Joe Six-Pack

I've been wondering what, exactly, Sarah Palin means by "Joe Six-Pack." Somebody who drinks a whole six-pack at a sitting? Somebody with really defined abs? So I went to urban dictionary, and this is what it says:

Average American moron, IQ 60, drinking beer, watching baseball and CNN, and believe [sic] everything his President says.

So that's how Palin is presenting herself in detailing her qualifications to be vice president. Uh-oh.

Letter to the New York Times

In the article "Campaigns Shift to Attack Modes on Eve of Debate," Adam Nagourney suggests that the Obama and McCain campaigns are engaging in similar kinds of tactics.

This is not, in fact, the case: Palin is smearing Obama with innuendo in her claims of his association with Bill Ayers, ignoring the parts of the Times article on their acquaintance that refute such claims.

The Obama campaign's advertising referring to McCain as one of the "Keating Five" involved in a 1989 ethics scandal, on the other hand, is fact; the investigators concluded that he had exercised poor judgment in his role in the scandal. As a candidate for president, his ability to exercise good judgment is, well, crucial.

Your writers should make clear the distinction between the smear tactics of the McCain campaign and the legitimate attacks of the Obama campain, rather than hiding behind supposed "objectivity" in making it look as though both campaigns are up to the same kinds of tactics. McCain's people won't like it? Doesn't change your responsibility to the truth.

Heide Estes
Manhattan

Joe Biden Cried Last Night. Or, Things Have Changed

Last night, Gwen Ifill asked Biden and Palin to talk about their respective "Achilles' Heels," noting that "conventional wisdom" has it that Palin lacks experience, while Biden lacks discipline.
In response, Palin mentioned her experience as governor of the "huge state" of Alaska (with a population of under 700,000, just a bit bigger than Washington, DC) and then moved quickly to her experience as the mother of a son about to be deployed to Iraq and another with "special needs." (What happened to the three daughters?)

Biden responded that after 35 years in the Senate, "People can judge who I am." He talked some more about his record, and then added:

Look, I understand what it's like to be a single parent. When my wife and daughter died and my two sons were gravely injured, I understand what it's like as a parent to wonder what it's like if your kid's going to make it.... But the notion that somehow, because I'm a man, I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone, I don't know what it's like to have a child you're not sure is going to -- is going to make it -- I understand.

He choked up. He blinked away tears. He moved on. To me, that shows more profoundly than McCain's choice of a completely inexperienced woman as a running mate, that my parents' generation changed America. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)

It's not 1972, and Joe Biden is not Ed Muskie. Responding to attacks on his wife, Muskie choked up during a speech. The press reported that he cried, and his already faltering presidential bid was derailed among claims that he was too emotional to serve.

While Palin uttered platitudes, Joe Biden showed himself as a man of emotional as well as intellectual depth. To me, the debate felt like an adult conversation between Biden and Ifill, with Palin refusing to answer questions and instead pleading with Americans, "look at me!"

If you're looking for a full transcript and/or video of the debate, the New York Times has them here.

Sarah Palin v the Polar Bear

Tim Downing of the Guardian wonders who will better succeed given current global realities. An excerpt:

Impact of climate change
Polar bear: Length of hunting season has diminished, birth rates have fallen and it now has insufficient fat reserves.
Palin: None observed.

The rest of the article is here.

Living with Chronic Illness

Or call it invisible disability, if you will. Here's one of the best definitions I've seen, from a New York Times article by Abigail Zuger:

Are you sick? Are you well? You are on a small island in the middle of the river, with lovely views of a rock and a hard place. And yet, you wake up in the morning, and you feel pretty good.

Today, two days ago, the day before that, and backward for the last few months, I went out running. Maybe next week, maybe not for another ten years, allergy or infection will almost certainly once again trigger an asthma attack that will leave me quite literally breathless. Without breath, everything else gets awfully difficult. I take three medications every day to keep the breathing going, and that regime lends me what looks, feels, like good health. Am I sick? Am I well?

Recycling Electronics

Getting rid of your old TV and replacing it with one that gets the new digital signal? Don't put it out with the garbage to go to the dump; recycle it. Go to Earth 911 to find out where.

(From EMagazine. You can subscribe here.)

Breathing

"Every breath is a prayer."

"Did you learn that at Hebrew school?"

"No, they say it at synagogue.

"Oh, right. They do, don't they."

The Offspring makes me think fairly often, but this one blew my mind pretty good.

After a pretty tough spring with six or eight weeks of troubles with asthma, I've identified myself as disabled at work so as to be able to teach on line if necessary and, hopefully, do a better job at keeping up with my classes. I'm having a tough time with going through this process, which isn't the point of this post, and maybe I'll get back to it another time.

At any rate, having The Offspring quote the liturgy at me got me really thinking.

If every breath is prayer, what does that do for the breaths that are "invalid" (yeah, go ahead and read that both ways), the ones that I get so angry about when they occur in my body, the ones that make me grieve when they occur in the body of The Offspring, to whom I've given my genes for this disease, among other things?

Are the imperfect breaths, then, imperfect prayers? I'm pretty sure all of my prayers are imperfect. It occurs to me to be more grateful for the good breaths, the easy breaths, the ones I take for granted, to try to move away from being so angry and so afraid when breathing fails.