David Sedaris observes...

David Sedaris, on undecided voters

“I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

WAVE THAT FLAG

remaining GRATEFUL DEAD ROCK FOR OBAMA

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Tie-dyed T-shirts and political slogans made for a heady mixture as the four surviving members of the rock band GRATEFUL DEAD put on a concert in support of BARACK OBAMA.

Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart hit a Penn State University stage Monday night to play for about 15,000 people.

It was the quartet’s first show together since a 2004 reunion tour. Hart, Weir and Lesh had already jammed together in support of Obama in February in California.

Before his set Monday, Hart said in an interview backstage that he was most impressed with Obama’s views on climate change.

“I believe him enough to be able to get up in front of my constituency, these people out there,” Hart said, pointing out the door to his dressing room, “and tell them ‘I believe.’ That’s really important. The Grateful Dead does not take this lightly. We’ve never really done something quite like this.”

Andrea Mead, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania, said Monday night the main goal was to stir up voter outreach efforts in a critical battleground state.

After Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band opened the show, Obama supporters including Penn State assistant football coach Jay Paterno and cornerback Lydell Sargeant took to the stage to endorse him. A taped video message from Obama himself also was projected on a scoreboard.

Then it was on to the main attraction as the lights dimmed and the Dead opened with their classic, “Truckin.”’ Minutes later, fans were tipping balloons in the air and the arena floor filled with an earthy aroma.

The Dead officially dropped “Grateful” from its name to honor the memory of its lead singer, Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995. Mead said the Dead approached the campaign earlier this year offering help in a battleground state with a large fan base.
THE DEAD 10.13.08 Bryce Jordan Center, State College, PA
Truckin' > U.S. Blues, Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower Playing In The Band > Dark Star > St. Stephen > Unbroken Chain > The Other One > Throwing Stones > Playing Reprise
E: Phil Donor Phil Rap > Bobby Rap > Touch of Grey > Not Fade Away

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND 10.13.08 Bryce Jordan Center, State College, PA
Revival, Statesboro Blues, Who's Been Talking, Midnight Rider, One Way Out, And It Stoned Me, Dreams (w/ Ron Holloway, sax), Don't Think Twice (w/ Susan Tedeschi, guitar & vocals; Ron Holloway, sax; James van der Bogert, drums) Anyday (w/ Susan Tedeschi & Oteil, vocals), Melissa, Trouble No More, Ain't Wastin' Time No More, Jessica
E: Whipping Post

McCAIN'S LAST STAND
The Republican senator's final debate performance was marked by oddball characters and marginal attacks, as hopes of his political resurrection appeared to fade.

By Walter Shapiro for SALON


What may well have been the final debate of John McCain’s political career featured oddball characters who seemed like refugees from Sesame Street -- Joe the Plumber (an Everyman from Ohio), Senator Government (a Freudian slip moniker for Barack Obama) and a sometimes petulant 72-year-old Republican trying to be Mac the Knife. While instant debate verdicts are always suspect, there was scant evidence that McCain, despite a strong showing during the first 45 minutes of the debate, landed a haymaker at Hofstra. As the debate clock wound down Wednesday night, along with McCain’s hopes of political resurrection, the Arizona Republican ended by arguing with Obama over a nearly irrelevant issue at a time of economic crisis -- school vouchers.

The opening that McCain had been craving came early in the evening when Obama pointedly contrasted the Bill Clinton economic record (a budget surplus) with the scorecard on George W. Bush (doubling the national debt in eight years). “Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush,” McCain declared. “If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.” McCain, to his credit, delivered the obviously rehearsed lines with conviction. But the Arizona senator then spoiled the moment by immediately veering off to talk about Obama’s tax votes in Congress and the “completely out-of-control” budget.

Historians of the angry autumn of ’08, when 700-point drops in the Dow Jones average became the new normal, will undoubtedly be fascinated to discover that Bill Ayers -- that blast-from-the-past 1960s Weatherman -- received far more debate airtime than Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. (Neither Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke nor his predecessor Alan Greenspan was ever mentioned, but, hey, who cares about the financial system anyway?) McCain, whose TV ads refer to Ayers more often than earmarks, backed into the subject gingerly, saying, “I don’t care about an old washed-up terrorist.” But seconds later, McCain was channeling his inner Richard Nixon as he demanded to know “the full extent of that relationship” between Obama and Ayers. (Obama’s response was a reprise of his oft-stated position that he and Ayers had merely served on foundation boards together in Chicago.)

This was not a debate in which Obama had many lines destined for the sound-bite hall of fame, but the Democratic nominee did pull off an impressive smile of astonishment on the split-screen TV picture as McCain, without missing a beat, switched from berating Ayers to claiming “my campaign is about getting this economy back on track.” Obama, who long ago learned that there is never a moment during a debate when a camera is not ready to record his expression, also contributed an amused laugh when McCain hyperbolically claimed that the left-leaning independent voter-registration group, ACORN, was on the verge “of destroying the fabric of democracy.” Leading in the polls, with all the momentum going his way, Obama accomplished his simple but vital mission on Wednesday night – don't make any blunders.

In late September, before the first debate, Bill McInturff, a McCain pollster, predicted that the contours of the race would not be known until a few days after the final debate when public opinion finally had a chance to settle. That is why McCain’s fate will probably be dictated by whether the weekend polls tighten or Obama continues to flirt with a double-digit lead in the national surveys and state-by-state scenarios that could give him as many as 350 electoral votes. Unless McCain makes up ground quickly from either Wednesday’s debate (unlikely but possible) or the simple force of gravity (Obama’s outlandish lead comes back to earth), the Republican nominee will soon be facing a stark choice. Does he want to go out railing about Ayers and ACORN, or does he want to step back and play out his string as a principled conservative, the reputation he held before this down-and-dirty campaign?

Sitting with Obama at the round table at Hofstra -- actually it looked more like an old-fashioned partner’s desk -- McCain tried to play it both ways. For all of his attack lines, there were also moments when viewers could glimpse the other McCain, the senator who excelled at working with Democrats. Asked about Supreme Court appointments, McCain spoke about his opposition to “litmus tests” and his votes to confirm Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. But then McCain, perhaps remembering that it requires more than Sarah Palin to appease the conservative base, added that his search for “the best people in the world” would probably not include “someone who supported Roe v. Wade.”
For his part, Obama carefully avoided spelling out any new detail about the real policy decisions that would confront him on Jan. 20, 2009, if the current polls hold up. Asked about the choice between expanding benefits and controlling healthcare costs as the federal deficit spirals out of control, Obama said, “We’ve got to do both -- and that’s exactly what my plan does.” Asked about whether American schools require more money or more reform, Obama gave the same both-sides-now answer when he said, “Now, typically, what’s happened is that there’s been a debate between more money or reform, and I think we need both.”

All three 2008 presidential debates (not to mention the Palin-dominated circus) had a time-warp quality about them. There was never a sustained discussion by either candidate about how the Wall Street whirlpool had totally transformed the domestic agenda of the next president. At a point when the government is taking ownership stakes in the nation’s leading banks, it seemed comically irrelevant to have an old-fashioned political scrap over whether Obama’s plans would put Joe the Plumber in a higher tax bracket. Somehow the phrase “class warfare” brandished by McCain takes on a new meaning when Wall Street gamesmanship appears to have thrown the entire economy into a severe recession.

Obama met the now-famous Joe the Plumber (aka Joe Wurzelbacher) in Springfield Township, Ohio, earlier this week as he was shaking hands between rounds of debate prep. Wurzelbacher challenged Obama on his tax plan so vigorously that Obama said afterward, “I’ve got to go prepare for this debate, but that was pretty good practice.” It was practice that came in handy Wednesday night as Obama probably deprived McCain of his best last chance to turn Campaign 2008 back into a horse race.

Here is some more from FRANK SCHAEFFER (a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD -- How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back")

I am an Obama supporter. I am also pro-life. In fact, without my family's involvement in the pro-life movement it would not exist as we know it. Evangelicals weren't politicized until after my late father and evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer, Dr. Koop (Reagan's soon-to-be Surgeon General) and I stirred them up over the issue of abortion in the mid-1970s. Our Whatever Happened to the Human Race? book, movie series and seminars brought the evangelicals into the pro-life movement.

(Dad's political influence persists. Last week one of my father's followers -- Mike Huckabee -- was interviewed by Katie Couric, along with all the other presidential candidates. Couric asked the candidates if they were to be sent to a desert island and could only take one book besides the Bible, what would that that book be? Huckabee answered that he'd take my father's book Whatever Happened To The Human Race?)

Fast forward...

In 2000, we elected a president who claimed he believed God created the earth and who, as president, put car manufacturers and oil company's interests ahead of caring for that creation. We elected a pro-life Republican Congress that did nothing to actually care for pregnant women and babies. And they took their sincere evangelical followers for granted, and played them for suckers.

The so-called evangelical leadership -- Dobson, Robertson et al. also played the pro-life community for suckers. While thousands of men and women in the crisis pregnancy movement gave of themselves to help women and babies, their evangelical "leaders" did little more than cash in on fundraising opportunities and represent themselves as power-brokers to the craven politicians willing to kowtow to them.

Fast forward...

Today when I listen to Obama speak (and to his remarkable wife, Michelle) what I hear is a world view that actually nurtures life. Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated. A leader who believes in hope, the future, trying to save our planet and providing a just and good life for everyone is someone who is actually pro-life.

Conversely the "pro-life" ethic of George W. Bush manifested itself in a series of squandered opportunities to call us to our better natures. After 9/11, Bush told most Americans to go shopping while saddling the few who volunteered for military service with endless tours of duty (something I know a little about since my son was a Marine and deployed several times). The Bush doctrine of life was expressed by starting an unnecessary war in Iraq that has killed thousands of Americans and wounded tens of thousands more.

The society that Obama is calling us to sacrifice for is a place wherein life would be valued not just talked about. As he said in his speech delivered on February 6 in New Orleans, "Too often, we lose our sense of common destiny; that understanding that we are all tied together; that when a woman has less than nothing in this country, that makes us all poorer." Obama was talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but his words also apply to our overall view of ourselves.

Regardless of the official position of the Supreme Court on abortion, a country in which all Americans are offered some sort of dignity and hopeful future would be a place conducive to the kind of optimism each of us must hold in our hearts if we are to welcome children into this world. But if our highest aspiration is to be a consumer with no thought or care for our neighbor, we will remain a culture in which abortion is not only inevitable but logical.

What we need in America is a spiritual rebirth, a turning away from the false value of consumerism and utilitarianism that have trumped every aspect of human life. To implement this vision we need leaders that inspire but to do so they have to be what they say they are. It's not about policy it's about character.

Obama's rivals for the nomination -- the Clintons -- do not inspire. When the Clintons were in the White House they talked about humane values while Bill Clinton betrayed every single person who voted for him by carrying on an unseemly sexual dalliance in the Oval Office with a young woman barely out of her teens. Since that time the Clintons have enriched themselves through their connections to a point where they're able to make a $5 million personal loan to their campaign.

For someone who says she has spent "the last 35 years of my life as an advocate for children" and/or "fighting for healthcare" that's a lot of money to have collected through doing good works. Presidential Mother Teresa wannabes shouldn't be doing deals with uranium mining outfits in Kazakhstan while schmoozing with the likes of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and wealthy mining magnates -- not if they want the moral authority to lead.

Similarly the Republicans have also been hypocrites while talking big, for instance about their pro-life ethic. But what have they achieved? First, through their puritanical war on sex education they've hindered our country from actually preventing unwanted pregnancy. Second, through the Republican Party's marriage to the greediest and most polluting earth-destroying corporations they've created a climate (both moral and physical) that has scorched the earth for-profit, with no regard to future generations whatsoever. The Republicans are to the pro-life movement what the Clintons are to selfless public service.

The real solution to abortion is to change the heart of America, not the law. We need to stop seeing ourselves as consumers. We need to stop seeing ourselves as me and begin to think of we. Our country needs someone to show us a better way, a president who is what he seems, someone with actual moral authority that our diverse population can believe in who has the qualities that make us want to follow him. Obama is that person.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN McCAIN
by Frank Schaeffer

Senator John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

Shame!

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.

We will hold you responsible.

Jolly Good article

FLIRTING HER WAY TO VICTORY

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse

from THE GAURDIAN (London) Friday 3 October 2008



At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked.
Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night. By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan . The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.
There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:
"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School , you get extra credit for watching the debate."
Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America . Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?"
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq , and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

MUD PIES

POLITICS OF ATTACK from The New York Times

It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.

They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.

Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s “cronies” and calling him “that one”), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as “my friends.” But apart from promising to buy up troubled mortgages as president, he offered no real answers for how he plans to solve the country’s deep economic crisis. He is unable or unwilling to admit that the Republican assault on regulation was to blame.

Ninety minutes of forced cordiality did not erase the dismal ugliness of his campaign in recent weeks, nor did it leave us with much hope that he would not just return to the same dismal ugliness on Wednesday.

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.

That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.

Mr. McCain’s aides haven’t even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were “going negative” in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis — and by implication Mr. McCain’s stumbling response.

We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign.

And the tactic of guilt by association is perplexing, since Mr. McCain has his own list of political associates he would rather forget. We were disappointed to see the Obama campaign air an ad (held for just this occasion) reminding voters of Mr. McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five savings-and-loan debacle, for which he was reprimanded by the Senate. That episode at least bears on Mr. McCain’s claims to be the morally pure candidate and his argument that he alone is capable of doing away with greed, fraud and abuse.

In a way, we should not be surprised that Mr. McCain has stooped so low, since the debate showed once again that he has little else to talk about. He long ago abandoned his signature issues of immigration reform and global warming; his talk of “victory” in Iraq has little to offer a war-weary nation; and his Reagan-inspired ideology of starving government and shredding regulation lies in tatters on Wall Street.

But surely, Mr. McCain and his team can come up with a better answer to that problem than inciting more division, anger and hatred.