TRICKS AND FEW TREATS

• It's Halloween and in anther two hours the kids in the neighborhood will be knocking on our door wanting candy. Last night housemate Amanda threw a party for her two children and their friends. So the place was decorated and quite lively. Most of the rest of us in the house went out to the movie and dinner during the party. We saw Social Network about the founder of Facebook and the lawsuits that resulted after he stole the idea for the online site from others and then tried to cheat his "friend" and cofounder out of the riches that followed after it took off and became a global phenomenon. A story about greed and betrayal.

• I saw yesterday that 47% of Democrats want someone to run against Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries before the 2012 election. It looks like his own party is now turning on him. Some of these folks are likely former supporters of Hillary Clinton but I would venture a guess that many are also people who feel Obama has betrayed his promises to fight for real hope and change.....

• The rally to "Restore Sanity" yesterday in Washington DC by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert drew a huge crowd. I've watched several videos and looked at hundreds of photos (on the Washington Post web site) but was not particularly impressed with what most of the sign holders had to say.

Stewart had some nice closing comments about how we should all get along, and respect diversity, but the fact that so many people can get together (CBS News reported 215,000) without mentioning two wars that are draining the national treasury speaks to the reality of how the American people have been depoliticized (politically neutered). A straw poll of rally goers by pollster Celinda Lake revealed: "86 percent of those surveyed plan on voting Democratic next week, another 8 percent said they are undecided with 1 percent planning to vote Republican." So clearly a crowd of Democrats and 13% of them told the pollsters that ending war was their top priority. The #1 concern of the assembled was jobs with 41%. How about connecting the dots between war spending and economic collapse?

At the end Stewart had crooner Tony Bennett sing "America the Beautiful" which was a nice touch, but I was disappointed that the crowd then took to chanting the right-wings favorite mantra: "USA, USA, USA......."