Ah, Labor Day weekend.  A time for BBQ (I prefer pulled pork, but I'm a bad Jew that way), beer (Sam Smith's Nut Brown Ale if I can get it), and political meltdowns (say what white boy?!).  Yes, this weekend, John McCain's uncontrollable libido maverickiness decided that the Democrats deserved "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": Sarah Palin, the least vetted candidate for Vice President of the United States, ever.  And Sarah, being the gift that keeps on giving, is rapidly entering the record-books for most rapid-fire scandalous revelations per day of any candidate, for anything, anywhere, ever.  And I don't use universals lightly.

Timeline to follow!

Insidious does not begin to describe it.  Partisan doesn't either.  The easy bigotry, the convenient prejudice that has defined the Democratic Primary campaign will not be a legacy that we can or should easily dismiss.  And as we move from the silly season to the season of reconcilliation we should perhaps consider a third season: the season of self-reflection.

Unity is one thing, but understanding how we were divided, and how easily, that is another thing entirely.

Ah, where's that pillory when I need it?  Oh, just behind my pile of bitterness.  What else on the list? There they are! My strident commentary and my tribalism, along with my thoughtless snarky responses, all in the same place.  Ok, now where am I keeping my list of slights, faults and other perceived insults?  Oh, next to my Cthulhu shrine, of course.  Good place for them too--they're all going on a sacrificial pyre after all, and Cthulhu likes a sacrifice of bitterness and spite.

You see, I'm burning my past, something I try to do every election.  Forgetting and letting go of it; forgiving people who I've maligned terribly, argued with tenaciously, but never even met.  You see, I've been a partisan ass, and I'm not apologetic about it.  But I've always been ready to unite against our common foe, whatever the outcome of the Primary.

And now the Primary is over, so let's get on with it then--we've got a country to save.

Emails from two sources verify that the Obama 08 campaign does not want protests on its behalf of the Democratic National Committee's May 31st Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting to decide the fate of Florida and Michigan.

"I was born in a small town," Mr. Mellencamp, the Hoosier's Hoosier sang, and I was: Vincennes, Indiana.  Vincennes (pronounced Vin-senz) was settled by French fur trappers and used as a rendez-vous for colonial traders on the Wabash river, a history commemorated yearly by our eponymous Rendezvous festival.  It was a site of revolutionary war, the home of short-term president William Henry Harrison, and settled once again by a late wave of Germans.  We have accents that Kurt Vonnegut, Indianapolis native, described as "the sound of a band-saw being drawn through corrugated steel."

And last night, Bill Clinton came to my small town to speak at a Clinton '08 rally.  My mother waited two hours in the rain to see him.  And he lied to her.  Bill Clinton, my hero, lied to my mother last night in my hometown.