Tag: Joe Biden

With a brilliant smile and a confident swagger, Sarah Palin faced Joe Biden, and America, in the first and only vice presidential debate. But the face she presented was that of shallow Pollyanna with a woefully insufficient grasp of issues and facts.

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News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

One heart beat away. One seventy-two year old, multiple melanoma’d, Alzheimer’s befuddled heart beat away. It doesn’t get any crazier than this.

The neocons actually have their own version of reality where a person so colossally unqualified can be president. They’ve just had eight years of a stand-up cardboard cutout of a president so they assume that we’ll just buy into another four years of their inbred belief system. This is un-fucking-believable.

I was going to put together some thoughtful essay on my first sixty years on this planet. In less than two hours I’ll complete the Chinese calendar full cycle of twelve signs and five elements. It’s a big deal in Asia. After tonight I’m thanking God for the transience of this life. I’ve lost two people very close to me over the last three weeks. Lucky them. They both went peacefully – while America is still more or less (mostly less) free. There are things far worse than death and we’re just some hacked voting machines away from experiencing them.

As tonight’s performance settles in there’s one feeling just surging up in me. Just who the fuck do these people think they are insulting my intelligence with this ticket of a semi-senile old fart with no moral center and a valley-girl airhead? Talk radio Uhmerica will be falling all over themselves tomorrow saying how great she was. A very significant percentage of the population will gladly, no- make that eagerly, buy into that bullshit. What happened to this country? I can understand the inbreeding that takes place in some remote areas of the hillier landscape being a partial rationale but 40%+ ???

People have to be willfully ignorant to buy into such insanity. What I saw and heard tonight was a US senator and a high school beauty queen on the same stage applying for the number two spot in the executive branch.

At my age I admit to having gotten in under the legal wire on the stuff Owsley made – and therefore I was grandfathered in. But every time I checked out for a few hours I always came back to the same old reality. Is it possible that 40% of the population – almost all of whom seem highly unlikely to have shared the experience – has ingested some substance which the rest of us have somehow managed to avoid so far?

The worst part is that the oligarchy, or the powers that be, or whatever you want to call the masters, must be laughing their asses off at us for eating this shit. As I said in a comment yesterday, we have two choices from here on out: we either grab our ankles or stand up. I’m too old to be grabbing my ankles for anyone.

Satya.

What do you feel when you see this (warning, sick and wrong attack on Obama follows):

Angry? Incensed? Stay with that emotion and watch this next one:

The topic below was originally posted yesterday on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Change is passé. Barack Obama squeezed all the juice out of the change orange since announcing his candidacy in February 2007. Personally, I never thought much of the “change you can believe in” slogan but there is no denying Obama went far with it.

However, Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s running mate has convinced the public change is coming no matter who wins. Even worse, the very same corporate media that complained Obama only offered “words” compared to Hillary Clinton’s policy specifics during the primary season now argue that McCain’s lack of specifics does not diminish his stature as a maverick. Is that fair? Of course not! But there is no sense whining about it. These are the cards we’ve been dealt.

So how do we change the narrative? The solution is to present the voting public with a stark choice: progress or calamity. Change vs. more of the same is stale and no longer resonates.

From a stay-at-home mom.

I know, I know…my alias is “grannyhelen”, which I’ve used as a tribute to my own great-grandmother. I, myself, am a 40 year old stay-at-home mom of two in a small commuter city.

Wanna win my vote? It won’t be as easy as simply nominating a “hockey mom”, or even taking down the “maverick” image of John McCain. But women – and particularly mothers – may help decide this election, and it’s obvious that the McCain campaign picked Governor Palin to appeal to women like me. In order to put Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats must compete successfully for these votes.

Follow me over the fold for some talking point do’s and don’ts of this demographic.

Are the Democrats willing to bet it all on preemptively striking McCain-Palin?

There is a major difference between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership. Democrats fight the political campaign as if it were an intellectual, academic exercise. The Republicans fight like it is an all out war, a brawl for control of the neighborhood. While the Republicans are willing to risk it all to save their hallowed ground, Democrats prefer to fight in a clean war mode. Republicans fight as if their futures depended on the win. Democrats fight as if they are right and, consequently, for the sake of fairness, deserve to win.

On any disagreement, the Republicans grab their guns and start shooting …it’s war. The Democrats pause to think. What is the problem? What are the facts? Can we negotiate with the potential aggressor? How can we avoid conflict? Should we wait until we are sure that the other party means us harm …wait until the other party throws the punch?

Since no one over at the main Kos site seems to care about anything other than Palin, here’s a cross post…

For those interested in the Native Americans of Southern LA, I’ll post on that tomorrow…however, this is another issue that burns me up, so here’s the rant on this…

It’s a complex issue, but I’ll try to make it short and bittersweet.  Mental health issues are not treated like physical health issues by insurance companies.  Despite the fact that neuroscience has now clearly linked many mental health disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, etc. to genetic issues or chemical imbalances, these are still considered conditions that do not merit the same level of coverage as physical health issues like cancer.  Why?  Because it would cost more money…the helath insurers generally treat these as they did in the 1970’s, offering limited..if any…coverage.

You can go to the National Institute of Mental Health website for the stats..I won’t bore anyone with them here.    However, they indicate that 13 million Americans have some form of debilitating mental health issue and nearly 60 million have a mental health issue of any form.  As with other forms of health care, minorities and the poor suffer more fro m these issues–often due to a lack of care–than other population groups.

Further, this should not be a Red or Blue issue, as anyone, from any background can develop a disorder.  For example, I have a good friend who developed schizophrenia while in college.  He was from a well-off family, had attended a very good private college prep school and was enrolled in one of the top universities.  He started developing symptoms in his sophomore year.  He dropped out, and fell into a spiral that eventually found him homeless or in jail.  He was eventually able to get help, and now lives a precarious, though stable, life on disability.  He is one of the lucky ones, as he had family and friends who gave a shit.  Others aren’t so lucky in their support.