Running scared......
Apologies for posting other people's stuff.....we are still balls to the wall.
Back in the day we used to say that a shower was worth four hours sleep. In the modern lexicon I am not sure how much an hour of posting rings in.....
The following essay rings true to me. My Newspaperperson sends me racist emails about Obama every day. She is a person with no healthcare beyond what is provided in jail, few teeth, a wildly dented white Toyota pickup you might do well to avoid on Cachagua Road. One of my favorite perverse moments in Cachagua History occurred after hiring her and Cowgirl Amy to dig out our flower beds and put in gopher wire.
We arrived for work at 0 dark thirty.....to find Newspaperperson and Cowgirl Amy in full on battle....swinging shovels with malice aforethought and malicious intent in a highly stimulated (if you get my drift.....) attempt to kill each other. At 6am. It was like some crazy redneck martial arts movie.....Clang! Parry! "Bitch!" Clang! "Whore!" Clang!
Newspaperperson is a valued member of Cachagua society because she is the only person presently able to drive to town and get and deliver newspapers....and because at heart she is smart and kind....and a victim of her awful home life. Well, and some ad hoc anti-depressants....
Newspaperperson is a registered voter and will be voting for John McCain....because Barack Obama is a fucking nigger. And a terrorist. And a Muslim.
I have bailed Newspaperperson out of jail at least three times. I have driven, or Amanda has driven, all the way to Natividad to pick her up from jail....after bailing her out...at least three times.
We are ignoring the fact that her creepy father....a rumoured serial killer of prostitutes and other lost souls....has not been seen in months, is possibly dead, and Newspaperperson is possibly cashing his social security checks, post demise.
Social justice, Cachagua-style. One does not venture to imagine her childhood and adolescence with her father.....much less her adulthood in the same small property in the woods. A Stephen King novel. The fact that an Obama inspired Health and Human Services world would get her counseling, dental care, and some kind of help with the crazy old man is lost on her.
The brilliance of the Republican agenda is its ability to get devastated, destitute people who have been devastated and destituted by Republican policy....to vote against their own interests.
It gets worse. One of my bartenders....a union carpenter and heavy equipment operator...an actual savant when it comes to gasoline and diesel engines....who I have personally been paying his absurd beyond sub-prime mortgage for a year while he dealt with a little meth problem, a bad girlfriend and his best friend's suicide....and whom I have also bailed out of jail on a few occasions....albeit at least once in a righteous battle with Officer Cocksucker.....also thinks that Obama is a Muslim and a danger. He has no health insurance, no unemployment, no hope of help with his mortgage....and all his Union jobs have been sucked up by illegal aliens. And he will vote for John McCain.....if I remind him when Election Day is.
Tonight, we bailed out another guy.....the Union foreman. DUI. We didn't have to bail him out....just get his truck out of hock with Andy Hill at Carmel Chevron. Union Foreman has another bad loan he cannot support. He has not been working for a year and a half trying to rebuild his house and family after a fire started by his crackhead wife. He just started back, working in the Preserve....and got popped last night for the first time for DUI.
Now....barely able to keep his bad loan alive to begin with.....and trying to keep his two daughters together in some sort of family life...while rebuilding his house and trying to keep his union job...he can no longer drive from his house in Cachagua to his union job in The Preserve.
His daughter is Nike. Today we were working on the Beach in Carmel. Her dad maxed out his cash bailing himself out of jail...and could not get his car out of hock at Carmel Chevron. So he called his 16 year old daughter....who had just been released from probation last Friday....to rescue his truck.
Nike was working the Beach with us for The Navy......She told me that she has $200 in her checking account, but it took $350 to get her Dad's truck out of impound....and in twenty minutes it would go up another $95.
Nike works 30 hours a week for us. It is almost impossible for us to get her to take money. We buy her things: computers, phones, rent, clothes....but we can't keep up.
"Mike, if you get my Dad's truck out of impound tonight....I will give you my $200 tomorrow......"
At this point in the fall....we owe Nike probably $2,500. And she was going to give me her last nickel to bail out her Dad's truck.
So....I abandon the NATO generals on the beach for the important thing....Nike. We drive to Carmel Chevron...pay the $350 cash at 5:50 and go to get Dad's truck out of impound. Nike was going to drive it....a 16 year old, off probation for four days with no license and no insurance.
No.
Turns out the truck has no ignition. We call up Dad: "Well...take the chisel and look down the slot where the key used to be....you can see some gears. Push the gears forward, and the ignition will go on and the radio will light. The starter should engage also. If it doesn't, there are two wires on the floor...touch them together and the starter will go. If the engine doesn't start, there is ether in my tool box in the back......"
Dad expected a 16 year old with no driving license, just off probation.....to accomplish this.....pay his impound, and drive his truck off the lot to a safe place.
I got it done for him....Got back to my generals......
Dad is a McCain voter.....
Read on:
Projecting an Obama Victory
Monday 06 October 2008
by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
photo
Senator Barack Obama in Pennsylvania. (Photo: Getty Images)
Projection is a psychological hazard of politics. What's "obvious" to some doesn't occur to others. So, these days, it's hardly reassuring when some progressives roll their eyes at the latest McCain-Palin maneuver and express confidence that few voters will be swayed by the latest slimy attacks on Barack Obama.
The poll numbers so far this month, combined with ample media hype, have fostered the belief that the current economic crisis is close to dooming the McCain campaign. But any crystal ball that offers assurance of an Obama victory is a piece of junk.
Twenty years ago, presidential nominee Michael Dukakis emerged from the Democratic National Convention with a 17-point lead in a Gallup Poll. One of the main reasons that the lead disappeared was a scurrilous TV ad, linking Governor Dukakis to a prisoner who committed a rape during a weekend furlough. The commercial included an ominous photo of the African-American convict, Willie Horton.
Now, a "Willie Ayers" ad is getting plenty of media attention, and Sarah Palin is accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists." The McCain campaign is eager to implement desperate measures for its desperate times - making preposterous claims to link Obama with terrorism - scraping toward the bottom of the barrel and heaving larger quantities of mud.
Any confidence that such tactics will have scant effect on the electorate is misplaced.
There's also the matter of race - and, more to the point, racism. "Many older Democrats quietly admit they will not vote for Mr. Obama because they fear he would put too many blacks in power, or be hamstrung in office by racial opposition," The New York Times reported from Florida on October 4.
This fall, no one knows exactly how much we'll see of the "Bradley effect" - named after the defeat of the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who received conspicuously fewer votes from whites than election-eve polling had predicted when he ran for governor in 1982.
Polls involving a black nominee "have tended to undersell the level to which race negatively impacts voting - particularly among whites," political reporter Chris Cillizza wrote on washingtonpost.com four months ago. "That is, a black candidate tends to underperform his or her polls on Election Day, as some voters who may have told a pollster they would support an African-American candidate ultimately decide against doing so."
The Bradley effect has a long history, Cillizza noted. "In other races involving a black candidate - most notably Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt's candidacies against Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990 and 1996 as well as L. Douglas Wilder's victorious run for the Virginia governor's mansion in 1989 - the Bradley effect came into play."
Some political analysts say that the Bradley effect has diminished and will have little or no impact on Obama. Maybe they're right. But I doubt it.
Along with throwing mud and benefiting from racism, McCain stands to gain from the fact that the national Republican Party now has a lot more money in the bank than the Democratic Party does. And in many states, a wide range of anti-democratic measures - including purges of voter rolls and very unreasonable requirements for voter ID on Election Day - will work to the benefit of the McCain-Palin ticket.
Overall, the polls showing Obama with a sizeable lead should be taken with a box of salt. The count on election night could be close. In the meantime, McCain can only benefit when progressives assume he'll lose.
Such rosy assumptions are dangerous. They're apt to result in overconfidence, reducing volunteer energy and voter turnout for Obama.
Assume that the economic crisis has doomed the McCain campaign? He hopes you will.
Back in the day we used to say that a shower was worth four hours sleep. In the modern lexicon I am not sure how much an hour of posting rings in.....
The following essay rings true to me. My Newspaperperson sends me racist emails about Obama every day. She is a person with no healthcare beyond what is provided in jail, few teeth, a wildly dented white Toyota pickup you might do well to avoid on Cachagua Road. One of my favorite perverse moments in Cachagua History occurred after hiring her and Cowgirl Amy to dig out our flower beds and put in gopher wire.
We arrived for work at 0 dark thirty.....to find Newspaperperson and Cowgirl Amy in full on battle....swinging shovels with malice aforethought and malicious intent in a highly stimulated (if you get my drift.....) attempt to kill each other. At 6am. It was like some crazy redneck martial arts movie.....Clang! Parry! "Bitch!" Clang! "Whore!" Clang!
Newspaperperson is a valued member of Cachagua society because she is the only person presently able to drive to town and get and deliver newspapers....and because at heart she is smart and kind....and a victim of her awful home life. Well, and some ad hoc anti-depressants....
Newspaperperson is a registered voter and will be voting for John McCain....because Barack Obama is a fucking nigger. And a terrorist. And a Muslim.
I have bailed Newspaperperson out of jail at least three times. I have driven, or Amanda has driven, all the way to Natividad to pick her up from jail....after bailing her out...at least three times.
We are ignoring the fact that her creepy father....a rumoured serial killer of prostitutes and other lost souls....has not been seen in months, is possibly dead, and Newspaperperson is possibly cashing his social security checks, post demise.
Social justice, Cachagua-style. One does not venture to imagine her childhood and adolescence with her father.....much less her adulthood in the same small property in the woods. A Stephen King novel. The fact that an Obama inspired Health and Human Services world would get her counseling, dental care, and some kind of help with the crazy old man is lost on her.
The brilliance of the Republican agenda is its ability to get devastated, destitute people who have been devastated and destituted by Republican policy....to vote against their own interests.
It gets worse. One of my bartenders....a union carpenter and heavy equipment operator...an actual savant when it comes to gasoline and diesel engines....who I have personally been paying his absurd beyond sub-prime mortgage for a year while he dealt with a little meth problem, a bad girlfriend and his best friend's suicide....and whom I have also bailed out of jail on a few occasions....albeit at least once in a righteous battle with Officer Cocksucker.....also thinks that Obama is a Muslim and a danger. He has no health insurance, no unemployment, no hope of help with his mortgage....and all his Union jobs have been sucked up by illegal aliens. And he will vote for John McCain.....if I remind him when Election Day is.
Tonight, we bailed out another guy.....the Union foreman. DUI. We didn't have to bail him out....just get his truck out of hock with Andy Hill at Carmel Chevron. Union Foreman has another bad loan he cannot support. He has not been working for a year and a half trying to rebuild his house and family after a fire started by his crackhead wife. He just started back, working in the Preserve....and got popped last night for the first time for DUI.
Now....barely able to keep his bad loan alive to begin with.....and trying to keep his two daughters together in some sort of family life...while rebuilding his house and trying to keep his union job...he can no longer drive from his house in Cachagua to his union job in The Preserve.
His daughter is Nike. Today we were working on the Beach in Carmel. Her dad maxed out his cash bailing himself out of jail...and could not get his car out of hock at Carmel Chevron. So he called his 16 year old daughter....who had just been released from probation last Friday....to rescue his truck.
Nike was working the Beach with us for The Navy......She told me that she has $200 in her checking account, but it took $350 to get her Dad's truck out of impound....and in twenty minutes it would go up another $95.
Nike works 30 hours a week for us. It is almost impossible for us to get her to take money. We buy her things: computers, phones, rent, clothes....but we can't keep up.
"Mike, if you get my Dad's truck out of impound tonight....I will give you my $200 tomorrow......"
At this point in the fall....we owe Nike probably $2,500. And she was going to give me her last nickel to bail out her Dad's truck.
So....I abandon the NATO generals on the beach for the important thing....Nike. We drive to Carmel Chevron...pay the $350 cash at 5:50 and go to get Dad's truck out of impound. Nike was going to drive it....a 16 year old, off probation for four days with no license and no insurance.
No.
Turns out the truck has no ignition. We call up Dad: "Well...take the chisel and look down the slot where the key used to be....you can see some gears. Push the gears forward, and the ignition will go on and the radio will light. The starter should engage also. If it doesn't, there are two wires on the floor...touch them together and the starter will go. If the engine doesn't start, there is ether in my tool box in the back......"
Dad expected a 16 year old with no driving license, just off probation.....to accomplish this.....pay his impound, and drive his truck off the lot to a safe place.
I got it done for him....Got back to my generals......
Dad is a McCain voter.....
Read on:
Projecting an Obama Victory
Monday 06 October 2008
by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
photo
Senator Barack Obama in Pennsylvania. (Photo: Getty Images)
Projection is a psychological hazard of politics. What's "obvious" to some doesn't occur to others. So, these days, it's hardly reassuring when some progressives roll their eyes at the latest McCain-Palin maneuver and express confidence that few voters will be swayed by the latest slimy attacks on Barack Obama.
The poll numbers so far this month, combined with ample media hype, have fostered the belief that the current economic crisis is close to dooming the McCain campaign. But any crystal ball that offers assurance of an Obama victory is a piece of junk.
Twenty years ago, presidential nominee Michael Dukakis emerged from the Democratic National Convention with a 17-point lead in a Gallup Poll. One of the main reasons that the lead disappeared was a scurrilous TV ad, linking Governor Dukakis to a prisoner who committed a rape during a weekend furlough. The commercial included an ominous photo of the African-American convict, Willie Horton.
Now, a "Willie Ayers" ad is getting plenty of media attention, and Sarah Palin is accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists." The McCain campaign is eager to implement desperate measures for its desperate times - making preposterous claims to link Obama with terrorism - scraping toward the bottom of the barrel and heaving larger quantities of mud.
Any confidence that such tactics will have scant effect on the electorate is misplaced.
There's also the matter of race - and, more to the point, racism. "Many older Democrats quietly admit they will not vote for Mr. Obama because they fear he would put too many blacks in power, or be hamstrung in office by racial opposition," The New York Times reported from Florida on October 4.
This fall, no one knows exactly how much we'll see of the "Bradley effect" - named after the defeat of the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who received conspicuously fewer votes from whites than election-eve polling had predicted when he ran for governor in 1982.
Polls involving a black nominee "have tended to undersell the level to which race negatively impacts voting - particularly among whites," political reporter Chris Cillizza wrote on washingtonpost.com four months ago. "That is, a black candidate tends to underperform his or her polls on Election Day, as some voters who may have told a pollster they would support an African-American candidate ultimately decide against doing so."
The Bradley effect has a long history, Cillizza noted. "In other races involving a black candidate - most notably Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt's candidacies against Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990 and 1996 as well as L. Douglas Wilder's victorious run for the Virginia governor's mansion in 1989 - the Bradley effect came into play."
Some political analysts say that the Bradley effect has diminished and will have little or no impact on Obama. Maybe they're right. But I doubt it.
Along with throwing mud and benefiting from racism, McCain stands to gain from the fact that the national Republican Party now has a lot more money in the bank than the Democratic Party does. And in many states, a wide range of anti-democratic measures - including purges of voter rolls and very unreasonable requirements for voter ID on Election Day - will work to the benefit of the McCain-Palin ticket.
Overall, the polls showing Obama with a sizeable lead should be taken with a box of salt. The count on election night could be close. In the meantime, McCain can only benefit when progressives assume he'll lose.
Such rosy assumptions are dangerous. They're apt to result in overconfidence, reducing volunteer energy and voter turnout for Obama.
Assume that the economic crisis has doomed the McCain campaign? He hopes you will.
posted by Txacoli at 12:14 AM
1 Comments:
Yep - no time to get lax in our due-diligence to remind everyone we know that the person ahead in the polls right now needs to get more ahead.
I read a very cryptic email from some nutjob on some blog. He said that Obama would not win because something very big was happening on October 19th. What the fuck does that mean?
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