I mean, it’s not like the U.S. has turned Iraq over to the puppet government we installed there after invading the country for lies in the last administration, as if Saddam Hussein (who got hanged years ago) was responsible for 9-11 or was any threat after years of embargo that had hundreds of thousands of Iraqis starving after Daddy’s bullshit mercenary war in the early ’90s. Last I checked, which was this morning, ridiculously overstretched U.S. troops and well-paid mercenaries were still there and still dying.

Nor is it like the U.S. isn’t still negotiating with warlords and drug kingpins in Afghanistan, or that the puppet government we installed there is in charge of anything other than the pallets of cash passed out to those drug lords. And yes, our troops and mercenaries are still dying every day there too. Why, last I checked – again this morning – Obama was still trying to get a troop surge there, despite not having any troops to work with after 8 years of decimating our vaunted “All-Volunteer” force.

Oh… and civilians by the multi-thousands in both countries are still being slaughtered wholesale, while our overstretched troops play the old game of “take this hill today, abandon it to the enemy tomorrow” that lost us Korea and Vietnam. Then there’s Pakistan, which Obama is bombing regularly with drones and slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians we’re not even at war with. And of course there’s Iran, which Obama is threatening daily with carpet-nukes because he doesn’t like their diminutive not-really leader’s rhetoric as our troops surround his nation. Oh, and then there’s Columbia, and Obama’s troop build-up there to ostensibly take on the drug cartels he’s supporting out in the open in Opium-Land.

The whole world is topsy-turvy crazy, and the Nobel committee is leading the pack. Wow. Just… wow.

Wake me up when Barack Obama does anything real in this world to end and/or prevent war. Until then, I’ve just got to consider this as being just what it is. The Nobel Hope-Against-Hope Prize.

CNN commentator Roland S. Martin has a piece up today (July 22) entitled, Obama birth issue is nutty that proceeds to make good fun of the wingnuts. But since one of George W. Bush’s first serious actions as President after 9-11 was to arrange the biggest government overhaul since the New Deal – by inventing the so-called “Department of Homeland Security” – there are Americans out in the hinterland who are suddenly quite confused about their legal status. I’m one of them, and so is recent Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. Who, like me, actually wasn’t born in the United States of America.

McCain, like me, was a Navy brat. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, I was born in the Philippines. There used to be a clear law on the books that held the children of American citizens born in a foreign country are indeed ‘natural born’ American citizens, even if they automatically get dual citizenship for the country in which they were born. I had that until I was 18, though after that I would have had to formalize, and I was never very fond of Ferdinand and Imelda “Shoe-Lady” Marcos. So I let it slide. Still, if nobody questioned McCain’s citizenship qualification for POTUS, the fervor with which wingnuttia rants about Obama seems even crazier. I mean, even if Hawaii hadn’t been a state when he was born, did not all Hawaiians receive automatic citizenship when it WAS made a state? It was a territory, after all. Like Puerto Rico. Which apparently some wingnuts in Congress think is a foreign country too, thus Judge Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t be a citizen. Weird.

The last day job I held was in the period after 9-11 when DHS became the designated troublemaker for Americans of all kinds. My problems started when Human Resources was informed that my birth certificate didn’t qualify as “proof of citizenship” for me to have gotten the job. So I responded that my state driver’s license and Social Security card should suffice if HR couldn’t manage to read the line that designated US citizenship for both my parents and myself on that Philippine-issued birth certificate. They told me I had to get a birth certificate from a state here in the US. So I asked them which state they’d suggest I pretend to be born in, thinking there must be a racket in California or somewhere that provides fake birth certificates for people like me who weren’t actually born there. They were not amused.

Then they found a “discrepency” on my Social Security card. Seems I had used the name I’ve always gone by in addition to the first name on my birth certificate, when I had the last name changed after I got married back in 1969. I was informed they could no longer make my pay checks out to my legal name (which WAS on the card), and which is the name on my bank account. The bank then proceeded to tell me it couldn’t cash my checks! I was informed I’d have to take unpaid time off work – for which I’d get in trouble because no one would approve it – to stand in line at the SS office to have the name changed again. So I could work. I began to get the very strong feeling they didn’t want me there.

So I wrote a nice missive to HR telling them that I’d been paying taxes for more than 35 years under the NUMBER on my SS card, and that the IRS – a duly authorized agency of the federal government – had never once complained or refused my money. I further wrote that when I got married, I had my named changed to his on that card, and nobody ever asked to see a court order or required me to get one that “legally” changed my last name. In fact, I had dropped my given middle name entirely and used the first initial of my original last name on all legal matters from that time on. Also a CUSTOM, not something for which I ever had to go to court. I further said that if I were to be required per DHS’s audit to legally change my name, they were going to have to go after every single married woman in the country who had ever taken her husband’s name or used their maiden name’s initial for their middle. That’s about 55% of the entire population, not something this nation had the money to accomplish while spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I did end up quitting that job just because I know when I’m not wanted. Now write full time freelance, and my boss has never asked me to prove I’m a citizen or argued with me about what name I care to attach. Oh… and he uses direct deposit to pay me, in the account with my terrorist name attached.

I call it my “terrorist” name because DHS was supposed to be chasing terrorists, not messing up the lives and livelihoods of lifelong American citizens and taxpayers in good standing. Thus they must have believed I’m some sort of terrorist. I prefer the title “Terrierist,” since I’m quite fond of small dogs. You’d think these folks would have better things to do in the wake of 9-11, perhaps going after real terrorists or something. Guess that’s what I get for thinking.

I presume these crazy wingnuts would be doing this same weird Dervish Dance if John McCain were President right now. I mean, he absolutely wasn’t born in the United States, while Barack Obama absolutely was. And while they’re at it, they should make a new law that says the wives of military officers stationed overseas are forbidden to visit them or live with them, on the off-chance a baby might be born somewhere outside of Kansas. Sheesh!

Most of these idiots are so dumb and so ill-educated that they can’t even find California on a map, much less Panama or Philippines or Iraq. Why are they being given time and attention in the media? Shouldn’t we be ashamed of the morons among us, the fact that they represent a good 20% of our population? Is that inbreeding, environmental toxins, or just insane?

Whatever it is, I’m glad I’m not one of them. And I think there should be an IQ test administered to all employees of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure we don’t have to actually deal with any of these defectives in our day-to-day lives.

1. “American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant and affordable energy.”

Actually, it was not until the rural electrification efforts of the 1930s – which were financed largely by the government as part of the infrastructure make-work provisions of the New Deal – that electricity became available outside major cities. In many states of the west-southwest, the CCC and Army Corps of Engineers worked in tandem with the rural electrification programs building dams and hydroelectric power plants to supply energy to those rural grids. Most of these RECs were cooperatives, owned by the customers who purchased the power, and governed by boards drawn from those small communities.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: This is Socialism in action.

2. “There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!” + something about destroying the economy.

Actually, as so graphically demonstrated last summer when the price of gasoline was arbitrarily jacked up to nearly $5 a gallon so oil companies and traders could make a literal killing, a reasonably high cost of energy that reflects its serious environmental effects, the expensive wars we are fighting to secure it, etc. leads directly to conservation efforts instigated by the people themselves rather than imposed by the government. Consumption of gasoline suddenly got cut in half as people stopped driving two blocks to the bar or convenient store, car-pooled to work, learned how to walk again, etc. It’s good for people to pay the actual costs.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The economy is already destroyed. Did you not notice? We did. These legs are made for walking. Or riding a bike. A truly reflective cost of gasoline – which other countries have been paying for decades – will spur investment in alternatives that will be more environmentally friendly, will bring much-needed crop price relief to farmers, and will generate jobs as more and more people are out of work with no chance of ever going back to the old ones.

3. “In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.”

Massive unemployment in the energy sector began just weeks after Saint Ronnie the Reagan took the oath of office. He ordered the wells in the booming oil and gas industry in Texas and Oklahoma (where I was at the time) immediately capped. Then he dramatically increased our dependence on imported Middle Eastern oil, no doubt to justify foreign policy adjustments that have led to current illegal oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s under those caps is now “reserve,” as we struggle to use up as much of the ME’s supplies as possible.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The increased cost of doing things the old way will spur investment in new ways. Those acre-size factories dotting the landscape can install solar panels on their huge roofs to offset their costs. Wind and water storage systems can help provide night supply, but most such factories don’t run at night anyway. That’s jobs in the factories, jobs in support industries (like installation and maintenance), jobs in production, and electricity in the grid. This won’t be done so long as energy is artificially cheap. Real costs will lead to real changes.

4. “Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.”

Again, America’s producing oil and gas fields expanded dramatically during Jimmy Carter’s “energy crisis” and ordered capped the moment Reagan got into office. They’ve been capped ever since. These are wells already drilled, were already producing. In order to increase our dependence on foreign supply so we could use it up and make vassals of those nations later on. Obviously, home-grown energy independence is NOT a Republican value or a “supply-side” tenet.

I live in Appalachia. I was in southeastern Kentucky last weekend and Mountaintop Removal is the absolute ultimate in environmental rape for fewer jobs and more poverty. I’m big into making a law through NC’s legislature that would forbid Duke and others from using coal mined in this way. In Tennessee there are once-beautiful communities still devastated by the massive fly ash spill, and increasing nasty health effects nobody’s attending to. There’s no such thing as “Clean Coal” – those scrubbers have been required by law since the 1970s and are STILL not installed because all coal plants get a waiver!

As for the most expensive and dangerous form of boiling water ever conceived, don’t get me started… I can go on for months. All those “secret” scram failures, failed fuel incidents and big ass dumps that have been going on since the early 1950s have killed and injured generations of Americans and are STILL not being adequately addressed. NO NUCLEAR, and I mean that most sincerely as a one-time health physicist who has seen it up close and ugly. We will NEVER be able to afford it, in any possible way.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: Name the forum, baby. I’ll bring my real cost-benefit analyses, my technical details, and some very sick survivors. You bring your ignorance, your propaganda and your lies. Then we’ll let the People decide, m’kay?

The way we do energy in this country must change. The change will indeed cause some trade-offs, that’s why the government is going to have to subsidize some things. Like offsets for the poor, low-cost financing to the low end of the middle class (that still own homes) to refit with supplemental power generation capacity and backwards meters, revamping the grid to recover some of the 30% of generation capacity we now lose to inefficiencies of transmission, etc., etc., etc.

Putting it off another decade or two won’t help, as more and more cities find themselves under water and massive population relocation kicks in due to increased global warming. Eventually it’s just time to pay the piper, and now is our time. Go back to Alaska and take care of your kids. They need you, we do not.

After just 64 days in office attempting to orchestrate some way out of the unholy mess those nutty Neocons left in their disastrous 8-year wake, President Barack Obama (oooh, I love saying that!) held his second hour long in-depth press conference on Tuesday night. Imagine a POTUS who actually makes himself available on occasion to the press to answer real questions! A POTUS who can speak proper English without inventing nonsense words out of whole cloth and lapsing into feigned ‘folksiness’ or juvenile frat-boy antics! This is all quite foreign to a populace that votes not for intelligence and ability, but on who they’d most like to get drunk with down at the bowling alley. Wow. It’s beginning to like like America just might have decided to join the 21st century at long last, doesn’t it?

In this second presser Obama chose not to call on ‘the usual suspects’ among the WH Press Corps’ denizens (who got their chance at the spotlight last month). He didn’t call upon reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune or even USA Today. Instead, he gave the backup bench a bit of a workout. This predictably led the stars to whine loudly that they weren’t getting their due amount of attention from their host.

But the true highlight of the evening was when Obama went ahead and DID call on one of those usual suspects – Ed Henry of CNN, who tried really hard for a “gotcha” question Obama would trip and fall over. Henry had already asked the question, but didn’t like the answer. So thought he’d have another go at wasting valuable air time with his oversized ego.

Henry wanted to know – and know right now – why it took Obama two days to come out publicly with outrage about the AIG bonuses. Especially since other people were expressing outrage right away. Visibly annoyed, Obama delivered a bitch-slap right to Henry’s cheek…

“It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

Oh, OUCH!!!!! That’s gotta hurt.

Now that the inauguration party is over and it’s still winter in Washington and the now-marginalized Republican Party is back to its obstructionist games, those who worked so hard for so long to get Barack Obama elected might want to pick up some of the paraphernalia they didn’t have time to pick up on the campaign trail.

Luckily, they’re not all gone yet. A site called Teenormous still offers funny Obama t-shirts worthy of collecting. Since I have several cool Star Wars shirts, I guess I’ll have to get one of Stylin’s “Help Us Obama, You’re Our Only Hope” shirts.

And for those who actually won the Superbowl pool, you can spend it on Steelers shirts too. Hint: do this BEFORE you figure your taxes for 2007, because when you do that you’ll be in for a big shock. Seems that those of us in the less-than $40K a year bracket had our taxes tripled when nobody was looking, and no, they didn’t take out nearly enough even if you were claiming no dependents at all. We will ALL owe way more than we’ve got this year unless we made a killing off the total world economic collapse.

Go figure…

Three of the four registered voters in my household voted more than two weeks ago, just 4 days into the early voting period here in North Carolina. That’s me, my hubby and our grandson who turned 18 in May. Daughter is voting today, mostly because she has this ‘thing’ about voting on election day. Then she and grandson are headed for Asheville to tend lines (I doubt there will be one here, more than three quarters of this end of the county early voted), then to an election party expected to go late into the night. Hubby and I will be off to our county seat, where we’ve been recruited as “Poll Ninjas” by the Dem chair, there to assist in case anybody is challenged, lawyers standing by.

Paper ballots again this year too, since Diebold got kicked out of the state after throwing the 2004 election into utter turmoil (it took months to sort out some state races, so many split-ticket votes had been compromised! Filling in the dot isn’t that hard. Counting them isn’t that hard either.

But it’ll be morning before we know the actual results, so I thought I’d offer a true story about voting out in “real America”…

Election Day in Wilburton, Oklahoma

It was 1982, a midterm election generally, but important locally for the city government, police chief and sheriff, county wigs. I worked as a typesetter and editor for the local weekly newspaper – it was the county seat, but there wasn’t enough going on in the county for more than a weekly. The newspaper office was across the street (little more than an alley) from the courthouse, police station and jail. Next door to the funeral home, across a vacant lot that was part of their big lawn.

There were no radio or television stations in the county, so the citizens started gathering on the funeral home lawn about a half hour before the polls closed. They brought blankets, lawn chairs, coolers, picnic baskets and children, by 7 p.m. the place was packed. Fred the publisher had a gigantic blackboard on a stand that was marked with grids in white paint that he’d used to post vote tallies as they came in for at least 4 decades. It was a regular feature for the county, families had been gathering there for generations.

Once the candidates and offices were written-in on the blackboard, we carried it outside and set it right in the middle of the street between our office and the courthouse where the votes were being counted. As the precinct totals were released, a runner would bring it to Fred in his big lawn chair, he’d nod, then I would hand it to the pressman precariously perched on a ladder, chalk in hand. He’d add the tally under the proper columns, and the people on the funeral home lawn would cheer or boo by turns. The totals had to be refreshed each time another precinct came in, and that was my job. I had a nice pocket calculator to help me with the math, and if I got it wrong I knew for sure I’d hear about it immediately from the crowd.

The last of the ballot boxes didn’t come in from far corners of the county until nearly 9 p.m., and by then many of the families with small children had made their way back home. But new people kept the lawn full as factory shifts were over and others got off work. The winners and losers were known by about 10 p.m. unless it was a very close race. We had one that year for Sheriff, it went all the way to 11 before we knew who won.

Now, we the “Paper People” didn’t get out of there until 3 a.m., since after all that song and dance for the audience we had to put the Special Election Edition together, get it printed and distributed. Made for a very, very long night, but I remember it fondly as my all-time favorite election.

Fred died some years ago, I have heard that the people don’t gather on the funeral home lawn anymore to watch the election results. They stay behind closed doors and watch Fox News, wait until the next day to find out who won the local contests. That’s very sad to me, just another symptom of the fog of depression that settled over Oklahoma when it abandoned its fervently Democratic status in favor of these past 8 years’ worth of fear-mongering, hate and insult. I don’t guess there will ever be a friendly community election again in that part of the country, so this little bit of Americana has gone the way of the dinosaur. I miss it, especially on an election day so full of Hope as this one!

Secretary of the Treasury and ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs Henry Paulson called Congressional leadership for a get-together. He tells them something – no doubt using charts and graphs – so horrifying, so absolutely terrifying that they all come out looking like Moses (er… Charlton Heston) after meeting the burning bush. Hair’s grown a foot and is stark white, their beards fall to their bellies, they’ve all got that far-away look in their red-rimmed eyes, and their hands are shaking. None dare breathe the edict: Set My People Free!

So. What was it, exactly, that Paulson told them? Gee, we dunno. Nor are we allowed to know. Just as if this were top secret intelligence pinpointing WMDs that don’t exist right in Saddam’s palace, we don’t get to find out. Even though it’s supposedly OUR trillion or three or four they MUST have right now to bail themselves out. With a laughable “emergency” plan that, Deputy Admin press secretary Tony Fratto said just today, was drawn up over the course of months.

Months. Not days or even weeks. They sure as shit knew it was coming, and simply waited for just the right moment of panic to spring it on us as if the end of the world is mere hours away. Ah, the lively tune reverberates in my mind…

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

If that’s not a scam just waiting on the Greek chorus to sing the dirge I sure don’t know what is. They don’t care what I have to say about it, but I say “No.” If it turns out that nobody’s bothered to keep track of where all the paper went, then nobody really owns the lien on my house. It’s mine, free and clear (if they can’t produce the lien, they’ve got no claim). Except for the annual taxes I pay to my LOCAL government. Which I don’t mind paying at all since it supports the fire department, rescue squad, county hospital, roads, bridges, schools and libraries.

Looks to me like they’re trying to salvage the prime and just slightly sub-prime mortgage market by putting in a claim to the Treasury because if we were ever to figure out that our actual loans have been so fragmented and bundled and bought and sold that nobody bothered to keep the dead trees anywhere, we ALL own our properties free and clear and nobody who thinks they own the paper gets paid!

Which, btw, is just fine with me. Wall Street can crash, I don’t mind. I’m sure there are capable players just waiting in the wings to kick-start things when the wind dies down. Real estate’s still a good income investment and can be had cheap right now. Hold the liens yourself on just two or three houses and you’re guaranteed steady income for the entire life of the loans – even at straight interest of 8-10% non-compounded, you’re still earning the premium. And if they default, the property goes back to you and you just sell it all over again. Wall Street may fall, but Main Street will survive. For the most part, anyway…

Ahoy, mateys! Ye olde Jolly Roger is flying high o’er the poopdeck this blustery Talk Like a Pirate Day, sun’s high atop the meridian and it looks like clear sailing from here to Zanzibar (where we get to meet the Zanzibarbarians)!

Of course, that flag’s been flying off the deck atop the mizzen gib since the Fourth of July, our old Old Glory having been ceremoniously burned on the beach at Tortuga some time ago due to unraveled edges and holey star-field. Roger was the only flag we had left to fly, so we did.

As it looks like those scurvy bilge rats privateering for effete Frenchies have managed to once again rob the Armada blind by stealing the fabled treasure of Wall Street, we of the honorable fellowship of brigands and pirates vow to take it back in the name of Good King Barry-O, our one-eyed Cap’n, in his bid to earn full knight-ship by saving the fleet from mass plank-walking.

Arrrr! Un-pantaloon yer blunderbusses, mates! We be makin’ for those Outer Banks before dawn! Weigh anchor, unfold the sheets – it’s on to glory and booty!

Anything for a Vote by Joseph Cummins

We get a lot of insults these days when pundits, pontificators and political apologists for one side or the other toss accusations and innuendoes around like parade candy. If you disagree with Mister 22% (Bush) you’re a traitor. If you’re a soldier and you disagree with the way the war’s being managed, you’re a “phony soldier.” If you’re trying to get Democrats elected you’re “soft on terror,” and if you object to the shredding of the Constitution you’re “Islamofascist” or “feminazi” or just the standard commie pinko hippie scum. It just never seems to get old.

My 85-year old Mother, who watches Fox News religiously (I don’t know why) gets very upset lately whenever the subject of politics comes up among the brothers and sisters. Which is a shame, because we all love to talk politics, even if we don’t agree about everything. It wouldn’t be so bad if her blood pressure didn’t rise so visibly just before she goes into the O’Reilly rant about “hate, hate, hate!”

So I’ve decided the best thing I could do for her at this stage of her life (besides go spend some quality time just being with her, taking care of things for her, and listening to her stories) is buy her a copy of a new book by Joseph Cummins, entitled Anything for a Vote.

Cummins traces political campaign name-calling and insults through the entire history of our nation, from George Washington to G.W. Bush, with lots of juicy stops in between. If politics is too mean and nasty to talk about in polite company, that means it’s as American as Mom and Apple Pie! In other words, politics has always been thus.

In what Cummins calls “one of the top five dirtiest elections of all time” – Thomas Jefferson versus John Adams in 1800 – Jefferson’s hired political hack called Adams “a repulsive pedant,” a “gross hypocrite,” and, strangely enough, “a hideous hermaphroditical character who has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Whoa.

Not to be out-slimed, the Federalists attacked Jefferson right back in the most personal ways. “Jefferson is a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia Mulatto father.” A Connecticut paper mentioned the excesses of the French Revolution against Jefferson: “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames … female chastity violated, children writhing on the pike? Thomas Jefferson was just sure to bring the Reign of Terror to American shores! History, of course, demonstrates quite differently.

Which is the point of this book, and the point I think Mom needs to reconnect with if she can. It’s just hype and hyperbole. How the game is played, and if you care to participate in the process you sure shouldn’t be taking any of it too seriously. Other choice tidbits:

• Congressman Davy Crocket accused candidate Martin Van Buren in 1836 of wearing women’s underwear: “He is laced up in corsets!”

• Teddy Roosevelt got shot in the chest while preparing to make a campaign speech in 1912, but decided to deliver it anyway: “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!” Very effective.

• Former President Harry S. Truman told voters in the 1960 campaign that “if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell!”

I figure it might give Mom a giggle, remind her of her love of politics, and reassure her that all is not lost just because politicians disparage each other and the people think they’re all crooks and liars. That’s traditional Americana raw, just as it is. Which is pretty much just what it’s always been.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. An old adage of folk wisdom akin to not buying a pig in a poke, not happening until pigs fly, and teenager’s bedrooms likened to a pig-sty. It’s been a coon’s age to a gnat’s ass, he needs to buck up and take it like a man, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

Republican John McCain’s campaign flunkies are all over this observation about the situation in Iraq, claiming that Obama called VP hopeful Sarah Palin a “pig” because she likened herself to a “pit bull with lipstick” in her RNC acceptance speech. What a total load of hooey! Looks to me like John McCain’s campaign thinks of Sarah Palin as a pig wearing lipstick, and wants everyone to notice.

When Joe Biden talked about funding for stem cell research in hope of treatments and cures for genetic diseases, the McCain campaign insisted the subject of people with ’special needs’ is off the table because Palin has a baby with Downs Syndrome. Huh!??! That’s like saying the subject of health care is off the table because Sarah Palin flew 2,000 miles and drove an hour across the tundra after her water broke so she could have a baby with Downs Syndrome at her local stitch-em-up. Or…

The subject of sex education is off the table because Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant. The subject of co-mingling church and state is off the table because Sarah Palin’s a dominionist holy-roller. The subject of reproductive rights is off the table because Sarah Palin can’t keep from getting pregnant. The state of the union is off the table because the Palins have secessionist ties. Science education is off the table because Sarah Palin believes Adam and Eve rode to church on a dinosaur. The subject of family law is off the table because Sarah Palin’s in the middle of a blood feud with her ex-in-laws…

Wow. Who’d have thought at the beginning of the summer that the Republicans would succeed in taking all issues of national concern and policy off the table just by picking a whiny, self-described pit bull wearing lipstick as Vice-Presidential running-mate? Thaaaaat’s some clever new 21st century Politics!

There is hope that the Tabloid Press can manage to reach the millions of low-information voters at the grocery checkout lines with lurid details of the Palin family’s dysfunctional soap operas in the not-so frozen northland. But then, those same low-information voters might vote for McCain/Palin just to keep themselves in cheap entertainment for the next four years. There is hope that Americans with 3-digit IQs will wake up and smell the frying bacon… er, mooseburgers, vote the nation’s best interests this fall instead of their own boredom.

You never know… we might be pleasantly surprised.