Author: Stagger Lee

Palin’s Small-Town Snobbery: Why it’s time to bury the myth of rural virtue – Reason Magazine:

The myth of rural virtue and urban vice is an old one in this country, and it persists no matter what the changes in the landscape. And whatever questions Palin may face in her debate with Biden, her paeans to small-town virtue aren’t likely to be among them.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don’t have to live in one. You wouldn’t know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas…

Nicked from Reason magazine. I don’t know how it got to the point that all my content these days is coming from libertarians and paleoconservatives. Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky (Just? -ed.) or maybe it’s some sort of residual effect from eating so much Top Dog before games. (Who knew that the world’s number-one Objectivist hot dog stand would be in Berkeley?)

But yes. I have lived in small town rural America (population ~3300), and I have lived in the capital of the universe and the cradle of the future. For myself, I have made the call, and I’m more than happy with it.

It was obvious the world had changed. Something very different was going to take its place. Geopolitically, it meant the end of the Cold War, the formulation of what some called the New World Order, and a brand new archvillain named Saddam Hussein. And into this brave new world, in August 1990, I started college. I’d been dreaming of that moment for the better part of twelve years.

It all fell apart in eight days.

Continue reading “Flashback, part 5 of n”

P.J. O’Rourke, who wrote the single greatest book ever for laymen attempting to understand American government, has cancer…of a particularly survivable and embarassing sort.



Now see, if I could write like this, I wouldn’t be wasting my time blathering at you donkeys.

Get well, you fascist son of a bitch. =)

You know what I want for a president? I want someone whose brain is so fucking big it deforms their skull. I want them to be the smartest motherfucker in every room they walk in. I want other world leaders so convinced they can read their puny minds that they don’t dare try to pull shit on them. When you ask them about the history of some country, I want them to smile at me and say “I’ll try to put it in small words for you”, and I’m not stupid.

So with the sweeping victory over the Al-Qaeda Cowboys on Sunday, I find myself swept up in a firestorm of Potomac Fever. I was going to gush about the whole DC experience, when it occurred to me that I actually lived in Arlington. So in the interest of intellectual honesty and as part of my ongoing commitment to integrity in spaz-blogging, I have split it into two parts. Hopefully, my friends back in the 202/703/571, who gave meaning to everything below, will concur in the validity of the lists.

WHAT DC MEANS TO ME:

Hail to the Redskins. The Pub Formerly Known As The 4Ps. Sonny and Sam. Bluegrass and Go-go. EB, Cakes, Lurch and JP. Don and Mike. Half-smokes. An Irish bar every five hundred yards. The 9:30 Club. HFS, back when HFS was really HFS. The lunchtime smoking club at Signature Cigar. The escalator to Hell at Dupont Circle. Rock Creek Parkway. Throwing down with a bunch of dugout lawyers during softball games on the Mall. Walk on the left, stand on the fucking right, tourist. Drinks at the Ritz-Carlton bar after movies in Georgetown. Gospel brunch at the Corcoran. Mac McGarry hosting “It’s Academic” on hungover Saturday mornings. Coffee at Xando, unless you’re close enough to walk to the Mudd House. Fuzagi’s “Waiting Room” for the Redskins defense, Chuck Brown’s “Bustin’ Loose” for the Nats and Mambo Sauce’s “Welcome to DC” for the Wizards. Lou Brutus and the Minister of Information, the Evil Alan Scott. Drinking at Felix, or the Blue Room, or Lucky Bar, or the 18th St Lounge, or the 4th Estate, or Mackey’s, or Recessions, or Pharmacy Bar. Barra Brava and the Screaming Eagles. The Greek Festival and homemade baklava. Standing on the Metro between a smoking-hot GWU co-ed on one side and a 2-star general in full Class A on the other. Lunch at Fran O’Brien’s the Friday before the Dallas game. Greasy pizza from the place on the corner and a McDonald’s that takes 45 minutes to get your order right.

WHAT NORTHERN VIRGINIA MEANS TO ME:

Turning leaves in Ballston walking down Glebe Road to Harris Teeter, or CVS, or the mall, or the movies, or the metro. Friday night in Clarendon. Swing dance lessons from Tom and Debra. Movies at Court House. Old Virginia Tobacco Company and SJ-9 cigars. The walk back up Wilson Boulevard into the setting sun after work. Plotting the demise of the leisure class in the middle of Tyson’s II. Games at Bailey’s in that huge frathouse basement of a bar. Christmas shopping at Pentagon City, staring four levels down into the food court. Grocery shopping at Giant and Fresh Fields. A pint at the Four Courts on the way home. World Cup watchers staggering out of the bar at 4 AM…or staggering in at 6. The original Apple Store at Tyson’s I. The long drive down 7 to Landsdowne, or Stirling, or Dulles Town Center. The sandcrawlers at IAD taking you out to the jetBlue terminal. The original Five Guys on Columbia Pike. Burgers and beer at Hard Times. The daily mob scene at Potomac Mills and IKEA. High school football at Washington & Lee and Lake Braddock. Square pizza from Mario’s at 3 AM, delivered. The couch at Common Grounds. The complete indispensability of the Orange Line.

Forgetting anything?

The margin of defeat – across party lines – was provided by House members running in swing districts, who overwhelmingly voted against the package. Members of the House who are not running for re-election supported the bill in sweeping numbers.

Make of it what you will.

* You are not hallucinating. That’s ESPN College Gameday, broadcasting this Saturday from VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, home of the #19-ranked Commodores. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Kiss your loved ones and get right with God, because the world as you know it is ending.

* Bama ranked #2 and generally regarded as a legit contender for the national championship? THIS is what Nick Saban was paid $8 million for, to wrench the Tide from humiliation to superpower in the span of 18 games. It’s not the sort of thing where one or two plays would have taken everything the other way and left them 2-3, or anything like that – they’re making sure that those one or two plays don’t have a chance to make a difference. And that is scary stuff.

* “Horny for Zorny” shirts are going to be popping up all over DC this week. The Skins have now beaten Dallas five times in the last seven tries – say what you like about Joe GIbbs 2.0, but he did something that nobody else managed during his absence: he made the Cowboys beatable again and turned the series from a thrashing into a rivalry again. Tony Romo is, quite frankly, pwned by the Burgundy and Gold defense; he’s 1-3 as a starter against Washington. At this point, I’m willing to bet that 3 teams from the NFC (B)East will go to the playoffs, and the fourth will have a better record than at least one other playoff team.

* That’s all the good stuff. Now for some really incendiary commentary about the Golden Bears, after the jump…

Continue reading “Football Wrapup”

So the “John McCain Wins The Debate!” ad pops up on the Wall Street Journal site this morning…before McCain’s actually committed to showing up.

If McCain loses this election, he can put it down to one thing: the fact that while Karl Rove was a poor man’s Lee Atwater, Steve Schmidt is a homeless man’s Karl Rove. I thought the showrunners at Team Hillary were incompetent, but right how I think Schmidt would screw up running a lemonade stand in the driveway.

From Gawker Media and our pals at Defamer:

Take-home text: “Hey Ryan – I’m sorry, b/c I’m covering for Lindsey’s usual asst., could you tell me, who’s Rosh Hashana and why would he/she affect Kristi’s meeting with KN and MC?”

Now, here’s the really troubling part: this person can vote.

I’ve frequently thought that the House of Representatives is the world’s biggest open-air special-needs class, and the GOP contingent a bunch of snake-handling mouth-breathers, but if this is true, it’s an inspired move. Sure, the government is on the hook if things go pear-shaped, but insuring bad debt for private companies who agree to take it on – and charging them for said insurance – is a hell of a lot less of a budget-buster than buying up all the bad debt outright and hoping against hope that it’s worth something someday. I mean, seriously. Put the profit potential of mortgage bonds in one hand and crap in the other and see which fills up first.

If this “toxic debt” is really something that will pay out for us in the end, then the private sector should be just as happy to make a profit on it, right? Especially with the government as the reinsurer of last resort? The best part is, it’s a simple plan along the lines of FDIC insurance and it leaves the heavy lifting on the industry that got its tit in a wringer to begin with. I think the watchword for anyone working on this deal should be “elegant in its simplicity.” These Rube Goldberg three-rail bank shot schemes are where shit comes unravelled.

And again, if I’m rank-and-file at Lehman, I’m climbing a bell tower with a high-powered rifle right about now…