crossposted at Motley Moose

In the spring of 2001, I had to go to a training with the other brand new Child Protection Investigator. Joe and I were hired within weeks of each other and we were force to attend the same computer system training (SSIS).

I hated Joe on sight. He was a retired Master Sgt in the US Army. I am pretty sure he hated me on sight as well. I was his antithesis. I am an out lesbian and a complete lefty.

The dreaded day came and we were off to Crookston. It is about a two hour drive from Walker and we started talking. Pretty soon we came to the topic of politics. I was fairly amazed to find that we agreed on many things. We were both kind of wrapping up the heinous assaults on our Constitution, and came to our conclusions. At the very moment I shouted the right wing caused this, Joe emphatically stated that the left wing were the culprits. Both of us were stunned into silence, and we both began to laugh.

We blew out all of the stereotypes about each other and became good friends. We always had each others back and we worked well together for almost three years. Just before he left the county in 2004, he took me aside and told me that I helped him become a Democrat, and that he was voting for John Kerry. I told I didn't do a thing, bush did everything he could to lose Joe's vote. He laughed hard. I haven't talked to him for a long time and I miss him.

(A SERIOUS WARNING: This is a very disturbing diary. If this doesn't upset you, then you are probably from another planet. If genuinely upsetting news is not your cup of tea, I sincerely urge you to stop reading this and go elsewhere.)

As our society rapidly unravels in front of us, up to 100 million Americans are now having great difficulty just making it through the day.

They are silently screaming for our help.

These human beings cannot wait until a new president takes office.

My grandmother was born in 1903 (the year the Wright brothers got one of those aeroplane contraptions off the ground for the first time) and died in 1995.  The only time she ever voted for a Democrat was in, get this, 1980 for Jimmy Carter; because he waved at her from his motorcade as he passed by our house - she felt a connection.  Aside from that one instance, she clung to her grandfather's advice that it was the Republicans who fought for the common man -- despite my teenage insistence that the tables had turned.

The closest she probably ever came to getting to know a black man was the one time I brought my 32 year-old, graduate student housemate back to my parents' home in the early ninety's.  She said, "He's a nice black boy."

After watching tonight's debate, I have all kinds of good news for my friend John McCain (no, not that one - the other one): First, the Treasury Secretary just got the authority you want to give him to renegotiate mortgages - it was included in a bill signed last week you may have heard about - though that was after you un-suspended your campaign.

Second, if you're all about your collaboration with Ted Kennedy and Joe Lieberman, the bills we used to call McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Lieberman are still out there waiting to be passed, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt those bills if you went back to supporting them again (though judging by the bailout bill, who knows).

With regard to Canadian Gal's Diary..Here is the full column that unhinged the Extreme Right-wing in the US..and all the way back to Canada. Whatever your stance on what the writer, Heather Mallick wrote, I will let the reader judge. After all, everything is relative...Enjoy!

http://www.heathermallick.ca/cbc.ca-colu mns/a-mighty-wind-blows-through-republic an-convention.html

Now that Congressional Democrats and Republicans have given away 300 semi-trucks full of $100 bills, $700,000,000,000 to the same speculators who caused the on-going financial meltdown, we might as well ask ourselves what the same amount of money could have bought for the rest of us.

The average cost of construction for a high school is about $25,000 per student.

(There's a brief summary at http://blog.news-record.com/staff/chalkb oard/archives/2007/10/tricky_numbers.sht ml and infinite details at http://www.wakegov.com/NR/rdonlyres/614D 9A8E-42FB-424F-AFEA-73E604598279/0/const ructioncostanalysisfinalpresentation.pdf )

So it's probably fair to say that you can build a beautiful high school for twice that amount... a high school with a couple of Olympic pools, huge classrooms, and high-tech goodies galore.

For $50,000 per student, a beautiful high school for 1000 students will cost $50,000,000.

1000 of these beautiful high schools will cost $50,000,000,000, and by the time you spend $700,000,000,000, you will have built...

14,000 beautiful high schools, with 14,000,000 students enrolled in them.

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

Last week the government owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) pulled the column "A Mighty Wind Blows Through the Republican Convention" by writer Heather Mallick. Written on September 5, the article in question goes after Sarah Palin and crosses a line that does way beyond political analysis and refers to Palin's supporters as "white trash".

Some of Mallick's more incendiary comments include:

"It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman."

"Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?"

"I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am."

On September 28, CBC publisher John Cruickshank issued an apology stating "we erred in our judgment".

More than 300 people have taken the trouble this month to complain to the CBC ombudsman about a column we ran on CBCNews.ca about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Sept. 5.

The column, by award-winning freelance writer Heather Mallick, was also pilloried by The National Post in Canada and by Fox News in the U.S. Despite its age -- it is three weeks old, several lifetimes in web years -- this posting remains a subject of fascination in the blogosphere.

Vince Carlin, the CBC ombudsman, has now issued his assessment of the Mallick column. He doesn't fault her for riling readers by either the caustic nature of her tone or the polarizing nature of her opinion.

But he objects that many of her most savage assertions lack a basis in fact. And he is certainly correct.

Mallick's column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan.

And because it is all those things, this column should not have appeared on the CBCNews.ca site.

After Mallick's column began to garner attention both online and on Fox News, Greta Van Susteren, the host of "On the Record," condemned the column as "beyond vicious" and during the segment repeatedly referred to Mallick as "a pig."  

I guess hate begets hate...  On a brighter note, CBC included a journalistic pledge in its report that is promising.

We failed you in this case. And as a result we have put new editing procedures in place to insure that in the future, work that is not appropriate for our platforms, will not appear. We are open to contentious reasoned argument but not to partisan attack. It's a fine line. Ombudsman Carlin makes another significant observation in his response to complainants: when it does choose to print opinion, CBCNews.ca displays a very narrow range on its pages.

In this, Carlin is also correct. This, too, is being immediately addressed. CBCNews.ca will soon expand the diversity of voices and opinions and be home to a diverse group of writers with many perspectives. In this, we will better reflect the depth and texture of this country. We erred in our editorial judgment. You told us in no uncertain terms. And we have learned from it.

No wonder I have been spending less time online.

The polling is really astonishing in recent days.  Support for Prop. 8 has gone from a fifteen point deficit to a five point lead in a month.  Supporters have vastly outraised and outspent the No side.

All I've seen is the ad Mocking SF Mayor Newsome and the California Supreme Court.  It's really quite effective.  And
the Mormons have really organized; this could even reduce Obama's
margin in the state.

But I think there are also some other considerations: