New Orleans I’m on the predawn patrol to Phoenix to check again on foreclosure ground zero and how it can be possible with tens of thousands of people losing their homes that this is not a central issue in the Governor’s election? When even the New York Times realizes from their lofty perch that the mortgage paperwork isn’t worth fish wrapper and there needs to be a moratorium, I understand why Wall Street can’t hear that, but how is it possible that the White House continues to miss the call?
Speaking of calls, flipping the channels before passing out last night, I saw the Media Matters guy talking head with an interviewer. He first caught my ears with a phrase about the “innocent staffers at the Tides Foundation” being “targeted for assassination,” and knowing so many of them, I could easily visualize them reaching for their cell phones to call Mom back home and explain why this was really a good job! He was threatening to call Sarah Palin, if she didn’t respond to their request for her to denounce Glenn Beck and all of the right wing hate speech. Yeah, right! Grizzly mom sets the scene for slaughter in speech after speech. This call won’t be answered, unfortunately.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks likes to speak for his program but he’s not getting much Media 101 advice from his volunteer team, and this may be why his German spokesperson got in a huff and resigned. He seems to have somehow believed that he could walk off the set on news interviews when he doesn’t like the questions and did so on the other day on CNN. Even with Mr. Softball Larry King and Daniel Ellsberg they had a minute where they thought he had buzzed off. He seems to be offended that folks are going to ask him about the rape and molestation accusations in Sweden. Well, hello, Julian? Until it’s resolved, of course they’re going to ask, and you just answer, and then move on, don’t be an ass about it and think somehow that this is something diva antics can handle. Come on, this is bush league. Man up!
On the rabid right because an election is nigh upon us, there’s a spate of ACORN’s BACK articles on the whack-and-blog front proving once again that the right is now so atavistic that it has become necromantic. Please friends and neighbors, keep away from cemeteries until after November 2nd. ACORN is dead as a doornail and no amount of blowhard air is going to resuscitate it. I got a couple of emails yesterday and forwarded links where someone was trying to conflate poor Project Vote’s meager efforts this round and argue Project Vote and ACORN were one and the same so let’s go to town. I wouldn’t want to confuse anyone with the facts, but Project Vote is simply not the same as ACORN. The facts are simple. If ACORN were still alive and well, there would be a different calculus right now on the eve of the mid-term elections. The outcome might not be that much different, but the contest would be closer and fairer if lower income and working people were registered and going out to vote in the numbers we have seen in the past.
Which also makes me think about Toronto, one of the shining progressive city lights of North America and has me head scratching to figure out the Mayor’s election this week? How is it possible that a hard right conservative could win by over a 100,000 votes? There’s no job in Mudville today.
So off to Phoenix!