More News From the Fakefamily Household

Confession:  I smoke cigarettes.  That makes me a member of a dying breed.  Ha ha, consider that my version of dark humor.  But here’s what happened:  last night, I was having a bit of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream (the only brand I’ll eat), topped with a bit of Creme de Menthe, prior to going to sleep.    The only thing wrong with that totally satisfying picture was that I was out of chocolate syrup.  Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, Creme de Menthe, AND chocolate syrup, is pretty much my definition of Nirvana. 

So then, I dropped it.  Please note that most accidents happen within a mile or so of your home, and are most likely, in fact, to happen within your home.  Also please note that Murphy’s law applies to accidents within your home.  If you drop a stick of butter, it will not hit the floor with the waxed paper side down.  It will hit the floor butter side down. 

So as I watched in horror, the Creme de Menthe spilled onto my next-to-last pack of cigarettes.  The open one.  Given Murphy’s Law rules, the Creme de Menthe could not have spilled onto the floor or onto some other spot on the coffee table. 

Today, I learned that you can smoke green cigarettes, as long as you let them dry out.  Not bad actually.  A little sweet-tasting, but what the heck.  It beats spending another five bucks.

Okay…Now I’m Afraid

A couple of the reasonable conservatives on my hometown newspaper…uh, let me rephrase that.  The only two reasonable conservatives on my hometown newspaper, both solidly pro-McCain, have both said that in the end, it really doesn’t matter who wins.  Not that they don’t passionately care who wins, it’s that the system constrains the winner, who won’t be able to fulfill most, if any, of his promises, and won’t be able to do as much damage as it appears they might in the course of campaigning.  The day after the election, we’ll all go back to living our normal lives, and we’ll mostly get over our disappointment for four years, at least.  I mostly agreed. 

Well you think I would be smarter and have a longer memory than that.  Gore losing in 2000 was indeed something we got over, but look at the costs.  I need not enumerate them.  “Constraint” was not a word in the Bush/Cheney vocabulary, and let’s face it, Congress rolled over and played dead for the last eight years. 

I’m not sure why Congress has such a low approval rating across the country, but I can sure tell you why I have a low opinion of it.  It’s because it abdicated its responsibility to declare war, and let George Bush do it for them.  It created the imperial presidency by default.  Remember that thing about having a system of checks and balances?  The Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial Branches?  Today, the only check on the power of the Presidency is the Supreme Court, and it’s doing a surprisingly good job, considering that King George W. tried to appoint justices who would only follow his agenda.  Meanwhile, Congress, which last I checked is supposed to MAKE LAWS, which presumably apply to the President, is busy trying to find its ass with a map and a flashlight. 

What’s disappointing about that is that Congress, in reality, is the closest we citizens come to actual representation.  Let’s face it.  Our access to to the President and the Supreme Court is nil.  Our access to our Senators and Representatives is minimal, but they’re our best hope.  When they’re asleep at the wheel, we might as well all be clinging to a roof somewhere in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. 

Now, today, Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times points to the potential consequences of a McCain win and it is enough to scare a pitbull into hiding under the bed.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28kristof.html?ref=opinion

But even that was not enough to scare me into politely asking the pitbull to move over and give me some space under the bed.  It took this post on Tallahassee.com by jackster to really, really scare me. 

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=69c784b9dea8455dbcdb5ae9aa1282fb&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckUserId=69c784b9dea8455dbcdb5ae9aa1282fb&plckPostId=Blog%3a69c784b9dea8455dbcdb5ae9aa1282fbPost%3ada4a75b8-cb96-427c-bd9e-a2c7b85841ae&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest

If I were smarter, I could just post the video, but I’m not.  The second video she includes is one in which McCain, offscreen (at least during my view of the debate), twice says “Horseshit” to what Obama is saying.  Obama was unfailingly polite, warm, and respectful, and in fact was criticized for being too nice.  I myself said, prior to the debate, that I hoped Obama would NOT be too nice, and would make John McCain mad, exposing him for the unsuitable candidate that he is.  Well, it seems he did.  I just didn’t know for sure until today.  Now I feel differently:  I’m glad that Obama, no matter what the provocation, did not stoop to McCain’s level. 

I ask you that if John McCain can’t restrain himself in a mere debate with his rival for the Presidency, whether or not he will be able to restrain himself when he’s across the table from the leader of another country whose name he can’t pronounce.  Oh wait–I forgot.  He wouldn’t be there in the first place.  He would bomb first and ask questions later.  You don’t have to worry about pronouncing the name of a dead guy. 

I can only hope that enough people saw the debate and his dismal performance to think twice about voting for him.  Honestly–we cannot allow this man and his airhead VP to win.  It’s just too frightening to contemplate.

Miscellaneous News from the Fakefamily Household

I’m a big fan of Nature, but she keeps trying to kill me anyway.  With friends like Nature, who needs enemies?  On Friday evening, I felt a painful sting or bite on my shoulder, right at the base of my neck, and managed to capture the beast and smush it, but I really didn’t pay much attention to it.  I’m not sure if it was something that dropped onto me from a tree as I sat at the picnic table earlier, or if it was a flying beast that came through the open door as I sat at the computer.  Whatever it was was rather small and black.  Could have been an ant, or a spider, or a small bee of some kind.  In any case, by yesterday, I had a a red, swollen lump the size of a chicken egg at the site of the bite or sting.  It doesn’t hurt or itch, but as of this morning, it’s oozing, no doubt as the little white cells in the blood rushed to my defense. 

So here’s what I say:  Death to all insects which bite, sting, or suck blood!  This means you, mosquitoes, fleas, fireants, hornets, and any other of your ilk that I’ve forgotten to name in person.  The hell with that food chain thing.  Anything which requires your existence as food will just have to learn to eat something else.  Something harmless to yours truly. 

In another display of Nature At Work, yesterday the girl cat caught another lizard.  This time it was a green Anole, and I’m very fond of them, so I made a special effort to intervene.  I was of course alerted by the special cat noise that means, “I caught something”.  Amazing how they can make that noise, or any noise at all, with a mouthful of lizard.  The first step in lizard rescue is to make the cat let go of it.  Choking the cat didn’t work.  Then I remembered that if I just waited, the cat would let go of it voluntarily.  Because eating the prey right off the bat is not the Cat Way.  It must be played with (translation: tortured) first.  (Why, oh why, do they do that?  Like, just kill it already, would you?)

Sure enough, she let go and I was there to grab her and hold her back, giving the lizard enough time to scurry into the corner where neither me nor the cat was likely to be able to get to it.  Great.  So after several minutes of scuffling, I won and managed to capture it.  In all modesty, this was a very selfless act on my part, since as much as I love them, there is a huge Ick factor to holding a squirming lizard in your bare hands.  Usually I try to do it with a plastic cup.  You scoop them up, and then put your hand over the top of the cup.  Then at least all you have to contend with is them poking their little faces into your palm. 

So I got the lizard to a safe place and observed it carefully, and it didn’t appear to have a single broken place on its skin.  (If it had been severely damaged, it may have been kinder to give it back to the cat.)  This is another amazing feature of cat hunting :  that the cat with all those sharp, deadly teeth, could hold this little creature in its mouth without puncturing its skin whatsover.  I’m personally familiar with those teeth, since when I first adopted her, she used to bite me regularly.  Affectionately, I’m sure. 

After observing the lizard, it seemed there were no lasting effects.  It was a sort of sickly mottled color and was breathing heavily, but it eventually recovered and scampered off.  Now it will have a great story to tell its grandchildren.   

Yesterday after posting “Critter for the Day”, I decided to switch my little icon thingie that shows up when I make comments from the basketful of baby possums to the picture of the cassowary.  That’s because I have aspirations to be one of the world’s most dangerous birds.  Alas, I can’t figure out how to do it, so I guess I’ll have to remain a possum.  And speaking of possums, did you know that possums don’t really play dead when faced with danger?  Research shows that they actually faint.  I have that from a highly unreliable source, so don’t quote me.  But if it’s true, it would be a lot more in keeping with my real personality.

Breaking News from Andy Borowitz

McCain Replaces Palin with Startled Deer

Hoofed Running Mate Could be Game-changer

 

With less than a week to go before the crucial vice-presidential debate, GOP presidential nominee John McCain announced today that he was replacing his running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, with a startled deer.
According to campaign insiders, the decision to select a hoofed mammal to replace Gov. Palin evolved after Sen. McCain watched his running mate’s performance in a series of interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.
“Good Lord, a startled deer could do better than that,” Sen. McCain reportedly said, prompting his aides to draw up a shortlist of startled deer.
The Arizona senator supposedly brushed aside concerns that a startled deer would wilt under the pressure of a televised debate, telling aides, “At least a goddamn deer won’t go on about Alaska being close to Russia.”
The McCain campaign said today that Sen. McCain’s new running mate, Bucky the Red Deer, would not be made available to the press prior to the debate.
“Bucky is very much a work in progress,” said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. “Right now we’re working on keeping him from bolting off the stage.”
Bucky’s opponent in the upcoming debate, Delaware senator Joseph Biden, appeared today to be trying to manage expectations for the high-stakes face-off with his four-legged rival.
“Bucky the Red Deer is articulate, bright and clean,” Sen. Biden said.  “That’s storybook, man.”
Elsewhere, former “American Idol” star Clay Aiken revealed that he was gay in an exclusive interview with Duh magazine.

The Sarah Palin Meltdown

Okay, so sue me.  It turns out that I couldn’t go a whole week without mentioning Sarah Palin.  It’s just that the whole Sarah Palin thing is unraveling in a big way.  Never mind that David Brooks and George Will questioned her fitness;  Kathleen Parker actually called on her to voluntarily step down.  Parker said she could cite a need to spend more time with her family (a classic excuse for getting fired), but the point is, that only Sarah can do it.  McCain can’t actually fire her and choose someone else, because that would call into question his decision to choose her in the first place.  In reality, even if she quits, it will still call his judgement into question.  As well it should. 

It isn’t that McCain chose a woman for a running mate.  It’s the particular woman he chose.  That’s why Hillary Clinton didn’t win the Democratic nomination.  It isn’t that she’s a woman, it’s that she’s Hillary Clinton. 

This week, Judith Warner of the New York Times wrote a piece called “Poor Sarah”.  http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/poor-sarah/?em  Summarizing, Warner sees the picture of Palin with Henry Kissinger as a woman with that deer-in-the-headlights look.  She’s out of her league and knows it, and is desperately trying to fake it. 

Elsewhere this week–perhaps in Kathleen Parker’s commentary, perhaps on the blog Mudflats on WordPress–I read the opinion that first, John McCain is using her for his own ends.  He thought that selecting her would shore up his “maverick” credentials.    I was so amused during the debate that McCain talked about the “earmarks” Obama requested.  Can we talk about the Palin earmarks?  Second, that her anti-abortion stand and other fairly outlandish beliefs would bring in the “base”, who don’t like him very much. 

All of this makes me sort of feel sorry for Sarah too, except for the part where her ambition and ego outpaced her ability.  She could have said No.  As in, “Thank you, Senator McCain, I’m honored, but I don’t yet feel qualified to accept your offer.”  Now they are both stuck.  He can’t fire her, and she can’t quit without losing face in a major way.  Stuck to each other like glue, like a recent quote I posted about Iraq.  Can’t fix it, and can’t get out of it. 

So it’s sink or swim together for them, and here’s my prediction:  Sink.

Critter for the Day

You know, a person cannot live by politics alone. Therefore, in an effort to rest my brain, sorely taxed by last night’s presidential debate, and further taxed by the ignorant blogs on my hometown newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, I turn to the comfort of my other obsession: animals. Behold the cassowary:

This amazing photograph comes to you courtesy of www.smithsonianmag.com. 

This is a southern Cassowary, which is native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northern Australia, where it is considered endangered.  Here’s a quote about them from the Smithsonian article:

“The ornery cassowary is not an easy creature to love. In fact, it ranks as the world’s most dangerous bird, at least according to Guinness World Records. A cassowary can charge up to 30 miles an hour and leap more than 3 feet in the air. On each foot are three claws—one slightly curved like a scimitar, the other two straight as daggers—that are so sharp New Guinea tribesmen slide them over spear points. The last person known to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean, whose throat was punctured on his Queensland ranch in 1926. There have been plenty of close calls since: people have had ribs broken, legs cracked and flesh gashed.”

Once a female cassowary lays her eggs, the male incubates them for about two months; then the young follow him around for six to nine months while he protects them from predators and teaches them to find food.  I like that in a man. 

Smithsonian magazine is, in my view, the best magazine in publication.  Like National Geographic, it has spectacular photography, but its content is not limited to nature.  The October issue, which contains the article about the cassowary, also contains articles about the history of Iran, the demise of chinook salmon fishing off the coast of California, and the Italian sculptor Bernini.   

There now.  I feel better already.

Debate Analysis…or Not

First let me begin on a personal note.  I feel like hell this morning.  My brain has been replaced by a peach, complete with fuzz on the outside.  I have aches and pains in muscles and joints that I’m pretty sure weren’t part of my body yesterday.  And why?  Because I did, in fact, stay up and watch the entire Presidential debate last night. 

It isn’t that I didn’t get enough sleep; I got the same number of hours of sleep I usually get.  It’s that the sleep started at the wrong time, and apparently my Circadian rhythm is very specific about when I’m supposed to sleep, and when I’m supposed to wake up.  Defy the Circadian rhythm at your own peril:  you will be punished. 

So usually at 9:00 P.M., I’m winding down.  I may watch a little TV, or read a book, and I’ll be asleep between 10:00 and 10:30.  What I am NOT doing at 9:00 P.M. is gearing up to watch something I know will last a couple of hours.  And no drifting off, either.  Not only must I watch, but it’s my civic duty to pay attention. 

I was highly annoyed already that the debate didn’t begin until 9:00 P.M.  Why couldn’t they have started it at a normal human being hour, like 8:00 P.M. ?  What–were they afraid that giving people a choice between McCain and Obama and Jennifer Love Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer, that Hewitt would win?

I finally decided the reason had to do with time zones.  If I have my time zones straight (see: peach, fuzz), 9:00 P.M. EDT is 6:00 P.M. on the West Coast.  I guess they felt they couldn’t expect someone on the West Coast to start viewing the debate an hour earlier, at 5:00 P.M.  At that time, half the population of California is stuck on a freeway somewhere.  But what difference did that hour really make?  My guess is that in order to watch the debate at 6:00 P.M., the entire population of Los Angeles had to leave work at noon. 

In summary, I feel this morning like McCain apparently felt last night:  grumpy, and a tad combative. 

Naturally, I felt compelled this morning to torture myself further by reading the opinions of pundits too numerous to count.  Gail Collins’ op-ed in today’s New York Times was by far the most entertaining: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/opinion/27collins.html?ref=opinion  But the most revealing may be a comment by Ben Smith of politico.com:  http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/The_reporters_and_the_polls.html?showall

I believe the CBS and CNN polls Smith references proves what I said yesterday:  if you’re for McCain, you thought he won.  If you’re for Obama, you thought he won.  It seems to me that the majority of the country is for Obama. 

In closing, Note to McCain:  Grumpy and combative is a loser’s tactic.  Note to Debate Organizers:  Please have the debate at a normal human being hour next time for those of us on the East Coast.  Note to the West Coast:  Get Tivo.

The Dismantling of John McCain

I never thought I would see it, but he’s doing himself in, and conservatives are throwing the first clods of dirt on the coffin.  I was astonished last week by George Will’s column, which closes with the following words:  “It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency.  It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency.  Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience.  Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”

This afternoon, I heard David Brooks of the New York Times acknowledge on NPR that he thinks McCain is reckless.  I thought I would faint.  He has been an admirer of McCain.  The evidence?  The selection of Sarah Palin as veep choice, which is increasingly embarassing; the phony “suspension” of the campaign to ride to the (unnecessary) and distracting “rescue” of the Wall Street “rescue plan”; the vow to stay in Washington until a solution was reached, followed by a reversal and agreement to go ahead and participate in the first Presidential debate, which he tried to get Obama to agree to cancel.  Er, postpone.  McCain is like a billiard ball that keeps eternally careening off the sides of the table in defiance of the laws of physics. 

The Palin selection was sort of the first clue about how off the wall McCain’s judgement is.  See David Brooks’ opinion of that decision here:  http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/16/opinion/edbrooks.php?WT.mc_id=rssmostemailed  Not an endorsement of Obama for sure, and he’s naive about Palin’s strength and skills and history, but…he makes a good point.   

I wanted to get this post in before the actual debate starts…in just a few minutes now.  Obama has twice the judgement and intellect and restraint of McCain.  I just hope he doesn’t get nervous.  I hope he makes McCain mad, so that everyone gets to see his “unsuitable temperament”.  I hope he isn’t too nice to make that happen.  David Brooks’ admiration of McCain seems to be based on his belief that McCain is a really good Senator, but maybe not the right guy to be President.  Yeah, David, me too.

Debate Canceled, Cluck Cluck Cluck

I’ve read all the reasons McCain wants the debate canceled, er postponed, and I’ve read all the speculation about why others think he wants it postponed.  And I just wonder why no one has come out and said it’s because he’s chicken. 

He’s not prepared and/or he thinks he’ll lose.  Let’s face it.  Things aren’t going as well as they once were.  The Sarah Palin rabbit he pulled out of the hat was only a good trick one time.   Now that trick is getting to be a bit embarassing.  His record is starting to come back to haunt him, especially that champion of deregulation thing, where he fought hard to let those smart Wall Street financial guys do their thing without interference from Big Bad Government.  But never mind all that, when he started getting cold feet about the debate, thank God there was an honest to God crisis he could blame!  He’s needed in Washington!  Country first!

Well, no, John, by the time you came up with this brilliant idea, everybody else had already been working on it for a week.  They did NOT need you.  Both Republicans and Democrats said your presence, as well as Barack Obama’s, would be a distraction. 

I think the going has gotten tough, and John McCain went to hide in Washington where he can be a big fish in a small pond.  Comfort zone stuff.  You’re in the big leagues now, John, you’re a candidate for President.  You have bigger fish to fry.  If either McCain or his handlers thought he could frame his decision in such a way as to force Barack Obama to follow along, that totally backfired.  Obama hasn’t taken the bait.  (How many fish metaphors can I use in one paragraph anyway?)

But I expect to see you in Mississippi on Friday night, John.  Otherwise, Cluck, Cluck, Cluck.

Today’s Naturalization Ceremony

Today I attended, for the first time, a naturalization ceremony for new citizens at the Federal Courthouse here in Tallahassee.  I walked the four blocks there from my office just before 9:30 in the morning, and it was this exceptionally beautiful day.  Temperature about 70 degrees F. and a good breeze which meant I didn’t have to fight my way through herds of love bugs. 

I’d never been inside the Federal Courthouse here, but I treated it like I was going to an airport.  I took a very small bag with only a few easily scanned items, which included my driver’s license.  Turns out you do have to have an ID to get in.   I had to give up my cell phone, but at least they let me have it back when I left.  Well that was the second time.  Because it turned out 9:30 was the wrong time.  So I walked back the 4 blocks, and then went back just before 11:00.

When we reached the courtoom on the 5th floor where the ceremony took place, we were given a program, and the start of the ceremony was supposed to be the Posting of Colors by a Sgt. in the U.S. Marine Corps, who never showed up, which seemed to sort of discombobulate everyone and disappointed me. 

There were brief words from the Deputy Clerk and then an invocation, which was wisely non-committal, religion-wise.  Then they really got down to business.  The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida had to make a formal move that the judge accept the petitions from the would-be citizens, which he did.  Then each “petitioner” stood one by one, stated his or her name and the country from which they were immigrating.  When all were done, the oath of citizenship was administered and all present were allowed to say it with them.  (As an aside here, they’re thinking of modernizing the oath or perhaps they already have in some places, but in this case, you had to renounce allegiance to any “prince or potentate”.  Please. )

Up until the end of the oath, everyone had been very solemn–to the point where the Immigration guy said, “Geez, Smile!  This is a very special day for you!”  But when the oath was completed, the U.S. Attorney said one word:  “Congratulations.”  And the room erupted in cheers and whistles, and people throwing things inluding flowers in the air.  In my small bag, stuffed around the absolute necessities I thought I would need, was toilet paper, because I knew I would cry.  And this was this first time. 

Then the judge spoke a few words, and a speaker said a few words…a professor from Florida A&M who only went through his own naturalization ceremony two months ago.  And then, the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.  Who can resist the words “One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, With Libery and Justice For All.”  Even as I was thinking that we haven’t quite managed that liberty and justice for all part, I was sneaking more toilet paper out of the bag.  Because as imperfect as we are, this is a lot more liberty and justice than most of these people have ever seen. 

There were people from 36 countries there; from 20 of those countries there was only one individual taking the oath today.  The path they have followed in every case is a long and hard one.  You have to live in the U.S. for 5 years minimum with a green card;  pass a background check;  take a test and participate in an interview. 

Then there was a Benediction by the minister, and the ceremony concluded.  There was a lot of picture-taking, then everyone gradually moved to the third floor where there was punch and cookies provided by a local law firm, and a table set up by the Supervisor of Elections to register everyone to vote.  Our Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, was there in person. 

On my walk back to the office, I couldn’t help but think, Welcome to America, with all its bitterness and bigotry.  But then, America is a nation of words.  Those are are our weapons for the most part.  The people I saw today will no longer have to fear people coming for them with machetes or AK-47’s in the middle of the night.  And fresh from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, I also couldn’t help but think of the preamble to the Constitution:  “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…”  And we are working on perfecting it all the time.  Well at least most of us are, I think, and we have a harder job of doing it than most countries.  We’re the most diverse country in the world, and becoming more so, and living with it.  Uneasily, but doing it.