Act in haste, regret...

Excuse me if I'm dense, but isn't counting super delegates before the convention on-point to polling a jury mid deliberation?

I know the media wants it over, I know Obama wants it over. However, in 12 years of covering trials, both criminal and civil, I've known lots of prosecutors, and sometimes defendants, who wanted cases decided prematurely. And some of them would have been a lot better off if they had.

Wasn't the super delegate system set up to act only if there was a change of direction between the last primary and the convention? Or to act as a jury in a deadlocked tie after each candidate presented his or her entire case?

Are Democrats forgetting a rush to judgment that cost Al Gore that big desk in the oval office? Maybe then he could have prevented "decider" from entering our vocabularies.

The media wants us to think the super delegates are just another voting block. They also want us to think those who say they have committed to either candidate (Obama) not long ago said the same about Clinton. Many super delegates want us to believe they are the "deciders." Gives them more cache. And higher profiles.

I seem to be beating on "the media" incessantly. But they seem to have forgotten their mission is to report the news. Yes, that most times involves interpreting. But not to the point of distortion.

My tolerance level for bullshit and being patronized gets lower everyday.

Hubris and Manipulations

Sunday morning talking heads. To a person, host and guest, all are too enamored of the process, not the meat. Hubris abounds. Obvious questions go unasked and unanswered. No news there.

I'm sickened and glad I deal antique linens now instead of running with the media pack dogs.
In the mode of pointing out the obvious:

All morning, Obama's team has been dismissing popular vote counts. It's about the delegates, they profess. So why does Obama's team and media like CNN and NewYork Times, put my home state, Missouri in the Obama win column?
Obama won the popular vote here 49 percent to 48 percent. But in delegates, it's a tie ~ 41 Clinton, 41 Obama.

Perhaps it's a small thing. But it's the small things that have twisted this Democratic primary season into a knot.

And it looks like all those poor voters in Michigan and Florida who dragged themselves to the polls at daylight before work, or stood in lines after, or dragged kids with them in the afternoon, or aided by walkers painfully made their way to the booths and had no say about nonsensical "rules" that they had no place in making...well, half of them could have stayed home.

It's clearer everyday that, just as the large corporations are running the country, a handful of power-hungry politicos, not voters, are deciding this election.

Seems like Nixon's silent majority has turned into the ignored majority.

Second OOT award this week

Rep. Davis: A spade is not just a spade

I'm so enraged, my 55-year-old butt spent time in my chair blogging instead of still curled on the couch drinking coffee and smoking my fifth morning cigarette.

This morning, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Barack Obama chief supporters Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala) and Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) were facing off against Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, (D-TX), Hillary Clinton chief supporters.

Davis, allegedly and by all indications black, said we should all "call a spade a spade."

Yes, he most likely meant we should accept the obvious. It's what the phrase means. At least to dyed in the wool racists.

Ironically, Davis was discussing racism in the party. He touted the Clintons as "pioneers in the American South" on civil rights but said with their [in my mind misconstrued] racial attacks were "eroding their own legacy. " And his legacy and understanding of his racial history? It's where?

Hmm. Does Davis refer to his constituents by the N word? Or spooks? Do those words and their hateful implications register? Yeah, I know those words like I know bitch and cunt. And wish I didn't.

It's not an obscure phrase, as many racist idioms go. If nothing else, said dear husband, doesn't he remember the scene in 1968s Bye, Bye Blackbird , a George Segal-starring spoof of The Maltese Falcon? Segal sitting in a room of men, his name [Spade] called and all the black guys stand up.

Guess the Obama campaign is as out of touch with the black community as it is with working class whites. As an aside, that's from our OOT media hype. There are truly anti-racist whites and working class blacks.

If the words had come from Hillary or Bill's mouth -- don't think so-- or one of her chief supporters, she'd be vilified, possibly stoned. And, even an ardent Hillary supporter as I am, I'd have thrown like Bob Gibson on a streak.

The present out-of-touch award goes to Davis. Sorry Williams. Infamy is fleeting.

Shame, shame, shame Davis.

For those of you who want to get into the etymological argument of the meaning of the phrase back 700 years, the contemporary usage of it at least for most of the last century has been as an ethnic slur. You might want to pick up a copy of Wolfgang Mieder's Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur : A Case Study.

This week's out-of-touch award

Brian Williams on NBC evening news tonight, did his "our favorite story" on a new AT&T policy.
With evident mirth, he reported that the cell phone giant will be levying a $2 fee for payments in person ~ charging for a customer service agent to take the payment.

Evidently no one of the high paid news crew or anchors gave a thought to who pays in person, and usually with cash.

Duh, poor people. People without a checking account (or one that is so low that checks clearing can be a crap shoot), and/or with no credit card.

Guess it never crossed his mind poor people need to reach out an touch someone. Cell phones can be cheaper than land lines and there is the added benefit that collection agencies that already plague a lot of these people's lives can't easily get the numbers. Yet anyway.

Adding another $2 charge to these people's swiftly depleting resources is criminal, not comedy relief for an evening newscast.

Shame, shame Williams.

More shameful is we rely on the fourth estate to be credible, rely on Williams and the rest of NBCs news staff to tell us whether Obama is really out of touch. And their basis for judging that is what?

He double dog dared me

So I haven't blogged in well over a year.

Molly Ivins died.

Dick Gephardt hasn't publicly uttered a "Nah, nah, I told you so" over NAFTA.

Too many are drinking the Obama Kool-aid. Oh, don't waste your breath. You all still think ambition and assertiveness in a woman is mean, unnatural and somehow corrupt. I'm weary of being a member of the largest "minority" in this country ~ the only one that it is still permissible to publicly degrade.

Not? Oh, yeah? How about Susan Pinker pimping her book all over NBC. You know, The Sexual Paradox in which she says our "cuddle" hormones keep women from WANTING the male dominated jobs. The world according to Phyllis Schlafly redux. And, no, I'm not giving you a link. If you want to read it, find it yourself. And while you do, think how that kind of reasoning would go over if theorized about any other minority's performance.

I need to point out you are reading narrative from a woman who made three full-grown male lawyers sob real tears in a two-week time period (an Atlanta journalism record) and who also has in her file a recommendation letter from an editor that says I work motherhood and good reporting into a nice performance. That from a job that netted me a national and several state news writing awards.

So, for awhile, I quit banging my head against brick walls.
I wanted my "Buy American" bumper sticker back (then courtesy of the now nearly nonexistent UAW).
Angsting over nonsensical governmental moves hurt my head.
I was beginning to believe I was on acid again, only without the pretty trailers.

Then my son the Twitterer put together Twubble in two days. After reminding him he has yet to post the Christmas pictures of my granddaughter, I started to question him about his Twitters.

"It's not for old people, Mom," he said.

Sounded like a double dog dare to me. Guess I just don't have those cuddle hormones.

And the fairies came

Funniest aside on a home decorating show: HGTV's Design on a Dime designers Spencer Anderson and Brice Cooper (I believe), were adding the finishing touches to a tablescape for an Old World Christmas decorating show. To Brice’s question about the significance of the holly Spencer was tucking under a yule log candleholder, Spencer replied, “It was revered because it stayed green during the really cold months when everything else died and they [the Celts] thought if they placed it in their homes it would invite fairies to come in…” Both designers and the segment dissolved into laughter.

It is us

Yes, peons, Time magazine's pick of this year is us. Well, they dubbed it You. Does that mean they are them? If so, who are us?

I might be tempted to voice an opinion on the subject, but I'm too busy checking Ihateameren.com to see if our state government is finally going to do something to make sure Ameren doesn't leave more than a half million St. Louisans without power for a week for a third time this year. And checking eBay to see if in this federal government declared "good economy" I've sold that $4k worth of items for a couple hundred dollars. And perusing blogs and news sites to find out what other hidden agendas will pop up around the Baker-Hamilton committee report that may mean one or both of my sons will end up ankle deep in Middle East sand. And finding out if the new medication my third-in-one-year primary physician prescribed will coexist with my other medications prescribed by other past and present physicians according to people who have really taken the drug, not just drug company literature. And posting questions on chatboards to see if there is a way to keep my husband from creating a wind tunnel through his nose and mouth (thus passing his lungs) when he falls asleep with his CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine on and his jaw drops or whether the CPAP is just another way for health insurers to bypass more expensive procedures. And then there's the search to try to find out where the hell the USDA was when all that E. coli infested greens made it to the end-users...

Time says all this is "a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail." Far as I can see, it can't get any worse. And we may end up with fewer of them. Whoever them may be...