May 09, 2008
Hey, I'm from there! Though it's been a couple of decades, I most certainly am a product of the great state of West Virgina, where I spent some formative years around people like this:"Is he Islamic or is he not?" [some dude from Wayne, WV named] Pasley says of Obama, who is Christian. "I know he's tried to talk about it but he hasn't looked anybody in Wayne in the eye and told them."
Oof. Okay, that's not exactly how I remember it. I guess kind of like that -- there was a whole lotta looking people in the eye -- but about seventy-five percent less imbecile.
I've never been to Wayne, but, looking it up, it's only 10 miles or so from the city that my mom was born and raised in. I'll have to ask her about the mysterious eyeball-driven Islamo-dar possessed by Wayne natives.
Posted at 04:14 PM
After reading yesterday of Sen. Clinton's latest foray into offensiveness -- her assertion that implies that Sen. Obama's support consists of the lazy blacks of America -- I was kind of expecting to see many many pages today of outrage, condemnation, grumpy-pants, etc. But after a quick morning spin around the Internet, I'm not seeing it. Oh sure, it's not passing without mention, but I woulda thought that Hillary breaking the proxy-barrier in the playing of the race card would have merited a little more shrillness.But you know why not? Because we're all sick to death of the bullshit. The Clinton campaign could burn a cross on the front lawn of the Obamas, and, at this point, the reaction would be a labored sigh, and a "Whatevs" to all that.
I wouldn't be surprised if this final act of the Clinton campaign is not an expression of desperate tactics, but rather a poli sci experiment in "What Can Be Gotten Away With". Which, if this is the case, would go a long way to rebuilding the good will that's she's been burning like a bunch of Velveteen Rabbits.
Posted at 08:59 AM
May 08, 2008
This is by no means as creepy as the creepy gnome, but it's only a couple days (instead of months) old, which makes it nearly of marrying age in Internet years (instead of fossilized) -- so have some creepy vaguely human-shaped floating thing.And just because it's not as creepy as the creepy gnome, well, come on -- it's still pretty cool. Dunno if you're childhood was partially spent what it would be like to be able to fly (as mine was), but I'm guessing it would be something like that.
Why is it that these videos are never from Cleveland, or Asheville, NC?
[LATER THAT DAY] Turns out I'm way off base on the timeliness of the footage of the creepy vaguely human-shaped floating thing -- not only did Griz unearth an earlier posting of the video, he also wrote about it -- about a year ago.
My fault for not paying attention.
Though kudos to both of us for not making the standard Mexico/aliens joke that you'd expect either of us to make.
Posted at 08:32 AM
May 07, 2008
So, I'm reading all kinds of stories about how the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana went last night, but I'm noticing a glaring omission -- no one is reporting on what Rev. Jeremiah Wright thinks about all this!!!How can you have fair coverage of an election without comment from the retired pastor of one of the candidate's church? I guess the media fix is still in.
(To be fair, I also didn't see comment from the heirs of Vince Foster -- come on, medias! Step to it!)
Posted at 08:48 AM
May 06, 2008
This obsessive attention I'm giving the Democratic primary is making me all shrill and first-person, which is not how I like to be for the purposes of this electronic publication. So let's talk about my little dog, Asta, for a moment.How is the little dog? Well, between you and me, she's worried sick about the Democratic primary. Even though my little dog promised to be relatively neutral until the nominee was decided, she was so disgusted by the Clinton campaign that she picked sides. And she is even more worried that the Clinton campaign, which is the as conventional, by-the-numbers, mud-slinging, pandertastic as any campaign in the past thirty years, will not so much split the Democratic Party as it will usher in a new age of idiocracy where elections are decided by which candidate is the quickest to denounce those scientists or professors whose policy recommendations interfere with the electorate's access to free VOD, or cheap intoxicants.
My little dog is aware that the question of electability is now "in play" in the primary -- although mostly because of the confluence of a weak-willed press and a campaign following the Campaign Playbook of Karl Rove (with a forward by the ghost of Lee Atwater). About this, my little dog, Asta, says that if you really want to see the issue of electability come into the play, just let Clinton back into the nomination by orchestrating the deforestation of the Obama campaign, especially with regard to the number of votes Clinton will receive in November, from my little dog, and those who generally agree with my little dog.
I keep telling her that it's unreasonable, but I'm just not quite sure that my little dog can hold her nose long enough to pull a Clinton lever in a voting booth at any time in the near future.
Even worse, I suspect that my little dog may be losing her sense of humor over the whole thing.
Posted at 08:42 AM
May 05, 2008
During Sen. Clinton's appearance on Romper Room yesterday morning, she pushed back against criticism that her cynical attempt to bribe voters by saving them eighteen cents per gallon of gas by reiterating her belief that the support of voters is worth eighteen cents a gallon.She also derided those economists (i.e., all of them) who could see no benefit in her (well, her and Sen. McCain's) plan, by calling them "elite", and decrying "this mindset where elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."
I'm not sure which of the $109 million dollars she and her husband cleared over the past seven years earns her an exemption of membership in the elite, but the gas-tax-holiday is an unmitigatedly bad idea -- benefits to consumers would be minimal, and it doesn't touch the actors who are actually gouging consumers. It was not the government that posted multi-billions in earnings while peddling the suddenly-expensive gasoline, it was Big Oil, who won't lose a penny if the gas tax is suspended.
Sen. Clinton must want the nomination very badly to pander so nakedly to the impressionable and the imbecilic.
Posted at 11:05 AM
May 03, 2008
Further to the bleak, bleak, bleak immediately previous post, I am currently reading a book that is easily the best "current affairs" book that I've read in years -- "Spanking The Donkey", by Matt Taibbi. It's all speaking the truth in irreverent but accurate ways that makes you feel no so alone in the face of feeling like the last not crazy person in America.Yes, I do frequently refer to the work of Mr Taibbi in these posts, so it is no surprise that I'm digging the book. But seriously, when I started it I felt an invisible hat leap three feet straight up off my head, just like in the funny pages.
Also, Mr Taibbi just won some kind of magazine award for "Columns and Commentary", so maybe the rest of the world is catching up to him.
Posted at 03:19 PM
I was reading through the morning's paper, which was basically gloom, despair, etc., with the story about the mad rush to execute people particularly annihilating my spirit, and I wondered: at what point to you throw in the towel? At what point do you surrender and admit that your nation is an inherently bad actor, a force for no-good, peopled by the small-minded, the blood-thirsty and the proudly ignorant? At what point is it okay to relegate yourself to your county's sad slow slide into parody? I may not be the salvaged remnant, but is there much of anything you can point to these days and be proud of?I don't pretend to be delicate, but how many times a day do I have to think to myself, "The FUCK?" before I should just close my eyes and think of the greater glory of France?
Well, whatever. I went to Free Comic Book day and they gave me an Iron Man HeroClix, so I guess I can't complain about that.
Posted at 01:42 PM
May 02, 2008
I can't believe I missed Law Day again this year! I keep meaning to throw a big Law Day party for all my friends, where we whoop it up and celebrate laws -- by breaking them! Littering, unlawful assembly, not separating recyclables -- whatever's clever (and unlawful)! Bwoo ha ha ha.Also, I'm not sure if I noticed this last time around, but the actual name of the useless holiday is not "Law Day", but rather, "Law Day, U.S.A.", (by presidential proclamation!), which sounds less like a useless holiday than it does a B movie from 1979 that couldn't afford to hire Burt Reynolds, and instead cast some nobody with a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds.
Law Day, U.S.A.: 10-4, good buddy! Yeeee-haw!
Also, to answer the unasked question: every day is Day Day.
Posted at 10:43 AM
In perhaps his longest post ever, Grizzly Dad (if that is in fact his name) ponders what once was and what is to be:This doesn't sit well with a vision of America that resides somewhere in my brain. I was 8 in 1976, and America had caught Bicentennial fever. We were all feeling pretty patriotic, but it was a different flavor of patriotism- it had roller skates and a disco beat, and celebrated a narrative in which a brave bunch of ragtag colonialists decided to defy an authoritarian regime. Because of the brave defiance of our forefathers, we had the freedom to wear our jogging shorts a little too short and have rocks as pets, and our comics could be unknown and our devil could be out-fiddled. We were silly, to be sure, but we weren't scared.
And then he endorses Obama -- no need to be coy about that.
It's good to see that Griz and I actually agree f- No, wait, we pretty much agree on everything.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Posted at 09:46 AM
April 30, 2008
Yeah, the president's press confidence yesterday was priceless, as usual, as he swore up and down that he never seen that economy before in his life, and got no idea how it got in his car.Everyone has their favorite moments -- like perhaps when he blamed the recession on the failure to drill in ANWR -- but mine was when he decided to show those eggheads a thing or two and utter the following:
We're dealing with a group of ideologues who use asymmetrical warfare -- that means killing innocent people -- to try to achieve their objectives.
OMG the terrorists have broken the symmetry barrier! Will nothing save us from their freedom-hating spatial reasoning!?!
Of course, "asymmetrical warfare" is an actual piece of jargon, describing (I think) the engagement of opponents of unequal means, which is used by very thoughtful guys like this one. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have anything to do with killing innocent people. It's about one side being "asymmetrical" with the other side, as far as their capability to wage war goes. So, Mr President: WRONG!
Plus also, the concept of "using" asymmetrical warfare is a stretch, in the same sense that asserting that some actor is "using" plain old warfare is a bit awkward. It's got a thin tether to the truth, but you wouldn't really say that, unless you were just learning English. (Or unless you were pretty unfamiliar with the concept but very impressed with its flashiness and therefore planned to use it as much as possible.)
Poor president -- he tries bust out the five dollar word and chokes on it, like a pretzel.
Posted at 07:03 AM
April 29, 2008
Gaw, I really thought that the post 9-11 "only you can help point men wearing towels on their heads to local authorities" had simmered down to a large extent.I guess I was wrong, or, at least I'm wrong if I'm visiting Shelby County, Tennessee, where an town hall meeting was held, advising the locals of the dangers of photography:
Shelby County sergeant Larry Allen warned attendees at the meeting to look for people who appear to be doing surveillance outside public buildings, such as shopping malls."One of the things discussed in the al-Qaeda manual is conducting surveillance of your target," added Eric Jackson with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "That could mean looking at a building to see how security is established."
Because, again, how can the bad guys blow places up without photographs of the place? Are they supposed to just guess?
And I'm not advocating blind complacency in Shelby County, which is the home of Memphis, a town I have great affection for. I'm just saying -- well, you know what I'm saying. Let's try to leaven our caution with a liberal dose of common sense, and the need for our children to be able to sleep at night.
Posted at 12:17 PM
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season.
That's panderiffic! Her rationale:
“At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”
Which simple belief is easily supported by her legislative record, as First Lady.
You may be surprised that Sen. Clinton would stoop to buying votes with tax abatements. I'm surprised that she thinks that your vote is only worth a measly 18 cents a gallon.
But watch the surprise be on me, as I doubt that very few people have gone bust betting on the grubby self-interest of the American electorate.
Boy, I'm starting to fucking hate these primaries. Or at least part of them.
Posted at 10:55 AM
April 28, 2008
I found myself last night sitting at the bar of an Applebee's in northwestern PA. Long story -- let's just say that I'm a sucker for half-prices appetizers after 9pm. But, more interestingly, I noticed that each of the TVs behind the bar (as opposed to the TVs on the walls in the bar-area of the restaurant) had the following inscribed on the bottom of the screen:Copyright regulations prohibit use of volume on this TV for broadcast programs
I might not have memorized the entirety of U.S. copyright law and the associated legal precedent, but, no it doesn't. Ain't no copyright law that sez, "Thou shalt mute all TV sets in bars."
Now, there is this weird kink in the copyright laws which provides that public performance of certain music is subject to the permission of the copyright holders, administered by these public performance organizations like ASCAP and BMI, but if this is what Applebee's TVs are referring to, then it's not copyright regulations that are preventing the sound from being turned on -- it's the unwillingness of Applebee's to pay ASCAP/BMI a fee.
Also, they might have some agreement with a specialized content platform -- like the cable channels run by MLB or the NFL -- but again, it's not copyright regulations that are playing Scrooge with the play-by-play, it's Applebee's.
I looked for a commensurate notice on the menu saying:
Free market capitalism requires that all food and beverage projects are subject to a 400% mark-up prior to serving
But it was not to be found.
Having said, my half-price chicken quesadilla was not quite delicious, but just what the doctor ordered.
Posted at 04:21 PM
April 25, 2008
You may think that we're taking the election pretty seriously over here, with our respective racism/misogyny, but in Japan, where an old friend is currently residing, they are taking the presidential race serious like a heart attack.Here, have a look for yourself.
I wish it were video and not just a still, as they say that the best thing about this very serious coverage is the soundtrack.
Posted at 12:16 PM