Stuff

Patti Abbott has a funny bit on TV commercials tonight. I'd like to add three more to the list of risible spots.

The contact lens commercial with the gorgeous girl playing the National Geographic type photographer out in the desert? Please. This woman is laughable in this tough-chick role. The grittist she does is her nails.

I've said here before that I'm willing to lead a planet-wide prayer asking that God teach plugster Billy May how a microphone works. You don't have to SHOUT at it. It does the shouting for you. His carnival barker approach must work because he's now hawking two new products. But I'm sure at family meal time his kids make him eat outside. The blast of his voice would be too hard to take otherwise.

The new John McCain commercial today that blames Barrack Obama for gas prices. No kidding. The part that irritates me is the chorus of voices shouting Obama! when the voice over dude goes and Who's to blame? Lynch mob anybody? I think we're probably working up to that. Hang the Negro! McCain is a stupid man (yet another howler this morning--when he confused Pakistan and Adghanistan!), a privileged bully boy used to geting his own way. Graduated near the bottom of his class in both high school and Annapolis--and only got through the latter because he came from generations of Admirals. Just like Bush at Yale. And spare me his POW story. It has no bearing on a run for the presidency. I honestly expect him to lose it and call Obama a racist name before the campaign is over.

----WORKING CLASS HEROES

Senator Bernie Sanders and Matt Tiabbi are among the few honest brokers in the senate and press respectively. From a long Tiabbi interview with Sanders.


"Here's the thing: nobody needs me or Bernie Sanders to tell them that it sucks out there and that times are tougher economically in this country than perhaps they've been for quite a long time. We've all seen the stats — median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great Depression, and 5 million people have slipped below the poverty level since the beginning of the decade. And stats aside, most everyone out there knows what the deal is. If you're reading this and you had to drive to work today or pay a credit card bill in the last few weeks you know better than I do for sure how fucked up things have gotten. I hear talk from people out on the campaign trail about mortgages and bankruptcies and bill collectors that are enough to make your ass clench with 100 percent pure panic.

"None of this is a secret. Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist. Our "national debate" is always a thing where we do not talk about things like haves and have-nots, rich and poor, employers versus employees. But we increasingly live in a society where all the political action is happening on one side of the line separating all those groups, to the detriment of the people on the other side.

"We have a government that is spending two and a half billion dollars a day in Iraq, essentially subsidizing new swimming pools for the contracting class in northern Virginia, at a time when heating oil and personal transportation are about to join health insurance on the list of middle-class luxuries. Home heating and car ownership are slipping away from the middle class thanks to exploding energy prices — the hidden cost of the national borrowing policy we call dependency on foreign oil, "foreign" representing those nations, Arab and Chinese, that lend us the money to pay for our wars."



ATTENTION ALL FOUR ED GORMAN READERS IN THE UNITED KINGOM:

I learned today that BBC Audio, the large print publishers, will be bringing out SLEEPING DOGS. This makes me very happy so I'm pleased to report it.