Some Words

It was with some sense of pride that I got to see Franken win. It wasn’t that I loved Franken as a candidate, I wanted one of his primary opponents to win, but he was there to unseat Coleman and he did it. Last week there was a nice little article on Minnesota politics that managed to not be condescending, much to my surprise, given that this was the NY Times.

Politico reports on Obama getting irked by the ridiculous media exposure that presidents are exposed to, and the consequent loss of the next four years of his daughter’s childhoods that might come with it, and manages to have exactly the sort of over intrusive overly detailed reporting that they are writing about. In what world do I need to know that the future president ordered a tuna sandwich on twelve grain bread? Other, lesser, men might have settled on a mere eight grains. I know that’s what I just bought at the market today. Obama is bringing the kind of change that means and extra four grains? I honestly don’t even need to hear what he ordered, or that he ordered. He’s at a restaurant, I can infer that he ordered food. Hell, I can infer that he eats, he’s human after all. I don’t really need any information at all about him taking his kids anywhere. But I appear to be in the minority in thinking that his ability to deal with a bunch of guys who long ago gave up on real investigative journalism has nothing do do with future duties as chief administrator and commander in chief.

Unless someone wants to write an article claiming that it was irresponsible of him to get tuna, because the increased popularity of the fish after he eats it will put further strain on already depleted stocks of tuna, teetering on the brink of extinction. If we’re going to invade the poor man’s privacy to this degree, let’s at least pointlessly saddle him with the blame for the extinction of the blue fin. I prefer my political reporting with a side of impotent rage.

It’s amazing how much more efficiently a man can work when the fear of failure finally kicks in. I just wish it had kicked in a few weeks ago. Right now I’m going full tilt, or as full tilt as a man making a blog post can go, to get the outline all ship shape and start working on memorization and drilling problems.

It is interesting to me that after watching just about everything I could have hoped for in the election come true, (baring Coleman and Bachman getting unseated) I have drastically curtailed my news reading habits. To be sure, some of this is the impending rush of finals as I enter the end of the first semester, but the itch has gone too. I want to see an Onion article, “Obama Leaves Nation’s Liberals Feeling Shriven, Absolved.” It’s probably not a good thing to feel more relaxed about things with all the crap going on and Obama not even in office, but just knowing that in a few months Bush is out of the house is tremendously relieving.

Belief that I would be able to concentrate on my studies without distraction today was shattered when I found myself reading a few NY Times stories.

As Shea said in the comments, sports metaphors are often obnoxious, and yet I cannot help that when I was reading the paper today, I found myself thinking of one. The article mentioned the possibility of terror attacks during the transition, because God knows we can’t go a day in the media without raising that specter. And I started thinking that with our forced so over committed, how could a president express that we needed to pay less and not more attention to the perpetrators of a terror attack, so that we could get to the business of governing that they had hoped to interrupt. The first thing that came to mind? Shaking the tackle. It’s inescapable. I don’t even really watch football.

When people talk about the discourse of the nation, how everyone always thinks things are too negative, people just rush in to suggest reasons as to why this is. Allow me to be one more person throwing in one more reason/complaint. What is with all the damned boxing metaphors. It’s two people sitting at a table talking. Yes, there is conflict, yes the candidates are trying to score “blows” against each other. But do we really want to put things in the context of two people (who probably got into the sport for economic reasons as much as anything) slowly giving each other brain damage with a sequence of blows to the skull? Is that really the best way to think about presidential politics? Isn’t it… a little too accurate for how candidates tend to work through a campaign? They sure aren’t getting enlightened out there and neither are we.

Political content of the article aside, when I see something like this in a NY Times Article, it raises some questions:

“The fact is, John McCain had a thorough search and made the decision to add Sarah Palin to the ticket because he believes” that she “will change America,” Mr. Schmidt said.

What was it that they had to replace with ‘that she’ in the middle of the quote? Was it just a bit of bad phrasing? If so why did they bail Mr. Schmidt out? I mean, it’s not likely to be something to make political hay out of. I just wonder. Did he say ‘Sarah Palin, divine goddess, my hope and inspiration’ and they just didn’t think it scanned? I want to know these things when they correct their source’s phrasing.

Well, to my surprise, the raids in the Twin Cities have actually gottensomeattention. Bonus points if you bother to read the comments on the Star Tribune article, in which most of the people clearly cannot grasp that whatever was found in the house, it had not been used yet, and only a tenuous case could be made that they would use it. I guess they found buckets of piss in one of the houses they raided. This leads the people in the comment thread to say that basically you don’t have a constitutional right to throw piss, which I suppose is not outlined in the constitution. Of course, they still haven’t thrown a bucket of piss, so…

Also, it’s good to see the the ‘vegan’ infiltrators thing come back. Seeing those signs up around town was just too funny.

I don’t like to think that I’m so locked into my political views that I can’t switch parties if the Republican’s field someone compelling. In my eyes, that hasn’t happened this cycle. But just for fun, I found myself thinking, what would the man have to do to earn my vote?

The Republican National Convention is causing all sorts of havoc for friends of mine in the Twin Cities right now, and that means McCain will be in the Twin Cities too. In order to get my vote, I’ve decided he will need to do the following:

He must go to the C.C. Club, with minimal escort, and order a Premium Grainbelt. Beer in hand he must then go to the jukebox and select “Time” by Tom Waits. When the song comes up, he will then have the secret service clear out the two mobile tables near the jukebox, where he shall proceed to dance a sad little shuffle as the song plays. That will earn my vote. If he manages to mumble the lyrics in a plaintive and half heard sort of way, I’ll even like doing it. Also, as long as he’s there, he should get the jalapeno cheese burger, because it’s damned tasty.

If he were to go to The Bulldog kiddy corner to the C.C., I’ll donate another $50 to Obama. If he goes to Common Roots across the corner, and gets the organic bagel? Well, then we’ll know the end times are upon us.

Ah, to dream that it could happen.

Cross posted at

So, I was working on the big project, and realized that I’ve been so focused on it, I haven’t really gotten a lot done on the short stories that I had planned to finish up. Well, that’s no good. I’m rapidly running out of time. I went back and didn’t like much of what I had planned, which probably means that several of those ideas weren’t very good to begin with. Ah well. So where does one find inspiration? Perhaps this absurd list of people who Barack Obama has supposedly had killed, much of which reads like synopses of D grade political thrillers?

No. But it was tempting… Change a few names, give it a little plot… It was tempting…

I would love to hear one day that the right had farmed out one of these bullshit conspiracies to a ghost writing John Grisham. At least then we’d get a couple of really creative deaths.

I have a strict “do not so much as enter” policy with Walmart. Finding reasons for this is not hard. For a long time I have been of the opinion that the place basically manufactures poverty. Of course that isn’t what they claim. Why would they? They act like they’re Robin Hood.

Jeffrey Goldberg has this article in The New Yorker. It covers some of Walmart’s campaign to improve their image. A beautiful moment occurs when an employee brags about eating at Subway, but clams up when it is pointed out that he makes millions of dollars. There is also a great bit where a former Democratic campaign aide trails off halfway through admitting he sold out his principals for cash.

As I was reading an article on Bush’s response to the subpoenaed aides and funding for the war, something struck me. It was the usual article, nothing special, but it ended with the idea that Bush taking a hardline stance might strengthen his base. What?

First off, his base can’t ever get elected again. Sure, higher approval means a stronger stance at the legislative table, but he’s taking hardline stances against things that are unpopular. Maybe there is a portion of the population that doesn’t care what a president endorses, as long as he makes a big macho show of being “presidential” about it, and here I mean presidential to read imperial.

That’s not what struck me though. Here is a president who is on what seems to be a historic run to the bottom of the well. He’s gone from seeming like an incomprehensible behemoth that the left could never seem to best, to one of the least popular presidents of the past 50 years. He’s got two years left, and as far as my, admittedly untrained, eyes can tell, he’s got a dinner fork in his back the size of his “home state.”

Yet every damn article I read about him seems compelled to latch on to some point, even if it’s just, “Mr. Bush seemed decisive about choosing ranch dressing over caesar” to claim his amazing power could come roaring back. Why all these silver linings? Is that balance? Bush is in a shitty shitty position right now. If I were on the right, I wouldn’t be looking for some silly palliative like, “He seemed strong today.”

Is this a continuation of the “Rove is unbeatable, so anything that looks like defeat must really be strategy” meme?

Why do people let Bush try to portray himself as standing up for the troops to get them more money? It’s more like, “I’m going to send your son to die in a pointless war, that I started out of an inflated sense of personal pride. You can send him to die with fancy equipment or cheap equipment. Do you support your son?” But instead of dealing with the underlying message, all I read the reporter surmising is that the tactic might work?

Not that I should really be surprised.

Edit: Quoting from this article:

Cheney called it a myth that “one can support the troops without giving them the tools and reinforcements they need to carry out their mission.”

Bullshit. The answer is clearly “don’t make them undertake a stupid mission in the first place.” They won’t need those funds if we take them out of Iraq. It’s been over six years and I still sometimes have trouble believing that such fatuous logic is allowed to take place in our governance.

In Turkey, where Orhan Pamuk (2006 Nobel for Lit) is from, Hrant Dink has been killed. Dink was seemingly killed for his stance on the Armenian Genocide of World War I. Both he and Pamuk were tried and convicted of slandering Turkish Identity because they spoke out about it. There is of course outcry about this. And it doesn’t look good for Turkey, trying to get into the EU.