She stands before the powder keg with a match,,,

Chicago Sun-Times 10/08

Sarah’s Silent says much!

‘South Pacific” is a morality play for our time. Sarah Palin is the Ensign Nellie Forbush — an All-American girl as racist, this time a racist with her eye on the White House. She can stir up crowds to shout “Kill him!” at the mention of the presidential candidate of the other party a couple of weeks before the national election.

In the restaurant, before I walked over to the theater, all the conversations were about the election — New Yorkers speak loudly in their noisy city for fear they will not be heard. The common opinion was that they didn’t know enough about Barack Obama to make a decision about him — as if there were not two books about his life. That plea implies that they don’t know enough about him to accept his strange name or his skin color. It is, of course, impossible that they could ever know enough. He isn’t one of us.

It is all part of a plan cooked up by John McCain to turn the major issue in the election from the economy to the character of the Democratic candidate. At this stage of the contest, I don’t think “kitchen-sink strategy” (as in “we’ll throw the kitchen sink at him”) will change the outcome of the election. I don’t believe the polls that suggest a possible Obama landslide. Playing the race card explicitly merely guarantees what I have thought from the beginning — racism in this country precludes the possibility of a sepia-colored man becoming president. However, the last-ditch attack on him guarantees that McCain and Palin will be blamed as the candidates who were content to hear crowds calling for the death of Obama. Their silence regarding standing before people calling for the ‘death, lynching…of ”… and the calling Obama a “traitor”– tells much about them both internally.

Ensign Nellie Forbush (the incomparable Kelli O’Hara) finds redemption at the end of South Pacific. She turns to her true love and escapes the obligation to wait for the enchanted evening on which he might suddenly might appear across a crowded room. For Sarah Palin, such an easy escape hardly seems possible. How can she ever justify silence when she heard a cry for lynching? To provoke a racist– to allow the flame to be fanned– to be a part of what all America fears down deep because of the underbelly of our Nation, there are no words for her. No, none at all.

McCain increasingly acts like an angry, befuddled cancer survivor and treats his rival like a field n—– who is just barely human. He does not talk to him, will not shake hands with him, will not even look at him, walks behind him when he is speaking to distract the audience. Obama’s languid, legs-crossed security on the bar stool must infuriate McCain all the more. Who does he think he is? He has no right to run for president and McCain does. Has not he served his country all his life? Has not he traveled the whole world? Has not he been involved in every major event of the last four decades? Does he not know everyone who is worth knowing? And what does his rival have to offer besides intolerable arrogance? Black skin and glib language? Is not Obama the one who is playing the race card? Therefore he must be exposed as what he is — a pushy fellow with a glib tongue who has no right to challenge a great American like John McCain.

McCain has little time left. He has been been cheated in other elections. Troubled and distracted, he has forgotten his strong words about honor. When one is faced with a shallow man who is running on the basis of his skin color, one can hardly worry about personal honor.

Now the furies are gathering.

The Stoned Age

Hey Ma,

I told you it started long before me.

Stone Age man took drugs, say scientists

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones

It has long been suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use, but there has been a lack of proof to support the theory.

Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes.

Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough on the Caribbean island of Carriacou.

They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands.

While the use of such paraphernalia for inhaling drugs is well-known, the age of the bowls has thrown new light on how long humans have been taking drugs.

Scientists believe that the drug being used was cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the beans of a mimosa species. Drugs such as cannabis were not found in the Caribbean then.

Opiates can be obtained from species such as poppies, while fungi, which was widespread, may also have been used.

Archeologists have suggested that humans were extracting mind-expanding drugs from mescal beans and peyote cacti as far back as 5,000 years ago, but have not found direct evidence that this is true.

They consider that drugs were being used to induce spiritual or trance-like states by people who had religious beliefs.

The only reason they couldn’t find the cannabis was that they smoked it, just like real “stoners” do.

Powells Other Endorsement– huffington

Colin Powell has officially endorsed Barack Obama for President. But the big news is that this was not even his most important endorsement of the day. As it turns out, the most important thing endorsed by Colin Powell today was an America that’s worth leading and worth fighting for, an America that encapsulates the idea of what some might call a “more perfect union.” To that end, Powell invoked a picture to illustrate his point.

“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star – showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life.”

[New York Times Photo]

So, yeah. Sometimes, America does benefit when we share our wealth with one another. And some people, in fact, do have it harder than Joe The Plumber.