For Anyone For Whom Facts Matter; Watch the Vido

Truth Report: The Facts Don't Matter Anymore

It has been surprising to me that the McCain campaign keeps repeating lies it knows are untrue, like Governor Barracuda's opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere; selling the state plane on e-Bay for a profit, and on and on. Today's Washington Post has an article that clears up the mystery.

"John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

So it has really come to this. Just lie through your teeth. All that matters is that Governor Barracuda is new, is popular and is an insurgent. Unbelievable!

Barracuda Report: Palin Charges State To Stay In Her Own Home

Slowly, slowly, the truth is coming out. Governor Barracuda, who contrary to the McCain campaign's claims did not sell the Alaska state airplane on e-bay for a profit and did not oppose the Bridge to No-Where, has been charging Alaska taxpayers a per diem to stay in her own home. The Washington Post is reporting today that she has been paid almost $17,000 for staying in her own home 312 nights during her first 19 months in office. Per diems, as anyone knows who has to travel on business, are intended to reimburse employees who travel on business for meals and incidental expenses like taxi fares, without making them turn in receipts for every little thing. Do you get away with charging your employer a per diem when you stay at home? I doubt it. How does Sarah Barracuda get away with it? Well, the official governor's mansion is in Juneau. Governor Barracuda, like our own Governor Blowhardovich, prefers to live in her own home in Wasilla and work out of a state office building 45 miles away in Anchorage. As bad as Blowhardovich is, even he would not dare bill taxpayers for staying in his own house in Chicago.

Slowly, slowly, the Palin balloon will deflate as the vetting McCain did not do before his impulsive selection gets done by the press. Don't panic Obama supporters.

Theater Report: Another Roberts Hit

Our local community theater, The Station Theater, might well be aptly renamed the Mark Roberts Theater. Once again it is selling out as it is presenting the fifth Roberts play of the last two years, and the second one of this season.

Like Roberts' previous plays at the Station, Couples Counseling Killed Katie, is raw, made bearable only by non-stop humor, as exemplified in the Director's Note: "To open yourself up to someone completely is really scary. Not as scary as having your balls cut off and taken on a high speed chase."

"Opening yourself up" is the theme of all of the Roberts genre and what you see is not always a pretty sight. But Roberts never goes for maudlin, and just when you think you can't take any more emotion, he hits you with a joke.

The couples in the play, eight of them, are all seeing the same psychoanalyst, an unseen and unheard presence, to whom they spill their guts. While the last Roberts play, Where the Great Ones Run, was set in a diner with unbelievably realistic detail, this one consists of nothing but a couch, on stage, facing the audience. There is very little physical movement, mainly the actors sit on the couch talking with the audience playing the part of the therapist. (Is it too obvious to observe that is probably literally what is going on; the audience is Roberts's therapist in his plays?)

The play is done in one act, only about an hour long, with only two actors depicting eight couples, going off stage only briefly between scenes to change costumes and characters. Mike Trippiedi has acted in more than 50 productions at the Station over the last 30 years. Lindsay Markel is a relative newcomer. Both of them perform brilliantly, convincingly portraying not only different types of people, but different species.

This play is not for the faint hearted. The language goes beyond blue. Unlike three of the Roberts plays that have been done here recently, this one does not have a local connection. It was written by Roberts in 2000, presumably in Los Angeles, where it played for eight months, became a cult hit and was optioned as a television show. In a report in May, 2007 on an earlier Roberts play, Parasite Drag, I compared Roberts to Tennessee Williams. This play does nothing to make me have second thoughts about that comparison. It gets at least five stars.

Mongering Some Gossip

The real reason I bought the National Enquirer at the supermarket yesterday was to read the article "40 Way to Be Richer Next Year." I don't think I had ever bought a supermarket tabloid before, although I might have bought the issue in which I appeared 10 years or so ago. I am against gossip mongering since the Bible says gossip mongerers will spend eternity in hell, along with people who call their brothers fools. I don't want to stretch the count to two strikes, so I stay away from gossip mongering.

But when I discovered that the first tip on "40 Ways You Can Be Richer Next Year" is "Make sure the coils on your refrigerator are clean and dust-free" and the second tip is to "Skip Blockbuster or Netflix for your home movie entertainment," I was about to throw the magazine away, when it sort of happened to fall open on the article, "Sarah Palin's Dark Secrets: Affair That Nearly Ruined Her Career; How She Tried to Cover up Teen Daughter's Pregnancy; Family War That Exposed Her Lies." I am pretty sure that if I had bothered to read the other 38 ways you can be richer next year, one of them would have been, "Don't Throw Away, Without Reading, Trashy Tabloid That You Have Already Paid For," so I went ahead and skimmed the article.

So, here's what it said about the affair. In toto. "Another incredible allegation emerging from the family war is that Palin, a mother of five, had an affair with a former business associate of her fisherman husband, Todd. Todd discovered the affair and quickly dissolved his friendship and his business associations with the guy," charges an enemy. "Many people in Alaska are talking about the rumor and say "Todd swept it under the rug."

What?? That's it? I can find out more by reading The Smoking Gun, which has copies of a motion by a former Palin business associate, Scott Richter, to seal his divorce files. (Not that his divorce files contain any salacious details, he just wants the files closed so reporters won't have access to his telephone number and keep calling him.)

You probably already know about another Palin lie; that she sold the Alaska government jet on e-Bay, further embellished by John McCain that she made a profit on the sale. She didn't. As the Chicago Tribune and many other news outlets have reported, she listed it; got one bid and finally sold it through a broker (who happens to be a donor to her campaign) at a loss.

Oh well. If anyone has even one idea on how to be richer next year, let me know, I need all the help I can get. I've been investing in the Bush stock market the last eight years. But please don't tell me that if we get four more years of Republican economics, I would be better off burying my money in a coffee can in the back yard. I already know that.

Sarah Barracuda Strikes Back

One of the few things Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has said about herself that is actually true is that she was known as Sarah Barracuda in high school. After last night's speech at the Republican national convention we know why. She sure wasn't Miss Congeniality (whether she was Miss Congeniality in the Wasilla, Alaska queen contest is open to some question. Her Wikkipedia entry used to say she was. Then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried an article that a St. Louis woman, Amy Gwin, is saying that was false; Ms. Gwin was Miss Congeniality. Now, the Post-Dispatch article has been scrubbed of the paragraph about the Miss Congeniality dispute. So who knows. Maybe the Post-Dispatch got threatened with a lawsuit. More about Palin lawsuits below.)

What the speech last night told us is that Sarah Barracuda can read really well. The speech was actually written by the McCain campaign when the speech writers still thought the vice presidential candidate was going to be a man and was tweaked of course with some personal references. I thought her joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull being lipstick was probably something she inserted herself, maybe even ad libbed; it had that feeling of authenticity.

As regular readers know I have been underwhelmed by the choice of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate, and another thing last night's speech shows us is that she will eat Biden alive in the vice presidential debate coming up in October unless he has a major personality transplant. He is, as Karl Rove said, "a big blowhard doofus." When Biden tries to overwhelm the Barracuda with all of his "foreign policy experience," she will just wrinkle her pretty little nose, grin and say that she has lived "right next to Russia" all her life, and he won't know what to say. That is, if she lasts on the ticket long enough to debate Biden.

Gov. Barracuda has more skeletons in her closet than a Halloween costume shop. She is still making false statements, like the one again last night about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere, which is astonishing since it is well documented that she was all for it until Congress cut off the funds. Although McCain decided to go with his gut rather than bother to thoroughly vet her, the truth will out. We already know she lied about not pressuring the state police to fire her ex-brother-in-law (maybe the ex-brother-in-law, should have been fired, but that's not the point; the point is that Gov. Barracuda said she did not put pressure on the State Police and she did.) The Washington Post has now gotten hold of some of her emails. Now that the heat is on, she is refusing to be deposed under oath about what happened, after having once promised to cooperate with the investigation (which is by a Republican legislature, by the way.) The McCain campaign got the governor lawyered up, remembering what happened to Bill Clinton when he gave a deposition under oath.

Even more intriguingly, word is out that the McCain campaign is threatening the
National Enquirer with a lawsuit for printing that Gov. Barracuda had an affair with her husband's business partner. We all know you cannot believe a word the National Enquirer writes, just ask John Edwards.

Given the incredulity of the folks in Alaska to the Barracuda's sudden elevation to the national spotlight, I doubt we have heard the last of the revelations about her. I can hardly wait.

JACK Report: A Recording Session

This has not turned into a political blog, although there is plenty more I could post about McCain's impulsive pick of the Ex-Beauty Queen as his vice presidential running mate. That will come later, but first some more important stuff.

As some of you know, Google helps me keep track of Son Number Two who is reticent about what he is doing. So, I have Google searches working 24/7 to find out anything they can find out about the JACK Quartet and Son Number Two, and to email me any alerts. Several days ago, I started getting alerts about entries in Kevin Keller's Journal about practices he was doing with JACK for an upcoming CD recording project. Keller is an established composer and recording artist with several CDs to his credit already. Anyway, he has posted a YouTube video of parts of the recording session with JACK on Sunday of his new piece called Riding the Purple Twilight.and here it is.

Son Number Two and The Girlfriend spent five days with us last week and did a house concert at the home of The Humble Philosopher. Here is a picture from the house concert. We had just under 40 people there. The music was accessible and the tips were generous, so I would say it was a successful concert. And while I'm posting pictures that will get me into trouble, here is one of the cute couple in our back yard.

Not A Good Day For The Ex Beauty Queen

My blogging friend, Patry Francis (if you've never visited her site, by all means follow the link and do so; she has some of the best writing on the internet, and also, buy her book) worries in a comment to my August 30 blog entry that McCain seems to have gotten a bounce in the polls with his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. In a response to her comment, I predicted that the bounce will soon disappear when the facts about Palin start coming out.

Seldom do my predictions come true so quickly, but as Josh Marshall points out, today was a very bad day for Sarah Palin. First, in order to knock down rumors that her four-month old baby is really her daughter, Bristol's baby, she had to announce that the 17-year-old Bristol is pregnant with her own baby. Obviously, Bristol's decision to have unprotected premarital sex has nothing to do with Governor's Palin's qualifications to be vice president, but it does reinforce the point that maybe Governor Palin's family needs her more right now than the country needs her. With her husband working on the North Slope of Alaska as an oil production worker, who exactly is looking after the family, not only the 17-year-old and five-year-old daughters, but the baby with Downs Syndrome?

Then, the main stream media is finally getting on the story that Governor Palin flatly lied at the speech in Ohio after she was introduced by McCain in claiming she had opposed the famous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

And, it turns out that her claim to have fought corruption in Alaska by taking on politicians like the recently indicted Senator Ted Stephens is another lie. Far from opposing Senator Stephens, she was a director of his fund raising group.

There's more. She was a member of the Alaska Independent Party, a far right political group in Alaska (the John Birch Society is too liberal for its tastes)that wants Alaska to secede from the United States (treason anyone?) Here's a video of their recent convention in which the party's president says she was a member of the party and they were hoping she would be elected as governor.

And here's a video of Governor Palin welcoming people to the Alaska Independent Party's convention in June, 2008.

And then there's the simmering scandal of Governor Palin lying about not having placed pressure on the head of the Alaska State Police to fire her ex-brother-in-law. The main stream media still hasn't gotten on that one, but it is going to come out because there is an on-going investigation about which there is supposed to be a report in October.

All of the fun stuff about Governor Palin only highlights the fact that Senator McCain apparently picked her impulsively, without doing any extensive vetting. Only now are the Republicans sending a team of lawyers to Alaska to check her out.

Finally, the latest polls show Obama up by eight points, according to CBS and seven points according to USA/Today. I'm still not as sanguine as Debra Hope, but I'm optimistic that Obama is going to win and that Palin is going to be a drag on McCain.

Michael Moore's Letter to God About Gustav

Michael Moore has a great open letter to God that is too good not to be shared.

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson's ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be cancelled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!"

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God's fellow children who are reading this, the city New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately.

Less Than Underwhelmed By The Ex-Beauty Queen

I think all Obama supporters should send John McCain a "thank you" note. What a gift, his selection of Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor, to be the Republican vice presidential nominee. In one stroke, he has just given away the biggest argument against Obama, his inexperience. I don't think Democrats need to argue any more that Obama is ready to lead; I don't think they will have to, McCain would be an idiot to keep running ads claiming Obama lacks the experience to be president when his own vice presidential nominee has even less.

Alaskans are shocked. Republican Alaska State Senate president said, she thought it was a joke when someone called her to give her the news. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Another joke is McCain's apparent belief that the selection of a vice presidential candidate with a vagina will get disappointed Hillary supporters to vote for him. It's an insult to the intelligence of the "PUMA's" to think they're going to support a right-wing, home-schooling, anti-choice ex-beauty queen, just because she's a woman. Gail Collins has a hilarious column here about how the pick of Palin couldn't have been because she is a woman.

For more on what the people who know Palin best are thinking, read this blog from Alaska, Mudflats with its picture of downtown Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor briefly.

Thank you, John McCain, you've cheered me up about Joe Biden.

All You Need to Know About the Election

Okay, no more kvetching from me about Biden. This is all you need to know about the election. The Democrats should stop all other advertising and just run this one; 24/7, from now until November. Want more of the same? Vote McCain!

Underwhelmed by Biden

There is no doubt that Obama is a lot smarter than I am, and he has a political team that has demonstrated its ability to pull off miracles. So there is no reason anyone should listen to me complain about Obama's vice presidential selection. I'm just not very excited about a running mate who is the quintessential Washington insider. Going to meetings is not my idea of accomplishment, and that is essentially what Senators do -- go to endless meetings. Biden strikes me as another preening, self-absorbed Washington politician, with the added disadvantage of being so windy that his talking has become the object of jokes. He's like Joe Lieberman with a chin.

But if Obama has decided that's the running mate who will help win the election, I'll swallow my misgivings. If he thinks Biden will help him win, fine. I'll feel a lot better about the selection if McCain makes the "brilliant" move of selecting Lieberman as his running mate. Biden would look good in comparison.

Ask Aunt Tillie: How Can Amish Be So Cruel?

Blogger's Note: Since this blog is somewhat Amishcentric, I get questions from time to time from readers about Amish life and culture, which I refer to my Aunt Tillie, an opinionated, but humble Amish woman. Here is a recent question and answer. Please leave a comment or email me if you have questions you want me to refer to her in the future.

Dear Aunt Tillie:

I used to admire Amish for their quiet simplicity and peacefulness. But now I am hearing about the two Amish brothers in Pennsylvania who were running puppy mills, and shot 80 dogs after state officials ordered veterinarian examinations of some of the dogs who appeared to be in bad shape. (Blogger's note: See story here.) How can a pacifistic people be so cruel? Will those puppy killers be expelled from the church?

(Signed) Horrified

Dear Horrified:

I hate to be the first to tell you this, but stupidity and cruelty are no respecter of religions. Not all Amish operate puppy mills, and not all of them would rather shoot 80 dogs than have them inspected by a veterinarian. I don't know if their church will excommunicate those brothers, but it should.

This is not an excuse, but Amish do not have the same attitude towards animals that the English do. (Blogger's note: When Aunt Tillie refers to "English" she does not mean people from England. In the Amish world, everyone who is not Amish is "English.") We use animals -- horses to pull our buggies and with which to farm; cows to produce milk and meat; hogs for meat. We rarely make emotional attachments with our animals. Generally, we do not allow dogs and cats into our houses. We have dogs and cats around the farm, but the cats are there to keep the rodent population in check and the dogs are to let us know about any prowlers. I doubt that there has ever been an Amish person who has dressed up a dog in a cute little outfit or calls herself the dog's "Mommie" like I've heard some English people do.

So, for an Amish person, shooting a dog rather than taking him to a veterinarian would be like killing a sick chicken or putting down a horse that broke a leg. I think, however, that shooting 80 dogs just because you might be in trouble with the state for not taking care of them properly is beyond what most Amish would consider acceptable. I certainly don't think it's proper, and I hope those brothers go to jail and stay there for a long time. And the church should excommunicate them, but I doubt that will happen.

I have a great-nephew who raises dogs and sells them. I don't know if he runs what you would call a puppy mill, but he keeps 7 or 8 dogs in pens in the barn, and I have seen them and felt like opening the pen and turning them loose. Even though I would never call myself our Rover's "Mommie," it isn't right to treat a dog cruelly. So, I hope you don't hold it against all of us what those two brothers did in Pennsylvania. But I think our bishops are going to have to get together and talk about whether allowing members of our churches to have puppy mills isn't more sinful than allowing them to have colorful clothing.

(Signed) Aunt Tillie

A House Concert Coming Up

If you're in Central Illinois, you can hear a fine concert by two young musicians on August 24th. Stop by, have some cake and say, "Hi." (Clicking on the image will enlarge it enough to read the fine print.)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

For some unknown reason, although I was vaguely aware of the author,Joan Didion, and must have read some of her magazine articles, I had never read any of her books until last year when I read The Year of Magical Thinking. It is an account of a harrowing year she spent in which her husband, the writer, John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly of a heart attack and her only child, a daughter, was unconscious with septic shock for a lengthy period, and then, eventually also died. The book deservedly won the National Book Award and was a finalist for many other awards, including the Pulitzer. The book is very good, not only because it is well written, but Didion pulls off a difficult subject with such passion, humor and insight, without ever resorting to self-pity or finding lessons to preach to others.

I didn't give The Year of Magical Thinking my top rating (five stars are very hard to come by from me,) but I raved enough about it that one of my Christmas books last year was a collection of Didion books called We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live.

I started reading We Tell Ourselves Stories during our Michigan paradise days several weeks ago, and kept irritating the wife by saying "Listen to this!" and then reading passages from the book. If I could write like that, I told The Wife, I would quit everything else and become a writer.

Didion is about 12 years older than I am, and her early writing shows a distinctively conservative slant. She was a Goldwater girl (I won't call myself a "Goldwater boy," but I was a fervent Goldwater supporter in 1964) and over the years, grew wiser and more liberal. But even her early writing shows such sparkle that although I disagree now with some of what she wrote then, it is a delight to read. Her essay, Slouching Towards Bethlehem cleverly skewers the hippie culture of San Francisco in 1967. Which gets me, finally, to the point of my posting tonight. She has an essay, written in 1961 when she was only 27 years old, called On Self Respect, which is so good that I have to share some of it with someone. Not daring to interrupt The Wife again, I will make you, dear reader, the object of my generosity. Here is the quote:

"I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.

"Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards -- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one has been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others -- who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

"To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There's the glass you broke in anger, there's the hurt on X's face; watch now; this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyound the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carlessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves."