Archive for July, 2007
Hey readaz.
My dad recently proposed the theory mentioned in today’s title. Here’s why it’s true:
Keep the faith, yinzers.
All Democratic strategists need to read this article and memorize its every word:
Dems, You Gotta Have Heart
It should really be an incredibly simple premise, but I can’t figure out why some Democratic dudes just can’t grasp it: Joe Average doesn’t have the time or the interest to read your policy papers; he has his family, his job, his mortgage and his favorite sports team to worry about, with maybe some free time for TV or radio. As a result, when elections come around, it’s unfair to expect that Joe magically found the time to read Congressional Quarterly and to pick up an M.A. in foreign relations. (Assuming he got an undergraduate degree in the first place; it’s still only 39% of the population.) Joe’s drawing on a few catch phrases, names and perhaps feelings that came up during the campaign, and casting a vote for “someone who gets it”.
In conclusion, being a political nerd is good because it means you might actually have an idea how to govern, but you better learn to hide that nerd side and get your average dude on for the campaign.
Obama | July 25th, 2007
Barack Obama’s comments about talking directly to Iran and North Korea is a great example of just how narrow our political debate really is: the guy’s talking about doing exactly what the U.S. did for 40 years during the Cold War (which we won), and somehow taking this stance means he supports Iran and North Korea. It’s a lot like the time Obama acknowledged that the Palestinians are suffering, which has long been another truth that must not be spoken. Luckily we have Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney to save us. When I think Hillary and Mitt, I think of things like “conviction” and “short-term political considerations having absolutely no effect on what one says or does in regards to our nation’s well-being.”
If Barack wants to fit into the American political establishment, he clearly needs to learn the arts of ignoring reality and lying to the public, and fast.
- Back in my New York days, it seemed that every time you turned around, someone was praising the independent, gritty spirit of 1970s-80s New York, the culture that produced hip-hop, tagging, Reggie Jackson, Taxi Driver, CBGB-OMFUG, The Warriors and other art inspired by the city’s crushing, nigh-bankrupt bleakness. While I acknowledge the period as one of the truly great creative eras in the American scene, one that I think I can explore forever, the nostalgia to me seems to overlook the big, fat suckitude of crime, urban decay, poverty and a general pessimism that pervaded New York in the 1970s and 80s. Does anybody really miss this? John Carpenter didn’t make Escape From New York because it was a great logical leap from reality. People suffered greatly in those days.
But let’s assume that you believe despair breeds the greatest art (I tend to agree), and you’re an urban hipster who craves the dangerous, anything-goes spirit of the 1970s. There’s another town out there for you long past its mid-century glory days; one with miles of burnt-out dwellings, a suburban population that’s afraid to go downtown, weak political leadership and an economic death spiral to boot. Plus, it’s been this way for a good three decades, so it’s not likely to have changed by the time you arrive.
So what I really want to know is, why isn’t Detroit seeing a nostalgia-driven hipster influx?
- Esquire magazine (to which I have a subscription; I hit my news/business base with The Economist, my sports base with SI, and my man-of-the-world, well-read, how-to-buy-suits-I-will-never-afford base with the big E) had the cover line this month “Can a white man still be elected President?”
Sometimes, one can take provocative cover taglines a little too far from reality, to the point that the reader says, “Man, they are trying way too hard to get my attention.” Then, to take a journey of rhetorical absurdity that’s hemispheres beyond that, one can write, “Can a white man still be elected President?”
- The more President Bush’s approval ratings drop, the more I fear what the government might do in the name of “Hey, we’re hated lame ducks anyway.”
Out.
As my friend Steve put it, “these sound a lot like people doing imitations of him”:
The 50 Dumbest Things …
I’m particularly fond of Nos. 50, 44, 39, 35, 26 and 14-13.
Squirrels run all over the place down here in DC. Meanwhile, chipmunks only live near wooded areas, knowing better than to overdo it in this media-heavy city.
SQUIRRELS AREN’T COOL
- Squirrels are basically just bushy-tailed rats. Where do you see them in urban areas? Nine times out of ten, they’re playing in the garbage can, or once that’s over, eating said garbage.
- Meanwhile, they do that annoying thing with their paws while they eat. It’s the same thing that flies do. Does anybody hold up the fly as an icon of cuteness? Hell no.
- Squirrels don’t have good cartoon characters. Rocky from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show? Dude wasn’t even your average squirrel; he was one of those crazy flying squirrels. Did you know flying squirrels are native to both the Pacific Northwest and Siberia? Being that one is a bastion of liberal agitators and the other is the home of the gulag, Rocky might well have been an agent for Boris Badenov.
- A squirrel once got into my fraternity’s kitchen and ate up the food. A chipmunk has yet to even tap on the window.
CHIPMUNKS ARE BETTER
- They’re smaller, and therefore more fuel-efficient.
- Their kids leave the nest after just eight weeks, rather than spending 12 years in their parents’ basement with nothing but a $120,000 B.A. in Theater for Social Change like these slacker kids today.
- I think Dale alone could beat up Rocky, but with Chip in tow, they would have brought down the USSR single-handedly, were they living in the same cartoon universe.
- Chip ‘n Dale are possessed of both black and red noses. In roulette, they just can’t lose.
Out.
Today’s testimony from the outgoing Surgeon General is probably the best one yet in the never-ending parade of scientists who don’t like the current government. Not only did your man Dr. Carmona (dude has one hell of a c.v., btw) testify that administration officials suppressed his reports on stem cells, contraception, global health and secondhand smoke and asked him to mention the President three times on each page of his speeches, but he also said that senior officials actually asked him why he would support the Special Olympics when the Kennedy family is involved in that charity.
I think that all future “The Administration is politicizing [x]” testimony has jumped the shark, because after the idea that it’s a worthwhile thing to diss mentally disabled people just so you can stop your ideological opponents from scoring points, where do you go from that?
This is an example of how far one’s leadership culture should extend. The President, spiteful and unsympathizing as he is, would not have given anyone specific orders to go and hate on Special Olympic athletes and families so the Kennedys would miss out on added support. The problem is that he seems to have let the suck-up culture run wild underneath him to the point that staffers would think, “Hey, dissing Special Olympics is a great idea,” and carry it out. I think we’ve all encountered the in-your-face, unprincipled one-upping type of staffers we’re talking about here—they’re a chance to use the awesome word “sniveling”—but it’s the leader’s job to set the tone and smack those people down so the honest people can be heard.
Meanwhile, only 19 more months!
- Big ups to my friends at PandaSmash.com for doing a cool job cutting on the web’s video sites. Right here. I personally would like to see more of Emo Sam, potentially a spinoff series. Hey, it worked for Rhoda.
- Big ups to A-Z Guitar Tabs for having such a complete archive. You think of a song, it’s up on there. Now I need a site to keep me motivated to learn to play. Or I can just wait 15 years for guitar-teaching neural implants and keep playing Guitar Hero II in the meantime. Sweet.
- Big ups to Rock Creek Park. Pretty cool woods and forest stuff to do in the middle of DC.
- Big ups to Morningstar Farms Grillers Original. Cooked in the pan with a little bit of olive oil and topped with some A1, these are sometimes higher than real burgers on the taste scale.
- Big ups to sunblock. Irish people in sunny climates thank yinz guys for keeping us out of lobster territory. Less ups to being pale as hell in the first place, though.
- Also, big ups to lobsters. You are delicious.
I’m out.
I guess I’m supposed to be mad at the commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence, but normally you have to be taken aback by something to be angry, and this is probably the most predictable presidential action since the last bad decision Bush made. (Choose your own; there’s no shortage.) But the point is, it was predictable.
The time to be mad about this was probably when he was convicted. If on the day of the conviction, you somehow thought Libby wasn’t going to be pardoned, you should probably also see a doctor about the inordinate amount of time you spend submerging your grill-piece in grains of silica. I will give Bush credit: he surprised us with the speed that he arrived at the incredibly bald-faced decision we knew all he’d eventually make. I was thinking fall 2008 or so, but it’s not even mid-summer 2007 and we’re already witnessing the bending of justice. (Note to Tony Snow: keeping Libby away from justice is clearly worse than Clinton’s pardons, because it’s pretty obvious that Al Gore didn’t go to Marc Rich and order him to break the law. We can’t be quite so sure about Dick Cheney going to Libby.)
Keith Olbermann is certainly right here, but we’ve come to the point where we have two options: impeachment / resignation (as if!), or battening down until January 2009. (The latter being contingent on us not going to war with Iran. Should he opt for that, all Bush has to lose are many thousands of human lives, and that hasn’t proven to bother him so far.)
Though I think the president’s actions more than warrant impeachment, the Republicans unwittingly did themselves a favor by impeaching Bill Clinton: that was such a partisan joke that the pooch of impeachment has been good and screwed for at least a generation or so going forward, and it just doesn’t seem like something the country is willing to go through again, even though the case for Bush’s impeachment just gets stronger and stronger all the time.
I still can’t believe all these G.O.P. jokers I see interning on the Hill, like the events of today aren’t even happening. Is impeachment justified? I think so. Will it happen? F no, it won’t.
2009, where you at!
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