Would a woman with three children give the go-ahead to build the Chevrolet Suburban? You must know that whenever you see a woman craning her neck to see over the steering wheel of a 6,000 pound excresence, she did not request it. She asked for a safe car, not an idiotic one. Nope, she was not the person shopping for a big, shiny penis — her husband was.

Possibly, she asked for a hybrid, not realizing that the Detroit men with the fat cigars built one she is certain to hate: the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid — 11 mpg city, 19 highway. That, and a shopping cart of money, will get her and the kids halfway to Carl’s Jr. (”Nothing too good for my pussycat.”)

If you’re looking for a woman to run a car company, don’t bother with the ones who don’t have kids — they’re too busy trying to behave like men. You know, the guys who to take shit from nobody (except from everybody whose ass they really have to kiss). Jacking up that glass ceiling takes too many reps with free weights.

When I look at these inflated chief executives — the Detroit CEOs who each felt he had to fly separately to the nation’s capitol in his own company’s fancy jet, simply to ask for fucking taxpayer money — it makes me want to give them wedgies at the hook of a construction crane.

Again, I’m stereotyping, but most mothers would not behave like that. Nor would a house-husband. The CEOs of the past decade want only to babysit their perks. If the spouse who actually has to raise the kids did as piss-poor a job, the next generation wouldn’t be around to vote against the estate tax.

Fuck these guys. Bail the companies out, but put these whores in neckties out of work. And if they ever have to make the trip to Washington again, make them drive one of the bogus rattletraps they greenlighted. And force them to cut grass along the roadside to pay for gas.

It’s no secret late night talk show hosts and performers rue the upcoming disappearance of a stupid, mean-spirited president from the scene. Few people depend on obnoxious and unsavory characters more than comedians — perhaps only parole officers and Hummer salesmen. So until Obama shows himself to have feet of clay, comedy writers need an annoying high-profile person in the administration. Despite her intelligence and obvious qualifications for the post of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has agreed to be that person.

Barack Obama is, of course, aware of the dangers. He is pledged to Change — unfortunately, jokes about Hillary’s pantsuits show no sign of abating. No pun intended, but there is simply too much material. For that reason, she will be asked to spend $150,000 of her own money on a new pantsuit-free wardrobe. Naturally, the incoming administration hopes to keep the choice of clothing secret so Letterman’s writers don’t get too much of a leg up.

Bill Maher and his staff, now on vacation, have volunteered to write pre-emptive jokes. They are among the few people who will be privileged to look at Hillary’s new duds before the new administration takes office and she appears in public. One likelihood is she will try something that gives a nod to the countries she will be visiting in her job — a bhurka, a chador, or she might surprise everybody and go 10th century Chinese, bound feet and all. Again, “Change” is the watchword, and the public can expect to see it.

Bill Clinton will do his part, too. He and Kimberly Guilfoyle will begin a highly public affair this week. The plan is to inoculate the public — make his fucking around so obvious and tiresome that it is old news by January 20th, insuring that the comedians put their focus on his wife. One danger, Obama advisers have noted, is Mr. Clinton may not remain faithful to Ms. Guilfoyle. If the ex-president begins yet another romance in December or early January, he will take focus from Hillary.

Balancing the risks is critical, but the Obama people have done a highly credible job of it so far.

In the late ’80s the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction, for flag burning, of Gregory Lee Johnson. It was a 5-4 decison and Justice Brennan wrote the majority opinion, asserting the principle that one’s First Amendment rights must be protected even though his fellow citizens might find an act unconscionable.

Following the news stories, I thought it might be a cool idea to make a flaming flag lapel pin. I thought they might sell, and maybe if we’d had an internet then, I could have found somebody to make them. Like so many of my big plans, it lived only in my sketchbook and fevered conversations.

In the two year run-up to this election, I became thoroughly sick of the pin. If the flag-wavers love the display that much, they should tattoo it on their necks like prison inmates. For a candidate, the pin seemed as de riguer as church-going. (I discovered it was a bit of a misconception, though, when in one of the Republican debates only 3 of the 10 participants wore flag pins — this, however, did not discourage anybody on the right from pointing out when Democrats failed to wear them). Yeah, let’s get all our patriotism from our doubtful friends — flags and lapel pins from China, oil from the middle east, and maybe the Sith can build us some nuclear reactors in space.

After the election, I figured the country would recycle the pins — melt them down to a reddish slurry, ship it to China to be spun into poor quality solder, then shipped back to us in TVs, toys, and clarinets.

But a few days after the election, I did a double-take. People who were never required by their roles in society to wear flag pins were doing so. I didn’t expect to see the New York Daily News columnist, Errol Louis, a black man who seems to have much in common with Obama (in Louis’s case, undergraduate degree from Harvard, Masters from Yale, and a Law Degree from Brooklyn College of law) wearing a flag pin. And I saw a few other center-left interviewees and commentators, wearing flag pins. I don’t recall who they were, but there were a lot more than I would have expected.

The election’s over. Why don’t people dump this silly shit?

The obvious answer is that suddenly, certain people are proud to be American. Maybe it’s their way of saying — like Michelle Obama — “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”

In some future time — long after I’m gone, I hope — the fascist mentality we’re so familiar with will return to America. The dark side reasserts itself in history and the best thing we can do is enjoy optimism while it lives. When things go in the ditch again, look for the keepers of patriotic morality to single out those who showed love for our flag only after a Socialist-Marxist-Terrorist was elected to office. Sure, it sounds far-fetched, but it must be remembered that the same mentality was at work after WWII, when McCarthy put the fear of god and the flag into everybody. The McCarthyites came up with a term for those, who in the 30s, expressed a dislike for the Nazi’s and other fascists of Europe. They were called Premature Anti-Fascists. The implication, of course, being that it was all right to be against evil only after your government has declared war against it. That happened for us, six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Before that, the official position of America was isolationist. Though FDR was in his third term as president, it was a largely Republican-backed position, complete with German-American Bund rallies that had the same hateful flavor as the ralies of Palin/McCain (yes, her name goes first in this circumstance).

It’s funny, in the 80s Americans thought an amendment prohibiting the burning of flags would solve the problem of people burning flags. Nope, enlightened government and hope for a better future is what prevents that kind of nonsense.

That, and the fact that American flags manufactured in China burn with the toxic ferociousness of a napalmed chemical dump.

I like to think of a middle-aged man working into the wee hours. Bent over his paperwork in that greenish desk-lamplight, just getting it right because it’s his job and his job has never been more critical — shit, lives probably hang in the balance. He put his kids to bed six hours before and a little later his wife turned in. Some completely unmemorable music farts its tinny way out of a radio, pure background noise. It makes my heart glad to think this guy is getting up at seven to take the kids to school — because he wants to. So he rouses them, joins his family for breakfast, hustles them into the car. Maybe he forgets the papers — hell, he hasn’t slept much — so he rushes back into the house, and up to his study. He sweeps the printed out sheets into his briefcase, then he drops the kids off. After that he picks up a co-worker who sits down with him at another office and picks the work apart. Back and forth they go, getting it dead-nuts perfect. Then into a space to rehearse in front of his team. March 18th, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he delivers the speech, “A More Perfect Union.”

W. likes to say, this is hard work. But Obama actually knows it’s hard work. He’s done the work. This is not to completely disparage Bush, because I don’t know of any other presidents, or presidential contenders, who wrote their own speeches — not in the last century, anyhow. I doubt that Obama writes all of his, but he did write the one that made the biggest difference in his campaign. After all, “A More Perfect Union” was the Race speech. His response to the bigots, know-nothings, and mouth-breathers who kept turning up the volume on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright videos.

I do not think we should ever again elect anybody who can’t demonstrate the ability to at least write a coherent first draft. This requirement would thankfully remove certain public figures from our destiny. We all know who they are, thanks, in large part, to the last couple months of Saturday Night Live.

Intelligence and verbal skills. That’s the kind of thing that makes you head of the Harvard Law Review. Oh yeah, that and hard work. But if our fate is to rest in your hands, putting in some late night hours is just as important as watching the NFL playoffs while some thirty year-old speechwriter pounds out high-minded drivel.

We know where that leads.

The skin over the deltoids, just to the rear of the armpits, takes most of the friction. Especially on a hot day when a t-shirt is all that separates the rubber crutch-tops from my body. I’ve been home an hour now and I still feel the burn. I don’t have the energy at the moment, but I have to look in the mirror and see if welts have formed. I suppose at some point callouses will build up, but I’d like to be back on my prosthesis long before that happens.

The pain was peaking as I descended the slight hill on Sacramento, after leaving the Presidio library (Philip Roth & Stanley Elkin in my bag — both remained quiet). I was approaching Baker at .072 mph when a driver, waiting at the stop sign, waved me across in front of her. Mam, if you’re one of the 200 million readers of this blog, you know who you are, so lissen up: Don’t give the go-ahead to a slow moving cripple when he’s still sixty feet from the intersection. Crutch locomotion is deceiving — you see a bunch of reciprocating appendages, but forward progress is minimal.

The psychology is this — and I’m sure it applies to you, too, Mrs. Cream Colored SUV Driver. Think back to the last time somebody held the door open for you when they were sufficiently far ahead to humanely ignore you. Did something fire in the good-neighbor center of your brain, speeding you up to accept this doubtful gift? Did you mumble thanks to the overtrained good-little-boy as you hurried through this portal of politeness? You probably did, but you were angry in your heart — because unless it was a liveried doorman, whose job it is to usher you through, you had to accept the gesture as though it was a favor. It wasn’t.

Now, women, I’m sorry, but I’m going to go all Larry Summers on you here. Females perceive right-of-way differently from men. I’ve been driving for over fifty years, and although the disparity is not great, a woman is less likely to advance when she has the right-of-way. (I just went through a lifetime of notes and the actual figure is 3%). Failure to accept the right-of-way causes accidents, kindles road rage, and causes sexist-sounding statistics to be published, unsourced.

There. I’ve said it and I’m glad. If you don’t like it, take a stiff piece of garden hose and whip me under the armpits until I take it all back.

Note: Men tend to do that irritating door-holding thing.

The knotty question in Democratic circles has been what to do with the errant senator, Joe Lieberman. There are those, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who think the Connecticut independent should be stripped of any and all committee leadership positions. Others would like to see him no longer be allowed, as one of two independents, to caucus with the Democrats.

Party leaders have finally come to a workable solution — one that allows Lieberman to serve his country in its intelligence-gathering operations. That would be to place him in a spy drone and program it to fly over the mountains of northwest Pakistan, which is believed to be the territory in which Osama bin Laden is hiding.

This compromise allows Lieberman the opportunity to be shot down and imprisoned as was his best senate buddy, John McCain. Nobody wishes for such an outcome, of course — merely the chance to spot America’s Enemy #1. Democratic officials point out that humans can still do this job better than technological gadgetry.

Lieberman, who has not accepted yet, is leaning towards the compromise, saying, “the Republicans have offered me a job grooming the Palin family sled dogs, but I need something more hypo-allergenic, like the aluminum tube of a drone aircraft.”

You were probably smart to shore up your contract before appearing on The View today, Mr. Olbermann, because a lot of your audience might even come to prefer Bill O’Reilly. But here it is for every idealist out there in MSNBC-land who thinks Keith Olbermann is the best thing since sliced Cheney: “I don’t vote,” Olbermann said, saying it is the only thing he can do to suggest journalistic objectivity.”

That’s like Paris Hilton saying, “I don’t fuck because it’s the only thing I can do to suggest virginity.”

You’re worse than a horse’s ass, Mr. Olbermann. You’re the product of the horse’s ass.

“I was so scared I could feel my poopiejarjars shrinking, actually pulling up into my body cavity,” said Rescue McDouglass (his and his wife’s name have been changed to preserve their anonymity). “To think California’s Proposition 8 very nearly failed to pass.”

“That’s right,” said his wife Shyinane, “for a minute there, watching the results come in in our Gary, Indiana home (the names of their city and state have been changed to assure no retributive measures will be taken against them, their neighbors, or their choir) I thought we were going to erupt into some kind of fight from which our union could never recover.”

Rescue nodded assent. “Something was about to break,” that’s for sure. “It was as though my wife’s (the pet name for her undergarment cannot be mentioned for fear it might answer to the call of a stranger) would be rent and all her vital juices could then stream away from the marriage bed.”

Shyinane said, “It was as though all that money we gave to the ‘Yes on Prop. 8′ campaign (the figure cannot be quoted because gay hackers might access the McDouglass’s bank account, steal from it, sowing the seeds for a bitter financial argument, and thus thrust them into divorce court) had just been flushed down the porcelain heresy throne.”

Rescue and Shyinane took each other’s hand and performed a mini-betrothal, a celebration of each other that took only a few seconds, then ushered me to the (I am unable to name the portal as it might reveal the nature of the dwelling in which these creatures reside) and ushered me adieu.

Writers note: Normally, I am happy to honor my subjects’ wishes for anonymity, but fuck these two. Their names really are Rescue and Shyinane McDouglass. They live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Shyinane’s silk undergarment answers to “Motoguzzi”.

Oh, and their bank account is #43-868-55a-296fz, First Bank of the Tabernacle.

SNL’s Lorne Michaels on the phone with Nancy Reagan — mid-call.

MICHAELS: …so in the sketch, Fred Armisen plays Obama. Will Forte plays your husband, Ronnie. And Kristen Wiig plays the dead, departed you.

N. REAGAN: It’s a seance. I don’t see why I’m dead.

MICHAELS: The joke is everybody’s alive but you.

N. REAGAN: Hmmm. Funny. But why do you need me?

MICHAELS: Seth! (muffled conversation) There’s a portrait of you on the wall that comes alive. You’ll play that.

N. REAGAN: You don’t need me. Unless it’s for the ratings.

MICHAELS: (long pause) 14 million people tuned in to see Sarah Palin when she came on the show. Tina Fey could’ve played her from now to kingdom come and that wouldn’t have happened.

N. REAGAN: So Obama calls and interrupts the seance to apologize to me. Then what?

MICHAELS: Then you — the portrait of you — tells Kristen Wiig what to say. You know, to be real deferential. About how he’s this amazing success story and like Ronnie in so many ways, blah blah blah.

N. REAGAN: Okay. Hold it right now. I have a daughter, Patti. Patti Davis. A gorgeous girl. She did a Playboy centerfold a few years ago. Forget this Kristen Whoever-she-is, and call Patti. She looks like me — she’s absolutely beautiful — and if anybody’s going to play the dead, departed me, it should be her, my own flesh and blood.

MICHAELS: We can do that.

N. REAGAN: Make it happen.

MICHAELS: Done. And one more thing, our writers really need to know what Obama said to you.

N. REAGAN: He said, ‘Mrs Reagan, I’m sorry for what I said about seances.’

MICHAELS: That’s it?

N. REAGAN: Oh, one thing else, could I get the script cleared?

MICHAELS: Why?

N. REAGAN: Well, he said SNL would probably do something on this.

MICHAELS: Who?

N. REAGAN: Barack Obama.

MICHAELS: (outraged) I’m expected to clear this through Barack Obama?

N. REAGAN: No. Through Rahm Emmanuel.

MICHAELS: Oh, Rahm. Of course.

A one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. That line’s always appealed to me, even before I had mine amputated. Bloggers like to think of ourselves in a self-congratulatory way. We kicked ass. Like our pissy commentary helped slice the rotting corpse of Republicanism out of America’s gut. Look at the red on the map. Follow it. It’s a clogged intestine winding through the country’s middle — inflamed, backed-up, and far from cured. It’s like the drug-resistant staph still residing in my stump. (Yep, I had another operation on Wednesday, but I feel great — such is the power of political purgation).

There were some people, though, who certainly made a difference this time around. The thousands of Joe-the-Activists who, at their own expense, traveled to the battleground states and made sure America didn’t get fucked again. One of these was Alisa Baker, a San Francisco attorney who worked as a polling observer. She wrote a wonderful account of election day in north Akron, Ohio — herewith, just a tidbit: “at St. John’s, the Democrats have a six-member team (including three lawyers); the Republicans have Monica, an untrained, non-lawyer inside observer. In the beginning she seems barely engaged, reading the paper, which is fine with us.  As the day goes on, however, Monica gets cranky about our Obamaphilia (and who can blame her: when all is said and done, our precinct will have cast 688 votes for Obama, 31 for McCain). The Obama GOTV team is clearly much too cheerful for her, and the Obama lawyers are making too many successful challenges to provisional ballots.  She comes outside to glare at us from a safe distance every half hour or so, pacing up and down the driveway and making angry calls on her cell.” (See Alisa’s entire essay here).

What Alisa was a part of — which is such a hopeful sign for the coming presidency — is the organization that was the Obama campaign. It wasn’t simply that workers were willing and able, they were given precise tasks to do. They worked within a structure that had been planned by intelligent, educated pros. What a difference that makes! Ideologues, parodists, and crankbutts could do their thing at the keyboard (here!).

In a way I’ve behaved like a bad parent to these horrors of the last eight years — my children: John Bolton, Karl Rove, David Addington, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Brit Hume, and so many more — I delight in pointing out their faults: “This is what I have to live with!” Now they’re gone and I’m suffering from Empty Nest syndrome.

But I am ready to give up these depressing characters. I’d rather go for the relative brightness and mock rocks and black holes for awhile. So much negativity is wearing. My friend James DeKoven tells me he’s living the perfect metaphor for the age: “I moved into a dark studio apartment, a real hovel, in the first month of the Bush administration. Now, eight years later, I’m outta there. I’ve rented a bright and open apartment, and I’ll be going in in January.”

As for the arbitrary bold-face in each paragraph, I’m experimenting with change.

Why add syllables and vowels? Do I need longer words? Do they add colour? Wheelchair or crutches? Wheelchair. I’ve got to use the cutting board and I can’t reach the tabletop, slung vulture-like on crutches. Cut the ham then the kiwi? Or kiwi then ham? Depends, do I want ham flavoured kiwi or kiwi flavored ham? Kut is better than cut. & Kwikee Kleen beats Quickie Clean. “You Kall these Kiwis Kleen?” Why C or Q, ever, when Kw does what Qu does, & S does C. Is that question or statement. Check punktuation. No, Punktuashun, relative to Pashtun, spokn in northrn Afghnstn. On lvng rm TV, mersedeez has mprovd krumpl zon. Bama cald wnr n NC. Fnlly! (M I txtng yt?)

I’m overwhelmingly happy and relieved at Obama’s win. I’m also $10 richer. Why isn’t sudden happiness and wealth enough for me? Why do I grind my teeth at any mention of the “wittiness” and “sincerity” of John McCain’s concession speech?

Hmmm. That’s a tough one. But three hours before the speech, robocalls were still going out in Miami saying that Castro and Chavez were rooting for an Obama victory. Like McCain has no influence over his campaign’s behavior. And the booing at his mention of Obama during the speech was such a breathtaking reminder of where he’s taken his followers. His aw-shucks attitude that both sides have to play rough in these contests ignores the utter contempt he’s shown for his opponent — a man who really did have to make it on his own in the world, and who succeeded because of intelligence, hard work, and the content of his character.

Part of my problem is that I liked McCain in 2000. Would likely have voted for him had he won the nomination at that time. I was outraged that he had to withstand the vicious (and racist) robocall campaign from the Bushies — the one that told voters McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. The child referred to was the Bangladeshi daughter the McCain’s had adopted a few years before. That McCain did not publicly call Bush out on that one vexed me greatly at the time. A Maverick would let a pusillanimous rich kid pull something like that? (Maybe he wasn’t as Maverick as I thought).

I remember my anger at Colin Powell when he did Bush/Cheney’s bidding at the U.N., giving credence to the cooked intelligence that gave us the Iraq war. In my mind, this man, who like McCain had given so much in wartime, just blew it. It’s simply that you expect something from certain people, and when they let you down, you lose faith. In any case, I wrote Powell off as a bad bet. But five years later, with his endorsement speech for Obama, all was forgiven. Time had passed and he wanted what the country needed, so I warmed up again.

I hope the same thing happens with McCain. I want to respect the man. But only AFTER he helps Obama win some battles in congress. And AFTER he explains the state of mind that led to the wretched campaign choices he allowed to be thrust on himself. And AFTER some time passes.

But it’s hard to nod appreciatively along with those who thought the good old McCain had returned because he sounded so gracious there in the Barry Goldwater room of the Phoenix Hilton. Just last night.

It’s dark outside my window. and my lamp is placed sufficiently off to one side, so my reflection in the pane startles me (in that instant before I realize it’s me). In the warped glass of this old building, any man with short white hair and a sufficiently wide face is going to look like John McCain.

Adjusting my eyes to the view of Russian Hill, I see a few hundred windows. A great many of them are backlit by TVs. It’s still the newshour, so the shifting images are most likely Campbell Brown, Keith Olberman, and Rachel Maddow. (Not so likely are they Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, or Joseph Goebbels — this being San Francisco).

I’m worn out. I just wrote about being able to break this habit come Wednesday. But can I do it if, as I expect, Obama wins? Because then I’m going to want to bask in all kinds of old footage I couldn’t bear watching tonight. But I have to know how things turn out before I can look at another five seconds of Palin or McCain. Or even any of their SNL counterparts.

Tonight, the Republicans trotted out a new Jeremiah Wright commercial. Obama’s face was presented in profile as stills of O. with his pastor clicked by. I remember the words “Risky” and “Radical”. The spot was signed off by some patriotically named stooge committee. That’s the ruse. McCain promises not to go into Jeremiah Wright territory, knowing full well the RNC will.

I catch my reflection again and move the lamp just a few inches over so I don’t mistake myself for McCain again. Even for a nanosecond.

Among the hundred-and-fifty or so commercials I see repeatedly on cable news every day is one telling me to vote NO on Proposition 4. This is the “Parental Notification” measure championed by the Christian Right. I agree with the ad’s message, but the seaminess of the abortionist is overplayed. He might just as well be twirling a moustache. The whole look of the spot — it’s forced obviousness — suggests somebody on the NO committee was on the set, insisting that the director amp up each of its elements: “Bend a few of those venetian blinds. Make the “doctor’s” sneer sneerier. Give him a dirtier jacket. And tell him to slouch more.”

Tonight, to tear myself away from the polling news and Palin pranking, I thought I’d make better use of my HBO subscription (I normally turn it on only to watch Bill Maher’s “Real Time”). Anyhow, I tuned in just as the much praised “Eastern Promises” was beginning. My pocket review is that David Cronenberg should go back to filming avant-garde screenplays because crime stories require actual story-telling talent. I checked the Rotten Tomatoes website and discovered 89% of the reviewers disagree with me, but as usual, they are wrong.

As scene by corny scene unfolded, it began to dawn on me that it might have been Cronenberg, himself, who directed the “No on 4″ commercial. The same look. The same elbow-in-the-ribs demand to get it. And the jumping-off place for both the commercial and the movie is a pregnant teenager.

As in most disappointing movies there was a point where your heart sinks. The hour you have invested is yanked out and waved in your face like a share of GM stock. In “Eastern Promises” it’s the big fight scene. I should have known something was amiss when the bad guys saunter into a sauna the size of a supermarket. The head-knockings, stabbings, and gratuitous gymnastics play out for a quarter-hour until Viggo Mortensson, the hero, kills his foes. Except for Viggo’s nakedness and the wisps of steam, it was like any hoked up fight of any action genre. Good guy is a tenth of an inch from death when he flips the bad guy into a hammerlock. Bad guy places knee on adam’s apple of good guy, who is choking to death until good guy frees up thumb and gouges out bad guy’s eye. I think directors should probably get in a few fights before they try to stage one.

This isn’t to say I will give up on HBO any time soon. I am in danger of overdosing on pundits and polls. The cable news channels are like having a selection of whiskeys sitting out on the table: Hey Fred, try me. This time I’ll turn you loose. But it doesn’t happen. I pick up the remote but I don’t put it down until I pass out.

In six hours of viewing, which is typical for me these days, I see at least 90 minutes of political advertising. I find my lips moving along with the narrators, I know the ads so well.

If I can just get myself to watch something else. Even a Cronenberg movie. Or read a book. Yeah — maybe after Tuesday.

I didn’t think the name Condoleezza Rice would ever cross my lips again. Well, it hasn’t, but I didn’t think I’d ever type it again. Neither her name, nor that of her twin sister, Condoqueesha, who I’ve always enjoyed discussing.

There are quite a few others I may never mention again — Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Micheal Chertoff. And it’s not because I think they’re unmentionable, but I doubt any of them will do something worth mentioning again. Except die. Unfair as it may seem, I believe most of these people will rate obituaries.

But Condoleezza. I will forget her by stages. The first thing that will go will be spelling of her name, because it was the last thing I acquired. Single “l”, double “e”, double “z”. I will soon forget her Five Core Elements of Transformational Diplomacy. Next, I will forget that she was an administrator at Stanford. After that, that she was a pianist who once performed with cellsit Yoyo Ma. I will even forget she said, in regards to WMD, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

But I will never forget her slip of the tongue. She had just finished eating dinner with the president and his wife, and in the interview that followed, she said, “As I was telling my husb…” Condi suddenly stopped herself mid-word. Evidently, she realized she was not married.

So, she got everything she wanted in life except…well, I certainly don’t want to type that man’s name again.

It’s the Thursday before the election and all anybody can talk about is Obama. What’s worse is you have the power to change this.

Kick Sarah Palin off the ticket.

That would be so mavericky. And it would give you credibility as a human being.

Nobody — not you, not me, not the American public — likes Mitt Romney. But McCain/Romney would play better than what you’ve got. And he knows something about the economy. At least how to spell it.

And after you give Palin the news, while you’re still in the shitcanning mood, ask Joe the Plumber to go back into the drain he crawled out of.

Do these two things and the top of every news broadcast from here on out will be: “The McCain campaign…”

Four years ago I worked a phone bank for John Kerry. We were calling people in a part of Colorado (I’m blocking on the area code) who were among the most rabid of the Republican right. The rude-response quotient was 90% +. I made a promise never to be nasty to a telemarketer again. It’s a promise I think I’ve kept. Other than maintaining a liberal blog, I haven’t done any campaign work since. And I feel a bit guilty.

I just learned of two friends — one a lawyer, the other a carpenter — who are heading to Ohio for the last few days of the election season. To work for Obama and to act as a watchful presence at the polls. When I think about the economic downturn, along with the need to stay on top of one’s own business prospects, the fact that ordinary guys are willing to travel at their own expense to make this a better country is nice. Really, really nice.

Do Republicans do anything like this? Not without some pretty significant economic incentive. In 2004, many who worked at connected businesses or law firms, donated $2,300. But they did so only because their bosses plainly spelled out the alternative — forget about ever getting out of a cubicle and into an office with a door. (These donors were called Buckeroos or Rangers or some such bullshit) The idea of the average person taking a thousand bucks out of his or her personal account to stump for McCain — with no expectation of a country music contract or even a photo-op — is ridiculous.

I probably know plenty of other people doing this work. Maybe because they’re busy doing the work, they haven’t had time to tell me about it.

I hope I hear from them after the election. They’ve sure earned bragging rights.

Karl Sola, a 6′ 4″ white man wearing a McCain/Palin hat, said he was approached by a teenage black girl outside a Burger King and asked if he had the time. In a sworn statement, he said, “I told her it was 12:14. I don’t why I said it — I didn’t look at my watch, or anything — I just blurted it out. I guess I wanted to be nice.”

Onlookers said the girl was wearing a large wristwatch. “She could easily have looked at her watch,” said an elderly woman. Her husband chimed in, “Hell, there’s a big old clock on the damn courthouse clock-tower. All she gotta do is just look.” Numerous others who witnessed the scene pointed out that in Ohio all one has to do on a clear day at this time of year is look at the shadows and you’ll get a pretty good idea of the time. However nobody had actually heard Mr. Sola tell the girl the time.

Eventually, Mr. Sola admitted he did not volunteer the time to the girl at all. It was not, he insisted, because she was black, but because she was wearing an Obama T-shirt. Immediately after the girl walked away he was disturbed by his unwillingness to give her the simple time of day, but he didn’t want to call out after her because the people nearby, presumably McCain/Palin supporters like himself, would have judged him harshly. So he said nothing. “The whole 12:14 thing. It was just a detail I made up because details always seem to make things sound true.”

“I wish the world wasn’t like this,” he added.