Dear Friend and Reader:
FIRST I HAVE a story about what kind of day it’s been, this day of the Mercury station retrograde in Libra, just a few weeks from the presidential election, 48 hours before the debate (as of this writing) and with a trillion dollars currently in the process of changing hands.
I went to Woodstock this morning for an acupuncture appointment, after which I sometimes go and sit outside Taco Juan’s and start my Friday column, making sure to visit the Golden Notebook bookstore next door. I bought a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring in honor of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ birthday Monday, and read that incredible introduction by Tolkien telling how it took him 13 years to write The Lord of the Rings amidst many other duties that he didn’t neglect.
I deliberately took an unfamiliar route going home, got lost in the hills between Saugerties and the Town of Ulster, found a farm stand that sold big friendly plants, bought two bushy ones and a cactus, and went back to my studio…where I was greeted by the business card of a private detective stuck into my door.
The card didn’t have a phone number, which is a little odd and intimidating, but I didn’t know what to make of that. I noted the time, so I could cast the astrology — which I did, and which turned out to be right. Those horary charts almost always are.
Now, I have the kind of life where it’s not unreasonable that I would get a visit from a private eye, so I did some research and tried to find the guy, a Mr. James E. Murphy of the Shamrock Investigative and Protection Agency, on the Internet. He wasn’t there. I pulled the phone book off the shelf and tried both the White Pages and the Yellow Pages; neither he nor his firm were listed. I called directory assistance and tried to find an unlisted James E. Murphy and there wasn’t one. Then I called a friend who has an investigative agency of his own and he hadn’t heard of him but told me where to search for his license on the State of New York database; no hit. He said he’d do some more digging tomorrow. I called my friend Steve, an attorney, just to give him a head’s up; he said if the guy gets hold of me, ask him what he wants, then tell him to fuck off. (That is Steve’s usual legal advice.)
Then I went downstairs and talked to my neighbor Dominick, who owns a cafe across the street, to see if he knew anything. He was sitting at one of his cafe tables, doing the cash register tally. I put the card down in front of him and he laughed. “You know who that is? It’s the homeless guy who sits out on the bench all the time. He came in and gave us a card and said if we needed an investigator to come out and get him, because he doesn’t have a phone.”
That’s what kind of day it’s been.
John McCain “suspending” his campaign is like the American people getting a visit from Mr. James E. Murphy, Private Eye. It looks convincing for a second, but when you investigate, the politics are blatantly transparent. So far this has been a Republican campaign of more stunts than bumper stickers: a bizarre war between Georgia and Russia that Dick Cheney had something to do with; the choice of Sarah Palin for vice presidential candidate, creating a huge circus about wolf hunting, Down’s Syndrome kids, teen pregnancy and lipsticks on pigs. When there’s a hurricane in Texas, they try to cancel the Republican National Convention claiming they’ve got to go down there and help out the folks; then there’s this self-made financial crisis, which like anything, a good old boy politician will try to capitalize on and, you know, cancel a debate he’s going to lose anyway.
All you need to do is watch McCain make the announcement if you want to see his intentions. You’ve probably seen it 20 times by now. He is not merely a politician; he’s a bad one. Listen to the singsong tone of his voice. Listen to the subtle, pallid, disingenuous imitation of the Decider-in-Chief. “Let’s set our political differences aside, get back to Washington and work together to solve this mess” sounds statesman-like noble and you can be sure some yokel out there is going to fall for it, but it’s a dumb idea. What exactly are they going to do? Brew a pot of coffee, roll up their sleeves and get out the abacus? To do this they would have to 1) cancel the debate Friday night; 2) cancel the vice presidential debate and take that time for the presidential debate, thus saving Sarah Palin some embarrassment; and best of all, 3) try to leverage people into supporting the bailout package by holding the debates hostage.
Sure.
I can tell you this, if we elect a candidate on the basis of fear, we’re gonna get fear. And we have barely seen the end of the Bush administration; this is the beginning of the endgame. Those boys came in with a scam and a Constitutional crisis, and they’re going leave office with one as well. People who cheat are generally not sportsman-like losers. You can afford not to be, if you have nothing to lose.
I found this today on Daily Kos:
McCain Panics When He’s Losing
by DemFromCT
Thu Sep 25, 2008 at 09:40:01 AM PDT
We know John McCain likes to gamble (craps is his preferred game). And we know when he’s losing, because he always does something unsettling to, as Richard Wolffe put it ‘upset the chessboard’.
When Obama nailed his acceptance speech, McCain sensed an impending loss and went for the Hail Mary with Sarah Quayle Palin. We said at the time it would prove to be a disaster for McCain in the long run, and we were right. All the polls not only show her popularity dropping (below Obama’s and below McCain’s), they also show majorities and pluralities coming to the conclusion she is not qualified to be President. That drag on the top of the ticket was not a ‘game-changer’, and how much of a drag is only now becoming clear to the talking heads.
Similarly, McCain sensed he was going to lose this election because of his own statements about not being an economics expert, that the ‘fundamentals were strong’ on a day the market was tanking, on association with Phil (Americans are a bunch of whiners) Gramm and other economic advisors who so clearly had only disdain for ordinary Americans, and on general anger at this administration for getting us into this mess. Given that, and his poor poll performance, he went to the well to rail against the librul media for not being campaign stenographers, and when that didn’t work, he tried to suspend his campaign and cancel both his and Palin’s debate as if it weren’t important for the American people to see the candidates side by side.
In fact, all he accomplished is to make Obama look Presidential, and himself and his sycophants look panicked. Americans don’t want an unsure hand at the wheel as President, and his outbursts (fire someone, inject presidential politics into the work of Congress) are hardly reassuring as a measure of Presidential temperament.
In the meantime, the media is getting out of the habit of rewarding bad behavior by crediting McCain with desperation in the form “boldness”. That is not something that wears well over time. Still, media people have to get their heads straight about what matters.
McCain’s campaign has been remarkable in its ability to — in the words of NBCs Tom Brokaw — engage in guerilla political tactics, which allow him to win political battles that on paper he shouldn’t be winning. And this debate gambit is the latest example of this (following his town hall challenge the day after Obama clinched the Dem nomination, and even his pick of Sarah Palin). But while McCain has proven adept at winning these battles, can he ultimately win the war?
What matters is the war, not the battles. McCain’s tactics have completely eroded his brand as an honorable campaigner. There is no getting that back. That means when McCain in retrospect lies about how important he was to the Congressional bailout process, it won’t stick. he’s full of these gimmicks, and everyone knows it (see David Letterman, see the View). By the way, if media wants to claim that McCain ‘had to do this’ because he was losing, then they owe us the honesty of telling us he was losing. Funnily enough, they never do that part. No matter. We do.
Bottom line: this not a guy we want anywhere near the WH when it matters. And if you want to know why, just watch what happens and how McCain acts when he’s losing. It’s not pretty.