MucheDumbre

There used to be an old TV show that in its narration included the phrase, “there are 8 million stories in the naked city”, and I was trying to riff off of that to begin a piece on gays in the military, but I just couldn’t make it work.  There are a million gays in the naked military?  There are a million naked gay stories in the military?  Naahh, this was not going anywhere.

 

But neither is this subject.  Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will probably be a first 100 days agenda item for President Obama; at least the executive order part of it.  Although no doubt the actual law (Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10) will come up in the new Congress as well.  Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher has already stated she plans to introduce legislation this year to repeal the law.  So one way or another, DADT is going down.

 

But as to those stories, there are a lot of them.  DADT policy creates a weird loophole that allows gays to serve, in violation of Public Law 103-160 which prohibits homosexuals from serving in the military, as long as they keep their gay shit quiet.  This creates all sorts of ambiguity for the military, Commanders, and gay service people themselves.

 

Several years ago, there was an active duty Army unit  that was turning over several items of equipment to a local Reserve unit.  I was in the Reserve unit at the time and was part of the group being trained on the new hardware and software.  Now I hate to pull out stereotypes, however they are a lot of fun and in this case accurate.  Our trainer was a female Sergeant who just looked lesbian.  At a distance, and close up for that matter, it was hard to tell if this was a dude or a chick.  Needless to say, we waited on following the lead from other people in her unit before determining which pronoun to use.

 

Driving from one location to another, a bunch of us were in a car following hers, which was festooned with pink triangle, rainbow, and other assorted and like-minded bumper stickers.

 

“Ha!  I knew it!”

 

“Know what?” replied my crusty old Warrant Officer.

 

“She’s gay!” I replied.

 

“Just because she seems kind of mannish?  That’s not really fair.”

 

“No, because of all the gay bumper stickers.”

 

“Eh?”  As far as following pop culture, and its various buttons, stickers, and icons, he had lost track shortly after the smiley face.

 

As we pulled up to the next training facility, he decided to trump me and my alleged bumper sticker lore.  “I’m going to go ask her what those stickers mean.” 

 

“No don’t!” said everyone in the car in unison.  But he wouldn’t be deterred; he walked right up to her, ready to prove his point that I had no idea what those stickers meant.

 

“Hey, Sergeant, I was meaning to ask, but what do all of those bumper stickers on your car mean?”

 

Sergeant Deer-in-the-headlights froze and her eyes got big.  “Uh… those are uh… about people, and uh human rights…”

 

“Thanks.” Replied the crusty old Warrant Officer.  He turned to me and smiled all smug like.  “Told ya.”

 

Later I was speaking with one of the other people in her unit.  Yes, everyone knew she was gay, including the commander.  How could they not considering her bumper sticker plastered car?  But she was good at her job so everyone minded their own business.  Someone doing temporary duty at the unit, a new arrival, or some meandering crusty old Warrant Officer could have blown that at any time though.  No doubt that Sergeant thought her military career was in jeopardy the moment that Warrant started asking about her bumper stickers.  That was probably not the only time she had one of those moments.

 

Not surprisingly, most of the time military people are cool about that.  People know, and just don’t say anything.  Sometimes people are actually protected.  One time years ago, one of the guys in my unit was spotted by some off duty MPs kissing another dude in a downtown club.  The MPs decided to report that to my unit’s security officer, wanting the kissing bandit’s security clearance pulled and his lips and all processed out of the military.  After having to answer our security officer’s question of, “What were you doing in a gay club? (working security),” she promised she would take care of it and then promptly tossed the complaint in the garbage.

 

But what about “good order and discipline,” the standard answer for those who oppose openly gay people serving in the military?   For people who have never served in the military or who served in the Air Force, it’s a meaningless statement meant to hide bigotry.  But there are real issues that arise in having openly gay people serve in the military.

 

It certainly brings sexual harassment to a new level.  At the post where I had advanced individual training, one of the girls in the class ahead of me would leer and make comments and gestures to the girls in the common shower area.  This was relayed to me months later by someone who was subject to this almost daily display of abuse.  “Why didn’t you just complain to someone about it?”  I asked, using dreaded guy logic.  “I just didn’t know what to say.”  She replied.  Harassment is a hard charge to make when the harassed is more embarrassed about it then the harasser.  If there had been a naked guy coming into the female shower area, giving the old once over, the situation would have ended almost immediately.

 

And that’s part of barracks living, not college dorm living.  I spend two and a half years living in a barracks showering in a common open shower area with half a dozen other guys.  None of them were gay (that I knew of) but it would have made for an uncomfortable showering time if some of them had been openly gay.

 

These two lesbians walked into a bar… well actually it was their Company Commander’s office.  Taking advantage of the open door policy, they met with the commander, and rather than just explaining that they wanted chaptered (discharged based on various military regulations) out, they proceeded to make out in front of the commander.  Rather than freak out, the female commander got the message instantly.  “OK got it, you want out.  I’ll start the paperwork.  Dismissed.”  Of course the wheels of military bureaucracy turned slowly so they were not actually discharged for several months.  In the meantime, they shared a room, their own lesbian love nest in the barracks. Policy for that unit was that sex was not allowed in the barracks.  On the other hand, who else was comfortable with sharing a room with these two?  And how would you enforce it?

 

By the way I knew both of these gals and neither one was hot. 

 

Just thought I would toss that out there.

 

Being gay in the military is easy if, like the bumper stickered gay training Sergeant, you go home to your own place every night, and the personal is easily separated from the professional.  Not so easy is showering together and living together.  In many military situations, and I could probably say in most cases on the two major deployments we have going on right now, it’s a little more difficult.

 

Maintaining good order and discipline is not the worry of either the incoming President or the incoming Congress; politics is.  But at the unit level where these policies have to be enforced, I expect Commanders, Sergeants Major, and First Sergeants are going to have their hands full dealing with openly gay service people in extremely cramped conditions where privacy is a luxury.  Will it be no sex in the barracks, unless you are gay and sharing a room, or will there have to be special gay shower hours for open shower areas?  Are you being harassed if you are straight and have to share a room with a gay guy, or is the gay guy being harassed by having to share a room with a straight guy?  If two gay lovers can share a room; why not two straight ones?  Would it be better for a male gay soldier and a female gay soldier to share a room?

 

Having worked along side gay soldiers I would hazard that most of the time it’s a non issue.  But if I were responsible for implementing any policy for removing DADT I would prefer that it be handled the same way policies regarding female soldiers are handled, such as not be allowed to serve in low echelon combat arms units or being excluded from combat arms military occupational specialties.  That would never happen of course.  It will be all or nothing, and given the prevailing political winds, I would guess “all” over “nothing.”

 

It’s a lot easier for the military to handle gay military members (heh – I said handle members!) when they have an incentive to be in the closet.  It will be a lot tougher when track lighting is installed in barracks rooms. So, follow the Milblogs.  That’s where the real story will be told of how these policies will be implemented.  Only the successes or clear examples of discrimination and bigotry will be in the main stream media.  I expect some entertaining reading.

 

 

 

oI was sitting around the Muche News desk complaining of writer’s block; I just couldn’t push anything out of my brain and onto the keyboard; when my fellow muche columnist said, “You don’t have writers block.  There’s just nothing to write about.”  I guess that’s true.  Sure there is the auto bailout, but there is no mystery there.  Chrysler and GM will get their bailout from somewhere.  The White House, Obama, and the Democratic leadership want it to happen, so it’s hard to imagine that it won’t in some form or another.  Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s scandal can’t get much worse than the tapes that have already been released, and the only tantalizing part, what did Obama know and when did he know it, is under lock down by Obama’s Praetorian Guard Press corps.  It’s unlikely that Obama had anything to do with this, but the rush by the press to get between Obama and Blagojevich and shield him from the scandal is embarrassing.  A non infatuated media would at least wait and see where the scandal takes us.  Is this how the media is going to cover scandals for the next four years?

 

So with nothing current catching my fancy I turned my eyes to the future.  Wow, that was a good line!  I would have loved to have worked that into some English paper to turn in for college. Take that Professor! 

 

But seriously; the future.

 

Baring stunning breakthroughs in longevity, I should probably be dead in 50 years or so.  But I care what happens to this country after I’m dead, and would like it to continue to be a great power.  Not just a good one, or an “OK power” but a great one.  So I thought of a couple ideas that I think would help to guarantee American dominance through the 21^st Century and beyond.  Not by any means a complete list of course, but just a couple of ideas to get us started.

 

Getting our fiscal house in order

 

This should be a no brainer, but given that we are heading for our first trillion dollar deficit, it’s clear that we are a nation that wants far more government than we are willing to pay for.  How we got in this situation is easy to see:  Republicans are no fan of taxes, but have made little headway (none actually) in cutting spending.  Democrats have a limited ability to raise taxes because the country doesn’t like to pay them, but have an unlimited appetite for Federal spending.  Add both parties in power; simmer for a few decades, and presto! A national debt of over 10 trillion dollars.  Of course that doesn’t even count the unfunded liabilities of our Social Security and Medicare promises, that we have no ability to pay, now, or in the future.  That’s about 50 trillion dollars and growing.

 

Fixing this problem should be a national priority of the first order.  It’s not of course but it should be.  The first and best place to start is with a balanced budget amendment.  We (both the Congress and the American people) have proven that we are not mature or responsible enough to handle an allowance without adult supervision.  We need some rules and that would be best one.  Just like we self righteously tell someone in credit card debt to cut up their cards, we need to cut up our national one.

 

In addition we need to redo the way federal budget is handled.  Social Security is a trust fund in theory.  In practice we spend the surplus from that every year, and in return give the Social Security Trust fund an IOU.  That’s not the only one.  The federal gas tax is supposed to go to a transportation trust to fix our roads and bridges.  What happened to that money?  Same place as the Social Security money, into the general pork fund.  I’m not an accountant, but even I know that taxes that are being collected for dedicated purposes, like the gas tax and Social Security, shouldn’t even be in the federal budget.  They should be in off budget separate accounts.  Fix this problem and maybe a dollar will still be worth a dollar 50 years from now.

 

 

Taking advantage of the brain drain

 

We are a nation of dummies.  We’ve allowed the K-12 educational system in this country to fall apart and since we still don’t have a national consensus on what the problem is or how to fix it, I don’t expect that to be solved soon.  However our system of colleges and universities are still some of the best in the world.  As a consequence they attract the best and brightest from all over the world to come and study.  Foreigners dominate our technical graduate and PhD programs. On the world market, a degree from a US University still means something.  So naturally, as soon as one of these foreign students graduates from a degree program with useful technical skills, what do we do?  We kick his or her ass out.

 

We do have a Visa program to allow people with technical skills to come to this country, but we limit it to 65,000 per year.  That’s a drop in the bucket compared to refugees, family “chain immigration” and other categories that allow people in this country.

 

And that’s not even counting the illegals.

 

What should we be doing?  We should gradually increase the number of H1-B technical skills visa and reduce the percentage of the other categories of Visas.  We should also make it easier to allow foreign students to convert their student visa to an H1-B.   Since we can’t produce enough home grown professionals and technically trained people, let’s just import them.  If we are going to maintain our economic dominance in science and technology, we need engineers, IT professionals, and scientists of all types.  We are able to provide domestically all of the sociology and feminist studies graduates that this country will ever need.  Maybe we should export those.

 

This country is still the number one destination for immigrants worldwide.  As long as that is the case, we should take advantage and get the cream of the crop.

 

 

 

 

Tax haven to the world

 

With New York losing its battle with London as the financial capital of the world, we should be concerned that capital is finding other places more attractive than the United States.  We are losing to a European country?  There are a variety of reasons, the financial crisis, Sarbanes Oxley, and even Elliot Spitzer gets some blame for chasing away companies from New York.

 

And of course there is the tax treatment.  US corporate taxes are among the highest in the developed world.  Although personal income taxes in most of Europe are far above the US level, we make it up by kicking in the crotch the companies that provide jobs and economic growth.   I’ve always found it interesting that “socialist” Europeans want their businesses to succeed worldwide, while in the “capitalist” United States we hate and incessantly attack our most successful companies.  We attempted to break up Microsoft and investigated them for years for anti-trust violations; one of the most successful US companies of the 90’s.  One of the other successful companies, Wal-Mart, is on the liberal ‘sue’ list. You don’t see Finland attacking Nokia for having too large a market share of the cell phone market. 

 

We need to redo our regulatory and tax structure to encourage capital to come to the US to invest, not chase it away.  There are several options to do this, such as the fair tax, or a flat tax.  We should have as a goal to reduce and gradually eliminate the capital gains tax.  Basically, whatever rules and regulations that successful tax havens have, we need to emulate them so people worldwide will want to put their money here.

 

 

These are just a couple of ideas and I’m sure other people have their own wish lists for what they would like to see and this is by no means a complete list.  But we need to start recognizing that the US continuing as a superpower isn’t inevitable.  It will take much effort and work to continue that status.

Well that didn’t work out very well. 

 

At least if you are a Republican.  McCain took a lickin’ and Republicans took a lickin’ across the country.  How soiled is your brand when John Murtha, who called his own constituents rednecks and racists, gets re-elected?

 

Doubtless there will be millions of words expended on what McCain did wrong and what the Republicans did wrong, but I think the Indecision 08 coverage summed it up for me.  Former Presidential Candidate and flat tax fanatic Steve Forbes, who for some reason was wedged between Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, broke down what he saw as the collapse of the McCain campaign:

 

 

 McCain was doing fine, up in the polls, until the financial crisis struck in mid-September.  McCain made a few key mistakes after that.  He declared the economy as essentially sound for one. Instead of taking charge of the congressional Republicans who were opposed to the bailout and trying to offer a less “give away the store” alternative, he glumly signed on to the Bush-Paulson proposal.  Of course, Obama did the same thing, but he was positioned to run against the administration, whereas McCain just looked like he was joining the Democrats and Bush.

 

McCain still potentially had a few good advantages for all of that.  He could have linked Obama to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae based on being the number two recipient of campaign funds from those failed mortgage buyers.  McCain could also have touted his own attempted reform of Freddie and Fannie in 2005.  Instead, he decided to condemn “Wall Street greed”, which was part of Obama’s and the Democrat’s position on the financial crisis.  Hearing him saying that during the debate, I figured the election was pretty much lost. If, as a Republican, you are just going to “me too” whatever the Democrat position is, why would the voters bother to vote for the “me too” Republican?  Why not vote for the Democrat and get the real thing?

 

McCain also ignored his own proposals.  His health care plan was far superior to Obama’s, particularly if you are self employed or have a small business, but McCain seldom talked about it,  even when he was given the perfect opportunity by “Joe the Plumber.”

 

Beyond the financial crisis McCain had several other disadvantages.

 

            A media that was in love with Obama, and did nothing but fall down in worship of him, tingly legs and all.  How many points in the polls is that worth?

 

Bush’s popularity, or lack thereof, and a Republican Party that had decided that power was better than principle.

 

But McCain blew it.  In his concession speech, he accepted responsibility for his campaign and in the final analysis, that’s where the blame has to lie.

 

So now what?

 

Well if you’re a Democrat, you expect to attain a higher state of consciousness when President-elect Obama descends from heaven to be sworn in at the capital in January.  And if every Republican Congressman would get caught having sex in a public restroom; well that would be icing on the cake.

 

If you are Republican though, it’s a bit tougher.

 

Still, I’m fairly sanguine about the future.  In spite of a Republican drubbing at the polls, and all of the previously mentioned forces that were allied against the GOP this year, I still think this is basically a center right country.  Actually, I should say because of all those forces, the media, Hollywood, and a major financial crisis, this country came very close to putting another Republican back in office, after following eight years of one of the most unpopular Presidents in modern times.  That’s quite a trick.

 

Obama mania won’t last forever.  True, it could last for a while though.  Obama will have a subservient press corps that George Bush could never dream of.  Chris Matthews has defined his job, “To make the Obama Presidency a success.”  Can you imagine Matthews, or any mainstream journalist saying something similar about the Bush Presidency?

 

Still, facts are facts.  When Republicans say that tax hikes damage the economy and slow growth, they are not just stating an opinion or conservative talking points, it’s an objective fact which has been demonstrated multiple times in “the real world.”  President Obama will discover that liberal orthodoxy and redistributionist policies have consequences that can only be spun so far, even with the MSM at his beck and call.

 

So what is my recommendation to the few remaining Republicans in Congress dealing with Democratic bills to raise taxes and squeeze “big business” with more regulations?

 

Let ‘em.

 

If President Obama thinks the path to economic recovery is covered in high taxes and regulations, he deserves the opportunity to demonstrate it.  It shouldn’t be the Republicans standing in his way.  Let him get the credit, or the blame for the consequences of his own policies.  The tax revolt of the 1970’s, beginning with California’s Proposition 13, set the stage for national Republican domination for nearly two decades.  If Obama wants to recast the Democratic Party once again as the party of choking taxes and stifling regulations, why expend effort and energy to try to stop him?

 

Who knows, maybe Obama is actually right, and raising tax rates on the productive classes and increasing capital gains rates will set off an economic boom.  I say let’s find out.  The people have spoken after all.  And we will let the people speak again in 2010 and 2012.

 

 

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Who, may you ask, is my favorite Vice Presidential Candidate?

No it’s not Sarah Palin.  Palin is exciting the Republican Party base, and although she has made a few gaffes to the press, they have not been particularly hilarious ones, nor have they been particularly numerous, but let me tell you about this guy, he’s just a regular Joe:  Joe Biden.

 

How much of a regular Joe is he?  Well unlike most politicians, he’s not afraid of ethnic humor.  Or racism as it’s usually called by the politically correct class.  Jewish jokes?  He’s got a million of them! 

 

The Yeshiva crew team, he said, sent a spy to Cambridge to find out why the Harvard rowers always beat them. The informant called his coach from alongside the river. “He said, ‘They’ve got eight guys rowing and only one yelling!’ “

 

 

Oy that’s funny!

 

Indians?  He’s got that market covered too!

 

“You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

 

“I’m not joking!”

 

Come on, give yourself some credit!

 

Black jokes?  Decide for yourself.  When speaking about Senator Obama, he said:

 

“The first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

 

Well take that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Better start bathing more often.

 

OK that’s not the funniest line I’ve ever heard, but it did dish out a lot of cringing.  Still, amazingly, Biden emerged from these brushes relatively unscathed.  Of course some of his gaffes are just misstatements and slips of the tongue.  No one seriously worries that he referred to Barack Obama as Barack America, or constantly confusing Battalions and Brigades.

 

But some are just bizarre, such as when he seemed to be threatening his running mate if Obama tried to take his guns.

 

“…he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem.”

“I guarantee you Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey,”

 

Although Beretta does make shotguns, something tells me that Biden doesn’t have a Beretta made shotgun.  I’m unsure that he even has shotguns; at least not now.  I suspect the Secret Service probably went into his home and confiscated them.

 

But really there are so many gaffes, I couldn’t even begin to cover them all:  attacking his own attack ads, his helicopter forced down in Afghanistan, Roosevelt’s 1929 TV appearance to the country, claiming Bush sent the Undersecretary of State to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials, claiming the Joint Chief said that we were losing in Iraq… whew!  It just goes on and on!

 

 

Biden had one debate with Gov. Palin.  Oh to have had a few more of those!  Be still my heart!  Now the McCain campaign counts 14 lies; as they call them.  But I’m only interested in a few.

 

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.’ Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.”

 

Huh?

 

You could almost swear Biden was on drugs when he said that.  It made no sense, and even Biden fans had to stretch the bounds of credulity to try to make Biden’s statement sound not insane.

 

Or how about this on the role of the Vice President:

 

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

 

 

Article One does mention the Vice President in section two:

Clause 4: The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

Clause 5: The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

But article one describes the role of the legislative branch, not the executive branch.  In fact, the only specific duties of the Vice President are those mentioned in Article One.   I guess the constitution was not explicit enough for Biden, since he got so much wrong.  This would have been an OK answer coming from Palin, but Palin was actually more correct on the duties of the Vice President than Biden was.  The Vice President can preside over the Senate at any time, not just to break a tie vote.  The question is more, what Vice President would want to?

 

Biden’s extraordinarily dumb answer is made all the more amazing by the fact that he is an attorney by training, and has sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee for over 16 years.  If there has ever been a Vice Presidential candidate more prepared to elaborate on the duties of the Vice President, it should have been Biden.

 

Naturally the media declared Biden the winner of the debate.

 

 

But his biggest boner (to date) was his promise that Obama would be tested within 6 months of being in office:

 

“Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

 

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate and he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

 

“Gird your loins.”

 

Once again: Huh?

 

Trying to figure out what Biden was trying to say has been great sport over the weekend, but the Obama Biden campaign has decided to dismiss it as “rhetorical flourish.”

 

If Biden were a Republican the talking heads would still be chattering about his crazy statements.  The word erratic would be used towards him rather than John McCain.  There would probably be a few other words used to: crazy. madman, nuts, damaged… I could go on but you get the point.

 

These words won’t be used about Biden though, and in fact, the media hasn’t paid much attention to him at all.  Palin has been the far more interesting Vice Presidential candidate.  Given Biden’s ego, that must be driving him nuts.  Of course, that could be the reason for all of Biden’s crazy statements.  Maybe they are not gaffes after all.  Maybe he is trying to say … LOOK AT MEEEEEEEE!

 

 

 

Like many people, many of my bad habits were introduced to me by older cousins. It was older cousins who introduced my teenaged self to the illicit joy of a warm beer. What could be cooler than that? I learned a lot from older cousins; many of those things I’ve spent years trying to unlearn. But not everything learned from older cousins was an illicit evil though. One of the more benign habits I was introduced to by an older cousin was Saturday Night Live.

When SNL premiered in 1975, there was nothing like it on television. It looked like a bunch of drugged out hippies had taken over the studios after the adults went home for the night. I don’t know if that was the purposeful intent or carefully crafted image, but it gave the impression that if you were watching the show, you were in on an illicit inside joke.

That was the SNL of the 1970’s. Saturday Night Live now, and for many years, has been part of the mainstream. Of course to me, mainstream means the same drugged out hippies took a bath, switched to wine and cocaine, and started collecting six figure salaries. In media terms, mainstream means liberal, as three decades of Weekend Updates will attest. But this year, things started to look different.

Last spring, during the death spiral of Hillary Clinton’s primary battle, SNL aired their

Democratic Primary Debate skit. It was a hilarious sketch, but it was groundbreaking in the sense that the basis of the skit was the news media’s obsession and support of Obama. No surprise for conservatives. They are used to the media taking sides, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly. But it’s not an issue that Democrats tend to think of much, regarding it as a right wing wack-job complaint. But Pro-Hillary Democrats, seeing the clip played endlessly on the Sunday morning talk shows, suddenly woke up to realize that was exactly what was happening to their candidate.

This created quite a reaction in the main stream media, with some soul searching on “Hey, are we really being too easy on Obama?” Real world consequences arose when ABC news This Week host, George Stephanopoulos, debate moderator for one of the primary debates, asked Barack Obama about his relationship with William Ayers, former terrorist and current America hater. That debate question ended the media handwringing over going soft on Obama. Stephanopoulos took a lot of criticism from his fellow journalists and leftie blogs for asking too hard a question!

But the issue was out the barn door and Hillary supporters were suddenly on the alert for media bias against their candidate. SNL didn’t let up. The figured they had a winner and rolled with it, letting Tina Fey do a special Weekend update bit, “Bitches Get Things Done,” and a parody of the 3:00AM ad.

Obama went on to take the primary anyway, but SNL helped provide a few speed bumps along the way. The stunning thing though, was that SNL took sides in a Democratic primary, and did not take the hip young choice. They didn’t choose Coke Zero, they went with Tab. I wouldn’t have thought any more about it though, if that had been the end of the unconventional choices to be skewered. The new fall season would roll out, and Obama would be portrayed in all his godhood, and McCain would be portrayed as evil, senile, or both.

Only that didn’t exactly happen.

OK it sort of happened. McCain has been portrayed as senile, or “erratic” as the official Obama terminology goes, but that’s only a small part of the story.

The first McCain-Obama skit featured McCain pointing out that he tried to eliminate an earmark called “Tony Rezko hush money,” which Obama explains he withdrew after Rezko began cooperating with prosecutors. Unless you listen to conservative talk radio, read conservative blogs, or live in the Chicago area, you can be excused if you are only vaguely familiar with that name. He has gotten the bare minimum mention on MSM TV news, so it’s surprising that a SNL writer would even be familiar with that reference. Equally surprising is that an SNL writer would have Obama describe his tax plan as one that would give tax breaks for “bribes, shake-downs and kickbacks.”

The second debate skit featured Obama praising his “friend and mentor”, William Ayers.

One of the more interesting skits was never posted online, but stirred up a lot of protests. James Franco was the guest host the week that SNL did a bit on New York Times reporters preparing to go to Alaska to dig up dirt on Governor Sarah Palin. The story line was the “unproven yet un-disproven” story of incest in the Palin household. Clueless reporters were being briefed on Alaska, which could not have been more alien to these Manhattanites if the New York Times were planning to drop some reporters on to Tatooine, Conservatives took it as an attack on Palin, which normally would have been a pretty good guess considering the multitude of MSM hatchet jobs on Palin. The New York Times was one of the biggest offenders, throwing credibility and fact checking to the winds in order to get any sort of dirt to stick on the Palin nomination. I watched the show the night it was on, and it was not an attack on Palin or her family. It was an attack on big media in general and the Times in particular for it’s tossing out of the normal journalistic standards in order to go after a political enemy. “Unproven yet un-disproven” indeed.

Consider the mortgage bailout skit. In a faux CSPAN press conference, Congressional Democrats congratulate themselves on approving the bailout legislation, while a bumbling Bush is hanging around on the periphery. So far, a normal MSM take on the bailout. Until, after Pelosi points 100% of the blame at Bush in his administration, Bush replies,

Bush: But wait, wasn’t it my administration that had warned about the problem 6 years ago, and it was the Democrats who refused to listen?

Pelosi: What? Who told you that? That’s crazy. It’s completely the other way around.

Bush: OK

Frank: Actually. This time he’s sort of right.

Pelosi: Ssshh! Don’t say anything. He doesn’t know.

Huh? On an SNL skit? Pelosi then introduces some “victims” of the housing crisis, a couple of no job having slackers. Rather than put the blame on “Wall Street” or the Bush administration, this skit blames the people who actually got the subprime loans that they didn’t understand and had no attention of paying on. Some other “victims” include Yuppie investors who lied on their mortgage applications and Herb and Marion Sandler, the real life former owners of a Savings & Loan that was sold to the now collapsed Wachovia. The skit was actually pulled and re-edited to eliminate the line identifying them as “people who should be shot.”

But wait, there’s more. The skit goes on to have Barney Frank explain what happened to the 700 billion bailout, introducing George Soros, currency trader extraordinaire, and moveon.org founder. Soros says the money is his now. On the screen, CSPAN identifies Soros as “Billionaire Hedge fund manager. Owner, Democratic Party.”

Who wrote this skit? Rush Limbaugh?

No. In fact most of the political oriented bits were written by longtime SNL writer James Downey. Downey was the writer of the Hillary debate sketches and coined the word “strategery” in a Bush-Gore debate sketch; a word that has now entered the lexicon. It’s been embraced by the Bush administration and is even the name of a book on the Bush White House. So WTF? Is Downey a secret pro-McCain Republican? Or a typical liberal writer from New York City who has taken the time to educate himself on the latest Republican talking points? According to former SNL writer Adam McKay, Downey is an “Ann Coulter fan” and “right-wing.” If so, how could he have gotten through the interview process and write on SNL for 27 years? Downey himself claims to be a registered Democrat, although if you worked in show biz, wouldn’t you?

I don’t know if Downey is a closet McCain or Obama supporter, but he has certainly shaken the common media portrayal of both Republicans and Democrats this year, and if that means continuing to stay in the Republican closet, please Mr. Downey, stay in the closet.

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It’s like this see.  I’ve had an interest in politics all of my adult life.  I’ve been interested in the public policy aspects, the economic effects, and the horserace of the various elections.  I’ve voted in every election, even those annoying small races and primaries that seem to happen at the oddest times and barely get news coverage.  “What?  There is an opening on the Hospital Board in the Western zone?  I’d better research these guys!”  I’ve attended teleconferences with my Congressman, But I have never ever actual bothered to go to an actual political rally.

 

So this is how it happened…

 

I was out of town in the great State of North Carolina last week when I received a call from wife.

 

“Guess what?  Sarah Palin is going to be at The Villages on Sunday.”

 

“Hmmm that’s nice.”

 

“Your son wants you take him. He thinks he can get extra credit in three different classes if he goes to a political event.”

 

“Hmmm we’ll see.”

 

And I thought that would be the end of it.  It wouldn’t be followed up on and once again I could skirt fatherly responsibilities.  But the next day I got another phone call from my wife.

 

“Guess what?  We’re going to see Sarah Palin next Sunday at The Villages.”

 

“Hmmm we are?”

 

“Yes, my mom has tickets for us so it’s a done deal.”

 

“Hmmm OK.”

 

My in-laws live at The Villages, so I guess they had the inside track for getting tickets.  Twenty years ago the vast area that The Villages sits in was pasture land and trailer parks.  Now, it is an affluent super retirement community with a population of over 75,000, straddling Lake and Sumter counties; the center of the State.  It is largely Republican and is a big enough bloc, both for votes and money, to make it a Mecca for aspiring Republican candidates.  All of the Republican primary candidates came to The Villages seeking both funds and votes over the course of the primary season.  Now that Governor Palin was on the ticket, there was no way that she could not have come.

 

So back in Florida, we were driving to see Mrs. Sarah.  It took forever to find a parking space there.  Most of the parking was reserved for golf carts, The Villages preferred method of transportation.  There were only 2 designated areas for car parking and one of them was apparently designated for the handicapped.  So my mother-in-law skirted the parking lots and the law by finding us parking in a rec center, one of several that dot The Villages landscape.  Unfortunately this left us a trek for a mile and a half to the town center, where the rally was taking place, dodging golf carts all the while.

 

By the time we finally trudged to the square, Aaron Tippin was playing.  I knew the name and knew he was some sort of country star, but I didn’t know how big a star he is in the country pantheon.  Down on the lower levels I suspected.

 

I wandered around trying to find some place to get something to drink that didn’t have an outrageous line.  No such luck.  But by the time I figured that out, they started to allow people into the ultra secured area.  This is where the tickets and my Villages connection paid off.  The secured area was a barrier enclosed area around the stage where Palin was to speak.  We had to go through a metal detector and empty our pockets, just like getting through the gate at an airport.  The checkpoints were even manned by TSA officials.

 

The stage area had Jumbo Tron screens on each side of the screen so that people who couldn’t see the stage could still see the action. I was really craving a beer at this point and I was looking around to see if I could actually get something to drink inside the ultra secured area.  A woman walked by holding a margarita and that changed my mind; it was a margarita that I wanted!

 

One nice thing about The Villages is that drinking is A OK on city streets.  I guess if you have a whole city of 70 year olds, they can make their own rules, and one of the rules allowed for booze to be consumed out in the open.  It was like a geriatric Key West.  I back tracked the woman whom I had first spied with the margarita and found the drinks stand.  Ah heaven!  Reasonable prices too. 

 

1^st Margarita

 

I was heading back to where my party was in the crowd and observed paramedics hauling away an elderly woman on a stretcher.  I was surprised there were not more elderly being hauled away.

 

Looking around at the crowd, I was admiring the diversity… ha!  Just kidding!  The majority of the crowd matched the majority of The Villages; old and white.  Of course there were other folks as well.  There was plenty of younger, redneck looking types.  Probably local people who wanted a peek at the star of the Republican Party.  There were some Hispanics, I could hear the chatter of Spanish here and there.  And there were many Hispanic families there.  They were easy to spot, since they were the ones dressed in their Sunday best.  That must be a Spanish thing.  I noticed the same thing when I lived in California a few years ago.  You could sit at the mall on a Sunday afternoon and see the Hispanics dressed in a combination of church/prom attire.

 

I saw quite a few Asians as well, but as for blacks… not too many.  By this time I had seen maybe two black women in the crowd.  I wanted to ask them, “Hey, what’s the deal?” but I didn’t have the guts.  Maybe after a few more margaritas.

 

2^nd Margarita

 

I was getting my second drink when I heard someone giving a speech.  After I headed back towards the stage, I saw it was Bill McCollum, the Florida Attorney General.  He was waving his arms and was giving quite an animated speech.  I couldn’t really be bothered with paying attention to the content, but it sounded good.  I admit I was surprised.  McCollum is someone who has been in the Florida public eye for years, and I would have expected a dull monotone type of speech.  I have to give it to him though, he sounded as if he was giving a good speech.  I’m not sure about what though.

 

3^rd Margarita

 

The Jumbo Tron was showing the Palin convoy pulling into The Villages.  The crowd went wild, watching the security vehicles and the campaign bus lead by every motorcycle cop in Sumter, Lake, and Marion counties.  It wasn’t so wild that an elderly woman couldn’t find the time to tap me on the shoulder.

 

“It looks like someone dropped their cup.”  She didn’t even need to point downwards.  Her nose did the trick for her. 

“True, but of course, it’s not mine.”  I said, lifting my own margarita cup.

“I see.”  She said, making it clear that she was unconvinced that the abandoned cup wasn’t mine.  We eyeballed for a while until I made clear that I was not picking the cup up.  I assume she scooped it up into a baggie for forensic analysis later.

 

I was heading for the drink stand again when the announcer said, “Ladies and Gentleman, the next Vice President of the United States…” the rest was drowned out by the roar of the crowd.  I admit, it was a little exciting.  The whole family piled onto the stage.  Shoot, I better stay.  Palin gave a good speech, I assume it was her standard stump speech, updated a bit to reflect last week’s financial crisis.  She went on about 25 minutes and that was it. 

 

Time to get another drink.

 

4^th Margarita

 

These were really good, and considering how much I had been sweating, I really needed the salt.  It was a health thing.  I went back to the stage area, which had thinned out a bit.  The Palin’s were still there.  There was a barricaded walkway that led from The Villages sales office to the stage, and the family was moving along the walkway, autographing and greeting the crowd.  I half expected Trig to be passed among the crowd.  I lined up along the walkway, but the crowd there was a bit thick so I had a hard time seeing where exactly the Palins were in relation to where I was.  There was a woman next to me, redneck type, waving her hat.  “ Dude!  First Dude!”  She turned to me, “Hey can you see him?”  I looked around, and saw Todd, a couple yards away on the other side of the walkway.  Sarah wasn’t in sight though. “Sorry, but it looks like he’s on the other side.”  I said.

“Shoot.  I need to talk to him!”  I didn’t see how that was going to happen though, but she wasn’t giving up.  She shouted at one of the Secret Service agents lined up in front of us. “Hey can you get Todd over to this side?”  The Secret Service agent wasn’t playing though; he nodded no and continued scanning the crowds.

 

“Dang!”

 

I wandered pass Redneck woman and tried to get a better view of Sarah.  That’s who I wanted to see.  I leaned up against the barricade and finished my drink.  Suddenly, there she was, on the other side of the barricade, signing campaign signs and, some wag had brought a giant mock lipstick holder for her to sign.  She was about 8 feet away, but she was on the other side of the walkway facing the crowd on the other side.

 

Nice Ass.

 

Suddenly there were Secret Service agents in front of me, scanning the crowd.  I looked to my left to see Todd Palin, about 4 feet away on my side of the barricade.  He was signing autographs.  I hope Redneck woman had gotten her chance to tell him whatever she felt was so important.  I didn’t exactly have the boobs to carry off getting an autograph there, so when he got to me I held up my ticket stub.

 

“Uh, thanks for coming down.”

 

“No problem.”

 

So I got Todd Palin’s autograph.  I couldn’t have felt dorkier if I had gotten Dr. Who’s.

 

I needed another drink.

 

5^th Margarita

 

We finally headed out.  I had my drink to fortify me, and the day had gotten slightly cooler.  As were walking through the little faux city streets, I saw one of the vendors closing up his stand filled with McCain/Palin hats and T shirts.

 

He was a black guy.

 

“I’m going in.”  I said.

 

“Don’t you dare…” said my wife as she tried to grab my sleeve.  But I slipped away.  I had a journalistic responsibility to report the news.  Now I knew why reporters drank so much.  It made being an ass so much easier.

 

“Hey, excuse, me, I’m a blogger for muchedumbre.com.  Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

 

“Sure go ahead.”

 

“This is a McCain/Palin event, and I just happened to notice that there are like four black guys here, and that’s counting the Deputy working the event.”

 

He laughed at that.  I guess it wasn’t the first time he had heard that.

 

“Yeah I have noticed.”

 

“So uh… what’s the deal?”

 

“Well this is really only my second event.  I haven’t been doing this too long.”

 

“Yeah, but, are you really a McCain supporter?”

 

“Yes, I mean, I don’t have the internet so I don’t really keep up with the news that much, but the way I see it, Obama will probably screw things up even worse than they already are.”

 

McCain could hardly have asked for a more stirring endorsement. But there one more thing I was curious about.

 

“What about your family?  Are they cool with this McCain thing?”

 

“Well I don’t really get along with my family.  We don’t have a lot of contact.”

 

I nodded and thought about that.  It made sense.  It’s hard to be a black Republican and maintain good family relations.

 

The wife would have to drive now.

Watching Hillary Clinton bring an end to the roll call vote during the Democratic convention had several thoughts go through my mind.  First off, it looked like the Obama team wanted to make sure Hillary knew she was beaten by rubbing her nose in it.  Bad doggie!  I also thought of an executioner who tells the condemned, “Yeah, go ahead and you put the noose around your neck.”   Amusing?  Sure.  A little sad?  Yeah, that too.  When she stopped the roll call vote, Hillary probably knew she was well and truly fucked, but I didn’t get how fucked until today.

 

I was taking a shower after working out and was thinking about Hillary (believe me, this had to have been the first time I thought of her while I was nake