Endorsements from Casa Diablo

As usual, the residents of Casa Diablo have our own take on the elections next week. The most important thing is that you vote. We might remind you that, statistically, the lower the voter turnout, the better the dreaded Republicans do. There is plentiful data to support this notion. Now, after that dire warning, we must suggest you vote for an actual Republican, Senator Lincoln Chafee. Both Bob Weygand and Chafee have their good points, and both have represented the Biggest Little with distinction. The similarity of their voting records, however, leads us to emphasize the importance of women's reproductive freedom.

Phillipe & Jorge have long stood for the right to choose, and despite all the obfuscation from the Bush camp on this issue, it's clear that the next president of the United States will have the opportunity to select one or more Supreme Court justices. Of course, that is with the advice and consent of the Senate. Dubya has already stated that the justices he most admires are the right-wingers, Scalia and Thomas. That's a pretty clear signal he intends, if elected, to nominate people of that stripe.

Linc Chafee is on the right wavelength here. Like Dr. Pablo Rodriguez and a number of other heavyweights in the pro-choice community, we believe that on this issue alone, Chafee deserves your vote. He's also a strong conservationist and has generally been a friend to organized labor. But it's the abortion issue that motivates our desire to see Linc Chafee returned to office.

In both Congressional districts, there isn't really a contest. Much as we'd like to see some real competition, the Republican Party continues to throw up sacrificial lambs as candidates. In the first district, we may sometimes chide Representative Patrick Kennedy for his shrill ways (and we'd really like to see him hanging around Vo Dilun a little more), but we greatly admire him.

Patrick has frequently been courageous and shown himself to be a hard worker when it comes to getting things done for our state. He keeps fully engaged in local issues, despite his frequent globe-trotting, and his input on issues like gun control, health care and the environment have been pluses. In the Kennedy tradition, he's a reliable voice for working people and the poor. When you consider how his Republican opponent, Steve Cabral, recently suggested that homeless people are homeless by choice, you have to wonder how responsible the Republican party in Vo Dilun is.

In the second district, Jim Langevin has been a very good secretary of state. While his overly cautious approach, and the vibrancy and clarity of her campaign, led your superior correspondents to endorse Kate Coyne-McCoy in the primary, we expect Jim to be a conscientious representative. He has a hard-working and good team behind him. Knowing that Jim will listen, we hope that folks with more progressive agendas will move him more clearly in a liberal direction.

By the way, we must wonder what the reluctance of voters on Question 5, the Heritage Harbor Museum, is all about. It's a great project, but according to Urinal/ Brown University polling done by the esteemed Darrell West, only 32 percent of voters favor the $25 million request, and 47 percent oppose it. We say, use a little imagination and let's get behind this first-rate idea.

Morons and oxymorons

Looking at the national picture, Phillipe and Jorge are becoming more distressed by the minute that Junior Bush may defeat Al Gore, who is our choice for president. This despite the fact that, afterwards, we plan to hold our lever hands over a lit candle to perform some sort of Mean Streets-style penance for our sin. (Although here in Little Rhody, we won't begrudge anyone their Ralph Nader vote. Gore is going to blow out the Biggest Little, so anything that helps get the necessary 5 percent for Nader, and future funding of the Green Party, is God's work.)

A win by the coddled moron Dubya means that voters have actually bought his oxymoronic "compassionate conservative" line -- which has about as much truth to it as a Bill Clinton alibi. If you think a haunted house is spooky, wait until Senate Majority Leader and former cheerleader Trent Lott and his right-wing nightriders jump out from where they've been hiding during the campaign, and along with Daddy Bush's appointed caretaker of Dubya, racist Big Oilman and non-voter Dick Cheney, start running the country the way they want to, while Dubya naps.

This, of course, means turning the environment over to corporations, cutting social service funding and affirmative action, and eliminating anything that doesn't spell big bucks for white guys in suits. The prospect of Dubya getting in is beyond frightening, and almost as scary to the rest of the world. As noted by Martin Kettle, Washington diarist for the Manchester Guardian Weekly: "To many non-Americans the idea that Bush could be popular, appear attractive . . . is mystifying and outlandish. He seems so second-rate, so superficial, so shallow -- and thus so dangerous. Some Americans share this disbelief too, but it is especially held among foreigners. If Americans can choose such a man as their leader -- also the West's leader -- they say, then what a comment it is on Americans. A nation that can be so easily conned into voting for a puppet of the oil companies, military-industrial complex and the evangelical Christian right deserves what it gets."

Not that Al Gore has done anything but shoot himself in the foot during his stilted campaign. Not only has he eschewed being seen in public with Billary if at all possible, but until this week Joe Lieberman appeared lost in space, as Two-by-Four has tried to do it all by himself, with wife in tow, not understanding how off-putting he personally is. Somehow, he thinks he and Tipper are America's favorite couple, the Love Story delusion he has already experienced once. Where are the leading women, minorities, celebs of stage, screen and music -- and by that we mean the A List, not Melissa Etheridge and Al Franken -- who would willingly go to bat for him and who are much better received than Mr. Pedantic?

P&J went to Brown political guru Darrell West and asked him what a Dubya victory might be like, other than gargling with gasoline. He gave us three scenarios. Darrell sez:

"1) Whoever wins the presidency this year may come to regret the victory. After years of peace and prosperity, our next president will not be able to count on as strong an economy as what we have had. It will be a much tougher job to lead when the economy goes in the tank.

2) Regardless of who wins, look for the opposition party to immediately try to find a scandal in the new administration and the new Cabinet. The politics of scandal are here to stay [not just a function of the Clinton years]. It is the way to discredit and undermine a new administration in ways you couldn't at the ballot box.

3) If Bush wins, he already has promised a `thorough cleaning' of the Oval Office before he moves in, especially in the area next to the phone. Perhaps he should install a glass door at the Oval Office just to be on the safe side."

And leave room for Chuck Heston's desk.

Please, for God's sake vote for the high colonic over low moronic -- Al Gore.

In lieu of flowers

Sombreros off to Mary Frances Hallowell and her family. She's the Providence woman whose death notice in the Other Paper on Monday read, "in lieu of flowers, please vote for Al Gore." On Tuesday, the BeloJo reported she'd often get so exercised over Dubya's inane responses during the presidential debates that she'd get on the horn to complain to her children and grandchildren about the governor of Texas. Rest in peace and way to go, Mary.

News greatly exaggerated

Phillipe and Jorge received a call last week from Family Court Judge Peter Palumbo, who, we said in last week's column, is stepping down from the bench due to health reasons. But unlike Casey Stengel, who -- after being fired by the Yankees after the 1960 World Series -- said, "I'll never make the mistake of turning 70 again," Hizzoner explains that he's simply retiring because he is 72 years old and would like some peace and quiet.

Since Phillipe and Jorge are probably going to look like the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, Margaret Hamilton, and the Queen Mum by the time we hit Peter's age, we thought that would alone warrant using the term "health reasons." And since the Honorable Mr. Palumbo is a judge, and naturally suspect, we demanded that he prove his fitness.

This he did by coming to Casa Diablo and doing 50 one-arm push-ups, high-jumping 7 feet and 6 inches, sparring three rounds with Vinny Paz, and doing a five-minute synchronized swimming routine with your superior correspondents before pulling a double-box semi full of cases of Pernod and grapefruit 100 yards up our crushed rock driveway with a bit held between his teeth.

We stand corrected.

Still crazy after all these years

Two thumbs up for James Traub's piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "Newt at Rest," a look at the former speaker of the House now that he's out of Congress. Seems that he's the same old wild man. In the course of preparing the article, Traub followed Gingrich to a conference on nanoscience held by the National Science Foundation. As legitimate scientific speaker after speaker cautioned the assembled about "nanohype" and unrealistic expectations in the scientific community, Newt was busy doing just the opposite, making exaggerated claims and over-hyping the whole field. Yes, you can't keep a good blowhard down.

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