blue girl

Miss Moose

Political Animal, Steve Benen, responding to things the McCain campaign has been saying since the announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

...it's not an especially good idea to describe McCain as "the master" on national security, given that he's embarrassingly confused about national security and foreign policy for quite some time...

...And fourth, John McCain's top strategist has effectively told the New York Times that the Republican nominee for V.P. won't be ready on Day One, but that's fine, because McCain will probably live until 2013. Seriously. That's his argument.

I'd think this situation was a complete joke and everyone would see straight through it until I remember the Republicans were able to convince people in this country that Bush, who saved Alabama from being bombed by the Vietnamese, and Cheney, who received five draft deferments, were the tough guys and were able to paint Kerry, a Vietnam Veteran with a purple heart, as the unpatriotic, french fry-eating traitor.

It still...boggles the mind.

But she kills moose with her bare hands and eats it raw!  Biden's never done that!  All Biden has ever cared about is saving moose!  Or running away from them, I'll bet.  Because that's what Democrats do!  They see a moose?  They cut and run!

Anderson Cooper:  "We asked you, our viewers:  Is Joe Biden afraid of moose?  Our poll results after the break."

Read Steve Benen's entire post here.

Related reading while it's all the rage.

Nancy Nall needs to rant.  Don't we all?
Lance Mannion's carrier pigeon never arrived.
And Tom Watson thinks Palin won't have much effect on this year's race.  Or hopes not, anyway.

Ah, there's that word again.  I hope it doesn't end up killing us all.

Hey! You! Get a Load of My Word Cloud

Will did it for me.

I made my own beautiful word cloud several weeks ago.  But, couldn't figure out how to post it.  And I was upset by that because it had about seven F-bombs in it.  So, I'm still G-rated.  I'll never be able to appeal to an adult audience!  Dang!

Unless you consider "McCain" profanity. 

Or "Bush/Cheney."

Or "Pinko Punko."

Heck, yeah!

Or "plate."

Create your own word cloud here.

Cuz two's a crowd on my word cloud, baby.

Investing in the Uncandidate

Pinko Punko commenting on a post by Res aka Kevin W. Baker aka Will aka My Underling over at RoD:

I am fine if someone wants to really invest themselves in the Dem candidate. For some reason that can never be allowed. It certainly wasn’t allowed with Kerry, and look what they did to Gore. It seems that the very thought of becoming invested in a candidate is a sin on the left, because all candidates must be compromising RE:progressivism, so if you invest in a candidate, you obviously must be fooling yourself, because a true progressive would only ever invest in some perfect progressive, i.e. can’t possibly be Obama, or for that matter anyone real. There is no noise machine that will truly get behind a dem brand, so we all have to claim we’re holding our noses when we vote, because anything less wouldn’t be cool.

I just am fed up with all of it.

And since BG wouldn’t friend me on F-book, she can eat it.

The most important part of that comment is the last line where Pinko Punko tells me to eat it because I haven't Friended him on Facebook yet.  But, is Pinko Punko worthy of being Friended by me?  I mean, I don't throw Zombies at any old Tom, Dick or Harry.  I'm not sure I can fully invest myself in his friendship.  I'm not sure that can be allowed.  I've seen him compromise on issues that are very important to me and I'm tired of fooling myself. 

You know, there's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

The other point in that comment is one I've been forced to ponder recently.  That it's never really cool to become fully invested in the Democratic nominee because we can never find one who is perfect in every single way.  For some reason, and I'm not sure what that reason could possibly be, we've never found that perfect android of a candidate whose every single word and every single action is as pure as the driven snow to every single eligible liberal voter that exists in these, our United States of America. 

Unlike Pinko Punko, my Un-friend, I'm not fully fed up with it yet, though.  It's a puzzle to me and I'm working through it.  You have to understand.  I've been surrounded by crazy Republicans my whole life.  And I never knew, until recently, how truly crazy all of you liberals are, too.  Crazy in a good way, though.  Sort of.  Most of you drove me nuts during that primary.

I know what he thinks and I know what he thinks.  Oh boy, do I.

What do you think?  Help me work through it.

Helping Obama/Biden

I'm not sure how to refer to these people because I do not read them regularly.  But, that is now my own personal history, because now I've got them bookmarked and I'm going to read them everyday.  (Yes, fish, that's 7,497 blogs I read now.  Happy?  Pappy?)

Anyway, The people?  The bloggers?  The Editors? The Poor Man? at The Poor Man Institute have some suggestions on what to do for all of us who do not want McCain in the White House.  And then end their post with this:

If one wishes to emulate people who have had success pushing their political agenda, these are some things you should do. You should encourage your opponents to emulate the Habits of Highly Impotent Political Movements - third party vanity candidates, purity tests, self-serving justifications for apathy, threats to move to Canada if your demands are not met, etc. We’ve all expressed our disappointment at Obama’s refusal to filibuster the FISA bill - he did the wrong thing there, unfortunately - but if you think this absolves you of responsibility for stopping McCain, and of the responsibility that you will incur by paying the bill for war with Iran and the rest of the Bush/McCain agenda, you are a hopeless, useless idiot. (Buh-buh some Democrats will vote for it too so I CAN NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS FALLEN WORLD!!!) You are a grown up, you live in a democracy. Figure out how it works. Personally, I can’t take another four years of this horseshit. I can not take it. Enough of this shit already.

I say, A-men...people?  Bloggers?  Editors?  Poor Man?

Read the whole post here.

h/t Nancy Nall.  Read her post, too.

You're Jammin' Me

Melissa's post about the bumper stickers her husband saw recently reminded me of what I saw yesterday driving on the highway, Tom Petty blaring, sun shining, windows down, hair blowing in the wind.

I was in the passing lane, as I usually am, when I spotted a McCain bumper sticker on the back of a fairly new black Cadillac.  It floors me when I still see Bush/Cheney bumper stickers and seems to shock me even more after eight years of Bush/Cheney that I would ever see a McCain bumper sticker.

In this instance, the McCain bumper sticker wasn't the truly shocking thing to be seen on the back of that Cadillac.  It was what the license plate said.  It said:

GOD

I thought GOD?  You can get a license plate that says GOD?  Really?  It's got to be fake.  Right?  Right?  Who gets a license plate that says GOD?  Wouldn't a lot of people want that license plate?  Who's the driver?  Why is she the special one who gets to get that license plate?

As I passed, I looked over at the driver.  A bulldog of a woman, 60-something, snarl on her face.  Her big hairdo died black, teased up and sprayed.  No neck.  Absolutely still, staring straight ahead, hands at 10 and 2.  Wearing loads of jewelry on her left wrist and fingers.

I just thought, compassionate conservatism personified.

Three cars up (and I swear I am not lying) on the back of an old gold, gigantic, gas guzzling Lincoln Continental, I saw another very interesting license plate.  And I did a double take.  This one said:

JU MAN

And I thought, JU MAN?  What?  What?  What is this?  Why is JU MAN three cars ahead of GOD?  And who even gets a license plate that reads JU MAN?  Who orders that?  Who?

A teeny tiny, elderly African American woman.  That's who.  One who is so tiny that she can barely see over the huge steering wheel of that old Lincoln.  One who has her seat so close to the steer wheel that it looks as if her forehead is touching it.  And one who is alone in her car, smiling.  Hands at the end of skinny little arms, also at 10 and 2.

I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.  And I thought, where am I?  Am I on the road to heaven? Or maybe on the road to hell?  I am in Ohio, after all.

I turned up Tom Petty even louder and sang, thinking about GOD and JU MAN behind me to the right, in the slow lane.

Internet Fun. I Miss It.

This is the only Internet fun I've had in a week.

I'm busy at work and busy working at life in general.

I'll be back when I can get my act together.

What?

What did you say?

"It was nice knowin' ya.  Have a nice life?"

Shut up.

The Monsters in Her Head

Denise was driving home in the fog one night wondering...

If a monster jumped out onto the road, I wonder if I could swerve in time?

What if I swerve but it attaches itself to the car?!

How do you shake a monster off your car? Back and forth jimmy-jam movements?

Wait.  I know.  Speed up and then break really fast to make them fly off!

Or, is that only if they are on the hood?  I mean, if the monster is hanging on the back, that won’t really do anything.. unless I DRIVE BACKWARD really fast then slam on the breaks.  God, it would be really dangerous to drive backward really fast on 35W. In the fog.

If the monster breaks the window or has some sort of Mazda-melting saliva, then what?

Is it wrong the honk my horn and flash my lights to get someone to stop and help me?  Or is that selfishly endangering other people?  What if it’s a monster that only comes out like once every 70 years and only needs to eat one person and then everyone else is safe and it just goes away?   THAT’s a dilema.

Oh my god.

What if the monster can run as fast the car and when I look over, it’ll just be loping along beside the car…like, GRINNING at me?

Read all of Denise's post, Why I should not have conversations with myself while driving home in the fog.

Laugh.  Out.  Loud.

Mr. Mourning Dove

Taking a break from hunting and gathering.

Mourning Doves

The Skimmer and I walked outside early this morning and a mourning dove flew from a pine tree on our left, over our heads against the blue sky, landing beneath a bush in front of us, in the shade. 

"Ah, there's my friend!  Wonder where the other one is?"

"I haven't seen the other one since the two of them sat together in the other tree in front of the porch a couple of weeks ago," I said.

We watched as he darted around surveying the area until he seemed to decide he had found what he'd been looking for.  A perfect, tiny twig gripped tightly in his beak, he flew back to the pine tree and disappeared within the branches.

We sat down on the front step and watched him fly from the pine tree to the shaded area beneath the bush and back to the pine tree several times.

"She's in there building the nest."

We sat for a few more minutes in the sun and then The Skimmer left to go get a paper.

I went back into the house to start the coffee and tidy up a bit.

The American Experience

People keep on living even after their dreams have died, even after realizing that they are not going to pull out of their town full of losers, even when they understand they will not get to the place where they really want to go...

Joe Posnanski's in China covering the Olympics, wondering if he should go to see Springsteen the night he gets back home.