Fire away!

Like lots of good liberal Democrats, I own several firearms and enjoy shooting. As I read somewhere, why in the world would we let the Republicans have all the guns?

Yesterday I was in the gun store trading a .357 revolver for a .45 semi-auto. Everybody needs a .45. The store was packed, and all the talk was about Obama. I’d read that there was a run on guns, especially assault rifle-type guns, since the election because owners are afraid he’ll take their guns away. And indeed, the wall on which they hang and display rifles was nearly empty. The gun clerk guy said they hadn’t been this busy since Clinton was elected.

I was tempted to declare myself a Gun Owner for Obama, but judged that keeping my mouth shut was not a political crime of omission under the circumstances. And FWIW, I doubt guns will be very high on the agenda for the new administration. Clinton got off to a terrible start by taking on the gays in the military issue. Obama won’t make the same mistake.

Mister Fashion Person

If I’m a little quiet in the face of these extraordinary circumstances, it’s because of my innate humility (ahem. . . .), and my observation that everything that can and should be said is being said. There is no end of analysis, celebration, and, from the lunatic right, gnashing of teeth.

But let me raise the one question I haven’t seen raised publicly: What was with the dress!?

Yo, Michelle! Me and my psychiatrist, Sharon, agree. You are a magnificently attractive woman with what seemed to be an unerring sense of style, and you wear this dress as your husband claims victory in the most important election of my lifetime?

Where is Mr. Blackwell when we need him?

A few thoughts as I wait for the fun to begin

I just watched the documentary film Why We Fight. This may not have been the best choice to pass a few hours before election returns start coming in. I have the DVD because it’s one of many I bought over the summer before I had surgery so I’d have a stockpile of materials to entertain and engage. I didn’t get to this one until today.

I can only say I highly recommend it, even if, like me, you’re inclined to think “I already mostly know all that stuff and why get myself depressed by dwelling on it?” Sometimes the right book or film forces us to know something in a way that’s far more profound than the way in which we knew it before.

I have three major hopes for an Obama administration if we’re lucky enough to have one when I go to bed tonight: one is that we’ll begin to turn away from our militaristic, imperial behavior which seeks to project American power abroad under the guise of spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Although this is now known as the Bush Doctrine, as the film makes clear the general idea goes back at least to the 1950s and led President Eisenhower to coin the phrase and warn against the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech to the nation.

Two is that Obama will reject the idea of the Unitary Presidency, the bedrock of the Bush administration and the brainchild of Dick Cheney. Most people don’t even know that under Bush, the whole concept of checks and balances was abandoned in favor of a president with nearly unlimited powers to set foreign and domestic policy, and the Bush Administration was largely successful in achieving that goal. Certainly one of the greatest tests of character is to willingly give up power, and it remains to be seen whether it will even be a goal for Barack. It hardly rose to the surface as a campaign issue.

And three is that we develop a system of universal, affordable health care, with access to health care considered as a basic right of citizenship, not as a commodity to be bought and sold. Most of the rest of the world is there, and it’s long past time that we catch up.

I think all of these hopes are realistic even in a time of financial crisis and the various foreign policy crises which will erupt as soon as the next president takes the oath of office.

So these are a few thoughts as I wait for polls to start closing on the East Coast and early returns to start coming in. For all I know, at least one of the networks has already projected a winner, but I’ll wait a few more hours before I start watching the coverage.

The news from here

With only tonight left before election day, I feel a little lucky that Mary and I spent part of our evening at a City Council meeting at which we were an agenda item. It took my mind off things and reminded me that whoever is elected tomorrow, a lot of what determines my quality of life happens below the level of national and international affairs.

This all stems from a long-standing dispute with a very difficult neighbor—let’s call him “Walter”—who has objected to some improvements we’ve made in the right-of-way which separates our properties. For over a year now, he’s placed complaints against us on the city council agenda, only to withdraw them at the last minute. Although it’s been stressful overall, I admit I’ve enjoyed outmaneuvering him at each juncture, despite his retaining an attorney.

If things go as we expect, “Walter” now gets to expand a driveway, which won’t solve the problems he’s said he has with driving up to his house, particularly in winter, and we have his written promise to drop his complaints, actually an appeal of a decision by the city manager which went our way. This initially made “Walter” so mad he was over at our house making threats against me, and I had to call the police to tell him to stay away. Since then he occasionally throws something at our house. Once, he rolled an old tire filled with mud and water down onto our patio.

If you’ve seen the film, There Will Be Blood, that’s “Walter.” He’s kind of pathetic, but I’ve always believed he’s dangerous.

Since much of this was public record, the local paper picked up the story on Sunday and ran a somewhat distorted overview. I declined to comment, in the same way I generally decline to swat at hornets which don’t seem intent on stinging me at the moment. Today, I watched a succession of cars drive by and even up his driveway to look things over. Some people might be surprised that the paper would carry such a non-story, but I remember several years ago when they ran the headline, “Big Storm Misses Basin!”

Tonight a big storm might actually hit the basin, as winter weather is arriving. We’re home from the council meeting, and I’m planning to watch the Saturday Night Live pre-election special in a little while. SNL, as everyone my age is quick to point out, isn’t a very good program anymore, but Tina Fey has done a lot to get me through some of my anticipatory despair with her locked-on imitation of Sarah Palin.

And then, the election tomorrow, and about this time tomorrow evening, I’ll be settling in to watch returns and probably stay up much of the night, as I have in past years. Last- minute analyses still give Obama the edge but with a lot of commentators seeing ways that McCain could win. I don’t think anybody knows anything at this late stage. I can see a squeaker for McCain or a landslide for Obama, or anything in between. In any case, it will keep me occupied and entertained for several days.

I don’t envy our next president, whoever it turns out to be. Me, I’ve got “Walter” off my back, at least for now, and my snow shovel set out.

What if Barack loses?

Overconfidence among some of my friends is scaring the pee out of me. My friend Marty was sure Barack was going to win by a landslide months ago. Now Michael blogs that the election has been over for about a month, and since he lives in D.C., he's excited about the inauguration. Me, I'm thinking about leaving the country if McPalin wins, which I put at even money

I've been working on my Spanish and looking at tropical little socialist-heavens-on-earth, but going north is also a possibility. And I'm not the only one.

http://www.slatev.com/player.html?id=1842856410

Adios, eh?

Don't know much about . . . . : Continued

Like most people, including most economists, I don’t know much about economics, and therefore I don’t understand at all why we’re facing an economic crisis right now, as opposed to a year ago or a year from now. Something about over-leveraged subprime derivatives, which goes a long way towards explaining why I'm not rich. That’s why I read with interest an article in today’s Washington Post which seems to suggest that whatever it was that went wrong, it was Alan Greenspan’s fault.

For a long time, I’ve thought of Greenspan as the J. Edgar Hoover of finance, although Greenspan only held his post at the Federal Reserve for nineteen years, as compared to Hoover’s 48 years at the FBI. Also, to my knowledge, Greenspan is not a cross dresser.

The Post documents that despite appearances to the contrary, a lot of people have seen the potential for our economic meltdown for a very long time, including some congressional testimony dating back as far as the early nineties. Greenspan, a self-avowed libertarian, always had faith in the corrective power of the capitalist marketplace, in part arguing that integrity was itself a commodity which promotes stability. But now he seems to have leveraged his opinion: “The problem is not that the contracts failed. Rather, the people using them got greedy.” A lack of integrity spawned the crisis, he argued in a speech a week ago at Georgetown University, intimating that those peddling derivatives were not as reliable as “the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician.” So there’s nothing wrong with unregulated markets, only with greedy capitalists.

Apparently if Greenspan were a zookeeper, he would offer the lions a balanced diet, confident that they would choose to eat healthy, including lots of fruits and vegetables and not too much red meat. Pharmacists,apparently, are natural vegetarians, so they can serve as a kind of economic control group.

The full Post article, very worth reading, is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1223568417-x4WVFeRo10fLkP1ibrviig

In the meantime, I was pleased to learn yesterday that AIG, which holds all of Mary’s gone-yesterday, here-today, who-knows-tomorrow retirement savings, is so confident in its corporate future that they just held a four-hundred-thousand dollar, week-long retreat for top executives. This got those bad executives a stern lecture from Congress, which seems to think just because it bailed AIG out to the tune of $70 billion, it can tell them they should settle for take-out until further notice.

I'll have the leveraged pot stickers with a subprime pedicure on the side.

The end of an era

As usual this morning, I was sitting at the computer having my third cup of coffee and waiting for the paper to arrive, lately sometime after 9:00 a.m. When it didn’t come, I remembered I had cancelled my subscription a few weeks ago, effective today, October 1st. Thus ends about forty years of uninterrupted daily delivery of a morning paper and a change in the habit of nearly a lifetime. I’m a little surprised it isn’t more painful

I love newspapers. I follow current events like some guys follow sports, with a passion and great attention to detail. I got my first subscription in 1969 when I shipped out (flew out, actually) to Vietnam and my thoughtful mother bought me a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle. She knew I love to read the paper every morning, and receiving the Chron by mail about a week late kept me feeling connected to home. There was life going on back there and I knew I was going to get back to it sooner or later.

For the last twenty-seven years or so it’s been The Oregonian, which I consider to be a very good daily paper. It used to be delivered about 5 a.m., and I could wake up, have coffee and read most of the paper before leaving for work. Then it started coming about 7;30, so when I was still working I had to read it after I got home in the afternoon. Not as good.

Now, though, it comes sometime after nine, and the distributor explained to me that it had to do with changing routes to use gas more efficiently. By 9, I’ve already read most of the Washington Post and New York Times online and had too much coffee to even think about pouring another cup. At most, I’d scan the front section and read a couple of editorials.

And then they raised the subscription price from $30 a month to $40 a month. I just couldn’t justify the expense anymore.

There are a lot of reasons at least a few daily papers should stay in business, and a lot of reasons they probably won’t. Give them maybe twenty years. Fifty at the outside. So I guess it is a little painful to step back while they’re still available. I’ll probably still buy the Sunday paper in the newsstands and have breakfast or coffee in a café. Most days, though, I’ll get all my news and opinion online. With email updates from the Times and Post.

I’ll miss the funnies, though.

Huh?

After the vote in the House, I heard this guy on TV:

"During the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) on the floor, "the slogan was 'Peace, land, and bread.' Today, you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom."

Huh?

The Bonfire of the Vanities

If there’s any joy in watching the Wall Street Meltdown, it’s the sweet taste of Schadenfreude as at least some of today’s executives and traders watch their fortunes and fame bleed out like an ice cube melting on the floor of the stock exchange. The whole thing has put me in mind of the Tom Wolfe novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, which I read shortly after it was released in the mid-80s. I’ve thought of digging around to see if I still have it. It would probably be a good read again and a reminder that the age of greed didn’t start with the invention of the sub-prime mortgage.

But yesterday I stopped by Blockbuster to pick up something entertaining for the evening, and back in the drama section, there was the DVD version of the film from 1990. I hadn’t seen it before, but with Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, and Morgan Freeman, I couldn’t pass it up. Kim Kattrall plays a younger version of her Sex and the City character, and Alan King, an actor/comedian I’ve never particularly liked, turns in the best comic performance of the film in a brief scene.

Directed by Brian DePalma, the plot summary reads like a headline you’d love to see tomorrow morning: “Sherman McCoy was Wall Street’s Master of the Universe—and everything in his life was right. Then one night he took a wrong turn at the wrong place with the wrong woman. And nothing has gone right since.”

I was a little put off at first because the characters seemed drawn as overly large clichés, and it was hard to feel much of the tension I remember from reading it as McCoy watches his life unravel after accidentally running over a black kid in the Bronx. As the film went on, though, I realized it was intended as a comedy, and whether Wolfe had that in mind or not, the general plot line lends itself to humor and became a wonderful comedy once I realized it was okay to laugh.

In the film, Hanks as McCoy has the last laugh, which may or may not be how the book ends or the message it was trying to convey. I’ll still try to dig that up or find it at a used book store, but I’m glad I found the film. Very funny and worth it.

Chapter 11: In which Mary and me is saved from ruination

We had a good meeting with a financial advisor yesterday. Mike Nichols is his name, and I recommend him to local folks who are looking to make big money in the market. He works for Edward Jones, who I don’t think is an actual person.

To my surprise, he didn’t try to sell us anything. He didn’t tell us our savings were in peril or we needed to start making eleven percent interest in high-yield stocks or we would regret it in our dotage. Actually, he told us we were safe right where we were. Well, as safe as anybody can be these days.

In fact, we had a nice visit and he answered several questions we had and explained some things we didn’t know we didn’t know. He spent about an hour with us, which I thought was impressive since he wasn’t selling anything, but he said it had been a rough week, and I think he enjoyed talking to a couple who weren’t facing financial collapse just yet.

So we seem still to be on track to Mary’s retirement at the end of this school year, partly because of one good decision and mostly because of dumb luck. The good decision was to move all of our savings into simple interest-bearing accounts. Zero market risk. We make about three percent no matter what. In good years, we can make about 4.5 percent. We did this several years ago because we’re chicken investors, which this time proved to be smart.

But mostly dumb luck. My heart goes out to all those people who are being hammered by Wall Street greed and the empty promises of deregulation. Since most of my friends are of about the same age, a lot of them have to be facing the same concerns we have. I hope all of them turn out to be as lucky.

Me, I just want to have fun. . . .

It’s hard to know what to make of our country’s ongoing financial crisis. I believe the federal government should have one overarching priority: to protect Mary and me from any loss and ensure our modest retirement exactly as we’ve planned it. Everything else comes second.

It seemed we had mostly achieved that last week when Treasury Secretary Paulson announced that we, the American taxpaying public, were buying out AIG so it wouldn’t collapse and destroy all life on earth as we know it. Since our modest little retirement savings are in AIG, we heartily approved of this transaction. The stock market was up.

Then, the stock market was down again, and it turned out we taxpayers have to buy out pretty much all of the market’s bad investments or face the Great Depression II. I was still on board with this plan because it might add the extra margin of stability I need to be sure our savings are safe.

By Monday, however, it was clear that there was little support for this idea on “Main Street,” since people rightly want to know why they should be held accountable for losses on Wall Street, brought on by the brokers and executives themselves and their Wall Street culture of greed, which has pretty much been the Republican economic policy since Ronald Reagan. The tab is now up to $700 billion—that’s “billion” with a B—or roughly the cost of another war in Iraq, which, as we all know, turned out badly despite our massive and ongoing infusion of capital.

A review of a few of today’s papers makes clear how complicated this whole mess is. One the one hand, I read stories of people like me—retired or soon to be retired—whose savings disappeared in collapsed institutions and nervous markets. The papers state quite flatly that even if the market recovers over time, these folks will never recover with it. Tough beans. Let them eat cake.

Additionally, Congressional Democrats raise important questions about just handing over that kind of money to Paulson, himself a Wall Street insider, without conditions and oversight. And economists of both the left and right seem to question the wisdom of any large-scale bailout at all. Something about throwing good money after bad.

Still, it looks like most of the important players are mostly on board with some version of Uncle Sam playing the part of The Lone Ranger. Whether or not the town stays fixed after the Lone Ranger rides off remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mary and I meet later today with a “financial advisor,” who himself might be teetering on the brink of disaster, to ask if it’s safe to move our money to a different kind of account, maybe a credit union that has federal insurance and pays two or three percent interest. We’re looking to move in for the big kill. Or is it better to leave it in AIG, which may be one of the safer places to be right now? Do we risk the dreaded “penalty for early withdrawal” if we just transfer money from one institution to another? Not at all clear.

Personally, I already don’t trust anything this advisor might tell us. At risk is our lifetime personal savings of thousands of dollars—that’s “thousands” with a T—and our hopes for Mary joining me in early retirement. We’ve been lucky so far, but as for everybody, our only real security remains false security, and all might be lost in the next morning’s headlines.

True security

It seems that rumors of our financial ruin were premature. After saying it was done bailing out badly run giant corporations, the feds decided that, well, just this one more time: “Fearing a global financial crisis” (that would have included me; therefore, I gave a shit), they are bailing out AIG by means of an $80 billion loan. (It’s no longer necessary to point out that “that’s billion, with a B,” since anything in the mere millions wouldn’t even make the sports page anymore.) In return for the $80 billion, (that’s billion, with a B), the feds are taking eighty percent of AIG’s shares and a controlling interest in the corporation. Sounds like AIG is being given a time out and put on a plan of improvement.

You can tell the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. finally decided to step in and protect the little guy. According to the New York Times, “What frightened Fed and Treasury officials was not simply the prospect of another giant corporate bankruptcy, but A.I.G.’s role as an enormous provider of esoteric financial insurance contracts to investors who bought complex debt securities.” That’s me, okay.

But wait! I found something else: “Small investors, including anyone who owned money market funds with A.I.G. securities, could have been hurt, too.” I think that’s actually me right there.

So in the span of twenty-four hours, we learned that that bad old cancer is gone and I’m probably going to live long enough to get on a motorcycle again—which will probably be the death of me since life loves a good irony—and then that we’re financially ruined—excuse me if I over-dramatize a little here, but still—and then we’re not ruined after all. I’m feeling a little post-traumatic right now.

All of this should lead me to see life in a whole new way: to appreciate the little things, to stop and smell the flowers, to appreciate the little things. But mostly I’m waiting until Friday when I get the catheter taken out so I don’t have to walk around carrying a bucket anymore.

Maybe it hasn’t all sunk in yet, but I realize once again that there is no true security in life, only false security. Given that, I want all the false security I can get.

Good news, bad news

The good news is that my pathology reports came back with negative margins and whatever else they look for in prostate cancer. My urologist, who called about 9:30 last night, said, "We got it all." This actually wasn't particularly a relief for me since I expected to hear exactly that. My concern has been about incontinence and impotence. I'm optimistic about those, as well, but I think it will be awhile before we have a very clear picture.

But still, is my cup half full? It is very half full. Mary especially was relieved.

With all this life and death stuff, you'd think the rest of life would put itself on hold for awhile, but of course it doesn't. In reading and listening to the news yesterday, I was knocked down hard by reports that AIG is one of the struggling financial giants making headlines. Mary and I have all of our non-PERS savings in VALIC, which is owned by AIG.

The picture is not at all clear, but if AIG goes under, which it may well, we might lose everything we've put aside for retirement for over twenty years. In fact, VALIC has been dropped from the company name, and it's now just AIG Retirement. Not a good sign. Our agent hasn’t returned our phone calls, so we can’t yet try to pull our money out and deposit it somewhere else, if that’s even allowed in a tax sheltered annuity. Also not a good sign.

The upshot if this goes bad is that Mary's hopes to retire at the end of the year will disappear, and it might mean I'll have to begin a serious job search. Chances are good she'll have to work an additional seven to ten years. It's hard to say what work I could find locally, especially since I can't work for any PERS-covered agency. At the least, I could continue as an adjunct at the local community college, though that only brings in about $5 thousand a year after taxes. Still, $5 thousand is $5 thousand.

So we're still in the position of believing we're in better shape than most American families. There are certainly a lot of people who would feel no sympathy for a couple of teachers who end up not being able to retire early. You call that hardship?

But it's a bitter pill to watch all our savings disappear overnight with no warning. We've long said that if we're ever in real trouble, the whole country will be in real trouble with us. Guess what?! Alan Greenspan says this is a “hundred year event,” and Alan has never been known for hyperbole.

Maybe, we hope, AIG will survive. Reports at this time are far from encouraging.

But hey, cancer free!

Final report

Okay: done; home; comfortable; upbeat.

No further reports to come unless there are new, unexpected developments. Everyone has been wonderful. Medical technology is amazing. Life is good.

We're going in!

Everything is a go for surgery tomorrow. Mary and I met with my urologist yesterday, and like all surgeons, he was able to put us at ease and develop a warm, personal relationship in our brief time together. For example, he told us my heart is fine and there was no problem going ahead with the operation. He could have told us this a week ago after my repeated calls to his medical assistant (what in hell is a medical assistant, anyway?), but he chose to tell us in a warm, personal way when we finally met him in his examination room. I always appreciate this kind of warm, personal treatment from surgeons.

Mary and I had a three-page list of questions, and as Mary read them, one by one, he briefly set aside some paper work he was doing to respond with admirably warm but concise answers. After a minute or two of this, he took the questions and answered them one by one in his warm, reassuring manner:

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Depends.”

“Depends.”

“Depends.”

“Everyone’s different.”

“Depends.”

He made a little check mark next to each question so we’d remember later that he’d answered it.

What I look for in a surgeon, though, is someone who can cut and stitch with absolute precision, and this guy has a good reputation. His personal warmth is just a side benefit, and a surprise one at that in someone whom I would describe as a “Type Triple-A Personality.” Since he knew what we were going to say anyway, he never made us actually finish a sentence.

So, I’m going in tomorrow about noon and hope to be out the next day. I’m anxious to get on with it. I’ve stocked up on some audio books, which might be easier than actually reading if I’m a little goofy for a few days. I got Anna Karenina in case recovery goes a little slower than I expect. I tried to get Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, but they were out of stock.

I should be walking right after surgery, walking around the neighborhood in a few days, and mostly back to my old self in a few weeks. Maybe a few months. No motorcycles for a month, he said, which is a bummer, but does leave a little riding time at the end of fall. Incontinence and impotence, well, I’m optimistic, but everyone’s different, and it depends. (I’m not stocking up on Depends yet.)

And cancer free, I fully expect.

Get your PSA tests, guys.

The candidate accepts

So, how did John McCain do in his acceptance speech? I’d heard that he is not a particularly good public speaker. After watching him last night, I’d have to say that overstates his skills. As a college professor who taught public speaking for over twenty years, I give him a C minus, this allowing for the fact that he didn’t even write it himself. Only Obama writes his own speeches in this election.

For the most part, I enjoy teaching speech, but it can be painful when a particularly bad speaker takes the floor. Unlike reading a student essay, I can’t hold my head with both hands and let out audible groans. But minutes turn to, uh, longer minutes, and last night McCain spoke for forty-five painful minutes. I held my head and moaned. I confess I flipped over to The Simpsons a few times.

The crowd cheered at all the appropriate moments, which was pretty much after every line, but the cheers seemed mostly desultory. When the cameras panned the audience for Obama, many of the delegates were openly weeping. During McCain’s speech, many were yawning. I am not making this up.

McCain is said to be very good in a town hall format, and good public speaking probably isn’t a leading factor in election success. In a close election, though, nobody can afford to be bad at anything.

And please: enough with the prisoner of war thing. It’s a compelling narrative, as they say, but it shouldn’t be the focal point of every speech by and about John McCain. Nor did it help when he talked about hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The only Pearl younger voters relate to might be Jam.

But mostly lackluster delivery trumped content.

Yawn.

I am Joe's prostate update

I'm doing mostly fine emotionally and scheduled for surgery next Wednesday. Things are still up in the air, though, because I'm "equivocal for distal anterior cerebral artery aneurisms." Sounds scary as hell, don’t it? but my family doctor tells me my heart health is probably good and I'm fit for surgery (probably). I’m “equivocal” because I have a “branch bundle blockage,” which is “not a nerve but it’s like a nerve” in my heart which is causing an irregular heartbeat. A BBB is not itself a problem but can mask other conditions. It’s up to me, the doc says, and since I happen to be a heart surgeon in my spare time, I feel well qualified to make a decision.

Or maybe it’s a bundle branch blockage. . . . Beach blanket bingo. . . . Bleach banquet bunko. Anyway, it’s not a nerve.

I'm waiting to hear back from the surgeon if he's willing to go ahead. I have a pre-op appointment Monday and may not know more until then. Urologists don't seem great about returning calls. My friend John has had the same problem.

I feel really bad for John. We're calling and emailing a lot since we're kind of doing this on the buddy system. John didn't get good news after surgery, and although his prognosis is still good, he has more therapy, side effects, and uncertainty ahead. The emotional effects for him and his family are tough, but he’s a tough guy. Hang in, John!

Me, I’m a weenie.

I’ve found the best way to handle this is to spend a lot of money on myself. I bought some flashy new leathers to assure myself of my virility in case I have erectile issues after surgery. Actually, every guy has erectile issues after surgery, but there are many therapies available to help Willie stand tall again, some of which sound damn fun. You wouldn’t believe what some guys will do to get a boner. I’m looking for a good source for powdered rhinoceros horn.

Then I bought a new helmet, which I actually did need. Then I bought a new watch since ten years on a $40 Timex is enough self-denial. I can’t think of anything else to buy right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

The support of friends and the kindness of strangers, especially cute nurses, has meant everything to me. If you’re wondering what you can do to help, send me presents. Send Mary some presents, too. Talk about cute nurses.

Sarah on the stump

Give Sarah Palin her due, she delivered a terrific speech to the Republican convention last night. It was do or die for Sarah. With all the questions about her meager experience and minimal qualifications, she had to be much better than just adequate; she had to electrify. Clearly she did that in front of an audience that wanted badly to love her. And with all my negative bias going in, I was surprised to find her smart, witty, and utterly likeable.

I told Mary I thought she was charming. Mary’s response was less favorable, especially after I said she was charming.

Even given that her speech was almost certainly written by other people, she still delivered her punch lines with mastery: "Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change." In only one line did she come across as snarky about Obama: “What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?"

We’ll see how the polls play out, and especially the only poll that really matters, which is the election in November. But in her performance last night she succeeded in fully winning the hearts of the Republican conservative base and probably won over some undecided voters who are easily swayed by mere likeability.

For those who actually look for substance, she’ll still face the issues of her fitness to step into the presidency any day after January 20th. In addition to all the experience questions, she’ll have a hard time defending her record as a reformer who will cut government spending. As mayor of Wasalia, she hired Washington lobbyists and secured over $20 million in earmarks for her town of fewer than 7,000 people. When she says that as governor, she just said no to the bridge to nowhere, she doesn’t add that she still kept the money and spent it on other Alaskan highway projects.

But Sarah made clear last night that she’ll be a formidable campaigner. Unlike Dan Quayle, who always seemed to have a deer-in-the-headlights look about him, Palin was composed, confident, and, well, charming.

She’s cute. She hunts moose. It’s rumored she rides a motorcycle. Can she turn back the waters?

More ringing endorsements for Sarah Palin

This from yesterday’s column by Richard Cohen:
“One of the great sights of American political life -- a YouTube moment if ever there was one -- was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: ‘She's the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television," Gingrich said on the Today Show. "So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.’"
And in an interview with PBS’s Gwen Ifel last night, I watched two Republican congresswomen defend Palin’s foreign policy experience. One pointed out that only the Aleutian Islands separate Russia from Alaska, and the other added that Alaska also borders Canada.
You can’t make this shit up.

The Republican Follies

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the Republican Follies—er, convention—this week. First, John McCain announces his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. As many have pointed out, she seems to have absolutely no credentials whatsoever to serve as Vice-President or, heaven forbid, President, if McCain should die in his first term, something seventy-two-year old cancer patients can up and do on you without a lot of notice.

This speaks not only to McCain’s bad judgment but to the apparent paucity of qualified Republics who can pass the doctrine tests. If he really wanted to select a woman, and it’s clear why he would, are there no Republican congresswomen with more experience and a long enough record that we might make a reasonable assessment of their skills and abilities? No governors with more than two years experience? How about Condi Rice, was she ever considered? A black woman would seem to trump the Democratic ticket on every count.

Maybe a female director of a federal agency? It’s enough to make you wish Dan Quayle would put on a skirt—make that a pants suit—and start preparing to debate Joe Biden.

And then, thank you Jesus, the Lord has delivered unto us a hurricane verily more mighty than Katrina, a perfect excuse to cancel the first two days of the convention and send Cheney and Bush back to their bunkers. McCain needs to do everything he can to distance himself from the Bush administration, even as he runs on a platform that seems like a backup file for the past eight years. Nothing like an act of God to keep W and The Evil One off the stage.

He may reject the notion that his election would amount to a third term for W, but it’s hard to see anything in his campaign talking points that would differentiate the two. It’s the perfect question for a debate moderator to put to him: Where and how do you differ from W? Be specific. Give examples. Try not to mangle your syntax.

And still, it promises to be a close election. I’m leaning towards crying.