Doublewide Trailer Trash

The Campaign

I still think that this election will not be close. I think that the infatuation with Palin will disappear as people learn more about her and some of the extreme positions she takes on issues. One poll that I read today shows a lot of potential problems for the Republicans in the perception of Palin.

First, 60% of the public sees her as fighting corruption. The Troopergate scandal should take care of that. Second, 47% think she has been against earmarking. Learning about the bridge to nowhere should take care of that. Third, 40% believe that she shares their views on abortion. Fourth, 49% think she shares their views on the environment.

Here is where it gets interesting. First, 56% do not know that she supports creationism. Second, 47% do not know that she does not think man has caused global warming. Third, 35% do not know her position on the bridge to nowhere.

Any good political consultant could drive a truck through these issues.

There are two other reasons, really three. There has been a marked shift to Democrats in new registrations. And by marked shift, I mean huge shift. Consider Nevada. In 2004, Republicans had a 1% lead in voter registrations. Now that is a 6% Democratic advantage. Obama has done a great job in getting new voters registered and now will work to get these voters to the polls or either early vote.

One state to watch is Ohio. The state opens up registration in late September and look for the Obama campaign to register college students in large numbers. I did a calculation, and there are nearly 300,000 students at Ohio’s public universities. With about 75% supporting Obama, that may mean another 100,000 votes for Obama. Bush led Ohio by about 130,000 votes, and of course, there are allegations that these votes were stolen and it is a fact that there was a huge voter suppression effort by the Republicans. Of course, now you have a Democratic governor and secretary of state, so the Rethugs will not be able to steal this one.

The Obama campaign concentrates on 22 states, but that number is probably down to 18. Overall, Obama has 336 local offices to McCain’s 101, with 35 of McCain’s offices in Florida. As someone who has run a local campaign, the local office is so important in getting voters to the polls, and that is how elections are won.

All signs still favor the Democrats. The Rethugs have run this country into the dirt for 8 years. People are pissed off. McCain is running the nastiest campaign in modern history and that will eventually destroy his own reputation. Palin is a liar and a cheap, tawdry, vindictive religious zealot. I still think Obama will win easily.

Incidences

I don’t know if anyone read the e-mail that Palin wrote a couple of years ago urging the firing of her former brother-in-law. I did, and one thing I noticed was when Palin was describing multiple incidents, she described them as “incidences.” Not one time; not two times; not three times, but four times according to my count. The woman does not know the plural form of the word “incident.” Incidence means a casual occurrence or matter.
An incident is a distinct occurrence.

Bright woman.

McCain Unveiled a New Commercial Today

I'm Voting Republican

Tim Baer, R.I.P.

There was a memorial service Wednesday for my dear friend Tim Baer, who died the previous Saturday. None of you knew Tim, but he was one of my closest friends in AA. We met soon after I got sober. Tim was my sponsor’s sponsor for many years. After Terry, my sponsor, moved to Mobile, Tim and I shared Squire as a sponsor. I initially asked Tim to sponsor me, but he refused because of our close friendship, which is how I ended up with Terry. Terry says that Tim knew that if I was always bugging Terry about something, then Terry would not have as much of an opportunity to bug Tim, so it worked out well.

Tim’s cancer was diagnosed about three weeks ago. The cancer was Stage IV lung cancer. In addition, Tim had congestive heart failure, which is what eventually killed him.

Tim was a solid Republican who worked for the likes of Jesse Helms and Karl Rove, so some might consider our friendship unlikely, but friendship in politics often transcends ideology. Tim’s real work, though, was with recovering alcoholics, and he excelled at that. Squire put it best, saying that Tim worked a program that he was not capable of working. I agree.

My first couple of years in AA were easy. I rarely obsessed about alcohol, and there was plenty of money thanks to my former wife. After my divorce, things fell apart. I worked at a menial job for menial wages, barely scraping by. I was hired to work on a campaign at a good salary, and I thought I was on the way back. Then I was fired after three months. Campaign work does not qualify you for unemployment, so all my money was gone pretty quick.

I will just about take a beating rather than admit to weakness, so I held my feelings in until I experienced my dark night of my soul. I was losing my place to live, losing my car, and possibly losing my sobriety. My bank balance was twenty-three cents. Suicide suddenly seemed an option. I wanted to drink and I wanted to die; it is just that simple. I had inherited my Grandfather’s calvary pistol and bullets, though I had never fired the weapon. I was scared enough to drive around and throw all the bullets out the window so I could not use them. When I returned home, I summoned enough courage to call Tim and ask for help.

Tim calmed me down, telling me that all was not lost, that this was only a bump in the road. I asked him to lend me five dollars so I could purchase some food. The next day we met at the local clubhouse and he gave me ten, double what I asked for, then he sat with me and helped me develop a plan to get out of my predicament. That was the type of guy Tim was. He was there when people needed him, and he sure saved my ass.

Tim used to hang around the Five Points clubhouse in Birmingham. If you hang around AA clubhouses, you are bound to meet some strange people. Raymond hangs out there. Thirty years ago, Raymond would have been institutionalized; he functions, but he is not quite all there. Raymond is a dead ringer for Moe from the 3 Stooges, chain smokes cigarettes, and talks to himself a lot. He is short, wears pants that are six inches too wide in the waist and held together by a belt several sizes too large.

Raymond loves military history, particularly World War Two. Raymond always talked about wanting to see the battleship USS Alabama, anchored in Mobile Bay, so one day Tim took Raymond on a field trip. Raymond had the time of his life. No one had ever taken Raymond on a trip. Tim also bought him a plastic model of the Alabama that Raymond could build, but Tim ended up having to build it with him. Terry had already moved to Mobile by this time and met them there. Terry says it was a day to remember.

Tim called a few months ago and asked if I had any furniture, towels, or sheets that I could give to Raymond. He had gone to Raymond’s apartment and found it a shambles, so Tim put together an effort to get his place straightened out, cleaned up, and properly furnished.

I guess the point of this story is that Raymond could not help himself in some respects, but Tim went out of his way to help him with no thought or prospect of receiving anything in return. That is the kind of person Tim was, and I am so grateful that I had to opportunity to call him my friend.

Terry and I went to see Tim last Friday morning in the intensive care unit, but he was sedated heavily and unresponsive, so we said our goodbyes in silence. Tim and I had an hour long telephone conversation the previous week, so we had already said goodbye. We just did not know how long it would take for the disease to kill him. It did not take long.

Terry and I traveled that weekend, but we stayed in touch by phone with Anne Mancer, who coordinated things at the hospital. She and Jerry G. got Tim shaved and cleaned up before Katie, Tim’s daughter, arrived back in town Saturday night. Tim was not capable of breathing on his own, so the nurses and doctors took out all the tubes, brought in the family, and Tim died ten minutes later.

The memorial service attracted an overflow, eclectic crowd. There were a couple of Alabama Supreme Court justices, plus a guy in a Hell’s Angel’s t-shirt. I am not sure that the political types were prepared for AA people. I placed a bet with Terry that someone’s cell phone would go off during the service, plus a side bet that the person would take the call. Sure enough, a phone did go off, but it was one of the politician’s phone, and he did not answer. An AA member would not have done that.

Three people spoke. The first speaker, Chris G., explained to the politicians that AA is about speaking in the language of the heart, and then talked about he and Tim used to sit around Five Points making fun of people in AA who talked about the language of the heart. The funny stories Chris told about Tim brought most of us to tears at the realization that there will be no more new stories. One of Tim’s political buddies spoke, then Katie gave a few remarks. She started off by having everybody look to the sky and tell Tim that we told him that the damn room was not big enough. It was a sweet service. Afterwards, many in the crowd went over to Squire and Grace’s house and swapped Tim stories until late in the night.

When I was a kid, Reader’s Digest used to publish stories about the most unforgettable characters people knew. I suppose they still do. If given the chance to write, I would have chosen Tim. An unforgettable character. The man who saved my life.

Life is sometimes difficult. A person can be taken from us in an instant and we are left to reflect on how they enriched our lives by their presence and support. We pass what we learned on to another and the cycle continues. At least that is how AA works. Monday night I received a call from C., a young guy I sponsor, telling me that they were inducing labor on Tuesday for the birth of his second child. Tuesday night I received a cell phone photo of little E., still red-skinned and so fragile and innocent. C. has a couple of years sobriety, a good job, a loving wife, and two beautiful kids, all things that he keeps through working the steps. C. moved to town about a year ago, so he did not know Tim, but I plan on passing on a lot of things that Tim told me. Everything will be OK.

The Cat in the Hat on Aging

My physician had this on the wall of his office.

I cannot see.
I cannot pee.
I cannot chew.
I cannot screw.
Oh, my God, what can I do?

My memory shrinks.
My hearing stinks.
No sense of smell.
I look like hell.
My mood is bad – can you tell?

My body’s drooping.
Have trouble pooping.
The golden years have come at last.
The golden years can kiss my ass.

Living the American Dream

Last week, I managed to cram a sixty hour week into five days. I suppose the highlight of that week was last Wednesday when I woke up at two and could not get back to sleep. I had to get up at four-thirty anyway, and I was on a plane to just outside Washington for a two hour meeting by six-thirty, then back at my desk by two-thirty and working late that night.

The weekend was a blast. I decided to drive up to Cloudland to check on things. When i arrived at the cabin the phone was dead, the satellite dish was out, and there were burst pipes under the house. I crawled under the house and worked for a couple of hours, bumping and scratching my head several times in the two foot crawl space. I let the pipes set up for a couple of hours and cut the water on again. Turns out there were two more burst pipes, so it is back again this weekend to try to finish. Last week i just gave up and went home rather than stay there and work all night.

This week has been somewhat better. I finally went to a chiropractor for my neck pain, and she gave me some relief from that. I know some chiropractors are quacks, but this woman actually has hospital privileges at UAB in the neurological clinic, the only chiropractor in the state with privileges. She just works on your posture and doesn’t claim to cure cancer. Most insurance pays for twenty-four visits, so that is usually what a chiropractor tells you is needed to get you well. This woman said that she probably needed to see me twice more and then I could come back when I felt I needed to. I was shocked.

Tuesday was yoga class. That means me and fourteen women. Men ask me where I take classes and I tell them none of their damn business. Wednesday was stormy, very stormy. As I was leaving to go to the airport I received a call saying that we might have to stay in NJ overnight because of the weather and to please rush to the airport so we could get off before the storms. Well, there was a big wreck on the interstate and our president got stuck in traffic, so we were late taking off, but did manage to get off right before the storms hit. The airport in NJ was socked in, so we ended up in Atlantic City and then drove an hour to the garden spot of the garden state, Tinton Falls. Alabama is not the only place with trailer parks. Then it turns out that they did not realize that there was an airport about six miles from the meeting place.

We were able to get back, but it was a bumpy flight and very windy when we landed. I sat up with the pilots on the return flight to make sure that they did not drink too much, which they didn’t. We made a nice sideways one wheel landing into a forty-six mile per hour cross wind. It was interesting.

Today was an easy day at work. I had a three hour conference call about Florida, then worked on CON problems in New Jersey, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Connecticut, and South Carolina. Oh, I almost forgot the doctor’s appointment and getting a bill for $75,000 from a law firm. At the end of the day I realized that my eighty-five year old mother has more dates than I do, so I called the beauty queen lady from yoga who is about a fourteen on a scale from one to ten to see if she wanted to have dinner Friday. Of course, she said no. Seems fitting.

After I finish a full day of plumbing work on Saturday, I am supposed to have lunch with my Mom on Easter. I will also pick up my Easter basket. Yes, I still get one and no, I am not sharing my candy. I bought Mom a weather radio the other day, so I am in good graces.

I am actively soliciting suggestions on what frivolous item I can blow my bonus check on. Any suggestions?

Blue Star

Reading tomorrow’s NYT on-line led me to the book review and I was pleased to see the lead review devoted to Tony Earley’s new novel, “The Blue Star.” Over the last ten years or so I have read some great books; Blood Meridian, Atonement, and Lolita (finally!) to name three, but Earley’s novel “Jim the Boy” has to be my favorite. It was not a commercial success, but I recommend it to everyone I know, and I have given away about ten copies of it over the years. I still own three first editions that I really need to get autographed.

To me, the novel is the equivalent of “The Yearling,” the book all of us had to read back in junior high and learned to love when we re-read it as adults. “Jim the Boy” is like that, a coming of age tale set in North Carolina during the depression. Jim is a ten year old boy whose father died prior to his birth and is raised by his mother and three uncles. It really is a charming book. One of the reviews describes it as a children’s book for adults, a fair characterization, but the novel touches that remembrance of youth and simpler times without becoming maudlin. I recommend it as a book everyone should read. If you decide to give it to your child, do not do so before reading it yourself. You will not be disappointed.

Miles Warfield R.I.P.

I still find it hard to believe that Miles is dead. He was a good man taken too soon. When I consider his life, I see several things to be grateful for. He lived fourteen years with the cancer, more than twice the normal life expectancy. He saw his boys grow up to be men. He enjoyed the fullness of life until the final stroke. When I read the entries on his Caring Bridge website, I understood what a wide circle of friends he had.

The strongest memory of Miles that comes to me is only one that the other members of SAE at Sewanee will understand. It involves a Saturday afternoon, and the Michigan-Ohio State game was on television. There was a guy who played for Ohio State. I believe I will leave it at that.

Last weekend, I attended a surprise birthday party for a friend in AA. Before leaving, I had a conversation with his wife about how the friends from youth and young adulthood stay with you. We all need people like that in our lives. I know I do. When they are gone, we miss them, but we carry that small part of them with us always, those memories of the good times, and we remember just how proud we are to call them friends.

Two Good People

        Two good people passed away last week. Dr. Noah Langdale died in Atlanta after a short illness. I only met him once when my father invited him to speak at the annual dinner of the local chamber of commerce in Phenix City. Lifelong friends from college, Dr. Langdale played football at Alabama while Dad was working his way through college waiting tables at the athletic dorm. Dr. Langdale was an interesting man. Physically, he was a big bull-necked individual, the prototype offensive tackle, his position on the team.
        Dr. Langdale graduated Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate, something not many football players do even at the best of schools. He then received a MBA and law degree from Harvard. After school, he practiced law in Valdosta for many years until he was asked to assume the presidency of Georgia State in Atlanta. When he arrived, Georgia State was a small business school offering one degree in two campus buildings. When Dr. Langdale retired, GSU was a 22,000 student university offering 50 degrees in over 200 fields.
        He was a erudite man, one of those people with scary intelligence, but he was also funny and a great raconteur. The one thing I remember about that chamber of commerce speech was him stopping and asking someone at a front table if they were going to eat the roll on their plate, then stepping off the podium and helping himself. After the speech, he came to our house and he and Daddy talked until late that night.
        The obituary in the Atlanta Journal said that after he retired he and his buddies would ride around town in a convertible and that they loved to eat at the Varsity. People from Atlanta will realize that living to be 87 after a lifetime of eating at the Varsity is quite a feat. Dr. Langdale lived a good life, a life that touched many people and made their own lives better by providing them with educational opportunities they might not have had.
        The second person who died was Johnnie Carr. Her name might not be familiar to most people, but most people know the name of her best friend, Rosa Parks. Ms. Carr died last week at the age of 97. I got to know Ms. Carr through an outfit called One Montgomery, a weekly lunch group that sought to improve race relations in Montgomery. I joined the group in a crazy effort to get Montgomery to adopt the Birmingham Pledge and had a chance to see her every week for several months before moving back to Birmingham. Knowing her role in the civil rights movement, I made sure to sit at her table every week and listen to the stories she told, and she told plenty.
        Ms. Carr was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association from 1957 till her death. She succeeded the first president, Martin Luther King. The MIA was the group that led the bus boycott in 1955. Rosa Parks was chosen to be the person to challenge the segregation law, but it easily could have been Ms. Carr.
        Ms. Carr lived a full, active life until her death. Until she suffered a stroke a month before her death, Ms. Carr still drove herself around Montgomery. She also tutored young people and urged them to do great things. She was never famous, but to me she was the epitome of what a good person with high standards can do if they find their life’s purpose and work toward their goals. Johnnie Carr left this world a better place through her efforts. We all owe her a debt of thanks.
        

What was that name again?

        Earlier this week, I distributed an e-mail about a high school football star named Yourhighness Morgan, certainly one of the stranger names I remember seeing, but since the kid plays linebacker, my guess is that very few people tease him about it. Seeing his name got me thinking about the whole concept of naming children and the recent trend to bestow unique, or almost unique, names on your offspring. I suspect that this is a cultural phenomenon, that as people become increasingly aware of their relative insignificance in the greater scheme of life (something they are constantly reminded of in our celebrity-centric culture), they seek out ways to assert individuality. Seeing this got me thinking and doing some research into strange names. Here is what I found.
        Celebrities set trends. Their fame derives, in part, from their supposed individuality, particularly as you descend the scale of famousness toward the Paris Hilton’s of the world, whores in things besides publicity. Daniel Boorstin discussed this back in 1962 in his seminal article, The Image, which discussed those who become “famous for being famous.” These people would lose celebrity status if they did not take measures to keep their name before the public, albeit usually through tawdry activity. Cancellation of the Hollywood Squares would achieve the same purpose. Somewhere on the playground slide toward cultural decadence it was discovered that one way to prolong your own fame and pass it to the next generation is to provide strange names to your children.
        Frank Zappa was, and still is, acknowledged royalty in the game, naming his two children Dweezil and Moon Unit. By the way, Zappa denied ever defecating on stage and said that the closest he ever came to eating shit was at a Holiday Inn in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Where the name Dweezil came from, I have no idea, but for those of you too young to remember, the name Moon Unit came from a character in the comic strip, Dick Tracy. Way back in the early 1960s, the creator of Dick Tracy, evidently in the throes of a hallucinatory moment, veered his hero away from fighting crime and into interstellar travel, complete with yellow spaceships with strange appendages and alien beings. His son’s love interest was a teenage alien named Moon Unit. Moon Unit had big hair, ample bosoms, and horns on top of her forehead. That reminds me of this woman I used to date, oh, never mind...
        I believe that seeing Dick Tracy in outer space is when I first contemplated how useful drugs might be, but as you may already know, this was definitely the moment that Dick Tracy jumped the shark, never to recover, but the memory lives on through the offspring of the man who gave us the Mud Shark.
        Bono named his child Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q. I am not sure what to make of that name, other than to say that it just provides further evidence that Bono is full of shit. I must add that the The Edge, the guitarist in U-2, really isn’t that good of a guitarist. David Bowie named his child Zowie Bowie. He must have fathered the child when he wasn’t sleeping with Mick Jagger (look it up yourself). Keith Richards named his child Dandelion after one of the songs he wrote for Through the Past, Darkly, the LP with the cover shaped like a stop sign. For the record, Dandelion later changed her name to Angela, probably because everyone made fun of her because of her dumb name.
        Anyway, hoi polloi have picked up on the trend.
        Most people do not know that the Social Security Administration actually maintains lists of the most common children’s names. They also look at the most rare, our interest here. The latest compilation I found was from 2002.
        The most common names that year were Jacob and Emily. I once had a cat named Emily, but she died.
        Six boys were named Timberland by their parents. There is no mention of any girls named Manolo Blahnik. However, there were 298 girls named Armani, which is probably as close as anyone in those families is ever going to get to the real thing.
        Forty-nine boys were named Canon, surely the children of photographers. There is no record of anyone named Nikon or Kodak. I wonder if any of the last names were Sure Shot.
        Sky was the name of 72 kids, but another 85 had the same name, only spelled it Skye or Skyy. The former is an Irish island, which is defensible, but the latter is the name of a vodka, evidently a high class vodka. My suggestions to parents wishing to name children after alcohol spirits are to choose Colt 45 or Mad Dog. Those wishing a generic, man of the people name, might consider Forty Ounce. A good drug name for boys is Crack Head; for girls, Crack Whore. Both are fine names.
        Two sets of parents deserve jail time and their children should be taken from them for naming their children after ESPN, the sports network. One child in Texas was named Espn Curiel, while one in Michigan was named Espen Blondeel. The latter spelling is the way the name is pronounced phonetically. Even though I am opposed to the death penalty, I may rethink my position.
        Sadly, scarring children is by no means a recent phenomenon. My mother actually knew a boy from her childhood in Chattanooga named States Rights Finley. I would bet that his family supported the rebel cause. Whaddaya think?
        I know of two women in Alabama with that name, that is, Alabama. One is from a prominent family in Birmingham. She told me once that she was named for her mother. There were five girls in her mother’s family: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Katherine. I cannot explain it. Maybe there was already a cousin named Mississippi.
        One final thought. All of you know that I have no child, but if I ever do I think I would name it Child Support. In today’s America, I would have a fifty-fifty chance of being correct.

An Encomium

I hate to add to everyone’s general despondency about the cancellation of OJ’s book and television special, but I am afraid that I have some bad news. Albert Hall, a long-time member of the Alabama legislature, has passed away. Albert’s heart finally gave out on him after many years of abuse, just after he was elected for his eighth term in the House of Representatives. Albert was from Gurley, which is about ten miles and ten years outside of Huntsville on Highway 72. With all apologies to the Guvernator, Albert was the original Gurley-Man, and I would take him over Ahnold in a fight any day.
I was the first lobbyist to visit Albert, just days after his election in 1978. I called on him one bright November morning, and we drank a cup of coffee as we sat around his filling station. He was a citizen legislator, jumping into the race when the government took some of his land when they were widening Highway 72 and making it a four lane road. He got mad, ran, and the rest is history. That first session of the legislature, Albert got placed on the Rules Committee, but he never would vote for the Speaker’s agenda, which did not make him too popular with the House leadership.
Outside of the ever-present chaw of tobacco in his mouth, there is one thing that I will always remember about Albert. One night my future boss, Clark Richardson, was hosting Albert and another Huntsville-area legislator, Bob Albright, for a night of fun and frolicking at the basement bar of the Downtowner Motor Inn, just across the street from St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was Jefferson Davis’s church, and mine too. Please excuse me if I call Albright by his nickname, which was Half-Bright.
About midnight Albert and Half-Bright got into some sort of commotion fueled by ample quantities of cheap bourbon purchased by the Alabama Power Company. I have been told that the attentions of a young lady were also in question, but we really do not want to go there. The situation came to a head when Albert drew a thirty-eight snub nose from his coat pocket and announced that he intended to kill Half-Bright right then and there. Luckily for Half-Bright, Clark was able to smooth talk Albert into putting his pistol away and not killing Half-Bright, then he convinced Albert that they should call it an evening before someone called the cops.
Clark maneuvered Albert to the elevators, all the while admonishing him for his behavior. Albert protested he was just joshing Half-Bright, that the pistol was not loaded anyway. He demonstrated this by drawing the gun, whereupon it immediately discharged into the ceiling of the basement of the Downtowner Motor Inn, which is also where Elvis stayed when he came to Montgomery, thank you very much. The situation was complicated by the fact that the hotel had an open atrium, so the gunshot woke up every guest not already passed out drunk and brought them out of their rooms onto the balcony.
Luckily, Clark did not drink much and was still sober, and he also remembered that the Speaker of the House, Joe McCorquodale from Clarke County, stayed at the Downtowner Motor Inn. You may be interested in knowing that Dolly Parton also stayed there when she came to Montgomery (I saw Dolly in the lobby, but she would not join us for drinks). Luckily, there was a happy conclusion. The Speaker made a couple of quick phone calls to Mayor Folmar and the Chief of Police and not only were no charges filed, there was no mention of it in the Montgomery Advertiser. What the Speaker got out of the event was a new best friend, for Albert was loyal, and he never voted against the Speaker again. Thus legends are made.
Albert’s death was commented on in the Huntsville paper by John Robinson, the House member from the adjacent district. He said, “North Alabama has lost a giant. Outside his family and the good Lord, Albert loved the people he represented.” I can say amen to that. You might remember John Robinson also got his name in the paper a couple of years ago when he was arrested in a night club parking lot for making the beast with two backs with a twenty-four year old female in the back seat of his car. Totally nude. Yes, he was re-elected.

Your Guide to the Senate Races

Connecticut
Joe Lieberman (I) vs. Ned Lamont (D)
Lieberman is known for two things: being the most boring man in Congress and for being Dick Cheney’s bitch. Lamont is an unknown rich guy who wasn’t doing anything else and thought being a Senator would be pretty cool. Despite all the hoopla for Lamont among the internet crowd, Lieberman will win with Republican help and support from George Bush. Interestingly, Lieberman’s middle name is Quisling. Lamont has been endorsed by both Grady and Aunt Esther.

Florida
Bill Nelson (D) vs. Katherine “Tits” Harris (R)
Nelson’s biggest claim to fame is that he actually flew on the Columbia space shuttle, which later blew up, two weeks before the Challenger, which also blew up. Harris was Florida Secretary of State and helped steal win the 2000 election for Bush. Her Daddy owned a lot of orange trees and Harris vowed to spend it all to win this seat. That is, until she read the polls and suddenly discovered that she couldn’t get her hands on all that money. She definitely has the best tits in the race, but her face is stretched tauter than a bungee cord with Oprah Winfrey tied to the end. Lots of surgery. Bush and his buddies were happy to have her steal the race for them, but they have let her twist slowly in the wind even though she says that Jesus has endorsed her. That Jesus, not the one from Miami. Democratic.

Maryland
Benjamin Cardin (D) vs. Michael Steele (R)
President Lincoln kept federal troops in Maryland during the Civil War to keep the state from joining the Confederacy. Steele is an African-American. You make the call. Cardin.

Missouri
Claire McCaskill (D) vs. Jim Talent (R)
Talent is living proof that God has a sense of humor when it comes to family names. He opposes abortion, supports the NRA, opposes homosexual rights, and clerked for Richard Posner, the only federal judge nuttier than Anthony Scalia. He also opposes stem cell research and has the support of John Ashcroft, the attorney general who spent $14,000 of taxpayer’s money to cover up the exposed breast of a statue of Justice. McCaskill is divorced with three kids. Her former husband was murdered a couple of years ago. The crime is unsolved, but Rush Limbaugh claims that Michael J. Fox is a suspect. I visited Jefferson City, the capital, earlier this year. A regular Eden right here in America. Toss up, but I am guessing McCaskill.

Montana
Jon Tester (D) vs. Conrad Burns (R)
Burns may be the dumbest person in Congress. Think about that for a moment. So far in this campaign he has been revealed as being Jack Abramoff’s bitch, has said that firefighters were doing a “piss-poor” job fighting forest fires, insulted Guatamalans, Italians, and called an Arab a “rag head.” He also confronted a woman with a nose ring and asked her what tribe she was from. In 1991, he was quoted as saying he was going to a “slave auction” after a vote on a civil-rights bill. Prior to becoming a Senator, Burns announced feed and cattle prices on AM radio. He has the endorsement of the Aryan Nation and is one of President Bush’s strongest supporters.
Tester wears a crew-cut, has a big beer belly, and is a trained butcher. The uncle I am named for was a butcher, as was my grandaddy, so Tester has my vote. He is now an organic farmer and probably grew some of that stuff you paid too much for at Whole Foods. Toss-up. A lot depends on the Aryan Nation turnout, but buffaloes are eligible to vote in Montana, and since most Democrats are vegetarian, wine sipping, communists, they tend to vote Democratic. Tester in a close one.

Ohio
Sheldon Brown (D) vs. Mike DeWine (R)
Brown was an Eagle Scout. My nephew was an Eagle Scout, and he ain’t got sense enough to get in out of the rain. DeWine has actually compiled a pretty good record for a right-wing Republican reactionary fascist, but he is going down in this race. Democratic unless it gets stolen, which in Ohio is a distinct possibility.
The Ohio governor’s race features Kenneth Blackwell, a crazed Republican African-American widely credited with stealing Ohio for Bush in 2004 while serving as Secretary of State against Ted Strickland, whose theology degree and previous work as a prison psychologist counseling criminals has marked him for eternal damnation according to James Dobson. Strickland’s campaign platform includes purchasing a new Winnebago for use as the Governor’s Mansion. The state capital moves to Lakeland, Florida each November and returns in April.

Pennsylvania
Rick Santorum (R) vs. Bob Casey (D)
Sonny Boy Casey’s claim to fame is that his Daddy was governor and died before anybody could get around to hating him real bad. Santorum is best known for his outspoken attempts to get Terri Schiavo voted the state vegetable for Pennsylvania. I don’t know about you, but my gaydar goes up real high when I see this guy. Very outspoken opponent of homosexual rights, big time catholic family man. Yeah, probably so. Also forgot that he was supposed to live in the state. Casey by a bunch.

Rhode Island
Lincoln Chafee (R) vs. Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
Today on C-Span I heard a call from a former Republican Governor from New Mexico who urged people to support Chafee. He said that the way to cleanse the Republican party of bad Republicans is not to get rid of good Republicans like Lincoln Chafee. No, but it is a helluva start.
Chafee became a Senator when his Daddy took a sudden dirt nap while serving in the Senate and the Governor mistakenly signed an appointment letter instead of a sympathy card, but Junior gets sent back to his chosen profession of blacksmithing in this race. Democratic, but I thought there was a law that no one named Sheldon could get elected. I thought they passed that law after The In-Laws came out.

Tennessee
Harold “Mandingo” Ford (D) vs. Bob Corker (R)
Corker made a ton of money building drive-in windows at Krystals. Undoubtedly, this has been the sleaziest, most racist campaign in modern history. The biggest issue has been whether Ford dated white women, and Corker’s radio ads contained tom-tom drums when they talked about Ford. Corker’s ads also made large of the fact that Ford went to an Ivy League school instead of the University of Tennessee, where the main requirement for getting a diploma is to drive through Knoxville with your windows down. Pictures of Corker’s daughter open mouth kissing another woman actually helped him when his response was to say that the other woman she was kissing was her step-sister. They like to keep it in the family in Tennessee. The polls say it is tight, but it remains to be seen if Ford can steal enough votes to offset the Diebold electronic ballots, but I say the racist Republican is going to win. Trivia Question: Where was the KKK founded? Bingo. Pulaski, Tennessee. People from Tennessee only like African-Americans if they are wearing shoulder pads and helmets with a T on the side or can shoot the three.

Washington
Maria Cantwell (D) vs. Mike McGavick (R)
Cantwell won her first election by over 2,000 votes, made a ton of money by starting Real Networks, and lives with her mother. McGavick scored a 0.17 on his breath analyzer test back in 1993 and walked away with $28 million in severance pay from Safeco in violation of his employment contract. Interestingly, he did not have his car insurance with Safeco despite being CEO, choosing instead to insure with IMDrunk, an insurer specializing in high risk clients. Democrats will sip latte all the way to victory on Tuesday.

Virginia
James Allen (R) vs. Jim Webb (D)
Allen is a racist, redneck, football loving type of guy, what in Mississippi would be called a liberal Republican. The highlight of his campaign has been to call an kid of Indian origin Macacca, which is the Tunisian Jewish version of calling someone the N-word. Allen’s dad was coach of the Washington Redskins and the Los Angeles Rams before that, building a solid reputation of doing less with more talent than anyone else in the league. His mother was a Tunisian Jew, but Allen claims not to have known this. Allen played football at the University of Virginia, where teammates said he used the N-word liberally, and stuffed a dead deer head in the mailbox of a black family as a prank. In high school he wore Confederate flag shirts and displayed a confederate flag in his law office, attended meetings of the racist Sons of Confederate Veterans, and kept a noose handing from his coat rack. Yessiree, this guy is a liberal Republican who is “soft” on civil rights. No wonder he was being mentioned as presidential material. Allen is also a draft dodger.
Webb is an acclaimed novelist, served as a Marine in Vietnam, is a recipient of the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest medal, and was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Reagan, resigning in protest when cuts in the Navy fleet were proposed, citing his principles. He opposes our war in Iraq, but his son is currently serving there. He is a dangerous liberal bent on overthrowing the government and imposing a Stalinist state in America. His military service to his country marks him as a dangerous deviant and totally out of sync with mainstream Republicans. His election would be a profound threat to America. Webb.

The Republicans Bring the Klan Robes Out of the Closet

Why can’t the Republicans be honest about it and just call African-Americans “niggers” in their ads instead of dancing around the issue? If you are going to be racist, just be a racist. Don’t deny who you are. Be a man about it.
Of course, there is a delicious irony in a gay white man, Ken Mehlmann, the head of the Republican National Committee, the party that hates gay people, appearing on MSNBC and denying that they advertisement the RNC is running against Harold Ford is racist. First, he claims that there is nothing he can do to stop the ad from running, even though the end of the advertisement says that it was paid for by the Republican National Committee. Second, he claims there is nothing racist in the ad. Sure, there is nothing racist about implying miscegenation. Bob Corker, the rich Republican Neanderthal running against Ford says he has asked that the advertisement be taken off of the air, but of course when asked cannot say who he spoke to about having this done. More about this moron later. Mehlmann recently appeared before the NAACP and admitted that Republicans had run racist campaigns and offering an apology. Guess he needs to schedule another visit.
The premise of the ad is this. It actually has a black woman appearing early on, then it consists of a series of fake “man-in-the-street” interviews slamming Harold Ford. In the middle of the advertisement a young scantily clad white woman comes on and says she met Ford at the Playboy mansion. After the RNC logo is shown at the end, the woman appears again and says, “Harold, call me.”
Mandingo was less overt than this. This advertisement is about as subtle as the pictures George Wallace ran against in Albert Brewer in 1970, doctored photos showing Brewer between Elijah Muhhammed and Muhammed Ali. It is far worse than the Willie Horton ad that Bush Senior ran in 1988.
Now it surfaces that Corker is running a radio spot where every time they mention Ford’s name they have jungle drums playing in the background and a choir sings when they are talking about Corker. I shit you not. Listen to it yourself.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/2006-10-25_Corker_Radio_Ad.mp3
Of course, this is the Christian party, the party of the evangelicals. I just wonder what Christ would think of all of this?
Nothing ever changes. My suggestion to the Republicans is to save some money. Just use some clips out of “Birth of a Nation.” How about the ones of the African-Americans in the legislature drinking whiskey, eating chicken, and sitting with their bare feet on top of their desks? Would that work for you?
I wish I believed in hell so that I could hold out hope that these fine Christians would burn for eternity.

President Clinton Tells Us Why the Democrats Will Win

We might all feel that way, but it's a very hard argument to make. I had an eighth-grade science teacher who was one of the most physically unattractive people I ever met in my life. (Laughter.) He had thick Coke-bottle glasses, and he smoked cheap cigars in a cigar holder that caused his mouth to pinch. And he had been a football coach before he became a science teacher, and he gained a little weight after he turned to science, and he still wore the same clothes. (Laughter.)

And I'm telling -- let me tell you why I said this. (Laughter.) One day in class he said to us -- I was 13 at the time, 47 years ago -- he said, "You won't remember anything about science in a few years. So if you don't remember anything else in class that I teach you, remember this: every day I get up, and I go to my bathroom, and I wash my face, throw water in my eyes. I shave, I wipe the shaving cream off, I look into the mirror and say, 'Vernon, you're beautiful.'" (Laughter.)

And by the end of the year, he was beautiful to me. I say that to remind you it is very hard to succeed in politics when you're telling people they're ugly all the time.