Chit chat

Not too long ago, I promised to post some bits from my first manuscript, Black Helicopters. I thought the following passage could give you a good taste of it:

“Hello? Is this the Bill McCracken residence?” Mark asked.
“Yes, who is this,” the person asked.
“My name is Mark Wood and I work for the Spotlight,” Mark said. “I’m calling about a report on the radio station about a big sinkhole out your way.”
“Oh, that was my son’s place. I’m Bill Senior, Mr. Wood,” he said. “Yeah, he’s jist across the road out here. I’ll tell ya, it was the damndist thing I ever seen. I was over there getting’ his copy of the Spotlight — ya know, I’m retired and I cain’t afford that $40 y’all want every year fer the paper — and we were jist out there talking ‘bout his family bein’ gone down in Florida an’ ya know how bad the corn was this year? Well, it was bad and we was jist talkin’ how everybody out here to Monrovia and Hall is doin’…
Mark was in Hell. “Why can’t this old man tell me what I want to know?” he thought to himself.
The senior McCracken just kept going. “…then all the sudden, the ground starts shakin’. Well, I don’t know where yer from, Mr. Wood, but the ground don’t shake ‘round here. I’m 75 and I kin remember maybe one little-bitty earthquake in my whole life. Now, if this was California, well then I could see it, but not ‘round here.
“Anyway, about an acre or so out in the field, we see dirt moundin’ up, almost like it’s gittin’ pushed up from below. Like a coupla dang fools, we got runnin’ out there. I tell ya, the cows were fussin’, them damn dogs was barkin’ like the Devil hisself was gonna pop out. We git up to it and Billy tells me to stay back. Well, I’ll tell ya somethin’: that was my grandpa’s land and my daddy’s land and mine fer years and my son ain’t about to tell me where I kin go. I go on up anyway and I’ll be goddamned if there wasn’t this bigass hole with somethin’ stickin’ up in the bottom…”

The above was inspired by more phone interviews on behalf of small town newspaper readers than I could possibly recount. Small town journalism is actually very rewarding, as I am now recalling after a few weeks in the new job. The feedback is quicker and more immediate; you're able to do a more complete job of covering the news because there isn't as much of it and you deal with a smaller area. The only real downside is smaller staffs mean less quality control. I do all of the proofing and copy editing and, believe it or not, I do miss things.

Don't overlook Orcinus

David Neiwert aka Orcinus has done some stellar work tracking the white supremacist culture in the Northwest. He has a post today about the kids from Arkansas who planned to kill Obama and several dozen other blacks. Read it. They, and the tweakers from Denver, are hardcore clowns but so were Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. And Lee Harvey Oswald.
I don't advocate paranoia in any form, but I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of heavily armed assholes out there incapable of accepting a black man as president. I don't take them seriously, but I do keep an eye out for them.
Even busted clocks work twice a day.

Viva The Field

As always, Al Giordano is 50,000 percent right about Rahm Emmanuel going to the White House. Progressives need to calm down. Obama's in charge. He's got his shit together enough to know that he needs an asskicker to terrorize Congress to keep the Blue Dogs on the reservation.
I, for one, can't wait for the new Chief of State to drop down on House GOP leader John Boehner like Batman. That crunching sound you will hear in January will be Rahm kicking Boner's nuts up into his stomach.
Al's point about Barney Frank is spot on, too. Frank is much smarter than Pelosi or Hoyer and will pretty much have his way with them.

Rude

If I were gay, I would be gay for The Rude Pundit:

Let's say, "Go fuck yourselves" to the right wing media, to the Fox "news" people and political analysts and insane columnists and idiotic bloggers who spouted lies and conspiracy theories and who rectally examined every aspect of Barack Obama's life, hoping that something, some association, some vague phrase he said, would make people think he's just another nigger. And you failed, you piss-drinking, talking points vomiting, garbage-fucking whores. Because, at the end of the day, America so rejected what you were peddling that the truly honorable among you should be dangling from your own nooses today, leaping out of your syndicate's or network's office windows, sitting in bathtubs and dropping your plugged-in TV's into the water.

Ah, the sweet, sweet schadenfreude

Well, we made it to the big day and it looks to be going just as I told you all it would a few weeks ago.
The lines are long up here in the Straits, but that probably has more to do with a very nasty prosecutor race than Obama v. McCain. I have no idea about how the election will go here, other than to say that Carl Levin is a lock for another six years in the Senate.
Obama has this thing in the bag. McCain will be lucky to crack 200 electoral votes, as he is actually trailing a bit in several states that he should have been able to take for granted.
It's this simple: If Virginia or Indiana is called for Obama by 8 p.m., the rout is on. If not, then it may be midnight before you can start gloating to all of the conservative assholes you know about a comfortable, but not quite landslide, Obama win.

Intelligent conversation

I know I promised to get back on a regular schedule, but the new job conspired against me this week. I had forgotten how intransigent grown adults came, which is funny considering that I've been married and had in-laws for 10 years.
I was watching Olbermann earlier tonight. His final guest was John Cleese, easily one of the funniest and smartest writer/performers in Christendom. I found myself thunderstruck by the level of discourse between host and guest. You just never see a smart broadcaster interviewing a smart, engaging guest on television anymore.

I'm alive and almost thriving

So, it's been a week in the new job...a good week. My staff is friendly and competent, as is everyone else at the paper. It's getting colder quickly, but it's not too bad. The rheumatiz is starting to flare up, but it does that at this time of year anyway.

Today was my first non-12-hour day, as I've had to learn the set up fast and get back to paginating on old software on buggy G4s. It came back to me quickly, thank God. My new boss is no hurry to reinvent the product, so I'm just going to tweak and adjust as I go along. I do have to get the new website up to speed by Tuesday, so Saturday is work day this week.

Oddly enough, I've been too busy with newsroom duties to follow the prez race. That's how it is at small papers; you're too busy newsgathering and editing to watch the big picture. I'm going try to catch up tonight, but it looks like things are going as I have predicted: McCain and the GOP are disintegrating and Palin is conducting an ongoing audition for her own show on Fox News.

My cable modem is now installed, so I'm going to force myself to get back on a daily blogging schedule. More tomorrow, whether I'm feeling it or not.

Peace.

This pretty well says it all

In today's New York Times, columnist and critic extraordinaire Frank Rich sums up the McCain campaign so succinctly that his piece should be required reading for every so-called pundit and political observer:

As if the Palin pick weren’t damning enough, McCain and his team responded to the financial panic by offering their own panicky simulation of the Bush style of crisis management in real time. Fire the S.E.C. chairman and replace him with Andrew Cuomo! Convene a 9/11 commission to save Wall Street! Don’t bail out A.I.G.! Do bail out A.I.G.! Reacting to polls and the short-term dictates of 24-hour news cycles, McCain offered as many economic-policy reboots in a month as Bush offered “Plans for Victory” during the first three years of the Iraq war.

Epiphany

I just got in from Michigan and I am wiped. I worked a little in between connections (O'Hare wasn't too bad today) on a post I'll have up tomorrow about an epiphany I had this weekend about Sarah Palin and this guy.

Northern Exposure

I'm halfway through my sojourn and, I must say, the northern latitudes are bursting with pretty colors about right now. In case you haven't bothered to guess, I'm near the Canadian border right now haggling with a fine publication about possibly becoming an unlapsednewsguy. 

Okay, I know that some of you who know me in the real world have heard me swear off the business 100 times (in fact, I think I may have done so in one of my earliest posts here). I don't know that the present situation before me would be any better or worse, but I do have a good feeling about it. It would be good money-wise, I like editing newspapers, and a change of scenery could do me some good. 

I dunno, we'll see.

This place has all of the charm of a little lake town mixed with the daily brutalities of supply-side economics. The people are ridiculously nice and, to a person, charmed by my unwittingly southern accent (hey, my grandpa escaped Kentucky 75 years ago!). My possible predecessor is leaving a solid paper with a good staff and stable readership. The publisher is an old newsroom guy (definitely a plus) and corporate leaves him alone (an even bigger plus).

I should know by mid-week if this is the place for me. I know now, however, that this blog will continue in its current form, regardless of where I post from. Some would question letting a smartass like lapsednewsguy edit a daily paper, saying he/she/it is too biased; I contend they are mutually exclusive. I dare say the readers of my old papers were never able to suss out my politics, primarily because my politics were none of their business nor relevant to my job.

Contrary to the Idiot Queen of Wasilla's recent screeching, you can have opinions and be even-handed. The secret is to actually listen when other people speak and be prepared to be wrong sometimes.

Of course, that would never occur to her...

Taking a break

I'm taking a break from my furious blogging regimen of late, as I have business in town Friday and out of town Saturday through Tuesday that will occupy my time. I may fire off one of two posts, but I doubt it. I've been so busy pontificating about America's future that I need to take a few days to attend to mine. I'll be back to my schedule of late by the middle of next week.

Ramsey is half-right

Radio host Dave Ramsey is circulating a plan to save the economy that makes some sense, at least to me. Aside from praying for Congress not to panic, he thinks the government should insure these crappy mortgage bonds, which would give them value they sorely lack now. He also wants to let everyone behind on their mortgages to roll the past due back into their principal and get a fixed rate at six percent. 

All of that seems reasonable, but the last part of the plan is stupid. He wants to abolish the capital gains tax. He says this would give rich people more money to invest in the economy. That's the same horseshit Reagan and Bush shoveled for years as wages stagnated and personal debt skyrocketed. Rich people are rich generally because they don't let the rest of us get our hands on their money. It's true that increased bank deposits and T-bill purchases would help with liquidity for a while, but we would be right back in this mess a few years down the road.

I think Ramsey is right about how irresponsible consumers have been in managing their finances and he often gives his listeners good advice; however, he is wrong about capital gains. The rate is too low and should be raised to the top income tax rates. That would improve the federal government's liquidity and lessen the need to sell T-bills to China and Saudi Arabia to keep the government afloat.