Mad About Michelle

The biped and I had a busy weekend, the highlight of which was Jon W.'s birthday, but more on that later. Right now, I want to spend a little time thinking about Michelle Obama. Here are some of my favorite looks.







It's not just the clothes, it's the hair. FLAWLESS.

So as I was saying, the biped and I had a busy weekend. On Saturday, we met the biped's friend from college, Emily, for lunch in Orleans.



Some of my fans were there and did a round of holding me. I got a little cranky about it, but otherwise tried to stay in control.





Then we went to Jon's house. He was 38 on saturday. My God, that's old.



And even though it was his birthday, I got a present from him! A new t-shirt printed with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton.



On Sunday, we went on a drive through the country to look at the fall colors.



We stopped in Lowell to look at the cotton mills they've made into a National Park. The biped says it's "research" for his "novel". Right.





And we went up to Groton to see the Provincetown art collection in a new show there. I wasn't allowed in the gallery, but who cares. There was just as much great art outside.

Surprise!!!

The New York Times has endorsed Barack Hussein Obama. My only question is why they waited so long!

Here's the knockout conclusion, but the entire endorsement is great reading.

Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”

This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.

The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

And the times has included a fascinating endorsement calendar showing their endorsements and the winners all the way back to Abe Lincoln. I'm sure the symbolism can be lost on no one.

For the Love of Fleas

Did I mention the biped is addicted to the flea market in Wellfleet? We went last Sunday and it was cold. I wasn't really happy about it.



But I did get this nice shot of make-up cases. They were all filled with rusty old tools. For real.



It was a pretty quiet day out there.



And the weather last weekend was really rough. Check out the waves on the backshore.



Now that it's finally turning cold and with this rainy weather, I just want to stay in bed all day.

Hallowhat?

The biped's mother must have the same sick sense of humor the biped has. She sent him this costume for me. I think it's an outrage.

But you know what? That's Provincetown in October. Look who pulled up on Sunday to pick up the biped for the employee dinner for the Dune Tours.



Auntie Helen, one of the dune tour drivers, was there with Lady DI.



They both looked stunning, but Helen in that red dress is a sight to behold.



Then one of the biped's friends is Halloween gaga--right down to a figurine that bears an eerie resemblance to a local businessperson.




The weather has turned colder, too. We stopped by Perry's Liquors to chat and Frank was there. He's going to dress up for the holiday, but no wig like the rest of them. The guys at Perry's refer to Frank and the biped as Rant & Rave. Very clever. Frank is Rant, of course.



Another view just to reinforce how degrading these outfits are. I never asked for a wig!

Panic

The biped is bragging about how he has been comparing the current economic problems to the Panic of 1873 and now the Motley Fool has an article on it. I don't care what he says, I never once heard him mention it! Here's a piece:

While many disagree about its root causes, the GDP numbers suggest that 1929 was at base an industrial depression that spilled into banking. But the Panic of 1873 was a bank depression that spilled everywhere else. It was much like our current difficulties, though its footprint on financial and commodity markets was very different, and in Europe, it lasted more than six years.

How did it start? In 1873 as today, we can lay the fault with bad mortgages. But the problem did not start in the United States: It began in Europe, where three empires -- France, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia -- sought to concentrate their city centers by founding new savings banks for workers and the middle class.

Gold Rush

Now that the biped has sold his place, he is looking for ways to spend his money and I am all for it. He rented a house in Palm Springs for the month of March. You can see the house here.

This is how I reacted when he told me the news.



Need I say more?

Tea and Toes

I'm playing catch-up a little here. The biped's broken finger and his "schedule" have interfered with my access to the computer. First, I want to say that I think we're settling in our new address nicely. Maria and Katie came over for an impromptu tea party and it was a lovely way to pass an afternoon.

I spent a lot of it hanging out between people's backs and the couch pillows.



And this is a new sweater the biped got for me. I like green, but honestly, it has a shamrock on it. Was it in someone's St. Patrick's day clearance?



Maria and the biped took me to sunset the other night.


It was gray sky and gray water and in between a neon hot pink disk. Maria insists it was orange, but....

Ancient Mornings and Afternoons

It's the Norman Mailer Society Conference here in Provincetown this weekend.


The biped is a member and has been attending some sessions in between searching for a house to rent this winter in Palm Springs. Frankly, I think he should forget about the conference and focus on the house. I LOVE Palm Springs. And so far at the conference, he's heard panel discussions that included a woman who related word for word her conversation with Mailer about God AFTER he was dead and a man who had a three decade penpal relationship with Mailer in addition to shooting his brother, spending time in a mental institution and teaching at a college run by lesbian nuns. Um, yeah. Palm Springs.


And we'll get to see Zuley the Giant, whose enormous forehead I miss licking.



In the meantime, I am getting used to the new place. There are a lot of different smells here, but more carpet for me to run on and sit on and NO STAIRS! Here is a local view. Our old living room looked out on this tree. That's how close we are to the old place.

Obamania!

Even though I am a chihuahua, that doesn't mean I have been standing in line waiting for tickets to that ridiculous movie. I read the papers and here reprint the editorial page endorsement of Barack Obama from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sent to me by Berta, my good friend and admirer. As she noted, this says it all. Thanks Berta!

The Post-Dispatch Endorses Barack Obama for President

10/12/2008

In January, nine days before the Feb. 5 presidential primaries in Missouri and Illinois, this editorial page endorsed Barack Obama and John McCain in their respective races.

We did so enthusiastically. We wrote that either Mr. Obama's message of hope or Mr. McCain's independence and integrity offered America "the chance to turn the page on 28 years of contentious, greed-driven politics and move into a new era of possibility."

Over the past nine months, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has emerged as the only truly transformative candidate in the race. In the crucible that is a presidential campaign, his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure consistently have been impressive. He has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisers who have helped him refine thorough, nuanced policy positions.

In a word, Mr. Obama has been presidential.

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear.

He even shrank from his own campaign slogan, "Country First," by selecting the least qualified running mate since the Swedenborgian shipbuilder Arthur Sewall ran as William Jennings Bryan's No. 2 in 1896.

In making political endorsements, this editorial page is guided first by the principles espoused by Joseph Pulitzer in The Post-Dispatch Platform printed daily at the top of this page. Then we consider questions of character, life experience and intellect, as well as specific policy and issue positions. Each member of the editorial board weighs in.

On all counts, the consensus was clear: Barack Obama of Illinois should be the next president of the United States.

We didn't know nine months ago that before Election Day, America would face its greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression. The crisis on Wall Street is devastating, but it has offered voters a useful preview of how the two presidential candidates would respond to a crisis.

Very early on, Mr. Obama reached out to his impressive corps of economic advisers and developed a comprehensive set of recommendations for addressing the problems. He set them forth calmly and explained them carefully.

Mr. McCain, a longtime critic of government regulation, was late to recognize the threat. The chief economic adviser of his campaign initially was former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had been one of the architects of banking deregulation. When the credit markets imploded, Mr. McCain lurched from one ineffectual grandstand play to another. He squandered the one clear advantage he had over Mr. Obama: experience.

Mr. McCain first was elected to Congress in 1982 when Mr. Obama was in his senior year at Columbia University. Yet the younger man's intellectual curiosity and capacity — and, yes, also the skills he developed as a community organizer and his instincts as a political conciliator — more than compensate for his lack of more traditional Washington experience.

A presidency is defined less by what happens in the Oval Office than by what is done by the more than 3,000 men and women the president appoints to government office. Only 600 of them are subject to Senate approval. The rest serve at the pleasure of the president.

We have little doubt that Mr. Obama's appointees would bring a level of competence, compassion and intellectual achievement to the executive branch that hasn't been seen since the New Frontier. He has energized a new generation of Americans who would put the concept of service back in "public service."

Consider that while Mr. McCain selected as his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a callow and shrill partisan, Mr. Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Mr. Biden's 35-year Senate career has given him encyclopedic expertise on legislative and judicial issues, as well as foreign affairs.

The idea that 3,000 bright, dedicated and accomplished Americans would be joining the Obama administration to serve the public — as opposed to padding their resumés or shilling for the corporate interests they're sworn to oversee — is reassuring. That they would be serving a president who actually would listen to them is staggering.

And the fact that Mr. Obama can explain his thoughts and policies in language that can instruct and inspire is exciting. Eloquence isn't everything in a president, but it is not nothing, either.

Experience aside, the 25-year difference in the ages of Mr. McCain, 72, and Mr. Obama, 47, is important largely because Mr. Obama's election would represent a generational shift. He would be the first chief executive in more than six decades whose worldview was not formed, at least in part, by the Cold War or Vietnam.

He sees the complicated world as it is today, not as a binary division between us and them, but as a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances and interests. As he often notes, he is the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, an internationalist who yet acknowledges that America is the only nation in the world in which someone of his distinctly modest background could rise as far as his talent, intellect and hard work would take him.

Given the damage that has been done to America's moral standing in the world in the last eight years — by a preemptory war, a unilateralist foreign policy and by policies that have treated both the Geneva Conventions and our own Bill of Rights as optional — Mr. Obama's election would help America reclaim the moral high ground.

It also must be said that Mr. Obama is right on the issues. He was right on the war in Iraq. He is right that all Americans deserve access to health care and right in his pragmatic approach to meeting that goal. He is right on tax policy, infrastructure investment, energy policy and environmental issues. He is right on American ideals.

He was right when he said in his remarkable speech in March in Philadelphia that "In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."

John McCain has served his country well, but in the end, he may have wanted the presidency a little too much, so much that he has sacrificed some of the principles that made him a heroic figure in war and in peace. In every way possible, he has earned the right to retire.

Finally, only at this late point do we note that Barack Obama is an African-American. Because of who he is and how he has run his campaign, that fact has become almost incidental to most Americans. Instead, his countrymen are weighing his talents, his values and his beliefs, judging him not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

That says something profound and good — about him as a candidate and about us as a nation.

Congrats, Paul!

In my brief lifteime and in the brief lifetime of this blog, I have referred to Paul Krugman more than once. Now, if a Princeton economist can make a 3-pound chihuahua understand economics, you know the guy has got to be articulate. And so I was thrilled to see that he won the Nobel Prize in economics. Congratulations, Paul! Keep on truckin'. And for whatever reason, the biped thinks he's not bad lookin' either.

We went down to Truro to see these seals people have been talking about. It was a beautiful day, but no seals.


That's not a seal. Apparently, according to the National Park Service, that's the wreck of the Frances. The biped is glad he read that on their website since he ran into Susan on the beach and she asked him just that. He said that the townfolks from Truro dragged a whaleboat out to the beach and rescued the whole crew, but the captain died several days later from exposure. He's a total f***ing know-it-all.


And then later, we went on a nighttime bike ride. I stayed in the basket and thank god I had on my sweatshirt. It was chilly.


A boat was all lit up in the harbor. Can you imagine being all alone in the middle of the ocean in that thing?


And here's a picture of Scott. He's been complaining.

Diner d'Adieu

The biped's finger is really broken. He showed me the x-rays. Pretty ugly stuff, but not as ugly as this ridiculous splint he has to wear!



In spite of all that, he had a few people over for dinner in our new place on Mechanic Street. A sort of farewell to Franklin Street. This one came over and brought his dog, Gus.



Gus is obsessed with squeaking things. Watch this!



And that was MY toy! I like Gus and everything, but he likes to get all up in my face. So I spent a lot of the evening lap dancing. I even had to have a little drink at one point!



Today, the papers were signed and the biped no longer owns the place on Franklin Street. In this environment, that's a miracle. But he's still neighbors with Dahlia Mark---look what he brought over today!



For more thoughts on the end of an economy, I like what both Paul Krugman and this guy in the Washington Post have to say. This is nice from Paul.

The United States should have been in a much stronger position. And when Mr. Paulson announced his plan for a huge bailout, there was a temporary surge of optimism. But it soon became clear that the plan suffered from a fatal lack of intellectual clarity. Mr. Paulson proposed buying $700 billion worth of “troubled assets” — toxic mortgage-related securities — from banks, but he was never able to explain why this would resolve the crisis.

What he should have proposed instead, many economists agree, was direct injection of capital into financial firms: The U.S. government would provide financial institutions with the capital they need to do business, thereby halting the downward spiral, in return for partial ownership. When Congress modified the Paulson plan, it introduced provisions that made such a capital injection possible, but not mandatory. And until two days ago, Mr. Paulson remained resolutely opposed to doing the right thing.

Puppy Party

Yesterday, the biped took me to a puppy party--it was a TOTAL surprise!

This is Atticus, who I normally bark at, but today decided to call a truce. The small dog is Betty. We flirted a little bit.


When Betty was chasing me, I decided to hide on the biped's shoulder.


On the left is Chupie. Following him is Buster. Buster stayed right behind Chupie, sniffing his butt the whole time. Chupie in the meantime is a total butt-whore. He would do ANYTHING to get someone to scratch his butt.


See the mayhem? Note who is getting his ass scratched!!


Today, the biped finished emptying the old place--here's the storage space. Why does he have so much stuff?


We went out for a walk in the dunes for his birthday. I didn't mention he totally forgot our anniversary, which was October 2nd. The dunes were so beautiful, I forgot to be angry with him.


And later, I decided I should eat grass like a cow.


All I have to say about the markets is we're either in the midst of a fantastic buying opportunity or on the edge of total economic collapse. For all those who dream wistfully about the way things "used to be" in Provincetown, the biped has said the only way to get back there is total economic collapse. I guess we might find out if that is true.