Pingpong balls, ladies and gentlemen.

[saltpoint]

Gather up as many as you can spare and mail them in a box to McCain's Senate office in Washington.

- - -

edited to clarify that I'm going for an emblem of McCain's absent parts, which MUST be absent for him to want to duck out of the debate with Obama.

Thanks to Moriah for the catch.

[SwampG8r]

1. mr moose? is that you?

[saltpoint]

3. Cue the violins, but I haven't seen an image of mr. Moose in a long

time.

Very nice of you to put that up there. Thanks.

[moriah]

2. But... but ... they played Ping-Pong in the Hanoi Hilton! He was a POW!

Don't you know that he has stated on numerous occasions his PTSD comes out watching ping-pong? He doesn't even watch tennis! He was forced to listen to his cruel guards play ping-pong all night!

You are so cruel, and you're going to make us lose the election, you unpatriotic ping-pong player, you.

[saltpoint]

4. O god, no, I didn't mean it in a Hanoi Hilton kind of way.

I meant to suggest ping pong balls as EMBLEMS of what McCain must be missing for threatening to skip the debate with Obama.

Damn. I should have been more clear.

[moriah]

5. So you refuse to deny you're a ping-pong player, eh?

I knew it.

[saltpoint]

6. I'm not. But my campaign manager is.

[moriah]

7. Well played. n/t :)

[saltpoint]

8. Hi, moriah. I edited my OP after you made that good

catch.

Thank you. I'm glad one of us is still awake.

[moriah]

9. "The inquisition, what a show...."

"I didn't even know them and they grabbed my by the stoghum and started playing ping pong with my balls!"

"Ooh, the agony! Ooh, the shame! To make my privates public for a game?"

[SwampG8r]

10. damn i was hoping you were

just going to drop ping pong balls on him
like mr moose

[moriah]

11. No, he's just insisting on making McCain cry...

... remembering listening to the guards play ping-pong with the other POWs. They never played with him.

He had to play with himself.

-------

(Okay, that's it, I'm going to hell. Goodnight.)

[saltpoint]

12. Hi, swampg8r.

Ok. I'm going to devote the rest of my posting life on DU to recipes, and that's it!

[SwampG8r]

13. no way dude

i totally got it
i just got it as an obscure mr moose reference
i miss that moose!
fuck sarah palin for killing mr moose and eating him!

[saltpoint]

14. Hey there. Good to run into you on the boards tonight.

For me, there's too long a list about Palin to even begin complaining about, but if I had to pick one thing that disturbs me even more than the Duh factor, it would be her aerial shooting of wolves.

I can't get past that one, no matter what.

[moriah]

15. Neither can I.

(I'm on the serious now, I had my fun, and boy was it fun. It's nice to have a good verbal sparring partner.)

If she actually was concerned about Native peoples and their ability to practice their subsistence lifestyle, she wouldn't hunt caribou. Caribou are semi-domesticated, or were, by Native Alaskan and First Nations peoples. (One of my good friends has married a Canadian with a strong First Nations lineage, and moved her all the way down to Arkansas. Poor girl. She's adjusting.)

And considering that one species of wolf in the areas put up for aerial hunting are nearly extinct, they only exist there...

[saltpoint]

16. Agree. You hit the nerve with the respect for Native Peoples and

Palin's lack of respect for them and their culture.

Psychologically the notion of capricious termination from on high is repellent to me. Certainly for endangered species, but in the larger picture, it's impossible for a lot of us to accept that she would consent to be so controlling.

That impulse to over-control is exactly what I don't want in public servants.

She's frightening.

[moriah]

17. She truly is.

She doesn't even acknowledge that it is her DAUGHTER'S choice to have her child, truly.

In the debates for governor, they were looking for someone to say "I would encourage her to choose life."

Not "I would choose life."

Just as she doesn't want kids to be able to have an abortion without their parents PERMISSION, we're not just talking notification like the law is here in Arkansas (48 hours notification, and if a girl has to run away from home to get it done, well, she can. She may face some very severe consequences when she gets home, but it doesn't matter -- she has the right to terminate her pregnancy, they just have to notify the parent of her choice 48 hours before the procedure, and doesn't have to do even that if a judge signs off.)

I'm a chick and the right to choose is very important to me. I truly admire and respect those who walk their talk about choice and life. My grandparents both walked their talks and decided that not having sex was the best form of birth control after my mother and her nearly died. (Grandpa wasn't religious, but he wasn't going to risk his wife for anything). A friend of mine from work and his wife decided to continue their pregnancy to term, despite the fact that their son had no kidneys and there was no way he would live outside of the womb -- not only would he have kidney failure, but he would have severe lung underdevelopment because amniotic fluid comes from urine and is essential to lung development. They held their son for the entirety of his life outside the womb, cradled and rocked him and made sure he knew he was loved even if he was in pain, and he still has the picture of him holding his tiny son in his hands on his desk at work.

I admire her for her choice to not terminate her own pregnancy when she learned her son had Down Syndrome. Of course, even though I don't think I could have made the choice my coworkers did, I think I would personally carry a child with Trisomy 21 to term, because most are able to function in the real world given some assistance and lots of love. I don't think I would have done what another couple on the Internet has done, which was continue their pregnancy with their daughter who had Triploidy. They say she's a miracle in that she's still alive at close to 5 years old as of the date the page was updated last, but she still cannot walk or truly talk, although they are trying to work with her on sign language and are good at telling what she likes and dislikes. She's one of the oldest children with triploidy I've heard of.

But damnit, all of those were CHOICES. You don't have the audacity to say that YOU would choose for your daughter.

[saltpoint]

18. You are correct, IMO. Palin wants to be at the control panel. She wants

to steer her own ship and everyone else's too.

Appreciate your family's narratives and as you say, these are choices and have to be respected. It's the right to choose that we would see disappear if McCain is elected, since almost immediately he would replace 2 Supreme Court Justices with right-wing kooks. Roe v Wade is imperiled if we lose, and after it goes, there's nothing stopping these people. They'll be in everybody's pants and burning library books by the score.

Obama is his wife's husband. I have a feeling he didn't choose her only because she is gorgeous. I think he fell equally in love with her mind and knew she would enrichen him. He as raised by strong women. Roe v. Wade is safe with Obama even as he's a stronger man for having married a strong woman.

Palin is part flirtatious beauty pageant contestant and part tomboy. It's interesting that no male governor would be likely to do photo ops of himself at a quilting bee, but it's culturally acceptable for Palin to be the outdoorsy gal. We have a long way to go before Sarah Palin becomes Diana the Huntress.

It may be that the same kind of mentality that assumes it has control over other people's reproductive freedoms also thinks gunning down quadropeds from the sky is acceptable sport.

Frightening.

[moriah]

19. She's not only a control freak, but egotistical too.

And has no idea of just how much that egotism has turned off the very voters that McCain was hoping would come to the ticket because of her.

And you are so right about Michelle Obama. I can't put into words how good of a choice Obama made when he decided he was going to have her as his wife, if she would give in enough to date him.

I was a Hillary supporter. Just as Obama is his wife's husband and his children's father, Bill -- for all of his numerous faults which we all know -- is his wife's husband and his daughter's father. People have criticized Hillary as the antithesis of feminism because she stayed with Bill. Well, by the time his infidelities came out during the presidential election, it was pretty obvious they had decided to bring no more children into their marriage.

But look at his relationship with his daughter. It's obvious that Bill and Hillary both love Chelsea dearly, and she has turned out to be a very strong, independent woman who has chosen her own path in life. She supports her parents and uses her celebrity status to help causes she cares about -- she may not donate time to charity like the Bush Twins, but she is not a person who enjoys the spotlight and yet she uses it to draw attention to gay rights, for example. As good of a politician as she would likely be, given her speaking ability and her genetic heritage, I personally do not think she will run for office. I knew people who went to school with her here in Arkansas. She is a private person and was very shy -- she is now a self-confident, self-assured, self-reliant woman despite all of the teasing done by even John McCain himself about her awkward metamorphosis from shy child to beautiful grown woman.

And look at Bill's support of his wife through this. Yes, he screwed things up for her, all puns intended. But he has been there by her side, even if she might have done better for herself to cast him aside.

I had already decided long before Hillary's speech to support Obama. I thought McCain would do what he thought was best for the country, before he picked this obvious pander to everyone imaginable who he needed to win this election -- a true example of NOT putting his country first, because putting a person as inexperienced as even Tim Kaine is a heartbeat away from the Presidency would be, and forgive me for quoting Karl Rove, "An intensely political choice, where he said "You know what, I'm really not first and foremost concerned with whether this person is capable of being President of the United States."

Sure, she is bringing the Conservative Christian women to the ticket in droves, and women do have an influence on their men. But she offended me personally, and I think every Hillary supporter as well, when she DARED to compare being chosen as a VP by one man to being chosen by 18 million people, men and women both, to be President, and dared to say she would do more than Hillary!

---------

And I spoke to a male Hillary supporter when I went to buy cigarettes and chocolate ice cream (yes, I do have my vices) after realizing I was being way too catty in my joking with you and decided to chill out -- the clerk at EZ-Mart -- who agreed with me. I told him the joke I made after prefixing it with "I am probably going to go to hell for this" and he said "It's okay, politicians are already going to hell." When I was checking out, he said "So, you are supporting Obama?" "Yeah. Well, I am truly a Hillary supporter ..."

"Me too! I wish we could get Bill back in office. Sure he screwed around and lied about it, but he got our country out of a deficit not once, but twice, and then Bush came along.... I don't know why she dropped out."

"No kidding! I think she did the right thing by continuing the primaries until all voices were heard, as it activated the Democratic party so much, but I'm glad she didn't resort to arguing about bureaucracy once they had been heard. As she said in her speech at the Convention, her values and Obama's values are really the same, and she thinks he will fight for them as hard as she would have. But then the very day after the Convention, McCain's VP choice said Hillary's accomplishments were nothing compared to being chosen to be VP!"

"You are so right, and I agree. I've been wavering but ..."

-----

Edit: I wonder why no one has joined our little party? Was it my bad joke? I'm really sorry...

[saltpoint]

20. No, it wasn't your joke -- it was my lack of focus in the OP.

It's late and things start to get blurry.... the blame's squarely on me.

I have felt for a while that Sen. Clinton would have made a better president than she made a candidate, and part of the problem is her choice of staff and the other part is that she was the one who chose them.

For me it's hard to talk about the Clintons before running into the wall of the media, who were generally complicit in attacking them. I mean not only the Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys but also the mainstream media who broke the Lewinsky story with barely concealed glee. I took Clinton's side against his assailants, and especially against Linda Tripp and her betrayal of her friend and her uncomfortable manipulation getting the blue dress packed up and sent to Kenneth Starr.

A friend of mine quoted a source I've long since lost about Linda Tripp, saying that her punishment in this whole story is that no one will ever trust her as a friend again. It's a suitable punishment.

And I hope Henry Hyde is roasting in the deepest rung of Hell as we speak!

Thinking out loud, I wonder if it might be a good move for a President Obama to name Hillary Clinton as the new head of FEMA. God knows that organization needs some serious rescue. She might be the one to do it and put a human face on government again. Raise it to a Cabinet-level position with full privileges and a handsome budget and name Sen. Clinton as its new head.

This has been a great exchange but I have to head to the bunker for some shuteye. Thank you for the heart & mind tonight. Much appreciated.

[Eyes_wide_ open]

21. Are you sure Moriah?

I may have heard that rumor but the way I heard it was that McCain was the inventor of Pong (the very first video game) :shrug:

[moriah]

22. Still, how dare they make fun of him for creating a game that so many people enjoy?

He was a POW, after all, cut the man some slack! Being a POW means he is supremely qualified for the Presidency, don't you know anything?

It's time for you to go sit and watch Fox News for another 4 hours -- I don't think you had enough conditioning before you were decanted?

"Streptococo-Gee to Banbury M..."

[Eyes_wide_ open]

23. I'm sorry ... I do understand .... however

having myself, been subjected to grievous torture (that oddly as it sounds ISN'T torture according to the powers that be, having been redefined as citizenship) for the last eight years by the King of Moranity it seems my reverence bone has suffered severe damage ... there is no hope of my recovery.

Being a firm believer though, in giving a man enough rope to hang himself, I think I've been very generous with the "slack" and have to admit to thoroughly enjoying the spectacle the asshole (albeit a heroic asshole who's service I appreciate) has made of his political suicide using that selfsame rope.

When the Obamanator is safely installed into the office of POTUS perhaps he will be able to call me back from the dark side of the force

...until then I think I'll just sit here and giggle