You Killed Ann Coulter!

Where’s Ann Coulter? Where is the woman I love to hate? Where is her fanatical, nonsensical support for Sarah Palin? I need her. Michelle Malkin is a pale shadow to the skinny acid-tongued bitch goddess. But it looks like Ann is pretty much sitting out this election. Wow, you people scared off Ann Coulter?!? I’m truly frightened.

It’s no secret Ann, like most rabid right-wing social conservatives, didn’t like John McCain. She was ready to support Hillary rather than deal with a McCain candidacy. But not Obama. So I was expecting the full force and fury of this nut job unleashed. But the best she can do is constantly refer to him as B. Hussein Obama. Weak sauce! Tepid tea! It’s no fun to make fun of someone who isn’t even trying.

Sure, she’ll bash Obama and Biden, and her first article after the Palin pick was all sunny and supportive. Then, nothing. I mean, she writes her weekly column, but none of it has any bite. And if you Google her, you get more recent hits of Hasselback saying she’s not like Coulter than anything Coulter says herself. The post-VP debate column barely mentioned Sarah Palin and two weeks ago her column was about polling statistics. Middle of October, and she’s talking about statistics? The last bastion of the uninterested? What the hell happened Ann?

Even look at her most recent Hannity & Colmes appearance. Lame, very lame. Where’s the fire, the bite, even the wit? No wonder Bill Maher doesn’t have her on anymore.

Guess that little bit from Palin about there being a Constitutional right to privacy didn’t jibe with Ann’s worldview. Someone like Ann probably gaped in horror at the misstep after misstep which only served to rub more salt in the McCain induced wound. Ann Coulter is mean, wrong, nasty, and certifiable. But she’s a consistent psycho.

And dare I say it, I miss her.

Election Fatigued (or Another Round of Political Inanities)

There is absolutely nothing new to write about politically and I’m completely incapable of writing about anything else until the election is decided. So here’s another round of political inanities. None of this is meant to be useful, insightful, infuriating, or entertaining. If it is any of those things, gravy.

The Obamercial was wonderfully done. Everything about it screamed leadership and is a welcome change from the stumbling bumbling of curious George. If nothing else, watching this campaign has raised the bar on what campaigning is about.

I was a little concerned about how Jon Stewart would fare with an Obama Administration. But as I was recently reminded by a post someone made on Facebook, he—should Obama win—will still have Joe Biden. Go Joe!

Speaking of Facebook, it’s been a godsend to me this election cycle. I live in a very liberal bubble, and the recent addition of so many of my former classmates in Florida (most of who are either very much for McCain or more probably very much against Obama) has pierced that bubble. In previous elections I’ve had my father to spar against, but even he’s solidly in the Obama camp.

And speaking of Florida, huge kudos to Governor Charlie Crist for supporting voter enfranchisement by extending early voting hours, regardless of the politics. Probably paving his way for 2012. I don’t know much about Crist, but I do know he was on a short-list for McCain’s VP pick. Is he centering himself for the coming Republican schism and positioning himself for 2012 or 2016? North Carolina also made a good, reasoned, decision regarding extending their early voting hours:

“‘I'm concerned that some counties will and some counties won't and that will be manipulated by the campaigns — they will hold them open later in Democratic counties and then will close them early in Republican counties,’ … So the board agreed to extend the mandate to all 100 counties, allowing them to opt out only if all members of county election boards agree.”

No matter what, more voting is good for this country. Our turnout has been pathetic.

Palin seems to have fallen off the news cycle. This is probably a good thing, but leaves me without as much inane situations to write about. But since this wouldn’t be much of an inanities post without a mention about the Palin wardrobe malfunction, here’s Piper’s opinion. Smart kid!

Madeline Kahn, You're On

I can often come across as disparaging of the average American, and their decision making process. And I am frustrated by it. But I do realize that it’s not wholly their fault. Americans are busy, they’re tired, and they simply don’t have the time to pay attention the way it’s needed.

Productivity increases occur year after year. Every new technology creates a new efficiency. My primary job over the last decade and more was in process improvement. My job was to increase efficiencies, both through human and technological processes, with reasonable but not barricading checkpoints to ensure a greater output. In short, my job was to increase productivity in the workplace.

What about increasing productivity in our lives? Where does that come from?

Over the weekend Sarah Palin tried to explain the wardrobe malfunction. The problem is, for those of us long opposed to her and to independent undecideds, it’s just not good enough. It’s not the clothes, stupid. It’s the disingenuousness that is Sarah Palin. She no more said thanks but no thanks to a $150,000 wardrobe than she said thanks but no thanks to the bridge to nowhere. She said bring it on until it became unpopular and then kept the money anyway. She isn’t against earmarks, she requested more per capita than Obama ever did. The problem isn’t her clothes, it’s her shallowness. She’s like the kid caught with the cookie crumbs all over her, but still refuses to admit she raided the cookie jar.

Everything about this woman seems perfect until you scratch the surface. That’s the problem with the clothes. Not that she has them, but that she wasn’t honest about them. If her consignment shop clothes are good enough for her now, why did she ever jettison them in the first place? I’m sympathetic, as I wrote here, about her need for the clothes. What I have a problem with is how it’s approached. She allowed herself to be packaged and when it didn’t work, she blames the gift wrapping. If she’s such a maverick and willing to take on her own party, why would she cave so completely on something as simple as a wardrobe?

Nordstrom, Saks, Neiman’s, etc. all put these big tags on the more expensive clothes so that people can’t wear them once then return them. Now the campaign is claiming some or most of them have been returned. Remove the tag and you can’t return the item. Returning them after they’ve been worn is tantamount to shoplifting.

The Republican Party has underestimated the power of Internet communications. They are campaigning as if blogs, YouTube, Google News, and The Daily Show didn’t exist. And it’s biting them. Just like the bridge lie, this is the clothing lie (not to mention the science lie, provided to me by a former classmate who I won’t name because I don’t have his permission). And all of them could have been easily avoided.

Wouldn’t this have been better? “I listened to the people and once they made clear we didn’t want that bridge to nowhere I instead put the money towards more worthwhile projects. I hate earmarks but had to work with the system as it stood because that was the only way to get what was needed to get done. Knowing how broken the system is, I’m in a strong position to change it. See here, here, and there where I made change where I could. Now put me in a better position to make change where it matters.”

Or this: “The clothes? You’re seriously talking about my clothes? Of course I needed new clothes. Didn’t you see what happened to Hillary in the primaries where Glamour and People and all kinds of fashion magazines picked her apart? Didn’t she herself say, near tears, that she needed a lot of help (referring to hair dressers, stylists, and makeup artists) to get through each day? It’s tough to be a woman in politics. Hillary knows what I’m talking about. Yeah, they bought me clothes and yeah, I’m going to pay the taxes on them. Nothing’s free and no one knows that better than women trying to crack that glass ceiling.”

And with the science lie, she once again proves her shallowness in thinking the American people will laugh at the concept of studying the fruit fly without really understanding what that science gains, for all of us.

The list just goes on. But it takes too much time to explain why her lack of intellectual appreciation of science or her skim-the-surface understanding of the earmark and budget system (and why it’s developed) so the wardrobe malfunction becomes what I—and the blogosphere—use to highlight her inherent problem. Which is her complete cynicism about what is really troubling America. She thinks a few folksy winks and stories about her earrings will fool people into thinking she “gets” the issues. But Americans have interesting instincts.

I’m a fashion-aholic and I have no problem with her wearing Valentino and Jimmy Choo. But as a political junkie, I have a problem with her trying to claim one status while portraying another. I have a problem with her attempts to snow the voters. Because Americans are busy, tired, weary, and over-inundated with sound bites. Here I am, with no kids and on a sabbatical from work and I can barely find the time to do all that’s needed to run a simple two-person household and keep up with election, war, and economic news. McCain and Palin are abusing that, and it’s going badly and I find it, as Bill Maher does, cynical; cynical to constantly think that the American people are so stupid as to fall for these tropes.

I can’t trust the American independent voter. I don’t believe they are applying any more judgment in this election than they did in 2004. But Obama is keying into what they want now and need in a way that Bush did in 2004 and in which McCain and Palin so spectacularly are not doing now. And at least Obama is trying to find a way to increase productivity in people’s lives. Worries about healthcare are a constant drain. Worrying about the wars is a constant headache. Worrying about the price of gas and how we can wean ourselves off of it is nonstop acid reflux.

At some point Americans are going to have to start demanding increased productivity in their lives so as to better understand how they live them. And the only way to do that is to decrease the demands on our lives. I do believe this is a first step in this process, by shrugging off the politics as usual (Obama, no matter what you think of him, is anything but usual). The 30-second sound bite as the basis for a decision must die.

Reboot!

The American people appear to want a rest. We’re not going to get it of course, times are too tumultuous. But we want a rest from something.

There are a lot of reasons this election appears to be so heavily tilted to the Democrats. There’s the huge get out the vote drives, there’s the anger with the current Administration, there’s the wonder at actually electing a minority candidate, there’s the charisma of Barack Obama himself, there’s the distinct policy differences between the two candidates. But I think there’s another reason it’s tilting so heavily Dem across the legislative branches as well. Americans are tired.

During the Clinton years, when we weren’t fighting losing wars and the economy was growing, there was something of an agitation to increase the partisan divide. During relatively untroubled times, Americans enjoy creating friction in our governments. We don’t like undivided Houses. We want our elected officials to have to duke it out. That’s very healthy and we can afford that luxury when times are good. When times are bad, the last thing we want is bickering. That’s why Bush and the Republicans were able to hold on until two years ago. Then the anger at the administration over its all too obvious failings created the slim Democratic majority. And the bickering started again. Things stonewalled. That’s not healthy in our current clime. We’ve got global roasting in our current cultural climate.

We have no control right now over our destinies; at least that’s what it feels like. The wars, the economy, the stock market, are all out of our individual control and yet it now has profound effect on our individual, day-to-day lives. I think there’s a mood that since we can’t seem to affect our own lives, let’s turn it over to one side and let them at least try. Because we don’t know what’s next. This is a really strange world. The very food we eat seems out to get us as much as the terrorists, China, Russia, and our own financial leaders. No one knows for sure what policy will work, but we know that bickering (Nancy Pelosi hurt my feelings!) won’t. We don’t whether spending or saving is the way out of this (there are strong economic arguments for both models), we don’t want three (likely) harrowing Supreme Court nomination proceedings. Instead, we’ll have one group to support or blame. Gasp, actual issues might get discussed.

I worked at Microsoft and Expedia, both ran on a Windows platform. My computer is a PC. We know that regardless of what is the root cause, sometimes a simple reboot fixes it. Or at least makes it go away until we have the time to figure it out. That’s a strange analogy I know for a nation and a set of problems as complex as we have and god knows I’m no Windows defender. But I’m trying to describe a mood, not get at root cause analysis, because we can’t. We don’t have the time to figure it out right now. I think, if the polls prove true, that the nation just wants a reboot in the short term to get on with their days. Get the country up and running for now and gain the breathing room to investigate later.

And even if the Dems get a filibuster-proof Senate, there will still be balance. There are always Senators who will cross the aisle. There will be newly elected Democratic Senators from heavily conservative states that still need to obey their constituencies (no one gets into this for just one term). There will still be internecine wars that will keep the most egregious policies from being enacted.

But Americans will have a period of relative peace from political sniping. Democrats will have the opportunity to really prove their case (or fail trying). Republicans will have a chance to decide what they want their party to be. And hopefully the cable news channels’ ratings will plummet.

Maybe not such a crackpot theory after all?

Here in Washington state, candidates appear on the ballot noting a preference for a particular political party (except for the presidential candidates). This does mean they are actually a member of that party. It’s a little weird. But what’s weirder is that Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate for Washington state governor sued for and won the right to state his preference for the GOP rather than the Republican Party on the ballot. Consequently, several candidates also chose GOP rather than Republican.

The popular opinion amongst the Democrats in Washington state is that Rossi did this because 25% of the population don’t know that the GOP and the Republican Party are the same. And that given the current mood about the Republicans this election cycle, he’s fooling a number of people into thinking they are voting for a third party candidate. Maybe they are? Could this be another indicator of the coming schism I theorized yesterday? Could those who label themselves Republican be doing so for a particular reason, same as those labeling themselves GOP?

My predicted blame game is already starting:

"The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated."

Cross-posted to Pandora’s Politics.