Some Words

I try to stay away from politics on this blog, but I couldn’t pass this one up.

I love this. The Republican spin is hilarious. I’m used to seeing good spin from them, spin that makes me gnash my teeth. The whole, “making us work is bad for family values” is amazing. Seriously, who thought of that? Did it go through any sort of review process before it was wheeled out?

Sure, it’s hard on some families, just over 200 of them. If these reps didn’t think their marriages could handle the results of their actually being elected, clearly they shouldn’t have run. Maybe, if it’s hard on their family, they should term limit themselves? That would be a healthy trend in America, people actually retiring to spend more time with their family, instead of using it as an excuse.

All anyone has to do is stand up, say, “Why not work to legislate to help the American family? Many of them are working longer hours than you will be, just to make ends meet.”

Over at Girls Are Pretty, they have officially broken the record for the most convoluted anal sex joke ever made. I am speechless.

This narrowly edged out everything Martin Peretz has ever said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the title.

Every time I’m about to stop reading kos entirely, he does something like this which, while a little cornball, gets the point across. I could almost hear De Niro jumping onto the slackline as he says, “We’re all in this together.”

Absent a Republican controlled congress, Democrats and progressives in general are arguing about who won it for the Dems. As my friend Mark pointed out to me the other day, this would be the time for all the Democratic factions to entrench the sense that they’re important. Sadly, this argument has the three hallmarks of all fights on the internet, a lack of retaliatory scale, occasional flights of intellectual laziness, and badly done photoshop jobs.

The mildest thing going on is people saying that blogs are very important to the current situation. I’ve got no problems with that, blogs played an important part in this past election. Still, I’m going to stop to take a swipe at Roger L. Simon, just because I can.

Roger, you think those people are luddites? Because they don’t know what blogs are? Please. I talk to people every day who can’t tell me if they use a PC or a Mac. Knowing what the hell a blog is goes so far beyond that. Also, have you noticed that bloggers still often refer to the MSM to get their stories. They take what the MSM has reported, and then examine it. Until I see a blogger with the resources and desire to go out and do reporting of his own, in a real, substantive, and sustained way, I don’t think we’re ready to call the MSM a dying beast just yet. Blogs are great for commentary, not so great for digging, say, into the finances of a major company. The MSM hasn’t been doing enough of that kind of stuff recently, but blogs have a better chance of forcing the MSM to reform than doing it themselves.

Now, moving on, we have The Plank giving a short civics lesson regarding the DCCC and DSCC. And then there’s DownWithTyranny… now, I don’t really care about the Rahm vs Netroots thing that’s going on right now. It’s deadening the buzz that comes from Dems having won resoundingly for the first time since I was allowed to vote. Still, there are two paragraphs that I cannot let pass by.

Yesterday I found an e-mail from New York Sun reporter Josh Gerstein asking me to call him about a story he was doing on Rahm Emanuel. I hadn’t checked that e-mail account in 2 days so I knew I was late. I called Gerstein at around 9 PM, ascertained that he wasn’t related to the Lieberman stooge of the same name, and said I was ready for my 10 minutes of New York Sun fame. He told me it was too late but that he had lifted a quote from my story on Rahm on DWT (if one uses the “search this blog” function above one will find 165 stories mentioning “Rahm,” even more than mention “Foley”). He also told me I wouldn’t be happy with the result because it was mostly Rahm’s friends giving his side of the story. And it was too late for him to re-open the story; it was after midnight in New York. Draw your own conclusions about journalistic integrity, etc. And about Mr. Gerstein’s story, which I haven’t bothered to read. How is it?

Is it a puff piece about how Rahm recruited brilliantly? Strategized brilliantly? Executed brilliantly? Deserves a huge role in the leadership? Does it talk about how he defeated the Syrians on the Golan Heights, does a mean ballet dance and eats lox and pastrami with his mouth open… while talking about taking over the world? Was it all about what a tough guy he is– our Tom DeLay, our Karl Rove, a modern day version of Chicago’s horrendous political boss, Richard Daley, the remnants of whose still insidious machine– rather than any actual people– he represents in Washington? I’ve read it all before.

So wait, you didn’t get the email, you waited two days, got back to the guy, and his publishing deadline had passed. You then question his journalistic integrity? What is he supposed to do? “Stop the presses! Stop the presses! There is a man with a website who wants to be heard!” Please. Read your fucking email regularly. That’s my solution.

That would be bad enough, but then you say you haven’t read the article, and set up a fiction bunch of talking points, which you suppose the article might contain, as a straw man to set aflame. Do you realize how fucking stupid that is? How long would it take to read? Seriously. Do you hear yourself there? I’m amazed. I don’t care if Rahm wins the spin war. Maybe he’d read the damned article.

Looking at the way things are shaping up now, the Dems might actually do better than I expected in the Senate. Webb/Allen has gone into a recount. McCaskill seems to be shaping up as a Dem pickup.

Recently I started seeing maps of the house that use little squares for each state. The size of the state on the map is based on the number of house seats. This map is especially great for this election cycle. I stare at it, and it’s like the big red swath in the center of the nation has corroded away.

Oh, and Martini Republic alerts me to the fact that the FBI is looking into robocalls.

I was feeling a little down about the election, worried that I’d gotten my hopes up for nothing. Then one of the colocation customers of the ISP I work for came in. He was taking his servers out, and sounded a little bitter. I asked him what he had been doing with those servers. It was then that he told me if was for a GOP GOTV effort.

It seems that the money going into MN’s GOTV was cut a while ago. He didn’t get the funds he was expecting, so he had never even started his operation. That pretty much made my day.

And tomorrow, I vote. If anyone I know reads this and does not vote, know that I will hunt you down.

Edit: I am not the only one who is seeing a botched attempt.

It seems that the NRCC has been making calls claiming to be Dems. I’d like to see a list of all the places they’ve done this. My girlfriend got a robo call that was supposed to be from a Dem candidate here in MN, then she got it again 15 minutes later. Sounds a little fishy. Also, if the Dems do take back the house, I’d love it if one of them would throw down a law about needing to identify the funding political group at the start, and not the end, of the call. It wouldn’t solve the problem, but it might help. Using faked robocalls like that that is just disgusting.

A little incident over at Firedoglake gave me a chuckle. They named names and pointed fingers at the pols who weren’t supporting their man Ned Lamont.

“Democrats all over the country have been making their calculations regarding Ned Lamont’s campaign. There are a few who need your help with their homework. They seem to be calculating that you will not notice their answers and will forget them by and by:”

On this list? Sen. Feingold of WI. The whole post seems to have an air of, “my support of you is based on this one issue.” Because, you know, support of Feingold should be based on his support of Lamont? At this point in his legislative career, Feingold should not have to prove his liberal credentials. If he disagrees on a point, he shouldn’t have to face ejection from the fold.

But oh! Scroll down their post and what do you get? An update. Feingold was wrongly accused. It seems that Lamont’s people only recently contacted him for support. Glad they did that whole calling out thing. Nice play Firedog. Lovely litmus test you have there.

Here are a couple of articles, and a post at Martini Republic that I thought were worth mentioning.

Adam Garfinkle has an article about what he calls Jewcentricity. I can’t say that I agree with everything that he says in there. There’s still a hint of the Jewcentricity that he is attacking in his own conclusion. But the point is, for the most part, well made.

Martini Republic ponders the conservative yokel stereotype, which is one that I must confess I’ve fallen prey to from time to time. I think it comes back to the comforting idea that many Americans hold to. Many people want to think of themselves as average. I don’t know if that’s because they’re not making much money, and want to feel like average is doing well, or were raised to think that average was an aspiration. It doesn’t really matter. There’s nothing really wrong with being average. But wanting, and trying, to be average leaves you open to people setting your expectations for you. If someone says they’re just an average guy, and they go in for x, suddenly you have to decide if you’re average enough for x, just like any other label you hold to, be it liberal, conservative, or crazy. Anyhow the post has an excellent example of someone using the “average electorate” as a means of making statements he can’t really back up with facts, and the Republic calls him on it.

I’ll just let this last article speak for itself. It’s about campus conservatives. It made me chuckle. Maybe not for the right reasons though. There are times when, in this age of party purity tests, I think we may end up creating a third or fourth valid party, just by refusing to admit people who disagree with us on a single point into the club. That wouldn’t be all bad… OK, maybe that wasn’t speaking for itself so much.

We take another step toward Russia, and I don’t mean diplomatically.

The sad thing is that there is always going to be 20+% of the population who are totally OK with things like this. The natural inclination of many is to say that things like martial law don’t matter to them, because they don’t intend to break any major rules. History has provided us with ample evidence that this is not the case, but people don’t realize that until they are being carried off.

Bush hasn’t used this new power yet, and he may never use it in his term of office. I certainly hope not. But even if he trusts himself with this power, (I certainly don’t.) he has no way of being sure that the next man or woman in the oval office will use it well. We change leaders fairly quickly here, and we set up a system where that helps prevent them from getting too comfortable with their power, but we should be more careful about what powers we pass on to the next guy.

Martial law is a state that negates freedoms that Americans consider important. This issue will sleep as long as a state of martial law isn’t invoked, but when it happens, America will have to ask itself if allowing one man to cut off basic freedoms that easily is anti-American. I just wish this had been considered by the public, who were largely in the dark, before the damn thing went to Bush for a signature.

While the U.S. does not officially recognize me as a dual citizen (my father is Canadian), last I checked Canada does. That’s given me a nice escape hatch to joke about over drinks with friends.

Now, if everyone on the left fled to Canada, that would obviously be a bad thing. It’s better that we use our votes here to have some, admittedly small, influence on the way things are going. Sure you can vote by absentee ballot, but we all know that’s cheating. Also, Canada is not easy to get into. That enormous border that all the weed gets smuggled over? You have to ask politely to get across. We’re American. We’d much rather just punch the guard in the face and run. But for those of you who are dead set on flight to Canada, Boing Boing has you covered.

It’s been a good month to me, in several ways. Billmon made it even better by posting this little bit on Abramoff.

Now, it strikes me that this is where anti-Semetic bull shit really shines. I’m Jewish. A few times in my life, that has actually lead to problems. My locker was defaced in junior high school with swastikas. The effect of this act was lessened by the fact that they had spelled Jew as ‘Gue.’ Seriously, only one letter from the actual word, and it’s in the wrong place. Come on now. To this day I say ‘Gue’ (pronounced “Goo-ay”) to mean, “You just tried, and failed, and now you look like an ass.”

Anyhow, the part of me that views anti-Semitism as a kind of carnival sideshow, really wants this to take off. Here’s the meme I’m looking for. Jack Abramoff was working for the Dems all along. He was just trying to weasle his way into the Republican party to bring them down from the inside. It was ordered by the International Jewish Banking conspiracy. I’m not talking about Dan Bern’s backup band here. I’m talking about the guys who never seem to give me my dividends. That may be due to the fact that they don’t exist, but a boy can dream.

Also, if they were real, they might not take to my halfsy heritage.

Anyhow, I think the single funniest thing that could happen here, (Because isn’t that what we’re all looking for? The laughter?) is for the Dems to start rehabilitating Abramoff’s image, call him a double agent. Why? Just to piss of the Republicans.