Parting shot

Fifteen years ago, I remember watching the early days of the Clinton era, when George Stephanopoulos was still handling the daily presser. And I remember sitting there in the den with the old man, knocking down my Crystal Pepsi, and watching this little sawed-off joker answering questions. My dad eyed him dubiously and said something I’ve never forgotten:
“That one looks like they ought to be sending his ass to get the keg.”
As with most things, he was right – I think he accurately assessed George’s full range of competence and skill set. Nothing in the ensuing 15 years has given me any reason to deviate from that evaluation.

We get it, OK?

We get it! The Sixties ™ were unlike anything in history! The baby boomers were unlike anything that ever came before or since! Things like a half-assed leftist insurrectionist wannabe from THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO are far, far, FAR more important than the fact that we’re paying $4 a gallon for gas, everyone’s mortgage is upside down and oh yeah, WE STILL HAVEN’T BAGGED OSAMA BIN LADEN.
I really don’t want this blog to be all politics all the time, but I swear, I will stop beating this dead horse AS SOON AS THE PRESS STOPS SCREWING IT!

Buyer’s Remorse

http://www.abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1063a2BushDefeatsTruman.pdf

The PDF linked above details that the approval rating for George W. Bush has not broken 50%…since January 16, 2005.

Now, for our international readers, those under age 14, or those just too stupid to remember Civics class, the President is sworn in on January 20 following the previous November’s election.

Bush the Younger has managed to spend literally his entire second term under the Seinfeld line. He would probably sell his soul to Ted Kennedy for a shot at “even steven” at this point. Theoretically this shouldn’t even be possible, unless something massively awful happened between November and January, and unless the royal screwing Cal football took from the BCS reflected on the ratings of a Texan President, I can’t think of any reason for the bottom to start falling out then.

And yet he still won. Why is that? The Rove offense, kids, and believe me when I say it’s entirely possible to be under 50% nationally and still win safely. As long as you can’t cut through the mud, you will fail to activate lightly-interested undecideds and you will lose to a better-organized and better-motivated base.

Obama’s going to school in a big way in Pennsylvania. He has the “beleaguered” tag hung around his neck like Apple Computer in 1996. He has a ruthless and implacable foe between him and the general, when he would be going up against the living, breathing proof that the “liberal media” is a myth. Either he brings his alpha game for the final 7 days…or the 2008 Democratic nomination for President becomes the 1986 Democratic nomination for Governor of Alabama: one long, murderous, soul-destroying slog where the winner’s trophy is full of poison at the end. And John McCain looks more and more like Guy Hunt every day.

Now hear this:

I have had it. HAD IT. Spare me any more talk about elitists or small towns or anything remotely close to it. Nobody – NOBODY – not ONE SINGLE F-ING MEMBER of the United States Senate has ANY standing to talk as if they’re some salt-of-the-earth defender of the sainted sons of the soil, manning the barricades against the horrible awful big-city slick-talking wheeler-dealers who are out to sucker the hayseeds.
John Rogers said it better than I ever will so go read it there. Meanwhile, I will nick one quote:
“I am just, I guess, well and truly tired of being told what “Middle America” wants, when Middle America is my age and lives in a goddam city, just like I have for my entire life.”
Arlington, Virginia, is America. Manhattan? America. Los Angeles? San Francisco? Silicon Valley? AMERICA, and don’t you !-ing forget it. Anybody who seriously wants to spend 2008 selling the old “real America” trope needs to cut that shit out with a quickness, because I. Will. Cut. Your. Ass. I mean it.

I should not be allowed out

So I had a little loose money in my pocket and couldn’t decide what to do with it. As it turns out, it seemed like a new Blootoof was a good idea (new law kicks in this summer; hands-free only in the Golden State) and so were my ridiculous new blue shades.

Naturally, as soon as I have spent my walking-around money, I start thinking of things I wish I could run right out and buy, to wit, e.g.; viz:

* Seersucker jacket (stop laughing! STOP IT!)

* New Timbuk2 Coder bag

* New water bottle (because the FIRST FIVE aren’t cutting it?)

* New big Timbuk2 backpack suitable for carry-on and taking abroad

* New duct-tape-wrapped Moleskine Cahier and 0.38mm G2 pens

I think a lot of the problem is exacerbated by the big feature piece in this week’s Economist, all about mobile technology. They go on a bit about the transformative power of the mobile phone (see my post from December about the MOTOFONE F3) and discuss the growth of digital nomadism, warning about the danger zone in which “you can work anywhere” tips into the realm of “you must work everywhere.” And the thing is…I want to be a digital nomad. I want to be able to work from the coffee shop, from the back deck of the pub, from the cigar shop, to do everything off a MacBook and a cell phone. I want, as McClellan Pope did, to have my headquarters where my hindquarters should be. (Look it up, Yankee. I had to.) In short, I want to *need* the stuff that I merely *want*.

The whole suite of articles also made an interesting argument that I hadn’t seen before. We all know that the Internet has a way of making things more self-referential, making it possible to get your news and see your friends and only ever see the stuff you really want to see (which is one reason I’ve tried to make an effort to broaden my political readings the last couple of months). However, the writer makes the case that unlimited technology tends to strengthen the strong social ties (you can be in touch with your friends constantly, even across a continent or two) at the expense of the weak ties (your Twittering from the cafe in the Rue Cler comes at the expense of striking up a conversation with the couple at the next table who have the County Wexford GAA shirts on). Consequently (inventing my own term here), what we’re seeing is not the atomization of society, but the molecularization of society. Tiny clumps of our own kind, at best loosely associated and at worst completely unbonded to larger things.

I don’t know about all this. What I do know is that the five years prior to my first Net access were an unmitigated disaster, and that pretty much anything good that has happened in my life since has ultimately derived from being online. So is that the tradeoff? Are we giving up large-scale structure in order to make sure that the few rogue atoms find somewhere to bond? And ultimately, are we more worried about the health of the compound or the health of the atoms?

Ain’t it always the way?

I tell the wife after 8 innings “I’ll come up to bed after the game.”

Top of the 9th, the Giants give up the tying run. Fortunately, Benji Molina hits a sayonara shot…in the bottom of the 11th.

Any win you can walk away from…

(Did you see those donkeys scaling the GOLDEN F-ING GATE BRIDGE?? Anybody else suddenly feel a hell of a lot less safe around here? If three protestors can CLIMB UP THE FATHER-MUCKING BRIDGE and nobody notices, I respectfully suggest that the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t give a shit about California. Also, where do I go to buy stock in “Something will go pear-shaped during the Olympic Torch run tomorrow”?)

This is…wait for it…a test.

I have now updated to Flock 1.1.1, which is WICKED fast.  It also imported my OPML file without a fight, it logged right into Twitter and Facebook – I kind of dig it.  Although to be honest, I’m not sure I see the virtue in having everything in one app a la the old days of Netscape Communicator.  Normally, what I am doing in Flock would be covered by…

  • OmniWeb (or Camino or Safari)
  • NewsFire (free and $ILLY for RSS reading)
  • Twitteriffic
  • An extra window just for Facebook – well, I wouldn’t do that, so it keeps Facebook up
  • ecto, for blogging

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s clubbing the proc too hard.  We’ll see what happens once I try to post.
Also, plenty cised that things have been quiet enough to let me catch up on the Junks today.  What a bunch of morons.  I love them so.

Rock Champ Jayhawk

The tabloid headline tomorrow will be “TIGER GAG”, as Memphis had Kansas dead to rights – and then inexplicably froze. The free throw became their Kryptonite again, and then Mario Chalmers basically guaranteed that he will forever be known as “Super Mario” and never pay for another drink in the Sunflower State for the rest of his life…and then they held the line the whole way in OT.

Nothing but pressure when you’re coaching a program founded by the man who, you know, INVENTED basketball. But Bill Self – another on that long line of former Tulsa Golden Hurricane coaches made good – basically took the monkey off his back, dragged it out behind the outhouse and gave it the beatdown this weekend. They didn’t back into it, they didn’t fluke into it – they came back and took it, decisively. And we got a hell of a game for our trouble.

Maybe not the best tournament year ever, but don’t try telling them that in Lawrence. =)

The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

They’ve repurposed “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” to sell pre-paid cellphones on butt-trifling at&t.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.