Annie's Day

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The Inevitable Tragedy

We don't know who created this page, but we're working on it. The great man or woman (or extremely bored creative team) deserve to go down in the annals of heroes of the democracy. Fan mail from some flounder? And we thought we couldn't hate her more than we already did. The only thing they forget was "Thompson, Giuliani aid in field-dressing". Sob!!

Caricaturist Rick Meyerowitz on Sarah Palin

I smell "new desktop"!

(Oh, right. Like the real SP doesn't have any tattoos??)

Meanwhile, in the Upper One...

(As opposed to the Lower 48).

Intelligent reader Bren referred us to Youtube video of yesterday's rally by Alaskan women who do NOT agree with Sarah Palin.

Hearteningly, the rally was very heavily attended with women and children holding signs like

"Real women vote issues, not gender"

which, for us, says a lot.

Then we followed to the next video, which was made by the NBC station closest to where the rally was held.

 It seems that a local talk-show radio host, a conservative, was so incensed by the audacity of "Dese damn liberals thinkin' da whole world agrees wid' dem" (really, if anything, I'm giving this guy a break with his pronunciation) that he read the home addresses and phone numbers of the rally's organizers on the air and encouraged his listeners to call the organizers and "let 'em know what you think". 

Many people called the organizers and were discourteous in the extreme, but few pulled themselves of the couch to show up for an anti-rally.

Wow. The Republicans are attracting all kinds of bitter, angry, stupid humans this year.

Nowhere Near Good Enough

Yes, they looked great and yes, we applaud Ms. Fey taking time from her busy schedule and Ms. Poehler squeezing her pregnant body  back into the pantsuit, but this sketch from last night's Saturday Night Live season opener was NOT ENOUGH.

After a few easy swipes at the Palin, the sketch devolved into a comparison of sexist comments. Supposedly Hil is upset because she's considered ugly and Palin is considered hot.

We don't know what percentage of SNL writers are men under thirty, but we bet they were all in on this one. Because, yeah, the REALLY important point of this wild political season is that Palin is a MILF.

Or is Lorne Michaels going through a second adolescence?

Mayor Palin and the Book Banning

A few days ago we printed a list of the books which Sarah Palin had (supposedly) tried to have banned from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor of that unfortunate town.

After a few hours of research, we realized that the list we had found was something that had been in existence for a long time; the list was of books which were frequently banned, or which people frequently tried to have banned, from American public and private libraries.

We took down the list because it was not what we had said it was. We're honest like that. 

Also, we express ourself in pretty harsh language here--we hate this Plain bitch and we want you to know the reasons why--and it doesn't mean much if we use meaningless propaganda and scandal to prove our arguments.

So this, according to ABC news, is what happened. Mayor Palin asked the town librarian if it would be possible to ban some books from the library. (There might not have been an actual list of books).

The Librarian was somewhat taken aback, but said that the library had been stocked according to local taste and professional tenets, and that she would not ban any book in the library.

Palin dropped the public questions and a few months later tried to fire the librarian (who was at that time also the head of the state association of librarians). A public outcry in the town made her rescind the firing order.

The librarian quit two years later, saying that it was just too difficult to work for Sarah Palin. 

It's going to be much, much worse to live in her country.

What is a Community Organizer: A Primer for Questioning Republicans

At the Republican National Convention, former Governor Pataki said that he didn't know what a Community Organizer was. Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani assumed that it would have to be a "problem" on someone's resume.

And Governor Palin said that she guessed being a small-town mayor is like being a Community Organizer, except with responsibilities.

So what is a Community Organizer? As a social work student I know exactly what the term means.

It means a man or woman who spends time--40 hours a week, or more, or volunteer time, because the job doesn't pay much--working with people who need help in the community.

These Community Organizers get into the lives of the people of their communities. When you get into people's lives, you immediately have great responsibilities not to mess things up. (It is funny that Governor Palin, whose personal and political beliefs include a lot of getting-into-people's-lives, doesn't know this.)

This help might be available from the government, such as Unemployment Insurance or access to a Public Defender or temporary financial help from the Department of Social Services. In this case, a community organizer sees to it that people who need the help know how to get it. 

A helpful program might need to be brought to the community and put into action. Think of New York's Meals on Wheels, or daycare programs everywhere, or community health clinics. I would think that Republican, Democrat and Independent citizens ought to be able to recite a list of programs like these which they see every day in their own communities.

After the past 8 years, there are almost no communities in our country which do not need some such assistance.

The help can be as simple as bringing the community the right to vote; voter registration. Right now you're seeing plenty of community organizers working on this little job. The League of Women Voters has been doing it for decades, and always with the thanks of both major political parties. Mr. Pataki, Mr. Giuliani, Mrs. Palin--this would be a program of community organization which brought your voters into the polling places. Surely you appreciate that!

Needed help might be as complicated and controversial as a program to distribute free condoms, publicize safe and legal abortion, dispense clean needles to IV drug users or "buy back" weapons from gang members. It might be as simple and supportable as a food pantry or a shelter for battered women and children.

Any and all of these programs, and thousands more which you might even be able to name yourself, need people to run them and to run an "outreach", because none of it will do any good if the people who need the help are not reached. Depending on the community, there are all kinds of challenges in that. Maybe the community is spread out over some hundreds of miles. Maybe it's all crammed together in a city neighborhood. 

Maybe the people who need the help are already so discouraged that they wouldn't come out and sign up for anything because they feel that they can't trust any kind of government intervention. Community Organizers see a lot of that.

As far as I can tell, there never was a "golden era" when community organizers were not needed at all. At no time have federal, state and local programs come together with federal, state and local money and started serving the population with absolutely no private resources, and staffed only by well-paid, well-educated and experienced civil servants.

There have been many federal administrations which tried to create such a "golden age"--those of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all come to mind. These were, of course, Democratic administrations. Republicans such as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush have generally tried to cut taxes, which meant they had to cut spending, which meant that community resources diminished considerably.

The usual Republican rationale has been that overall prosperity will "trickle down" to the entire population, including people who can't come out of their homes to buy and eat lunch because they are too sick or too poor. I would think that even in the best-trickling times, Community Organizers would still be needed.

With his skills, brains and education, Barack Obama could have started his career by working for big business. Because of his character, he went to work as a Community Organizer.

Mr. Pataki, Mrs. Palin and Mr. Giuliani have made a ghastly mistake in treating Mr. Obama's work record as a joke. The have insulted anyone who ever wished to help, and, even more, the people who put that wish into action by becoming Community Organizers.

Big Brother: A Comment from Phil

(When he is not living the life of a stalwart husband and father, and writing on behalf of the endangered rain forest, my brother Phil Berroll thinks about politics. What he's thinking nowadays is making him pretty sick. Herewith, his comments on recent events:)

WHAT I LEARNED FROM WATCHING THE RNC

1) No one knows when (or how, or why) the Iraq War began. But what matters is that courageous maverick John McCain, a former POW, advocated the surge in the face of opposition from defeatist Democrats, and was proved right. Now, he is clearly the man to lead us on to victory, which is the only acceptable outcome.

2) The economy seems to be doing ok, and will continue that way as long as we can keep those wasteful, tax-and-spend Democrats from wrecking it.

3) How to solve our energy problems? Drill, baby, drill!

4) Whoever it was that occupied the White House in recent years, he has a worthy successor in John McCain, a courageous maverick who is also a former POW. His opponent is a black radical street agitator turned corrupt Chicago politician who likes to give airy-fairy speeches.

5) This is still the greatest, strongest country on earth, and anyone who doesn't think so is a defeatist Democrat, or a member of the elitist media and the elitist Washington establishment that look down their noses at average, hard-working, God-fearing folks like us. But John McCain, a courageous maverick and former POW, will lead us to victory over them.

6) God help America.

(Annie gain. I would also like to refer you to the blog of our friend JC, who is featuring a clip from Jon Stewart guaranteed to make you extremely confused, even while you chuckle.)

Another Scary Thing

We had thought that Governor Palin's speech would begin at 10 PM last night, so that's when We switched from TCM ("The Last Hurrah", a wonderful movie which even people who do not live in Boston like a lot) to one of the networks, pick one.

Imagine our alarm when Rudy Giuliani started speaking! The guy was Mayor of New York City for like 127 years and we managed to miss his speeches whenever possible, at one point moving to Philadelphia just for that purpose. 

Now we were trapped, trapped do you hear! as HizFormerHonor sank his bicuspids into Obama/Biden.

Not only did he lie, cheat and steal (and offend and malign and libel and all but rustle the horses; we suppose Fred Thompson was out doing that) but he frightened the hell out of us by SMILING.

In all those 127 years we had never seen the man SMILE so much. It was horrible.

Jeez, Rudy, keep it for scaring the kids, huh?

Now We Know What We Have to Deal With

Our advice to all Democrats and other people who are in favor of Barack Obama becoming president sometime soon: take this woman seriously.

We're no pundit, but even we can see that jokes about small towns, pregnant daughters, Alaska, and lack of experience have to be abandoned right where they lie. 

Damn it--she seems like everyone's sister-in-law. She seems like the gal at Motor Vehicles who straightened out that mess for you so your husband could still drive to work when he had that job over in the next county. She seems like the coach who made sure your daughter didn't have to ride the bench that whole JV season, especially when the college scouts were watching.

She seems like the girlfriend who's pretty quiet now, not wild like when you were kids, but she'll still come and pick you up at the bar when you can't drive home. She seems like the Tupperware Hostess who sees to it you get that extra egg-holder at cost, or even free.

She seems like the doctor's receptionist who puts aside a few free packets of your anti-depressive when the pharmacy rep comes by. She knows you don't have insurance but you need those damn pills.

And who is Sarah Palin, really? She's the new Reagan; the politician who, so improbably, becomes the national synthesis of a familiar figure who you know and trust. 

No one who votes for her will ever hear anything bad of her. Not that they'll refuse to hear it; they simply won't hear. You remember: like when we used to say "Reagan's a nut case, he thinks it's 1938, he's got Alzheimer's!" and nobody even frowned us down for bad taste, they just didn't even hear us.

So we'll just say it now: she's a Huey Long, a populist demagogue. She believes that evolution did not happen and that teenaged women can raise children on their own. She believes as well that teenagers will resist having sex and doing drugs because you tell them not to. She believes your daughter should have that baby even if three different doctors say it will kill her.

She believes everyone, everywhere, should own a gun if they want one.

Her intellectual depth makes George W. Bush look like Adlai Stevenson and her lovability will make Barack Obama look like Richard Nixon.

Please, Senator Obama, Senator Biden, Mrs. Obama, everyone: take this bitch seriously. She's poison and she's telegenic and you know how desperate people act when they're up against something like that. THEY FALL IN LOVE WITH HER.

For God's sake, be bright enough to send against her her own natural enemy: the original trusted girlfriend, Hillary Clinton. Mother to mother? Daughter to Daughter? Experienced pol to experienced pol? Hillary will go for the jugular on this dame, and might even find it. Which really will be the only way to send her back home.

Personally, we hate Governor Palin. We started hating her at the point in her speech when she said:

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a very, very special love. 

No they don't, idiot. They inspire EXACTLY THE SAME LOVE because YOU DON'T LOVE THEM ANY MORE OR LESS THAN YOU DO YOUR OTHER KIDS.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message for you: For years, you've sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. And I pledge to you that, if we're elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.

The lousy, lying bitch looked right at the camera and told us this. US. We've been in the union, on the battlefield, for eighteen years and she's been here five months and she's promising this to us? 

What does she know about the problems little Trig is going to face? What does she know about the problems he might face in states which are not as wealthy as Alaska? When she knows something, I'd be interested in seeing her plans. But she doesn't have them yet and she doesn't have any idea of the reality of raising a disabled child in this country, and it's wicked, patently wicked, for her to say what she said when she's still in that state of ignorance. Doesn't her form of Christianity teach something about humility?

So please, quite laughing about the lady. When even Rudolph Giuliani can be self-righteous on her behalf, you're up against something which will not dissolve in warm water or even caustic wit. Fight her with her own fake intellect and lack of heart. Fight her like the cold-blooded beast she is.

Take her seriously.