It's a minute to midnight. Americans, do you know where your economy is?

The first two paragraphs from this Associated Press story Saturday night would have Alfred Hitchcock reaching for the night light and his wubbie:

President Bush and financial leaders from nations rich and poor pledged Saturday to intensify their efforts to unblock a frozen financial system before it does more damage to an increasingly shaky global economy.

While there were no concrete offers of new moves, Bush vowed anew that his administration was doing everything possible to halt the biggest market disruptions since the Great Depression. The finance ministers spoke in unusually somber terms about the need for action.

DO YOU understand what was said here?

Finance ministers of nations worldwide speak in "unusually somber terms" about the need to do something to stop the global financial meltdown. Nevertheless, no one has committed to do anything along those lines, at least in any concerted manner.

I think those in charge of the global credit markets and stock traders around the world understand what has -- or more accurately, hasn't -- gone down during the Washington meetings. And I think we can guess what might happen Monday morning if the finance ministers don't do something big by Sunday night.

Don't know about you, but I'm getting damned nervous.

My parents both grew up dirt poor during the Great Depression. I've heard all the stories. I know the indignities they suffered seven decades ago. I know the opportunities lost forever to those children long ago -- the dysfunction bred and the repercussions still rippling through myriad lives after all these years.

I don't want to go there. America doesn't want to go there . . . again.

Bush started the day shortly after daybreak with a Rose Garden appearance with finance ministers from the world's richest countries and later made an unexpected evening visit to the headquarters of the 185-nation International Monetary Fund a few blocks from the White House.

With Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he participated for about 25 minutes in a discussion with the Group of 20, which includes rich countries and major developing nations such as China, Brazil and India.

Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said that the president told the finance ministers that he was doing all he could to involve other countries in efforts to resolve the crisis. According to White House spokesman Tony Fratto, Bush acknowledged the problems began in the U.S., with a meltdown of the market for subprime mortgages in the summer of 2007. The president felt it was important to take the rare step of coming to such a meeting because the problems were spreading globally.

"It doesn't matter if you're a rich country or a poor country, a developed country or a developing country—we're all in this together," Bush said, according to Fratto. "We take this seriously, and we want to work with you."

In response, the G-20 countries issued a joint statement in which the finance officials pledged to work together "to overcome the financial turmoil and to deepen cooperation to improve the regulation, supervision and the overall functioning of the world's financial markets."

The financial turmoil also dominated discussions at weekend's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. The IMF strongly endorsed a five-point plan put together a day earlier by the so-called Group of Seven wealthy powers, in which the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada jointly pledged to use all means possible to prevent major financial institutions from failing and to keep pumping money into the banking system to unfreeze lending and get credit—the lifeblood of the economy—flowing again.

"The depth and systemic nature of the crisis call for exceptional vigilance, coordination and readiness to take bold action," the IMF said in its joint statement. That statement, in an unusual move, repeated verbatim all of the commitments made in the G-7 statement that had been released on Friday.

IT SEEMS to me -- with government ministers and private-sector economists all stresing the need for urgent, global action to stave off le deluge -- all world powers can muster are piecemeal patches and pretty words. How will that save us from the financial apocalyse predicted by the head of the IMF on Saturday? From MSNBC:

The International Monetary Fund warned Saturday that debt-ridden banks were pushing the global financial system to the brink of meltdown and wealthy nations had so far failed to restore confidence.

The IMF's policy setting panel said the economic crisis is so deep and widespread that it will require a willingness to take bold action.

The Group of 20 nations, which includes the world's wealthiest nations and the largest developing countries such as China, Brazil and India, issued a joint statement late Saturday night stressing their resolve to work together to overcome the current financial turmoil.

"Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown," IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

The IMF endorsed a plan of action adopted Friday by the G-7 economic powers to protect the financial system and get credit flowing again.

Bush huddled with economic chiefs from the G-7 — Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — and officials from the IMF and World Bank, and said top industrial nations grasped the gravity of the crisis and would work together to solve it.

"In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come through it together," Bush said. "There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned their energies against each other or sought to wall themselves off from the world. This time is different."

"I'm confident that the world's major economies can overcome the challenges we face," Bush said, adding that Washington was working as fast as possible to implement a $700 billion financial bailout package approved a week ago.

Yet there was no concrete offer of new moves when Bush spoke on a Rose Garden stage just after daybreak, flanked by representatives from nearly a dozen nations and international organizations.

EVERYBODY HAS a plan. What we need is implementation. No implementation, no chance of a solution.

And no solution leads us to a place we really don't want to go.

At least that's what the experts who forecast our present predicament say. Like this one:

Nouriel Roubini, the professor who two years ago predicted the financial crisis, said world financial officials should orchestrate interest-rate cuts of at least 1.5 percentage points to help avert a depression.

A temporary guarantee of all bank deposits, unlimited liquidity for solvent financial institutions and fiscal-stimulus measures are also needed, the New York University professor of economics said in a commentary e-mailed today to Roubini Global Economics subscribers.

"It will take a significant change in leadership of economic policy and very radical, coordinated policy actions among all advanced and emerging-market economies to avoid this economic and financial disaster," said Roubini, 50. From late 2006, he highlighted the dangers flowing from a likely U.S. housing crisis.

The economist urged immediate action as officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Group of Seven nations meet in Washington this weekend. Stocks tumbled around the world today as the yearlong credit crisis deepened, sending Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average to its worst weekly drop in history. The MSCI World Index was set for its biggest weekly decline since records began in 1970.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 9,000 for the first time since 2003 yesterday. More than $4 trillion has been erased from global equities this week.

"At this stage the risk of an imminent stock-market crash -- like the one-day collapse of 20 percent plus in U.S. stock prices in 1987 cannot be ruled out," said Roubini. "The financial system is breaking down, panic and lack of confidence in any counterparty is sharply rising and investors have totally lost faith in the ability of policy authorities to control the meltdown."

AT LEAST that's what the Bloomberg News story said Friday. As for what people will say today, who knows?

All I know is it doesn't look good from here, as I sit in the studio typing this. You have to wonder . . . and I do.

What particularly worries me is that, after four decades-plus of cultural chaos and familial breakdown, our society is in a worse position to deal with an economic collapse that it was in the 1930s -- and it was a close call even then. We just have no idea what would happen now, and I'd just as soon not tempt fate, if you don't mind.

I'D REALLY just as soon not find out what happens if the economy implodes just as GOP presidential nominee John McCain has unleashed the right's angry demons against Democrat Barack Obama . . . and everybody else who happens to get in the way.

And it's not like the "nutroots" left is any better. Or any less angry. Just different.

I don't want to find out what happens if our financial system -- and, soon after, our entire economy -- falls apart at the same time as we do.

Not an Obama voter

By all that is holy and good, it is really important that Sarah Palin be kept out of the Gret Stet of Louisiana.

What? Oh, crap.

WELL, IN THAT CASE, be warned that this, as reported in the Monroe News-Star is the kind of baseline whackjobbery she'll have to work with:

A 75-year-old man was arrested today for threatening to bring his shotgun to the Registrar of Voters office in downtown Monroe.

According to the report, Wade Marshall Williams of Monroe used profanity and racial slurs and said he needed to vote in the upcoming presidential election to “keep the n***** out of office.”

Williams, of 266 Lake Passman, then reportedly said he wanted his card before he came to the building with his “shotgun and emptied it.”

Ouachita Sheriff deputies received complaints that Williams had threatened the office over the telephone after he was informed he would receive his voter registration card in two weeks, but could still vote by showing picture identification.

Williams reportedly told the office he recently moved back to the area but grew up in Ouachita Parish and attended Ouachita Parish High School.

Christa Medaries with the registrar’s office said Williams may have been drinking. He was booked on a charge of terrorizing.

ACCORDING TO The Smoking Gun, Williams did nothing to exonerate himself when the long arm of the law reached out to his address:

En route to the jail, he "continued his 'tirade' about n****** and also stated that he had a shotgun, but had it hidden at his residence," reported Lt. Michael Judd.

AMERICA'S ORIGINAL SIN: It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Kool-Aid v. Kool-Aid

The Catholic Kool-Aid drinkers for the Party of Mammon, Greed and War have scored a great triumph, repudiating and purging from the Franciscan University of Steubenville a Catholic Kool-Aid drinker for the Party of Abortion.

IN REVIEWING this report from LifeNews.com, Jesus must be so proud of the Catholic Church in America:

A pro-life former law professor Nicholas Cafardi, the former dean of the Duquesne University Law School, has quit his position on the board of trustees for Franciscan University of Steubenville. Cafardi's decision comes after he received criticism for endorsing pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Cafardi recently issued an endorsement for Obama and claimed the pro-life movement is dead -- drawing a strong rebuke from pro-life advocates.

Franciscan University issued a statement saying Cafardi did not represent the views of the college, but it appears Cafardi has resigned on his own without pressure from university officials.

Catholic writer Deal Hudson, who has been following the controversy, tells LifeNews.com about the latest events.

"Dr. Terrence Henry, president of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, has just told me that he received a letter of resignation yesterday from [Cafardi]," he said.

"Fr. Henry stressed that Dr. Cafardi's resignation from the board of Franciscan University was voluntary and had in no way been requested by the University," Hudson added. "Henry added that he was 'grateful' for Cafardi's letter."

"Cafardi's continued presence on the Franciscan University board became an issue several weeks ago when he publicly endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president," Hudson said.

Cafardi became the second prominent Catholic attorney to endorse Obama, following Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine University -- who has been the subject of significant criticism from pro-life advocates.

Cafardi based his endorsement on two points - claiming the pro-life movement has "permanently" lost the abortion battle and saying voting for Obama can be justified on other political issues.

But Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, disagreed.

"If you think the battle against abortion has been lost permanently, then you are asserting that the battle for America and civilization itself have been lost," Pavone says. "So don't trouble yourself one way or another about this election."

CAFARDI IS CORRECT when he says pro-lifers have utterly lost the abortion battle in this country. Pro-lifers have lost because -- either unable or unwilling to do the dirty work of impacting the culture for the cause of life -- they put all of their eggs (and cultural capital) in the Republicans' basket.

And 30 years later, abortion has been eliminated to the point where it's a wonder doctors aren't shooting healthy, full-term babies as they pop out of the womb. As a matter of fact, the "culture of life" has so triumphed -- thanks to the loving and savvy action of Catholic pro-lifers all over the United States -- that parents and guardians in Nebraska now are using a recently-enacted "safe haven" law to dump their unruly teen-agers in hospital emergency rooms.

That's not necessarily reason to vote for Obama, but it is reason not to judge a man, or his conscience, because his erstwhile compatriots' utter ineffectiveness in championing life has led him to a radically different political conclusion.

NOW, WHAT ABOUT John McCain's support for war, war and more war, more tax cuts for the rich and embryonic stem-cell research? Is anybody being forced off the Steubenville board for endorsing a candidate who supports, in order, Mass Death, Avarice and Homicide?

And what about supporting a candidate who sends out his "Joe Six-Pack" running mate, Sarah Palin, to demonize the opposition and work crowds up into this kind of hateful, racist frenzy, as noted by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post?

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

(snip)

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

"See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops," she said.

EXCOMMUNICATE the politically incorrect board member, and turn a blind eye to folks who'd kill Obama and sling racial slurs at TV sound men. Turn a blind eye toward those who organize the lynch mob, egg on the devil within then remain silent as the hate approaches critical mass.

Catholics should remember one thing from history: You might think it's better to hitch your wagon to Generalissimo Francisco Franco to defeat the lefties, but that choice comes at a price. And with its own set of pathologies.

The devil always gets his due.

Your daily p0rn from Omaha

Slouching into that good night

We're teetering on the edge of some bad juju here in America, and the woman above could be vice-president.

If that weren't depressing enough. . . .

Don't worry, be happy.

Remain calm, all is well. Yes, we can!

"We're gonna spread happiness! We're gonna spread freedom! Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna lead 'em."

Or so we have been informed by a choir of brainwashed children singing hosannas to the Man Who Would Be Dear Leader.

FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I can't figure out why the Europeans don't think much of us anymore. Really, where did this Der Spiegel opinion piece come from?

There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker's tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience's reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN.

The American president has always had enemies in these hallways and offices at the UN building on First Avenue in Manhattan. The Iranians and Syrians despise the eternal American-Israeli coalition, while many others are tired of Bush's Americans telling the world about the blessings of deregulated markets and establishing rules "that only apply to others," says the diplomat from Berlin.

But the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

"Well," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva began, standing outside the General Assembly Hall. Then he looked out the window and said: "He decided to talk about terrorism, but the issue that has the world concerned is the economic crisis." Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president of Argentina, said that the schoolmasters from Washington had dubbed the 1994 Mexican crisis the "tequila effect" and Brazil's 1999 crisis the "Caipirinha effect."

Are we now experiencing the "whiskey effect?" But President Kirchner was gracious and, with a smile, called it the "jazz effect."

Is it only President George W. Bush, the lame duck president, whom the rest of the world is no longer taking seriously, or are the remaining 191 UN member states already setting their sights on the United States, the giant brought to its knees? UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to a "new reality" and "new centers of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world." Are they surprised, in these new centers, at the fall of America, of the system of the Western-style market economy?

OH, JUST WAIT. It gets better:

This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.

A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.

Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

Gone are the days when the US could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else -- without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.

With its rule of three of cheap money, free markets and double-digit profit margins, American turbo-capitalism has set economic standards worldwide for the past quarter century. Now it is proving to be nothing but a giant snowball system, upsetting the US's global political status as it comes crashing down. Every bank that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is currently forced to bail out with American government funds damages America's reputation around the world.

Of course, it is not solely the result of undesirable economic developments that the United States is in the process of forfeiting its unique position in the world and that the world is moving toward what Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, calls a "post-American age." Washington has also lost much of its political ability to impose its will on other countries.

The failed leadership of President Bush, whose departure most of his counterparts from other countries are now looking forward to more and more openly, is not solely to blame. Nor are his two risky wars: the one in Iraq, which he launched frivolously in the vain hope of converting the entire region to the American way of life, and the other in Afghanistan, in which Bush now risks the world's most powerful defense alliance, NATO, suffering its first defeat.

But it's hard to forget how this president's mentors celebrated the power to shape world affairs the United States acquired in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the East-West conflict. There was talk of a "unipolar moment," of "America's moment," even of an "end of history," now that all other countries apparently had no other choice but to become smaller versions of America: liberal, democratic and buoyed by an unshakeable confidence in the free market economy.

The Bush administration wanted to cement forever this unique moment in history, in which the United States was undoubtedly the strongest power on earth. It wanted to use it to clean house in chronic crisis zones around the world, especially the Middle East. Far from relying on the classic, cumbersome and often unsuccessful tools of multilateral diplomacy, the Bush warriors were always quick to threaten military intervention -- just as quick as they were to make good on this threat.

The strategists of this immoderately self-confident administration formulated these principles in the "Bush doctrine" and claimed, for themselves and their actions, the right to "preemptive" military intervention -- with little concern for the rules of alliances or international organizations.

The superpower even claimed privileges over its allies, even offending some of its best friends during Bush's first term. Bush withdrew the American signature from a treaty to establish the International Criminal Court, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change and he withdrew from an agreement with the Russians to limit the number of missile defense systems.

Washington sought to divide the world into good and evil -- and did so as it saw fit.

Now, in the wake of the crash on Wall Street, the debate in the UN reveals that the long-humiliated have lost their fear of the giant in world politics. Even a political dwarf like Bolivian President Evo Morales is now talking big. "There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity," Morales told the UN General Assembly.

The financial crisis has uncovered the world power's true weakness. The more the highly indebted United States has to spend to stabilize its own economic system, the more trouble it has performing its self-imposed duties as the world's policeman.
The new US president will only have been in office for a short time when a document titled "Global Trends 2025" appears on his desk. The report is being prepared by analysts at the National Intelligence Council. Its chairman, Thomas Fingar, has already released a preview, and reading it will not exactly be enjoyable for proud American. "Although the United States will remain the most important power, American dominance will be sharply reduced," says Fingar.

According to the preview of the report, the erosion of American supremacy will "accelerate in the areas of politics and economics, and possibly culture."

The century that just began is unlikely to be declared the American century again. Instead, "Asia will shape the fate of the world, with or without the United States," says Parag Khanna, a young Indian-American political scientist whose book "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order" has attracted a great deal of attention in the United States.

There is much to be said for Khanna's assertion. Beijing is already funding a large share of the gigantic American trade deficit, while at the same time selling many consumer goods to the United States. In other words, it benefits from the US's weakness in two ways. And politically speaking, the newly self-confident Chinese will no longer allow themselves to be domineered by the West. Reacting to worldwide criticism of political oppression in Tibet, the Chinese encouraged their nationalist youth to assault Western institutions and refused to allow themselves to be lectured on human rights.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has acknowledged that the "world's largest debtor nation" cannot simultaneously shape the course of the world. The challenges America faces have multiplied, especially in recent times.

WELL, HOW DO YOU like that, America? You really must read the whole thing -- particularly since it's all true.

And particularly since it's all our own damned fault.

Sometime during the last few decades, we Americans ceased to be a serious people. The past eight years, particularly, have exposed a country unserious about public and private morality, unserious about effective self-governance and seriously incapable of cultural . . . seriousness.

But we did get the world to buy into a serious Ponzi scheme. We should be so proud.

We've made a grand hash of things, and now we stand ready to elect as our leaders either an unstable McCrank and his comely-but-ditzy sidekick or the Dalai Obama and his gaffe-prone lesser incarnation.

ONCE, the United States was a country of great products and audacious feats. That time is past.

It's now last call for the American Century as a nation slips off the barstool -- a little hazy, a little discomfitedly buzzed -- and prepares to slouch off gentle into that good night.

Don't eat (or drink) while watching this

A drinking game for Mormons

Here's a drinking game that our Mormon (and strict Southern Baptist) brothers and sisters can participate in with a clean -- and sober -- conscience.

Here's what you do: Download Sarah Palin's interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric from the CBS News website. Then, procure a fifth of Seagram's, Early Times, Jack Black, Stoli . . . or, hell, just mix up a big pitcher of "jungle juice" (Everclear and Kool-Aid).

NOW, ALL YOU NEED to do is gather around the laptop, play the interview and take a drink every time Palin makes a lick of sense.

If someone insists on taking pictures to upload to his or her Facebook page, I guarantee that no one will be worried about his pastor -- or any potential employer -- stumbling across them on the Internets.

Here's another Palinapalooza sample from the CBS Evening News:

Katie Couric: Why is it much more challenging there? Can you explain that?

Sarah Palin: The logistics that we are already suggesting here, not having enough troops in the area right now. The… things like the terrain even in Afghanistan and that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, you know, we believe that-- Bin Laden is-- is hiding out right now and… and is still such a leader of this terrorist movement. There… there are many more challenges there. So, again, I believe that… a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq. And as I say, Katie, that we cannot afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq. That's not gonna get us any better off in Afghanistan either. And as our leaders are telling us in our military, we do need to ramp it up in Afghanistan, counting on our friends and allies to assist with us there because these terrorists who hate America, they hate what we stand for with the… the freedoms, the democracy, the… the women's rights, the tolerance, they hate what it is that we represent and our allies, too, and our friends, what they represent. If we were… were to allow a stronghold to be captured by these terrorists then the world is in even greater peril than it is today. We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan.

SEE, NOT A THING in there that would cause Demon Alcohol to pass through pious lips.

McCain-Tambo '08

My God, the Republicans nominated Shelly Tambo for vice-president!

Not only that, when the second fiddle of the McCain-Tambo '08 ticket goes before the TV cameras without a script in front of her, it's tough to tell Tambo's real interviews from Tambo impersonators' gag interviews. It can get right confusing.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. If the GOP and Sen. John McCain wanted to recruit a No. 2 from the ranks of Alaska moose-shooters, why not go for Maggie O'Connell? Or even Maurice Minnifield?

Honestly, I thought it was bad enough when, in her first TV interview, Tambo said she had foreign-policy experience because the Brick served both Stolichnaya AND Absolut. But this latest interview with CBS Evening News anchorwoman Katie Couric is just too much.

I think I'd need to polish off at least one bottle of Stoli -- maybe two -- before anything she said would start to make any sense to me.

THEN AGAIN, after a bottle or two of fine vodka, I wouldn't much care. Which would pretty much put me on a par with McCain and the Republican Party leadership, now, wouldn't it?

Fair is fair. But society isn't.

Rod Dreher over at Crunchy Con posts the following points about "white privilege" sent in by a reader of his. I'm ashamed to say that, in reading the post, I was taken aback that I hadn't even considered some of it before.

TO SHOWCASE just one example, what about Bristol Palin getting knocked up by her "f***in redneck" boyfriend, and how, if the young couple were black, we'd be clucking about "social mayhem" and the problem of black illegitimacy. Which we would.

Is it a problem that we don't see preggers Bristol and her ruffian baby daddy as some sort of baby-mama ho and her white-trash Tupac? Do the daughters of GOP vice-presidential candidates have a higher class of unplanned, unwed pregnancy?

Or is it a problem that we've become conditioned to see just about every unwed black mother and her baby daddy as just that, almost without exception?

MAYBE THE PROBLEM is both. That we're too quick to overlook the forces of social disruption lying at the heart of every white Romeo and Juliet and too quick to condemn African-American kids when they do the same damned thing.

No difference in the offense. Big difference in white society's perception. And that's flat-out wrong.

Not to mention racist.

Anyway, here's part of what Crunchy Con posted. Go read the rest . . . and cringe as you do:

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a "f**kin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their f**kin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot s**t" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

Eye-rack. Track. Hell-bent. Exactly, Charlie.

Tina Fey is Sarah Palin

Uncanny. I don't know whether I've ever seen a more dead-on parody of someone as Tina Fey's of GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Sanity's not all it's quacked up to be

The New York Times went to Alaska and discovered -- surprise! -- the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee is just another power-hungry, crony-appointing, paranoid, authoritarian clone of the guy we say we desperately want out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Imagine.

IT'S A PITY the Daily Kossack "nutroots" pretty much inoculated Gov. Sarah Palin -- at least among the socially conservative and the fair-minded -- against the political consequences of her own shenanigans by letting their visceral hatred of motherhood, Christianity and disabled infants get the better of them.

After such an eruption of Naziesque "final solution" invective -- spleen vented at the image of a "hockey mom," her Down syndrome baby and her preggers teen daughter -- the American people might feel sorry enough for Palin to place her a heartbeat away from the presidency. And John McCain in it.

That would be a bad thing. Not that, alternatively, electing Barack Obama would be a good thing, mind you.

But that's not important now.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that Ruthie the Duck Girl is dead at 74. It says it right here in New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper:

Ruthie the Duck Girl, a French Quarter eccentric who zoomed from bar to bar on roller skates, often wearing a ratty fur coat and long skirt and trailed by a duck or two, died Sept. 6 at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. She was 74.

Ruthie, whose real name was Ruth Grace Moulon, had been suffering from cancer of the mouth and lungs when the residents of her Uptown New Orleans nursing home were evacuated to Baton Rouge as Hurricane Gustav approached, said Carol Cunningham, a close friend who watched over her for nearly 40 years.

"I've always looked at Ruthie like a little bird with a broken wing, " Cunningham said. "She was always so dear to me."

Miss Moulon, a lifelong New Orleanian, became a French Quarter fixture, achieving legendary status in a city that treasures people who live outside the mainstream. Along the way, she acquired a coterie of people like Cunningham who found places for her to live, paid her bills and made sure she got home at night.

A tiny woman with a constant grin, she frequently sported a bridal gown and veil on her forays because, people said, she considered herself engaged to Gary Moody, whom she met in New Orleans in 1963 when he was a sailor.

Moody showed up at a 2001 birthday party for Miss Moulon at Mid-City Lanes Rock 'N Bowl, but the two never got to the altar. According to a Times-Picayune interview that year, Miss Moulon had a stock reply whenever anyone asked if there might be a wedding in her future: "I got engaged; that's enough!"

In 1999, Rick Delaup made her the subject of a documentary, "Ruthie the Duck Girl."

Miss Moulon's daily routine consisted of roaming from one watering hole to another, mooching drinks and cigarettes. She could be sweet one minute and unleash a torrent of profanity the next.

Although people deemed Miss Moulon's behavior unconventional even by French Quarter standards, no one ever diagnosed her mental condition because she refused to see a doctor, David Cuthbert wrote in The Times-Picayune in 2001.

"She's not out of touch with reality; she's just not interested, " photographer David Richmond told The Times-Picayune.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that we are a nation that looks at Ruthie the Duck Girl and sees something just short of humanity.

What's important is that we are a nation whose elites look at little Trig Palin, the candidate's son with one too many chromosomes, and condemn his mother for bringing him into the world.

What's important is that a culture can make short work of the gap between aborting little Trig Palin and devising a "final solution" for society's factory rejects, who zip around the Vieux Carré on roller skates -- ducks close behind -- mooching drinks and bumming smokes.

What's important is that I can see either McCain-Palin or Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, slapping on the roller skates and zipping down the Boulevard of Broken Schemes (and screams).

What's important is that, right now, Americans see a city like New Orleans -- broken and flood-damaged and, quite frankly, a little nuts -- and wonder why we just didn't remove the feeding tube. Remove all life support from the one place in America that could see Ruthie the Duck Girl as a cause for celebration, not consternation.

I particularly liked this comment on the Times-Picayune obit:

Posted by vaticanlokey on 09/13/08 at 7:07AM

Years ago, when I was still working at Poppy's Grill (and the Rouses in the Quarter was still the A&P), I recall meeting Ruthie on Rue Royale with her duck in tow. For some reason, she wasn't wearing her skates that day. We talked a bit, I gave her a few cigarettes (I was still smoking back then) and she went to go inside the A&P, telling the duck to stay put. While inside, the duck wandered out into the street and got hit by a car and killed. Someone rushed into the A&P to get Ruthie. She walked out with this indescribable look on her face, wandered out into the middle of Rue St. Peter to look at the carnage, and literally yelled at the dead duck

"I TOLD you to stay put, duck!" and without another word, wandered down to Rue Bourbon and disappeared.

I have never forgotten that day, and I will never forget Ruthie the Duck Lady. She is one of the many reasons I proudly call New Orleans home.

Au revoir, Ruthie, and give the duck my best!

WELL . . . OK. This one, too:

Posted by NOLevee on 09/13/08 at 10:05AM

Once when tending bar at Lord VJ's (now Ryan's) Bar Ruthie in came Ruthie with her duck, she climbed up on the bar-stool placed the duck on the bar and in her duck-like sounding voice said: "Give me a rum n' coke, give my duck one too."

Taken a bit back I said, "What?"

In which her sardonic side expounded, "What? Are you deaf? I said give me a rum & coke and make one for my duck too."

So I did. And the both of them preceded to enjoy their drinks.

She was definitely one of a kind.

WHEN I LOOK at what we Americans most value today -- and especially when I look at the fine electoral mess we've gotten ourselves into -- it occurs to me that Ruthie Moulon, the Duck Girl of the Vieux Carré, wasn't the nutty one.

Palins put bee in Buzz's bonnet

Far be it from me to promote substance abuse -- particularly that of an illegal nature -- but this column on Bayou Buzz.com really is best read stoned.

For the first time ever, the 2008 Republican Convention celebrated unwed teenage motherhood by seating Sarah Palin's reportedly 5-months' pregnant daughter with her teenage lover, proudly in the VIP row. As the swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand, Alaska's governor and the prospective mother's mother sternly lectured on family values and accused "the media" of persecuting her family.

Has the Republican Party gone mad?

No. But perhaps it's watched "The Da Vinci Code" too many times.

Are the Republicans returning to the cult of the goddess?

Maybe. Anything to win the election, right?

The Republican wanna-be First and Second Families made a fascinating tableau, with fertility being unabashedly the message. Sarah wore a tight choker of fat pearls, the luminous gift of oysters, enhancers of libido and mimics of male anatomy. Her plain, silvery tunic fit like Joan of Arc's breastplate and set her apart as the GOP's new high priestess. Cindy McCain, swathed in pearls, wore a bright green outfit—highlighting the Republicans' odd claim to now be champions of global warming. And green is also the color of fertility, of shimmering, budding springtime woods, of leafy glens and grassy fields where fertility rites took place until authoritarian Christianity wiped it out. With her tightly-pinched face and platinum hair hanging loose, her older children gathered around her, Cindy stood for fertility well-preserved.

But the frisky Palins are fertility real and present. Bristol showed us her tummy, her breasts, her pregnant fulsomeness. Sarah's husband, whom she calls "The First Dude," a crow's caw of sexual prowess and desirability, exhibited his softer side by cuddling the infant rumored to actually be his grandchild (by the voluptuous Bristol and her lover), although Sarah claims to be the mother.

If there weren't tricolor flags and people wearing elephant hats, one might think we were at Stonehenge.

How will bright green outfits, bouncy boobies, big bellies, sleeping babies, beehive hairdos, and fecund boyfriends help McCain win the presidency?

Because sex sells; sex wins votes; sex seals the deal.

I'M REALLY AT A LOSS what to say about this -- at least at a loss for things to say that don't begin with "Holy" and end a couple of expletives later.

C'mon, is this s*** for real?

"(T)he swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand"?

What, couldn't Sarah Whalen, The Bayou Buzz's hot-and-bothered columnist, work in the phrase "turgid member" while she was at it?

I don't know exactly what has so stung the Bayou Buzz "editors" -- and I think I'll keep "editors" in quotes from now on in relation to this amateurish and weird website -- that they would post Whalen's ode to whack, but you have to wonder whether it has been covered editorially by Al Goldstein at some point.

One thing I do know for sure after reading this: Sigmund Freud died 69 years too soon.

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark Shea thinks the Buzz piece is another example of the "nutroot" liberal freak-out over the existential threat Sarah Palin's example poses to Abortion, Inc. The piece is a freak-out, that's for damn certain, but it's not of the "nutroot," Daily Kos variety.

NO, THIS IS a down-home, whacked-out, "there's no eccentric like a Louisiana eccentric" freak-out. This is the crazy aunt you might find in Anne Rice's attic.

This is Uncle Fester at Pat O'Brien's after his third hurricane.

From what can be gathered online, Sarah Whalen "is an expert in Islamic Law and a photojournalist specializing in U.S. foreign policy issues." At some point, she apparently taught at Loyola University in New Orleans. And she has been a contributor to the Arab News and The Palestine Chronicle.

One who appears to have "gone native."

The bee in the bonnet of The Bayou Buzz isn't political commentary as spewed by Nutroot Nation. No, this is political commentary you rightly could expect from Hamas. Or the official Saudi press, as it were.

BEFORE THE INTERNET democratized the publishing universe, this Bayou Buzz screed is what you would find lying on a table at the student union. In all its mistyped, poorly photocopied glory.

It's also -- way down the bayou or way up in the piney woods -- the kind of "philosophical treatise" over which you might find some not-half-as-clever-as-he-thinks sort waxing rhapsodic. At least once he'd borrowed a dictionary to look up words such as "swarthy" and "fecund."

In other words, "Move along. There's nothing to see here."

Unless, of course, you happen to be a trained mental-health professional. Or maybe Jack Bauer.

Kulturekampfers für Obama

Translation:

"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."