Can the Dude Abide?

In her current op-ed column in the Times, Maureen Dowd points to the moment when Sarah Palin and the Tea Party got some traction in the health care debate with their ridiculous claims about “death panels.”

It never occurred to [Obama] that such wildness and gullibility would trump lofty rationality. (NYTimes.com)

That seems to be the problem with this election in a nutshell. Wildness and gullibility trumping rationality. Stupendously misleading claims trumping facts. False fears, fostered by Fox, trumping real needs and interests.

Footnote: Have you noticed that an anagram of Palin is plain? Unfortunately, she really isn’t plain in so many ways, not plain in all the wrong ways about all the wrong things. Equally unfortunate, “plain” no doubt seems like a good thing to much of her base.

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The BNP meltdown – Yay!

The BNP meltdown: “One of the arguments made on Pickled Politics and elsewhere was that while the BNP were great at exploiting people’s fears and casting themselves as insurgents, when it came to the pesky business of actual government they found now rather trickier. Now the electorate in Barking and Dagenham have demonstrated how they feel about the BNP’s record of governance on the local council by voting all twelve of them out. This capped a poor night for the party overall, which left them will only 19 councillors, down from 45.”

(via Pickled Politics.)

Captain Picard says, “Labour – Make It So.”

Can New Labour cling on?: “As the campaign hits warp factor 10, John Harris heads south to test the government’s record on three key issues: jobs, housing and equality…”

Watch the video of everyone’s favourite sexy bald captain tell you why you should vote Labour in the upcoming election (assuming you’re in Britain) at Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

(thanks to Ken Macleod at The Early Days of a Better Nation for pointing me at this)

The Debate

I’ve never seen such excitement around any presidential debate – it was really amazing. Most of the bars in my neighborhood had the debate showing on every TV – a number of them had organized official, or semi-official, debate-watching parties, and were generally standing room only. A local cafe set up TVs just for the event, and brought in entertainment (folk-singers) as well.