dedication embraces the divine in the passing moments of his earthly pilgrimage.

Sarah Palin, like most happy people, suffers outrageous set-backs, endures insults, personal tragedies, stumbles and falls, but remains happy because she is centered and other directed.

That drives sad, but very successful people, crazy.

The crazy is on 24/7 on cable television.

Click my post title for one of my favorite sites belonging to a very smart Obama supporter.

Sarah Palin is Unfamiliar with Morons - The Prank and Obama's Crowd

Decent people try to think the best of people. That is why pranks work and scams get fulfilled. Mean and tightfisted persons are never duped by Homeless Veterans with the Styrofoam cups and their legs tied up under their thighs.

The prank or scam is the rubric for the mean-spirited cheap shot crowd - the Olbermann/Maddow mavens.

Sarah Palin is a very nice person. Nice persons are treated badly by louses and sneaks and toted as 'chumps' by their confederates.

Obama has legions of such matching souls. He can have them. They worked against him when he ran against Bobby Rush. They mocked him as 'a white-boy' in the Chicago news media. They pranked Obama and Obama embraced them. he can have them.

Sarah Palin is hated by these louses of both and the more dubious genders, because she is a successful, effective, loved and happy person. She'll be fine.

Barack Obama look who has your back!

A Montreal comedy duo who made a prank telephone call to Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin got their 15 minutes of fame Monday on U.S. network television.

The Masked Avengers (Justiciers Masqués) were flown to New York City for an appearance on CBS's morning show to talk about their weekend phone conversation with Palin that made international headlines.

Posing as Nicholas Sarkozy with a bad Pepé le Pew accent, comedian Marc-Antoine Audette chatted with Palin for several minutes on Saturday about hunting, politics and Carla Bruni before coming clean.

Palin played along beautifully, Audette told Early Show host Harry Smith.

"Once we started making jokes, she didn't seem to mind, and she didn't seem to be aware of the fact we were making jokes," he said during his live appearance on CBS.

"We were like 'Oh my God this is gonna be long.' "

Harry Smith - you are a two fisted, gold-plated . . .Madcap. Love to get your ear some time Harry.

Joe Epstein - Progressive Feminist Screamers -The Loathing of Sarah Palin

My career in teaching high school English is a lunch-bucket version of academics. Real teachers rarely become community activists, much less political polemicists. They are far too busy.

They get shuffled off to 'workshops' by the very people who could not hack it in the classroom and became Administrators with degrees in Education from the community college at best or mail-in diploma mills in order to hear Academics from the Colleges of Education who never once set foot in a classroom.

Teachers toss the hand outs and get in forty-winks, or grade papers while some tweedy jerk struts the stage and lights up the video.

Real teachers teach English, History, Business, Physical Education, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Languages. They are Jim the Physics Teacher; Donna the Volleyball Coach.

Seth the Fourth Vice Principal for Curriculum Development sets up Workshops and is paid seven times what real teachers make per year.

A Real Teacher from Northwestern University, Joe Epstein*, has recently scaled down his teaching load and written another book - this one on Fred Astair The Hoofer!

Today, Joe the Writer, presents an essay on the great shout-down: Joe The Plumber is being assaulted by the American Media, because he asked a question of Sen. Barack Obama and managed to pin Obama to the mat on his Redistribution of Wealth Agenda.

Joe Epstein concentrates on the Progressive pile-on by Progressive Feminist of Sarah Palin. The Progressive Feminists loath Sarah Palin, because the Governor of Alaska is a happy person. She is beautiful, successful, active, healthy, married, centered and powerful. Most of all they hate her because Sarah Palin is very happy. Most Americans are happy- beset by troubles, heartbreak, worry to be sure, but essentially happy. Progressive Feminists like Salon's Joan Walsh demand their Female Icons be as battle-damaged as she herself seems to be, but Sarah Palin, Doggoneit, is too happy!

Here is the nub of the rub from Joe the Writer:

Strongly liberal women get most agitated over the issue--though of course to them it is no issue but a long since resolved matter--of abortion. Abortion, to be sure, is the great third-rail subject in American politics. But when a male politician is against abortion, these women can write that off as the ignorance of a standard politician, if not himself a Christian fundamentalist, then another Republican cynically going after the fundamentalist vote. A woman not in favor of abortion is something quite different.

And it is all the more strikingly different when the same woman not only holds this opinion on abortion but acts on it and knowingly bears a child with Down syndrome, a child that most liberal women would have thought reason required aborting. What else, after all, is abortion for?

A few months ago Vanity Fair ran an article about the discovery that the playwright Arthur Miller, with his third wife, the photographer Inge Morath, 40 or so years ago had a Down syndrome son. Miller promptly clapped the boy into an institution--according to the article, not a first class one either--and never saw the child again. Most people would have taken this for a heartless act, one should have thought, especially on the part of a man known for excoriating the putative cruelties of capitalism and the endless barbarities of his own country's governments, whether Democratic or Republican. Yet, so far as one can tell, Arthur Miller's treatment of his own child has not put the least dent in his reputation, while Sarah Palin's having, keeping, and loving her Down syndrome child is somehow, by the standard of the liberal woman of our day, not so secretly thought the act of an obviously backward and ignorant woman, an affront to womanhood. "Her greatest hypocrisy," proclaimed Wendy Doniger, one of the leading feminist lights at the University of Chicago, "is her pretense that she is a woman."

*Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937) is a Chicagoan essayist, short story writer, and editor, best known as a former editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's The American Scholar magazine and for his recent essay collection, Snobbery: The American Version. He was also a lecturer at Northwestern University from 1974 - 2002. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weekly Standard and a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to The New Criterion and Commentary. The late William F. Buckley, Jr. in his review of Snobbery called Epstein the wittiest writer alive.
Essay collections and books
Divorced in America: Marriage in an age of possibility (1974)
Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life (1979)
Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)
Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (1983)
Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing (1985)
Once More Around the Block: Familiar Essays (1987)
Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (1988)
A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays (1991)
Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life (1993)
With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays (1995)
Life Sentences: Literary Essays (1997)
Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (1999, paperback 2007)
Snobbery: The American Version (2002)
Envy (2003)
Friendship: An Exposé (2006)
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (2006)
In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (2007)
Fred Astaire (2008)

[edit] Short story collections
The Goldin Boys: Stories (1991)
Fabulous Small Jews (2003)

[edit] Short Stories
My Brother Eli appearing in The Best American Short Stories 2007 pp. 85-112.

[edit] External links
"The Culture of Celebrity: Let us now praise famous airheads" in The Weekly Standard
"Friends Aren't What They Used to Be: The New Ethos of Intimacy" a review of Friendship: An Exposé, in Slate
"Kid Turns 70: And Nobody Cares" in The Weekly Standard
"Golden Juggler" a review of In a Cardboard Belt! by Joseph Tartakovsky, in the Claremont Review of Books

From the Good Folks at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Epstein_(writer)

McCain/Palin- Sun Times Stuck on Stupid - Read This Idiotic Editorial on Sarah Palin's Speech! Wear Your Depends -or Borrow Some!

Hat Tip to my Pal Steve Rhodes at Beachwood Reporter! Thanks Steve! Have a Falstaff Son!

I did not get around to peeking at 'The Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago' this morning, as I was busy doing what most Americans do - taking care of kids, getting to work and actulaly doing something when I get there! Never on Queen's Time!

So, I turned to the Beachwood Reporter to get an update on Chicago Media Moon-Howlers!

Never disappointed - Heeyah 'Tis - The Sun Times (STNG) in all of its suicidal glory (excerpt of course)!

. . .Because his pick for vice president, Sarah Palin, is woefully unprepared to be Leader of the Free World.

Does this sound harsh? We know it does, though we mean no disrespect. Our sincere hope is that McCain, a good and brave American, lives a long and healthy life. But when the senator chose Alaska Gov. Palin to be his running mate, and in doing so deemed her fit to stand a heartbeat from the presidency, he either demonstrated phenomenally bad judgment or put politics ahead of country.

Palin has almost no experience on the national or international stage. She has virtually no qualifications to be commander in chief. She is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town about the size of a couple of Chicago high schools. She has been governor for 20 months of a wilderness state with a population of 684,000 -- about the number of folks in Will County.

And the more Palin's GOP defenders contort themselves to defend her credentials, attempting to inflate the uninflatable, the more obviously thin her resume looks.

Asked by a CNN reporter what qualifies Palin to be commander in chief of America's armed forces, a McCain aide pointed out that, as governor, Palin "commanded" the Alaska National Guard. The reporter then asked, to no avail, for a single instance in which Palin had involved herself in the business of the Guard.

A commentator for the conservative National Review generously granted Palin "foreign policy" experience solely on the basis of geography -- Alaska is next to Russia and borders Canada. If the commentator knew of any Palin-Putin talks, he failed to mention them.

Jimmy the Two-Headed Boy, or most De LaSalle Graduates could understand Palin's speech last night. Not Chicago's 'Progressive Independent Voice' - they are waiting for John McCain to explain it to them - Senator, Read Slowly!!!!!!!!! Use Pictures!

McCain/Palin: Something(s)About Sarah - A Report from Frank Nofsinger, Patriot, Polemicists, Philatalist, and Swell Dancer

If America were the insolvant, racist, hill-billy swamp critter, knuckle-dragging oaf over-run, Pan-Balkan festival of misery that the Denver National Convention parade of morons said it to be - Connecticut's Frank Nofsinger was stride right in and, with horny-knuckled but gentle hands, divert the cleansing mid-continetal waters of the Mighty Mississippi into a National Spray and Wash and set things right. Smaller men do live beyond the understanding and reach of Frank Nofsinger. The Georgia Peanut comes to mind.

If Jimmy Carter were half the man . . .oh, he is. Settles that. But, John McCain has inpeccable taste in Women! He has the sound sense and judgment to pick the one person in the VP Field who will help send the Obama Camp into hissy fits, snits and tizzies 'Lord, I do believe I have the Miseries and the Twizzles!' and absolute bury the Obama/Biden ticket in the first week of November.


Well anyway Frank Nofsinger wants Americans to know another 10 Great Things About Sarah Palin - I ain't blind Frank so I know the first thing - yes, I am shallow.

Sarah Palin is drop dead gorgeous and four years younger than Michael Jackson - the gloved Wonder. That was pointed out to me by retired a CPD detective who met at a Forty Hour Devotion at Keegan's Pub.

Frank Nofsinger -American - wants you to know that....

Sarah Louise Palin (nee Heath) was born Feb., 1964, in Sandpoint, Idaho. Her family moved to Alaska when Sarah was an infant. Her father, Chuck, is a retired schoolteacher.

2. She attended Wasilla High School where she played point guard on the state champion basketball team. Her nickname was "Sarah Barracuda."

3. Palin graduated in 1987 from the University of Idaho with a degree in journalism. She worked briefly as a sports reporter in Anchorage.

4. She refers to her husband, Todd, as the "First Dude." He's worked as a commercial fisherman and as a production operator on the North Slope for BP. He enjoys snowmobiling and has won the Tesoro Iron Dog, billed as the world's longest snowmobile race, four times.

5. Palin and her husband have five children, Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow, and Trig. Trig, born in 2008, has been diagnosed with Down syndrome. Her son Track joined the army in 2007.

6. Her favorite meal is moose stew.

7. She comes from a family of outdoor enthusiasts. Her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, enjoy hunting and fishing, and have both completed marathons.

8. Palin was named Miss Wasilla in 1984 and was a runner-up for Miss Alaska. In 1996 she was elected mayor of Wasilla.

9. She's a lifetime NRA member and enjoys hunting, fishing, and snowmobiling.

10. Elected in 2006, she's Alaska's first female governor and the youngest governor elected in the state.

11. 2) Her husband's status as a Native American will be a much-discussed, big plus -- Todd is a Yup'ik Eskimo.*

I believe Frank picked up these nuggets of FYI at Townhall


Obama's only executive experience ever was working for Bill Ayers.

Hugh Hewitt

McCain/Palin: My Progressive Poster Seth Pie-Gallon: 'Tom Hayden Cares, People!'

Hickey is taking the day off - he should take his life off. I'm Seth Pie-Gallon*.

Today I want to explain - let me be as clear as possible and go as slow as I can for you grass cutters, who do not seem to be bothered that Iraq is an occupation by European Crusaders who believe that God wants them to kill Muslims, or that millions of obese Americans go to bed hungry in food deserts created by the same CIA/Halliburton Gang of Cheney that blew the levees in Katrina,Louisiana and Twin Towers, New York. Sarah Palin is evil, Man! The issues are clear and all Grampa McSame and his Eskimo Pie offer is Bush 44.

Read this from Tom Hayden - he really cares. This is why:

1.Sarah Palin is a mortal threat to the possibility of Obama winning. The reason is simple: if she can add a couple of points to McCain from defecting white women and the newly-energized right wing religious base without losing more independent votes, McCain pulls ahead in some key states.


The dangerous tendency of the Obama campaign and its Democratic surrogates is to not fight back, but treat Palin as a “distraction” from McCain, the economy, the issues they feel familiar with, etc.

If they assume that the Palin bubble will return to earth naturally, or that the mainstream media and Saturday Night Live will do the job for them, the Obama campaign is mistaken.

There needs to be a controlled message that treats Palin as an extension of McCain, not a bobble-head to be laughed at.

The message has to cut off independent and women’s support for McCain-Palin and, if possible, divide some of the right-wingers. Not an easy task.

Perhaps the point is that we’ve already suffered eight years under a president Bush and vice-president Cheney who were, in Palin’s words, so “wired in a way to be committed to the mission” that they could neither blink nor think.

An excellent editorial in Sunday’s NY Times makes the connection from McCain to Palin in terms that will reach independent and moderate voters. It should be quoted and widely circulated. The choice of an unqualified candidate to be a heartbeat from the presidency of a 72 year old man with four melanomas “was shockingly irresponsible”, the Times said.

I think we can see in McCain-Palin a kind of faith-based extremism that reminds us of Bush and, even more, the persona of Gen. Custer.

We have seen where righteous faith-based politics goes in the Supreme Court decisions, corruption scandals, the official lies, and the unnecessary wars of the past eight years, all carried out in the name of what both McCain and Palin now call “God’s plan.”

We should say, In the name of God, stop them!

2. The McCain-Palin foreign policy is a mortal threat from the same neoconservatives who brought us Iraq wrapped in lies. We cannot give the Republicans an advantage with their false clams of “victory in sight.” We have to emphasize the three-trillion dollar cost of the war, and we have to connect the war to the price of oil. Democratic consultants should stop compartmentalizing the economy like it was 1992 all over again.

This is apparently not the advice of the biggest Democratic heavyweights like Bill Clinton and James Carville who tend to revert to “it’s the economy, stupid.” But it’s not 1992. It’s the 9/11 era, the Iraq War era, the War on Terrorism era – and also the middle of the worse economic and energy crisis in memory. The issues are tied together. Not enough people will vote on “lunch bucket” issues if they think McCain-Palin will protect them from terrorists, but they might vote against McCain-Palin if they think they are being lied to again.

The war is not being won. That’s why Petraeus wants to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq. We are paying 100,000 Iraqis not to shoot and bomb us – for now. Iraq is a time bomb with a timer set to go off next year after the November election. It costs $324 million a day, three trillion in the long run, that could be spent on public works, health care and education now. It deepens our dependency on oil when we should be spending the money to weatherize our buildings, conserve our energy and throw ourselves into a new clean energy economy with the same focus it took to get to the moon. That’s the mission we need to be wired into…

Under McCain-Palin, the same neo-conservatives who fabricated the pretext for invading Iraq will only take us into more quagmires – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Georgia, maybe Iran - that will bleed our troops and our economy without an end in sight.

Palin's brazen neocon advisers repeated the original Iraq lie – that Saddam was behind 9/11 - in the scripted speech she gave to her son’s troops as they departed for the war zone: “You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans.” [NYT, Sept. 14]

Bush-Cheney obviously are trying to scare enough voters into supporting McCain-Palin amidst a rising national security crisis. The Democrats and the media are helping them by accepting Georgia’s triggering attack on Russia as legitimate, which surely was orchestrated with the knowledge of McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, the same neo-con who directed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq from Washington lobby to actual invasion force. They further hope to bring back bin Ladin’s head from Pakistan before November. Bush-McCain may get the scalp of bin Ladin but they are on Custer’s path to Little Big Horn.

So the clear promise of McCain-Palin is there will be blood. The fact that they scoff at Obama at the mere mention of diplomacy [despite their own talking to Russia, Iran, etc] presents an opening to describe them as what they are: extremists in the tradition of Bush-Cheney for whom war seems to be a first option. McCain was there on an aircraft carrier screaming “Next stop, Baghdad!” in 2002 as if it was Vietnam in 1967. Palin says she’s wired to win the war without blinking. That’s also why McCain on two occasions this year has spoken favorably of resuming the compulsory military draft. Independents and young first-time voters should pay attention to these issues.

The peace movement which provided the platform that made Obama’s candidacy possible in 2002 cannot afford to let that advantage be squandered by Democrats this fall. The upcoming September 20 Million Doors for Peace campaign is a good way to begin spreading the word.

[ See http://www.milliondoorsforpeace.org ]

* Seth Pie-Gallon Bio:

Seth Pie-Gallon is a film & television writer/producer living in America's Heartland -- Peotone, IL. He's the founder of The Department of Homeland Narcissism, a grassroots initiative demanding an apology from President George W. Bush for the offenses of his two terms. He's also founder of the groups: Democrats for Levi Strauss, Progressives Against Parsnips, and Please Don't Hit Me.com. His new book is Pardon My Algorithms: Ready-to-Mail Apologies for Eight Years of Undergraduate. Seth Pie-Gallon is a member of Ward Churchill Study Group and the Michael Moore Subway Sandwich Fellowship.

Katha Pollitt - Palin Hater for America and One Ugly Broad! Chicago Tribune Thinks She's Swell!

Katha Pollitt is one ugly woman - this past Halloween the kids at the door gave her candy; in Katha's photo album there's only negatives;beauty is only skin deep but ugly is to the bone (Dangerfield. New York).

Click my post title for the article - it is pretty standard hate stuff but very badly written and certainly worthy of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

I read Miss Pollitt's op-ed piece with great interest this morning. The Tribune did not provide a photo of Miss Pollitt but I managed to match the face with the message. Miss Pollitt is also not all that bright it seems to me thata demitasse would fit her head like a sombrero. Miss Pollitt is also rather . . .shall we say offensive? I've come across decomposed bodies of two fishermen tossed up on the beach at Holland Michigan that were less offensive than Miss Pollitt.

Miss Pollitt would scare a starving dog off a meat wagon, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As Progressive are wont to say 'Who's to judge?' As I am wont to say, 'Me.' That is one ugly broad. Beauty works it's way up from the heart and Miss Pollitt's words of unnecessary invective match her tiny heart.

But shucks, don't take my word for it I am a dedicated and devout sexist.

My favorite Lesbian/literary critic Camille Paglia thinks not much of Miss Pollitt*. as well.

Feminist author Camille Paglia described Pollitt as a "whiny troll, an unscrupulous and unreliable critic and a cultural philistine...She's a good example of the phony prep-school/trust-fund leftism suffusing the incestuously interwined Ivy League cliques who run the corrupt East Coast literary and magazine establishment."[6]

Yet, the Chicago Tribune's editorial board sees fit to use a 'whiny troll' to smear Sarah Palin. Pollitt is a feminist. One of those feminists who can not seem to develop a happy life and Billy-bedamns any woman who is everything that they are not. Pollitt tosses hate on Sarah Palin like Englewood Napalm ( a horrific concoction of boiling water and bacon grease that is infamous for branding domestic disputes.

Sarah Palin will be fine. The Radical Feminists are scared witless - I believe that is the word I wish - of Sarah Palin.

The Chicago Tribune has become as sad a joke in journalism as the soon to closed Chicago Sun Times.

Katha Pollitt is married ( her second and his third) to Marxist critic Steve Lukes.

Sarah Palin is Governor of Alaska and happily married to the man she met in high school.

This is list from Mother Jones by Katha Pollitt Her Ten Must Reads - Yeah, I'll get around to those hits . . .when it snows in the Philippines.
Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation magazine and author of Reasonable Creatures: Feminism & Society in American Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 1994). In the early 1980s, she reviewed books for Mother Jones. Her choices, listed chronologically:

1976 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society, by Raymond Williams (London: Oxford University Press). The great Marxist scholar of English literature analyzes the history of 131 crucial words, from "aesthetic," which has always meant the opposite of "social" and "practical," to "work," which did not always mean paid employment.

1978 For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (New York: Doubleday). This feminist classic is still the most elegant and spirited dissection of received medical wisdom -- a.k.a. sexism.

1983 Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson (London: Verso). A brilliant and erudite investigation of the concept of national identity -- a modern invention whose psychological power lies in denying that it is one.

1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, by Pierre Bourdieu (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). With subtlety and sophistication, the great French sociologist analyzes the way social and economic classes are shaped and preserved by myriad tiny but amazingly precise differences -- from preferences in food and art to body language and hairstyles. The data are French, the implications universal.

1984 Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, by R.C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin (New York: Pantheon). Three prominent scientists debunk genetic determinism and sociobiology so thoroughly it's amazing The Bell Curve got published.

1988 A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A beautiful, furious essay about the author's native Antigua, tourist mecca and postcolonial slum -- the modern world in a nutshell.

1990 City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, by Mike Davis (London: Verso). I learned something from every page of this bold social history of Los Angeles as the prototype of a new kind of city, the world megalopolis.

1991 Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi (New York: Crown). The book that woke American women from their Reagan-era "post-feminist" nap. Faludi shows how the media operates as a kind of Möbius strip, endlessly recycling half-truths and distortions to "prove" that feminism has made women miserable.

1991 Mao II, by Don DeLillo (New York: Penguin). A Pynchon-like writer leaves his study to explore a world of cults, terrorists, dilapidation, and drift. A tragic meditation on post-modernity as alternating currents of isolation and mass hysteria.

Adolph Reed Jr.'s essays are not collected in a book, but he is the smartest person of any race, class, or gender writing on race, class, and gender. (His writing appears in the Progressive and Village Voice.)


Rather have my gums scrapped, Katha!

Cammy, with words such as yours about Katha ('She's a good example of the phony prep-school/trust-fund leftism suffusing the incestuously interwined Ivy League cliques who run the corrupt East Coast literary and magazine establishment.') I am proud to call myself a Lesbian too!

The Debate: Biden Exudes Charm & Class, but Palin Connects to Americans

The Chicago Tribune rolled out its underwhelming 'damn with faint praise' edition of the Post VP Debate spin.

Steve Chapman's charge of 'Small Town Snobbery' that he lamely leveled against Sahara Palin still banners up for the Salon set. Using some dweebish sociology paper, Chapman explains that crime is down in small town America because the towns are small:

This deters crime in two ways. First, you don't want to damage your reputation among people who may ostracize you for doing wrong. Second, you don't want to rob someone who can easily identify you to police—and in a small town, that limits your pool of victims. Crime is more common in cities because they offer a target-rich environment and much less chance of being spotted by someone who can tell the cops your name, address and 3rd-grade teacher.
One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

Homicide, Assault, Robery in Englewood, Chatham, Gresham, Roseland where the body count goes up higher than Franklin Raines' Fannie Mae buyout loot?

Steve, you really need to get out a bit. Violent Crimes in those neighborhoods do not occur because of the economic rich pickings, Steve and all too often the neighbors and relatives witness the actual crime and 'NO SNITCH!'

Anyway, Joe Biden is a compelling, forceful, witty, and delightful man and Sarah Palin faced one of the most skilled debaters in the U.S. Senate. Gov. Palin held her own and gave back as good as she got.

What is important is this - Sarah Palin spoke to America.

Joe Biden won the debate, but Sarah Palin won the hearts and minds - if not the ears of folks all over America - I expect more disertations on Palins mispronunciation of the 'N word' - NUCLEAR. I believe that her pronunciation was part of the tactical plan to connect with Americans - irregardless of Party Affiliation. That was the mission. Check!

Steve Chapman's is to help paint the Yellow Brick Road that Obama is skipping on - for now.

Here's Who Hates Sarah Palin - Glad I'm With Her!

They really Hate Sarah Palin!

Heck, I ain't mad at nobody. Hate beets.

POTUS SATELLITE RADIO; AIR AMERICA: MSNBC - The Tool Shed; NPR; PBS; Gwen ' Books to Sell' IfillCNN- Wolf's Pack; Hollywood - except for the one's with genuine enduring talent; Bruce 'I'M Woody Guthrie!' Springsteen; most of the really bad tippers at Keegan's Pub -both of them; The View - except for the skinny blonde broad; Kathleen Parker?; the New Yorker; Rolling Stone; THE GDs; The Stones (not Rolling -the gang-bangers) Vice Lords; Four Corner Hustlers; Mikey Cobras; all seven operators of the open and active Crack Houses on Morgan between 87th & 79th Street; community activists everywhere; Hugo Chavez; SEIU; Catholic School Girls Against The War; and Michael Moore in between meals HATE SARAH PALIN!

That makes me feel good. I care not a fig for most of those yamheads- can't say that I hate 'em. Bored by, yes. Irriated by their volume, to be sure. Tickled by their intrisicly humorless self-absorbtion, all the time, but hate is for losers. Looks like Obama has a huge problem - the Hate/Loser demographic in his corner is bigger than Michael Moore's snack! Here is a great article from last month by Dave Kahanne that sums up the idiocy of group think.

But she’s not a Democrat, which despite her va-va-va-voom appearance, means she’s not really a woman, which is one of the reasons we’ve spent the past four days since McCain unveiled her trying to tear her limb from limb. Just because she’s the governor of a state sandwiched between two obscure and unimportant countries, Canada and Russia, and spent more time in her first five minutes visiting American troops in Iraq than Evita Barry did during his entire Rainbow Tour, what could she possibly know about foreign policy? It’s not like she’s John Edwards or something.

So that’s why we’re having our Wellstone Funeral Moment at the moment. We mean well; we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go over the top with our outright loathing of the Neanderthals who preach “Christian” values while practicing Wiccanism and child sacrifice and who hate black people and gay people and want to destroy the environment just because they can, and want to amass more money than even John Kerry or Jon Corzine or Herb Kohl or Jay Rockefeller or Dianne Feinstein — the five richest senators — or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards or Nancy Pelosi have. That, usually, is the Kos Kidz’s job. Along with speculating exactly how Bush got from My Pet Goat to planting the depth charges that blew up the levees in New Orleans.

But sometimes the mask slips and you can see — whoops! — how much we hate you. Normally we’re against hate in all its forms, and embrace tolerance as one of our defining moral attributes. But when it comes to you conservatives, well, with the best will in the world, we just can’t tolerate you. You’re elitist, you’re judgmental, you’re hypocritical, and we know that deep down you hate us even more than we hate you. Therefore, by any means necessary, we will defeat you this fall. Voter fraud, “walking around” money, legions of lawyers, as many recounts as it takes — bring it on!

Because we need to take back our country. We need to take it back from fascists like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and give it back to its rightful proprietors, patriots like Henry Wallace, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas, Gus Hall, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Saul Alinsky, William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and, yes, my guy, the Talking Parrot, you know who.

And Sarah Marshall Palin stands in the way of all that. After we sent Bill n’ Hill packing with their twin gold watches in Denver, we thought we had a clear playing field. The sunshine of the uplands was ours. Mother Gaia had opened wide her arms to embrace us, shunning the Orcs and the Uruk-hai of the Anti-Slavery, Anti-Segregation, Anti-Secularism, Anti-Sedition and Anti-Surrender Party. We were going up against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, Herbert Hoover and Whoever, Daddy Bush and Dan Quayle, Gerald R. Ford and, well, Bob Dole.

Piece of cake, walk on the beach, a Renaissance Weekend in a non-denominational heaven for atheists. Until Sarah Marshall Palin showed up, bringing with her 10 million bucks for the bad guys in three days, a level of enthusiasm not seen since Ronnie was a pup, and a clear shot to Republican dominance with her and Bobby Jindal and whatever seduced and corrupted minority group is coming next for eons to come.

So that’s why we hate you, Sarah Marshall Palin. We hate you because you remind the other side of their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and make them want to fight for you against our sneers and our smears. We hate you because you’re smart and accomplished and didn’t make your bones on the back of Monica Lewinsky. We hate you because you’ve made us forget that our last two candidates for vice president were Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, whoever they were.

We hate you because you’re smart and beautiful and we wish we had women like you on our side.

We hate you.

McCain/Palin: Salon -'Insists' - That Readers Agree - The Semiotic Seduction

Joan Walsh, the Gee Whiz Xanthippe of Salon.org 'insists' that readers 'understand' that

1. Gov. Palin is a Stepford Wife Dominatrix

2. Feminism really means something to mothers of America, as well as 'divorced, single-by-choice, or alternative inclination' females.

3. John McCain is a long-legged Mac Daddy

4. Change will only come if everyone does and thinks as Salon -'insists.'

My Aunt Helen used to ladle an extra pint of Dinty Moore Beef stew on my biscuits with an 'I insist!' No argument from this fat-boy Aunt Helen, ladle it on!

I love my Aunt Helen who insisted that I pray to the image of the Sacred Heart and not act like such a little jerk -'all of the time.'

Other people have insisted -'Have shot of Jack.' Pass, that stuff would gag a maggot. Strictly a Smithwicks Man, Noam.'

Other people have insisted that I 'read this op-piece by Noam Chomsky he really understands.' But I do not understand Noam. The guy has the personality of a dial tone.

Some others have insisted that I 'vote for Obama.' I did. Twice. Right here in Illinois. He got creamed by Bobby Rush and won over Allan Keyes!

Now Joan Walsh and her crew 'Insist' that Sarah Palin looks lke 'deer in the headlights ( Dan Quayle -BTW Quayle Won Huge!) and that Charlie Gibson tossed grapefruits at the Governor on ABC last night - saw it Joanie. Gov. did fine.

But Joanie 'insists' upon this doozy:

The fact that Sarah Palin sat for her humiliating interview with ABC's Charles Gibson on 9/11 is one of those strange serendipitous events that makes one believe there's order in the universe. Remember how 9/11 changed everything, especially our new seriousness about the larger world and foreign policy? Never again would we risk a president, maybe not even a senate candidate, without global experience and sophistication.

What a mockery Palin made of all that. I'll get criticized as sexist for saying this, but I would say the same thing about a man who sounded this ignorant: Talking to Charles Gibson tonight, Palin sometimes reminded me of poor Miss South Carolina, who, asked why many Americans can't find the U.S. on a map, famously said: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And I believe that our education, like, such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

This statement from Palin about Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is better, but not hugely: "I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes. We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran."

N.B - Joanie had nucular misspelled -which I believe was meant to be a an affront to Governor Palin. Could be? Nah. Well, maybe.
Nah, no thanks. Non Sequitur, Joanie. This will keep you with a gig shouting with the White Noise Chris 'Milky' Matthews on The Tool Shed -MSNBC, but it is a roar of laughs to folks who can read - read about what they also witnessed. What? Were you hallucinating? Joan Walsh and Salon will continue to crank out laughs and McCain'Palin will continue to erode the once powerful lead enjoyed by the Junior Senator from Illinois.

When Aunt Helen insists, pour it on.

McCain/Palin: Catholics Seem to Give McCain/Palin the Zogby Boost

The Zogby Numbers seem to indicate Catholics to be the big demographic in the McCain/Palin Bounce over the flat Obama/Biden ticket. Makes Sense - Obama Loves Abortion and Hates School Choice and Joe Does What the DNC Tells Him.

They Are no Mavericks!

All they got is Hollywood - We got Altar and Rosary Societies and Knights of Columbus Councils everywhere!


Some Very Strange Numbers From Zogby

Fritz Wenzel, a spokesman for the Zogby polling organization, is on XM POTUS08 right now, and he says that according to their numbers, McCain's surge in the polls started during the Democratic convention... which strikes me as rather odd.

Then he says that Sarah Palin is helping McCain by "double digits" among Catholic voters, particularly in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Michigan. While I don't find that impossible, it's interesting that a non-Catholic political figure would move the dial for Catholic voters. (Having said that, it's easy to picture her "hockey mom" style playing with Catholic voters in those states...)

[UPDATE: Numerous readers argue this is the Trig Palin effect. Yeah, that would make sense. A couple readers are telling me Sarah Palin was baptized Catholic, but I am skeptical that that would be the reason that Catholic voters would be shifting to the McCain-Palin ticket; that fact just doesn't seem publicized enough, nor seem like the piece of data that would shift a voter from one ticket to another, as Biden is Catholic.]

Independent women voters, as a portion of the sample, shrunk from 15 percent to 7 percent, but they went to Obama-Biden, not McCain-Palin. Yet among independent voters overall, McCain-Palin leads Obama-Biden, 49 percent to 42 percent.


All of this is from a Zogby Interactive poll of likely voters. For what it's worth...


09/08 01:13 PM

Sarah Palin - Palin is Ready to Lead and Meet Her Critics - I Do Not Believe that They Will Care to Meet The Governor on a Level Playing Field

The front page of the Chicago Tribune features a nude painting done by a 69 year old artist - who employed his daughter as a model for Governor Palin. The Chicago Tribune editorial geeks are solidly behind Senator Obama. Along with the cork-screwing Sun Times, the Tribune engages in a daily beatdown of McCain or Palin. No big deal really as no one in Chicago seems to pay much attention to the Chicago editorial dweebs and pencil-necks who tend to live in lily-white suburbs while celebrating diversity.

With all the news that the Chicago Tribune is not covering - Tony Rezko, Willliam Ayers and their long and close associations with Senator Obama; another murdered Chicago Police Officer; multiple killings and shootings on the south and west sides; a moronic Governor bankrupting the State; Public Schools looting the budget and world wide terrorism; the editorial snobs decided to be edgy.

The painting is in no way offensive - its is badly done art, by what appears. It might be to Gov. Palin's father or her husband, but then again the 'artist' would cower behind freedom of speech and artistic expression to avoid a sound beating by either or both gentleman.

What is offensive is the 'nuanced' editorial gigglers. Nuanced means bullshit these days - Obama is 'nuanced.' Obama is using 'Middle Class' more than TV sit coms use 'Dude!' - when in fact, Obama committed to Trinity United Church of Christ which demanded that members 'disavow' the American Middle Class. That's Nuanced. The editorial Board at the Chicago Tribune is Nuanced.

The Chicago Tribune long ago shred its dignity along with editorial intelligence. No matter, people will stop buying the paper product and more hard working and effective people with the Tribune will be laid off - and the talentless and smugly mediocrities will soldier on.

The painting is of no consequence and even of less consequence is the Chicago Tribune.

A Chicago Police Officer was murdered by a drug-dealing thug - every day occurrence; the greatest financial catastrophe in decades brought on by Progressive nitwits and scam mortgage pirates; a simpleton Governor is bankrupting Illinois - but Chicago Tribune needs to mock the Governor of a solvent State running for Vice President.

Eric Zorn says that expectations for Gov. Palin are on the floor.

It is always great to hear someone display contempt and low-regard before a contest. Generally, it comes from someone who has never been in a fight, much less won one.

People who have actually acted in the interests of other people or been placed in a situation that requires dignity and courage from them never sneer at any combatant.

Most people, and Sarah Palin is like most people not Tina Fey, or Bill Maher or Sean Hannity, face life and the occasional opponent as if they were playing Notre Dame every day.

Then there are the nuanced - those who avoid the fights, the struggles, the commitments - and sneer.

On Thursday night Governor Palin will face a great Democratic foe in Senator Biden. She had best pack a big Lunch. She will do fine.

Then, Governor Palin and turn to chat with Salon, MSNBC, CNN, and the dweebs at Chicago Tribune. Pack a big energy bar cupcakes.

I Fully Support Vice President Sarah Palin It's Easy.

This is from a pal of mine in Texas.


I support 100% the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin for Vice President and stand in sympathy and support of the Palin family during this challenging time that they face with their daughter Bristol.

I pronounce anathema on the subhuman slime who first spread baseless and abhorrent rumors about Gov. Palin's fifth child being her daughter Bristol's child and upon the feckless filth who subsequently are twisting the announcement of Bristol's pregnancy into a grotesque attack upon Bristol and upon Sarah's fitness to serve in office and judgmental condemnation of the Palin family parenting skills.

And I entertain utter disdain for those media personages and media organization in this fine land who have prostituted all journalistic principles and brought down American political discourse to uprecedented and inconceivable depths of degradation, tearing down hitherto unbreached barriers of ethical restraint, in their persecution of Bristol Palin and their lust to destroy by innuendo and guilt-by-parentage the political career of Gov. Palin for strictly partisan and vindictive reasons unmoored from any sense of honesty or integrity.

Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin - Cammy You are My Kind of Gal! Well, Gal Pal Anyway. . .Look, I'm with Sappho Too. . .

Camille Paglia is great teacher of literature. I was OK. Ms. Paglia is a common sense Feminist; I am a devout sexist. Ms. Paglia is a devotee of Sappho (attracted to women) and so am I!

I'd buy her a beer the size of Connecticut

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

Cammy, when and if you hit Chicago, I'll spring for steak that would gag Keith Olbermann and shut-up Chris Matthews . . .for a moment. We'll double! We can even take in some South American tunes.

McCain Palin: Obama is Dull, But He is Really Shrill

There's Atheists and then there's atheists. The other day I read a piece in Newsweek, an organ of Camp Obama, by Sam Harris. Sam Harris is the leader of the Reason Project dedicated 'to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy. It will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific research and opinion polls, award grants to other non-profit organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals — with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition and bigotry in the world.'

Harris and HBO bigot Bill Maher a key player in the Reason Project smear and assault any and all religion. Harris attacked Sarah Palin as an icon of all Harris and Maher consider to betoo stupid to live. We are breathing their rarefied air it seems.

Harris is a punk philosopher, born in the age of 'don't hit him, he's weak.'

“Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/09/sam_harris_on_s.html

Theocracy? What manner of coinage does Brother Harris Use? Still says 'In God We Trust' behind George Washington's neck on all the U.S. Minted quarters that I toss into theparking meters. Sam Harris and Bill Maher hate religion like the Inquisistion hated heresy. 'Bastinado, for you Mrs. Murphy!'

Well Sam Harris is an atheist. Thene there's Chris Hitchens, the British wit and critic of religion. Christopher Hitchens has no truck for Church-going, Psalm-singing Rubes, but he genuinely loves them.

Where Harris and Maher have entered the lists as God Mocking Knights of the Woeful Countenance, Christopher Hitchens observes the battle from the grandstands of intellectual inquiry.

He is not 'unnerved' by Governor Palin, but he is bored by Barack Obama, who is not a Muslim, but a devout Christian without a Church, until after the election.

Why is Obama so vapid and hesitant and gutless? Why, to put it another way, does he risk going into political history as a dusky Dukakis? Well, after the self-imposed Jeremiah Wright nightmare, he can't afford any more militancy, or militant-sounding stuff, even if it might be justified. His other problems are self-inflicted or party-inflicted as well. He couldn't have picked a gifted Democratic woman as his running mate, because he couldn't have chosen a female who wasn't the ever-present Sen. Clinton, and so he handed the free gift of doing so to his Republican opponent (whose own choice has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas). So the unquantifiable yet important "atmospherics" of politics, with all their little X factors, belong at present to the other team.

The Dukakis comparison is, of course, a cruel one, but it raises a couple more questions that must be faced. We are told by outraged Democrats that many voters still believe, thanks to some smear job, that Sen. Obama is a Muslim. Yet who is the most famous source of this supposedly appalling libel (as if an American candidate cannot be of any religion or none)? Absent any anonymous whispering campaign, the person who did most to insinuate the idea in public—"There is nothing to base that on. As far as I know"—was Obama's fellow Democrat and the junior senator from New York. It was much the same in 1988, when Al Gore brought up the Dukakis furlough program, later to be made infamous by the name Willie Horton, against the hapless governor of Massachusetts who was then his rival for the nomination.

By the end of that grueling campaign season, a lot of us had got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose—or was at the very least scared of winning. Why do I sometimes get the same idea about Obama? To put it a touch more precisely, what I suspect in his case is that he had no idea of winning this time around. He was running in Iowa and New Hampshire to seed the ground for 2012, not 2008, and then the enthusiasm of his supporters (and the weird coincidence of a strong John Edwards showing in Iowa) put him at the front of the pack. Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.

Look at the record, and at Obama's replies to essential and pressing questions. The surge in Iraq? I'll answer that only if you insist. The credit crunch? Please may I be photographed with Bill Clinton's economic team? Georgia? After you, please, Sen. McCain. A vice-presidential nominee? What about a guy who, despite his various qualities, is picked because he has almost no enemies among Democratic interest groups?

Yep, Barack Obama is dull, but he is also shrill. Obama is negative - The Surge Can't Work! The Economy is Doomed! Americans Cling! Americans are Bitter! Americans Are Racist! Americans Are Not Elite!

Dull, but Shrill. There's Atheists and then ther's atheists.