A wandering parable about coffee and politics

Took the car in for minor work this morning to the dirtiest, greasiest repair shop in town. It also happens to be the best, as they always are. The shop is connected to the dirtiest, greasiest convenience store in town.

This place is not a national chain, and it is clearly not marketing its wares to the busy executive on the go. This is a small, salt-of-the-earth, domestic beer and foil wrapped mystery sandwiches kind of place. The kind where there is invariably an 18-wheeler idling outside the front door. The kind Papa Bear finds irresistible.

I headed in for a coffee. Now, up the street, at what we'll call "The National Place," the coffee bar is a well-scrubbed island, decked out with neon signs of steaming cups and bearing pots of things called "Guatemalan Free Trade Monkey Bean" or "Antiguan Handpicked Donkey Blend."

Yet, no matter what they call it, it all tastes like warmed over engine sludge.

Here at the Grease-and-Go, no such nonsense. Just six dusty, nondescript containers, all bearing the same label: "Coffee." And you know what? It tasted exactly like the same warmed over engine sludge that costs you 30 cents more up at "The National Place." Consequently, it tasted just fine to me.

I like my coffee with a dash of truth, and a scoop of simplicity. And sometimes you can still find 'em if you look.

Speaking of which.....let's talk for a minute about Sarah Palin.

Though a rabid Democrat, I have to give credit where it's due. The fact that the Republican Election Winning Machine has managed to succesfully package this vapid, neo-conservative political neophyte as an exciting new product is sickening testamant to the fact that while he may be a repulsive bottom feeder, Karl Rove is a pure genius.

It's working, folks. The head-scratching marketing of a doddering geriatric Washington insider and the gun-toting former Mayor of Wasilla as some new breed of maverick reformers who will reshape America is gaining traction with the unwashed masses. And these are the folks who determine the outcomes of elections in this country, not eggheads like me.

I watched with a mixture of horror and bemusement this morning as MSNBC dissected the impact of a speech Obama gave yesterday in which he (rightly) classified branding McCain as a reformer as "putting lipstick on a pig." Alas, the issue being discussed was not whether Obama had a point, but whether his use of "lipstick on a pig" could be considered an insult to Palin. A talking point which the Right Wing Noise Machine had succesfully planted into the media within minutes of the words leaving Barack's mouth.

So the politics of lies and obfuscation are working, as they always do. These guys have got it dialed in. They've hijacked the "Change" message. They control the tone of the entire campaign, while, as with Gore and Kerry, a far more decent and competent candidate is betrayed by the inability of the pinheads at the Democratic National Committee to get a handle on how to counter this strategy, or use it to their own advantage.

Republicans know how to win, and I've got a bad feeling at this point that they just might do it again. If after 8 years of Bush-Cheney the Democrats can't figure out how to win an election, I fear they might never do so again in my lifetime.

But at least I've got an honest cup of coffee here to blame the bad taste in my mouth on.