we suck young blood

An expert on awkward faces vile people make had the following to say about McCain's weird "smiles" during the debate:

Hill’s dissection: “You can see Obama’s smile is a true smile. It’s about twice as barring [sic--ed: did he mean "jarring?" I hope so] McCain’s. McCain, when he smiles, it’s always really more of a grimace smile. There’s a tension that permeates McCain’s personality.”

Exactly! And that tension would be that the Hamburglar is constantly stealing all of his hamburgers when he's not having press conferences or unsuspending his pants. McCain's erratic temperament can lead to indiscriminate retaliation against those he fears have stolen his hamburgers and won't stay off his lawn: namely, children. Here he is sucking the brain out of one plump specimen in order to feed his tumor farm.




























And here the vengeful flesh-eating mutant has run amuck and is actually trying to devour the President right on stage! My friends, ehs ken haz POTUS?

why is the 21st amendment so pernicious?

via LG&M, a bit of presidential history. Good to bear in mind as the cold season approaches.

a possible explanation?

I think in time historians will view this past month for the McCain campaign as one of the strangest and most surreal episodes in the history of modern presidential politics. In an effort to understand, Mickey Kaus calls on Tom Wolfe:

P.S.: Remember Tom Wolfe's description of a fighter pilot's decision-making protocol: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! ..." Update: Delmarva Now's J. Fisher has posted the Wolfe quote in full. It's eerily resonant! ...

This is the passage he has in mind:

Being a fighter pilot... presented a man, on a perfectly sunny day, with more ways to get himself killed than his wife and children could imagine in their wildest fears. If he was barreling down the runway at two hundred miles an hour, completing the takeoff run, and the board started lighting up red, should he (A) abort the takeoff (and try to wrestle the monster, which was gorged with jet fuel, out in the sand beyond the end of the runway) or (B) eject (and hope that the goddamned human cannonball trick works at zero altitude and he doesn't shatter an elbow or a kneecap on the way out) or (C) continue the takeoff and deal with the problem aloft (knowing full well that the ship may be on fire and therefore seconds away from exploding)?...

Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!" And then that truly spooky click on the machine. What do I do next? (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff.
-Tom Wolfe, "The Right Stuff," 1979

Interesting.

Letting down your (Republican) guard

(multiple updates below)

I agree entirely with Chris' take on the debate. Anyone who hasn't decided who they're voting for in this election by now is a low information voter, someone who's incapable of discerning the instances where McCain was intentionally (or worse, unintentionally) misleading and/or factually inaccurate. With little more than a basic grasp of the complex financial issues at issue and having only a limited understanding or awareness of world events, the swinger is going to look to the candidates' tone, confidence, and fighter instinct, among other qualities that are assessed on the visceral, rather than intellectual, level.

In this regard, McCain came in like a charging bull, a scrapper, yet, improbably, showed himself to be polished, steeped in historical context, and even steady. He played it like an underdog, effectively sticking the shiv to Obama every time he had the opportunity (the "shiv" is the appropriate weapon of choice, as McCain (hilariously) referred to "when [he] got out of prison," leaving out the ubiquitous POW modifier). How many times did McCain note that "Sen. Obama just doesn't understand"? To my surprise, by the end of the debate, it was Obama who seemed to border on the minature and McCain who towered over his opponent in stature.

An exaggeration? I don't think so. While I found plenty on an intellectual level with which to fault McCain, that stuff just doesn't seem to matter here. No, for the swinger what matters is the healthy and winning sheen of a JFK, the self-effacing and humorous quips of a Reagan, the pathos and ability to connect of a (Bill) Clinton. Obama delivered no memorable line, he stammered, had no coherent organization to his answers, and, most damaging, unlike McCain, he didn't have a consistent message or soundbite that he continually drove home throughout the debate. I don't remember a damn thing Obama said. All I remember is McCain having his way with him, swatting his feeble protestations away like pesky flies, and Obama = doesn't understand and Obama = lacks the experience. This was the worst debate performance by a Democratic nominee for president since Dukakis got all wonky about his hypothetically brutally beaten and raped wife in 1988, courtesy of Bernard Shaw. Sort of makes me realize what all of those yahoos were saying in the primary about wanting Hillary over Obama because she's at least a fighter (granted, she's most often fighting for the wrong things, so maybe it cancels out).

Look, maybe Obama's performance would be understandable and perhaps even passable if he were leading in the polls by 20 pts. But he's not. So maybe the best explanation for his performance is that he's a fucking sucky debater.

Other observations:

- McCain mistakenly referred to the Iranian Republican Guard (it's the Revolutionary Guard; the Republican Guard was defeated and then disbanded when the US of A invaded Iraq in 2003); of course, Obama ratified this gaffe by making the same mistake when he got the mic. Woulda been nice to be able to have a surrogate mention that as yet another example of McCain losing his marbles.

- I think the foil/inverse relationships between some of the candidates in this race are fascinating: McCain: God awful at giving a stump speech (or, fuck, any speech for that matter), but excels at debates (if you can get over his evidently irrepressible condescension, self-satisfaction, and perpetual sneer); Obama, on the other hand, excels at giving a stump speech, and in fact I far prefer to listen to one of his speeches to one of (Bill) Clinton's, but when debating he's drained of any hint of eloquence and prattles around ineffectually and with no real sense of purpose or urgency. With each point McCain makes about Obama's inexperience and lack of understanding, he effectively undercuts his nimrod running mate and bolsters Obama's running mate; likewise, each time Obama effectively demonstrates that experience doesn't matter as much as judgment does (clearly this is a hypothetical since he amazingly doesn't seem up to the task on this score), he undercuts Biden's central appeal as a candidate and excuses Palin's singular deficiency.

- As Josh Marshall has aptly pointed out, mockery is a very important tool in one's arsenal in combating the Republicans' shenanigans and outright lies. As he's also pointed out, Obama has shown real promise in deftly mocking McCain in some of his speeches before supporters. Why not begin tonight's debate by simply saying after thanking folks, the university, etc., "And Sen. McCain, I'm really glad you decided to join us tonight after all." Oh, I don't know, that might've been memorable, you know, something quip-y yet still totally respectful and something that the newsbots could've latched onto and mentioned after the debate and used as a means of bringing up McCain's crazy-ass behavior over the past few days. Screw that idea, let's instead spend a significant chunk of the foreign policy discussion talking about preconditions and preparation and lower level and higher level and fucking A!!!! What the fuck was he droning on about??!! And, uh, didn't he actually say in that YouTube debate, point fucking blank, that he would in fact meet with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad without preconditions, full stop?! Well, now that he spent significant time hemming and hawwing and amending and interjecting this whole "preparations" non-distinction, the McCain folks can keep this baby alive for a few news cycles, even maybe generate a good scary attack ad over it, which would say that not only would he put us in mortal danger(!) by eating from the same cookie plate as Raul Castro, something only an inexperienced pol would've offered, but he then flip-flopped or lied about his position on the matter.

- Did you notice the camera angles that rendered it nearly impossible to see the left side of McCain's face? The campaigns must've reached some sort of agreement about that, or at least I'd think they would've had to, as the asymmetry of the camera angles was pretty apparent to me half-way through the debate. Even though the guy's paying someone thousands of dollars to cover up the scars he has on his face, along with the copious wrinkles, he's gotta still be worried about folks' reactions to glancing even a bit of the disfigurement that's nakedly on display here. It wouldn't surprise me if the Obama folks had decided to give the old guy a gimme on the camera angle thing, as it appears they're bending over backwards to make sure Palin's stay is as pleasant and comfortable as possible:

Advisers to Mr. Biden say they were comfortable with either format.

That's awesome! I'm sure they'll also be comfortable winning or losing the election to the most unsteady, unstable, erratic, and bellicose opponent to come along since Nixon under the most favorable conditions to Democrats imaginable. Six to one, half dozen to the other. Either way, democracy wins!


p.s. I know I paid him a compliment above, but if you want to get a glimpse of some Obama supporters who downed the Kool-Aid and aren't looking back, check out TPM's post-debate coverage, specifically the bit on monkey cognition and what this reveals about McCain's latent fear of Barack Obama. Please. Get over it. The wind beneath your wings was totally f-ing schooled tonight.

p.p.s. Marshall:

My own sense remains that this was basically a tie between these two candidates, with both bringing their A game.

Agree! They both brought their A games. It's just that McCain's A game is pretty solid whereas Obama's pretty much sucks ass.


p.p.p.s. Victory! Oh if only the entire country were hearing impaired!

p.p.p.p.s. Apropos my observation above about camera angles, Yglesias notes that the cameras were also seemingly manipulated in such a way so as to obscure McCain's relative smallness. Perhaps that accounts for my impression that McCain wasn't seeming quite his usual Keebler Elfish-self tonight.

p.p.p.p.p.s. This ad was up immediately after the debate. Not sure how they pulled that off so quickly. In any event, really hope that deference thing works out for ya.

p.p.p.p.p.p.s by the way, not that I have any dogs in this fight, but I'm imagining Ole Miss's win over the fourth-ranked Gators, coming on the heels of successfully hosting a pretty substantive presidential debate with no evident hitches, makes for some pretty sweet icing on the cake for folks in Oxford.

p.p.p.whatever --- Update: While I believe Obama did not come off looking particularly well-versed and responsible during the debate, I really enjoyed Fallows' take on the debate and the strategy underlying each candidate's approach. I respect Fallows' experience and depth of knowledge about these types of things, and I particularly find noteworthy his reminder that Obama lamentably has to consider how he'll come off as a black man facing off against an older white guy. Haven't seen footage of Obama's debate against Keyes. I'm eager to see how his performance differed in that circumstance. More interesting analysis from Fallows.

Thomas Friedman's belly button

Man I love this guy's stuff.

kill whitey

Say what you will about McCain, but it's quite a feat to get an entire town in Mississippi to hate your guts when the main alternative in the election is a black dude.

Fact

The bailout should be financed by $700 billion of the roughly $1 trillion in American quarters the Canadian government has over the years secretly replaced with worthless canuck quarters in our $10 rolls of quarters, cleverly placing exactly one Canadian quarter in each roll to avoid detection and thereby stealing from America's college students, dads who have gotten too friendly with the nanny, renters, and other sundry losers.

It's not even a real country anyway.

I'm your biggest fan

And another thing, what possible reason would there be for the fundamentalist Christian governor of a state containing perhaps two Jewish residents (not counting the native Alaskans, all of whom would be counted as Jews according to Steve Young) and who has never visited Israel to have only an Israeli flag in her state office?

p.s. and, based upon one possible reading of my wording above, it would be funny (and send quite a message!) if the contents of her governor's office consisted entirely of one single Israeli flag--no chair, no window, no paperclips--just one Israeli flag. And a tanning bed.

Mary had ten babies . . .

. . .and, sadly, her head did pop off. While I can't imagine the strain of caring for 10 children, let alone a gerbil, I love the fact that the article almost seems to laud the man for stopping short of dropping off his oldest child, you know, the legally emancipated one, or, what's the word??? Oh right, adult!

off with his head!

Man, give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile.

bad joke

This guy's campaign is more and more looking like a really bad joke.

No more funny stuff

Great catch by Ken Silverstein. Give us the fucking money, Bernanke, or we'll cut off your johnson!

I mean, who are we to quibble over right and wrong?

Farley/Greenwald smackdown

In a post I shared on the side pane a day or two ago, Greenwald worried about the implications of the domestic (and possibly indefinite?) deployment of a U.S. Army brigade. In it he discusses the apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In response, Robert Farley offered this stinging rebuke, noting that the PCA wasn't designed to safeguard democracy, but instead was enacted to safeguard southern white supremacy. Interesting exchange, particularly as I know very little about the legal and legislative history behind the applicable laws.

With friends like these

Yglesias vents his frustration about Bill Clinton giving the stage to McCain at his Global Forum, which gives him the veneer of bi-partisan cooperation and high-mindedness:

You might think a former President would be so committed to an axe-grinding agenda that he couldn’t see the big picture.

As with most things relating to Clinton, once you hear more or look closer, it gets worse. Apparently McCain's call to delay the debate(s) was made in "good faith," which I think is crediting this bizarre conduct every bit as much as Lieberman or Graham would. This comes on the heels of an appearance on the Daily Show (part 1, part 2) where he could hardly muster up even the most milquetoast of praise for Sen. Obama while having an "aww shucks" moment in response to Stewart's playful entreaties to have him get back in the fray and beat all of the other presidential contenders. Oh right, William Jefferstein Clintonowitz has apparently also decided not to campaign for Obama in the crucial swing state of Florida during the Jewish holy days (twelve days in all). And I imagine harvest season will preclude him from visiting the midwest, and New England is out of the question because he couldn't possibly think of intruding on folks' enjoyment of the fall foliage. With friends like these . . . .


p.s. Lemieux agrees, and posts a hilarious segment of Letterman with Chris Rock.

smokescreen

This is a compelling theory:

The more I look at what happened today, the more I think it was all an elaborate attempt to stem the fallout from the truly disastrous interview Sarah Palin taped this morning with Katie Couric.

At first I was incredulous, but now having looked at the relevant footage, via Greenwald's excellent post on the topic (almost all of whose sentiments contained in the post about Palin, Washington experience in general, and Obama I agree with), it seems pretty plausible.

tag-teaming?

Why does this give me the uncomfortable feeling that Obama is walking right into a trap? Will McCain be there too? If not, why not? Even if McCain and Bush aren't in cahoots, it still doesn't necessarily strike me as sound idea to meet with the most unpopular president in modern history on the eve of (apparent) passage of what looks to be a very unpopular bailout--which Obama has indicated he'll support.

Uncle!

It appears that McCain's gambit of forestalling the campaign and debates has no historical precedent--not during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Great Depression, or World War II. The claim that the present financial problems necessitate the suspension of the campaign when these far more emergent past circumstances did not is without merit. But I suppose when McCain sizes up the past week or so, what with his plummeting poll numbers, his mute running mate's continued avoidance of the press, the emerging details of his campaign manager's Fannie Mae connections, etc., circumstances around McCain camp HQ must take on the feel of the cataclysmic.

p.s. No wonder he wants to make it all go away. Wow. It just doesn't get much more painful than that.

suspending the campaign

In light of this bizarre development, I think Obama's response, while remaining high-minded and all that, should be sure to point out that it's not surprising that someone would go into panic mode around a financial crisis when he has a history of saying things like this:

I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues.

Update: It'd be nice if they'd highlight this ridiculousness too. Clearly McCain's asserting that his presence qua senator will be helpful in dealing with this crisis. Well, if that's the case, his presence qua senator in the preceding six months might have allowed him to understand that, no, the fundamentals of the economy are not in fact strong, which knowledge would've given him at least a fighting chance to fashion preventative, ameliorative measures. The guy hasn't cast a vote in the Senate since April 8. What a surprise that, only a couple of days before he goes head to head with his opponent in a debate and on day 28 or 29 of no (meaningful) press access to Palin and in the face of plummeting poll numbers and embarrassing news stories about his campaign manager's $15,000/mo. paycheck from Fannie Mae, he'd decide it's imperative he head back to D.C. What a joke. In addition, it shouldn't escape notice that he's, in the process, not just proven himself to be disingenuous, out of touch, and hypocritical, but also, apparently, he's a ratfucker.

Update: I think they (the McCain camp) clearly see the writing on the wall. McCain's known for a while that he's going to lose. The choice is to either lose by a respectable margin by playing it conventionally or throw the Hail Mary and hope that you bet right and win, even though the odds are clearly against you. This is what Palin was all about (and man, did that not pay off; consider how much better it'd be for McCain to have Romney by his side during the financial crisis as opposed to Palin) and this is what this bizarre campaign suspension is all about; it fits perfectly with his documented high stakes gambling persona. However, I don't want to discount altogether the possibility that this impulsive move was somehow prompted by some freakish scandal that's about to come out about Palin, such as an affair or what's becoming apparent with each passing day, namely, that she's utterly incapable of being in front of the public without having her hand held tightly, or, perhaps, some health issues McCain's having. Afterall, as Atrios notes, his left eye did look awfully weird during that press conference, and he's just generally looking pretty haggardly lately.

Update: Marshall is right. The only thing I'd quibble with is that, in an ideal world or even in a functioning democracy, having additional press resources in D.C. while this deal is being hammered out (for better or for worse) should facilitate a resolution, namely, by better educating the public about the nature of the "crisis" and its causes, by instructing the public about the various solutions being offered and who stands to gain from those solutions, etc. The fact that this isn't the case, that Marshall (rightly) feels that having the press around would muddy the waters rather than be a benefit, is depressing.

senior moment

I mean, I, er, I don't know.

the "good" sort of elite

Sent the following to Andrew Sullivan a little while ago in response to this post, titled "Populist Rubbish":

Indeed, and please continue to harp on the fact that Sarah Palin got her undergraduate degree from a - gasp! - state university. The horror!!! Oh my God!!! Because nothing appeals to the deeply un-populist, elitist, and effete swing voter, the majority of whom I'm sure attended both Oxford and Harvard, like mocking a candidate for his or her public education. Yes, what a surprise the Obama camp isn't knocking down your door for more advice on the quarter-hour.

What a fucking snob. Perhaps he'd be better to continue his campaign for the "good" sort of elite after Nov. 4. Since when did attending the University of Idaho (or any other state institution for that matter) become an acceptable epithet, and how out of touch does one have to be to believe that that'd be an effective line of attack?

She has a degree in sports journalism from the University of Idaho, and went to several colleges in several years.

Put her up against the wall!!

The Golden Age Is In Us

Jesus this is funny (scroll down), if you're into that kind of thing. By the way, if you haven't checked out Rees' Get Your War On comics, dating from right around the time we started dropping bombs on Afghanistan, then well, you've been missing out. Oh yeah, big time. Por ejemplo. His earliest are my favorites, although I can't seem to find his archives at the moment. [SS: I thought you were leaving, asshole.] [ed: patience and steel!]

note

Dear Reader(s),

I'll be traveling for a short while and as a result will be out of touch. I promise to bring back souvenirs.

FP

SFU

Alan Ball, the genius creator/writer/whatever he was for the show Six Feet Under is at it again with the new vampire show True Blood. Having watched the first episode of TB I can say that it was a letdown and I won't be watching any future episodes. I guess it could be like SFU, in that it's just starting out weak but soon the momentum will build. But even if that were the case, SFU, even the first one or two episodes (in my opinion, the weakest of the series), was never as bad as the first episode of TB was. In any case, the folks at the Washington Post are writing about Ball and TB and had this to say, which must've been a lot of fun to write considering, as I imagine, Ball must have a pretty huge following in the gay community and TB is said to incorporate a lot of allegorical themes about cultural oppression of gays:

September lays out a full-on feast for Ball fans, with his independent
movie "Towelhead" opening tomorrow, fast on the heels of his quirky HBO vampire
drama "True Blood."

(Emphasis mine). Well. Sounds, uh, filling? It'll be a virtual nativity calendar of Johnsons! Riding high on Ball, his fans will no doubt be in for quite the Cocktober surprise. [SS: See, you too can write for the WP!] [FP: by the way, this "dictionary" definition of cocktober surprise doesn't credit or reference Wonkette that I can see. That's a shame, cause Wonkette's (I believe) coining of the term and contemporaneous coverage of the Mark Foley scandal was hilarious and classic. See here for archival coverage.]

Who Am I?

"HAHA!!! YES!!"

First prize, an easily detachable bike fender, goes to the first correct response.

Carson City, bitches!!!

Indeed, I am ready on Day One America. Should Osama Bin Laden himself knock on my door once I am blessed to be sworn in as the next Vice President of the United States, I will not blink, I will be able to give him specific information on specific countries, for example, the percentage of Kenya's GDP of textiles vs. agriculture, and I am also a viking when it comes to state capitals.


. . . adding, FACE!!!!!!!!!!! Allow me to demonstrate as I flip off each of the Earth's four elements.

Mail Call: the one that got away

Responding to this, a commenter writes:

Yeah, but what would that have meant for Jed Bartlett, eh? Or Bruce
Bartlett for that matter.

To which I say, "MI-MI, YOU GOO-NIE!!!"

Wrong!

Earlier I wrote about the strangeness of Bush's lack of foreign travel/living experience in light of his, no doubt, many opportunities. In remarking on Statler's lack of int'l expertise, Atrios notes McCain "is as incurious and ignorant as George Bush, with less excuse." I suppose he's getting at the fact that McCain has lived abroad (albeit for a good five years involuntarily) while serving in the Air Force in a foreign war, on top of his myriad leadership roles in the Air Force after Vietnam, which gives him less excuse to be ill-informed or incurious. I suppose. But really I don't know how anyone can have less excuse than Bush in the areas of interest and curiosity in and exposure to other countries. I think it's a tie. Thus, Atrios is WRONG! [Eleanor Gee I think you're Swellinor: I think that's a little over the top.] [ed.: perhaps, but how else would I have reason to direct attention to this gem?] [E: I feel used.]

Disagree!

I like Matt. He makes a lot of sense. And I do believe Statler is a fogey and dangerously out of touch and blah blah, but if you listen to this exchange it seems to me that McCain simply didn't hear or understand that the reporter was switching gears from Latin America (a fact which is not clear from the portion of audio Yglesias uses) to Spain and Zapatero. Look, the reporter has a thick accent and from the grainy sound of Statler's voice, it appears that he's partaking in the interview via phone, which makes it doubly hard to comprehend what a fast talker is saying (and this reporter, regardless of her skill, intelligence, incisiveness (all of which I know nothing about) is decidedly a fast talker).

McCain (aka, Gustafson's da): Sometimes I wonder if God forgot about me.

Update: On the other hand, I suppose the Right and the MSM would be going apeshit if Obama had given the same clueless answer Statler did, so maybe the ridicule and grilling is deserved. [Grendel: Yeah you fucking apologist, maybe.]

livin' large

Shorter Elizabeth Drew: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself/ I am large, I contain multitudes."


. . . Atrios is right.

I don't know what happened, everything's coming in so fozzie

Elizabeth Drew, whose political reporting I've enjoyed on at least one or two occasions in the New York Review, has this to say about her on again, off again relationship with Statler.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly
(including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the
vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my
earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man. In fact,
it’s not clear who he is.

(emphasis mine). Breaking!!! * * * * Nancy Drew Appeals to World: Please, Oh Please Give a Fuck About Whether I Land on 'Hating On McCain' in the Musical Chairs of Life Once the Sweet Sweet Song of Myself Comes to Its Wistful End.
In other words, shorter Nancy Drew mystery: Against McCain before I was for him, wrote a paean to the oversizedness of his weener in relation to his little drawfish body, then realized the lighting was bad and I'm far-sighted anyways, will duly write sequel to Citizen McCain, which I will cleverly title Citizen Cain and will simply involve altering the text of the first obsequious tome by inserting the word "NOT!" in front of all glowing references to the Mav. [Septimus Smith: What drove me to insanity and subsequent death by impaling was that stupid phrase "for it before he was against it." Each time that phrase is used an angel's wings are pierced. Please refrain.] [FP: Noted. btw, you're crazy.] Really, is it possible that anyone cares that Drew is easily duped?? Perhaps she and Sullivan, Klein (Joe), Marshall, et al. could get around to forming a support group wherein on an hour by hour basis they detail to the group and the world at large their efforts at recovery, which consist of tearing down the vaunted myth of the maverick that they helped errect so assiduously in the first four years of the decade. [Waldorf: you moron, they have done this, it's called "the daily dish" and "talkingpointsmemo"!] [FP: true dat, and indeed, these poor teetotaling souls have finally kicked the McCain addiction, reaching the 12th step of recovery, which is comprised of eleven parts excessive use of the words "meme" and "narrative," a heaping tablespoonful of the word "bamboozle" and its derivatives, and randomly throwing out inane phrases like "patience and steel" and "Know Hope." Huzzah!!! And congratulations on your sobriety!!]

---

By the way, if you're not reading Glenn Greenwald, then well, you're probably employed. But even if that's the case, you should probably make some time to give him a go. Late last night I ventured onto the fetid stomping grounds of the Right to find that, lo and behold, the Right is capable of indignation in the event of a breach of privacy. Oh NO!! A "gross violation of her privacy"!!!! What-ever will we tell the sweet, innocent children!?! Just how is it that one can get so exercised over the hacking of a single yahoo email account when the current administration (with the complicity of the Democratically controlled Congress, the cock-blocked judiciary, and the comfortably numb public) has presided over the warrantless eavesdropping of untold numbers of phone calls and illicit sifting of private email accounts? I'm out of my depth here, so I turn it over to the Duke of Outrage to pinpoint just what heights of ridiculousness the Right has attained.

---

ed. note: in conducting research for this weblog entry [SS: indeed, "blog" is such an ugly word.], I stumbled upon a heretofore uncovered romance---apparently S&W have carried on an illicit love affair with a certain Miss "Emily Bear" for an unspecified amount of time, which, if I recall from trusts and estates, makes Fozzie Bear of Wokka Wokka fame my adoptive son. Furriness explained.

It is later revealed in the Muppet Family
Christmas special that the two hecklers were friends with Fozzie's mother,
Emily Bear.

the scent of bitter almonds

When I first read this book in high school, the following passage made an impression on me. I thought I had underlined it, but when I just now looked back in my copy, I couldn't locate it and sure enough I hadn't in fact underlined it and I was only able to locate where the passage is in my hard copy by doing a query on Google. So I'm glad I made a mental note of the passage, since it was a misapprehension that I've come back to periodically over the last eleven years.

He had also seen the only two pictures of his father. One had been taken in
Santa Fe, when he was very young, the same age as Florentino Ariza when he saw
the photograph for the first time, and in it he was wearing an overcoat that
made him look as if he were stuffed inside a bear, and he was leaning against a
pedestal that supported the decapitated gaiters of a statute. The little boy
beside him was Uncle Leo XII, wearing a ship captain's hat. In the other
photograph, his father was with a group of soldiers in God knows which of so
many wars, and he held the longest rifle, and his mustache had a gunpowder smell
that wafted out of the picture. He was a Liberal and a Mason, just like his
brothers, and yet he wanted his son to go to the seminary. Florentino Ariza did
not see the resemblance that people observed, but according to his Uncle Leo
XII, Pius V was also reprimanded for the lyricism of his documents. In any case,
he did not resemble him in the pictures, or in his memories of him, or in the
image transfigured by love that his mother painted, or in the one unpainted by
his Uncle Leo XII with his cruel wit. Nevertheless, Florentino Ariza discovered
the resemblance many years later, as he was combing his hair in front of the
mirror, and only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing old
because he begins to look like his father.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera 169-70.

Love is on the air

You're beautiful when you're bankrupt. Hottest and most informative gay scene EVER!

Can I be the first (or the 9 millionth?) to suggest to network and cable news programs that America needs to see more man-on-man nipple suckling? 

This brings back a great article that seems apropos for our financial woes: perhaps all Wall St. needs is the old cocking cure?

Grey's

Thought this was interesting. Apparently the entertainment industry has made great progress in the area of messaging subtlety since the 90s.

a cancer on the presidency

There's probably a good argument against full release of medical records for presidential candidates under normal circumstances, i.e., where the candidate in question does not most closely resemble a necktie holding together a melting pile of mash potatoes and margarine. But where the candidate has already suffered two distinct boughts of malignant melanoma and Tracy Flick's slack-jawed older sister would be the stand-in president in the event of McCain's demise, I think the press and public should demand to see McCain's records without restriction, i.e., none of this in camera, no electronic equipment, three-hour viewing bullshit. How could you vote for the guy without first having reasonable assurances that he's going to make it to the White House come January 2009 without Sarah Palin having to carry him over the oval office threshold? See here for interesting background.

file under "reinforced cockpit doors et al."

apparently the work-in-progress financial meltdown didn't catch everyone off guard.

David Foster Wallace

Rest in peace.  

did he just call him polyester?

nicely played, hillbilly.  nicely played.  

apropos the up-and-coming ad man's new killer slogan, a little vernacular Cummings:

ygUDuh 

          ydoan 
          yunnuhstan 

          ydoan o 
          yunnuhstand dem 
          yguduh ged 

                yunnuhstan dem doidee 
          yguduh ged riduh 
          ydoan o nudn 

LISN bud LISN 

               dem 
               gud 
               am 

               lidl yelluh bas 
               tuds weer goin 

duhSIVILEYEzum 

---

From 95 Poems, if I recall correctly.  

it's almost like being there!!!

 it's almost like being there!!  in fact, it's such a convincing read that the folks in Galveston will be compelled to send relief packages to David Kurtz once they realize how engrossed the ordeal has left him.  send pkgs to DK, 

c/o some fucked up sense of timing, 

3919 N. Uppity McBookish St.,

Mother, Fucker 34423

by the way, if you have a minute and want to see why conservative and a good many other americans loathe "elitist" liberals and in fact why liberals have in some cases earned the reputation, check out Andrew Sullivan's (yes, I know he's at least nominally a conservative, but what with his and Josh Marshall's symbiotic crank-yanking about Obama, I consider him a prime example to look to here) recent posts on Sarah Palin, particularly this one. you can just hear the sneering contempt he has for this woman, what with her "sports journalism degree" from, of all places, the University of Idaho.  lord almighty!!! what a gas!!  and here he faults her for noting that she first heard about the surge in Dec 2006 in the news and he pines away for better, tougher questions, like the type Tim Russert's reanimated corpse would pose were it conducting the interview.     a--how else would Sullivan expect a governor-elect of Alaska to hear about a newly developed, highly secretive strategy the Bush administration would began foisting upon the public in earnest late Dec/early Jan.?  this criticism strikes me as unfair.  I'd put money on the fact that most if not all governors (let along governors-elect), whether they be Rs or Ds, heard about the surge like most other Americans (and most priggish bloggers for that matter), from the news.  how the fuck else is she supposed to find out about it?  rather than supporting Sullivan's overwrought and (typically) hyperbolic criticism of Palin as being a pathological liar, her admission that she learned about the surge on the news seems candid and refreshingly truthful.  credit where credit's due, dickslap.  b- on what planet must one be living if they really consider Russert, zombie or no, to be some sort of tenacious muckraker who strikes fear in the hearts of tremulous politicians??!    was he joking?--we can only hope.  

humanah humanah humanah

Now don't get me wrong, I'm entirely in favor of anything that makes Palin come off looking like the fool she is.  However, as a pretty regular follower of politics and international affairs, I don't think it's particularly fair to count this supposed flub against her.  I surmised from Gibson's question that he was likely talking about the dubious doctrine of preventative warfare, something that sticks out as the most salient feature of Bush (foreign) policy.  However, a source as eminent and reliable as Wikipedia confirms my initial reaction, which was to say that the doctrine of preventative warfare, evidently to what Gibson was referring, is not universally (or even commonly?) referred to as the "Bush Doctrine."  And in fact, it seems the phrase "Bush Doctrine" is a term that stands in for any number of Bush policies arising in the aftermath of 9/11.  As such, I hardly think it was unreasonable for Palin to ask for more specificity from Gibson.  Of course, that doesn't explain the stunned deer-in-headlight look.  

Update: apparently liberty's most steadfast and ardent defender, Andrew Sullivan, is in agreement with his bosom buddy Josh Marshall about Palin's flubbing of the Bush doctrine question.  Who knows, maybe she's secretly part of that dread fifth column.   

Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks there's a good deal of ambiguity surrounding the term "Bush Doctrine."  While Josh Marshall apparently thinks this is ridiculous, the more I read the more I'm convinced that Palin was in the right for asking Gibson for clarification on what he meant, and Gibson was being needlessly coy when he refused to elaborate on what he was referring to.  Granted, it was foolish and belied a lack of confidence for Palin not to have followed up with something like, "Well Charlie, I'm assuming you're referring to the doctrine of preventative warfare. . . "  If anything, Palin demonstrated she lacks the confidence to discuss foreign policy, a sin in and of itself when running for VP, but she it can't fairly be said or implied that based on Palin's evident lack of understanding of the term Bush Doctrine that she was completely unfamiliar with the policy set forth in the National Security Strategy document.  Weirdly, despite Marshall's and Sullivan's disingenuous claims to the contrary, I think Krauthammer makes the most sense when he attributes the gaffe to Gibson.  

clean passport

campos is right, and his tone of wit's end exasperation is spot on.  while some may view it as a haughty, elitist notion that a would-be president of the usa should have at least a modicum of international travel experience, if not actual time spent living in one or more other cultures, this is in fact a decidedly reasonable expectation to have for one who would be the commander of the most potent military force and vastest empire in world history, not to mention the nation's chief negotiator in affairs with other nations and international institutions.  while international experience shouldn't be an express prerequisite for holding the office of president or vice president, common sense pretty much dictates that you'd want the folks holding those offices to have some first-hand experience of other cultures.  besides, we need only point to the current president's sparse international travel prior to assuming the most powerful office in the world to reinforce this point.  if my recollection is right, I believe President Bush had traveled outside of the United States two times prior to becoming president in 2000, one or both of which having been trips to Mexico, a foreign country bordering the state he governed.  And needless to say, I'm sure those jaunts south of the border focused a bit more on Jose Cuervo and Girls Gone Wild than they did on cultural exchange, etc.  The paltriness of Bush's international experience is brought home when one remembers that this is the grandson of a powerful United States Senator and the son of a man who was at one time head of the CIA, vice president, and president.  

maybe i did . . . maybe i did.

"Maybe it would have been better for Obama to have called Sarah Palin a pig, rather than to have spent a day explaining why he didn't."

Agreed!

missed-nomer

at first glance, i thought they were renaming TNR.  

 . . . or discussing the hot dog of the semitic variety.  

que sera, sera bitches

A philosopher friend of mine writes me, the oracle, to divine the answer to the following vexing philosophical conundrums.  

my responses in bold.  

No worries. Will look at your tome of an email soon. I'm currently thinking of the following cases. Any intuitions?

1. Must choose between saving a janitor and a surgeon. Permissible to save the surgeon since he's very likely to do more good in the world (for persons in his life that are currently as yet unidentified)? Or should be flip a coin (or give the two equal chances in some less crass way)?

well, does the janitor have a good sense of humor, a large penis?  I'm trying to take a panoramic view here.  spit-balling if you will.  in the movies, when faced between shooting human and animal, we are told to shoot the animal.  blue collar worker = animal.  shoot janitor in back of head.  qed.  

no, but in all seriousness, that's a really interesting question.  my first instinct is to ask for more information.  but simply going off these bare facts, i guess i'd have to say decide in some way that allows for equal odds for each.  although i see the allure of offing the janitor in favor of the surgeon, and it's hard to resist.  

if this is for your [redacted by official gov't Tmen] application, i can ask [my significant other] to break in to the phil office to get the answer key.  you need only ask.  

2. We have a certain amount of a scarce drug that each of three people, A, B, and C, urgently needs to live. A and B are quite close to us, but C is far away. Imagine also that there is enough of the drug to save A and C or B and C, but not A and B. (Perhaps differing physiologies make it the case that the amount remaining after saving A would not leave enough to save B, and vice versa, but would be enough to save C.) Now, if we give the drug to B, who is a fast runner, he can get the remaining effective amount to C before he dies. But if we give the drug to A, she will not reach C in time, and both B and C will die. Is it permissible to view the fact that B but not A could save C a good and conclusive reason to save B rather than A?

Yes--a "good" reason, but maybe not "conclusive."  "Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes."  Walt Whitman.  

3. Combo of 1 and 2: Choose between A, a normal person, and B, a surgeon, who is the only one who could save C (who needs a surgeon). Permissible to save B? Or should we give A and B equal chances.

having been a janitor but never having been a surgeon, my sympathies are with "normal person."  but here, where the beneficiary of saving B is identified, it makes me lean toward saving B, surgeon, so he/she can save C.  Plus, A, the "normal person," probably can't run fast enough because, like most "normal persons," he/she is overweight and his/her corpulent little leggies aren't as deft as they were when he/she played safety for the high school JV team.  so in a way, A's death can be ruled a suicide.  

If you choose to accept this challenge, all I need are your intuitions about what it's permissible to do. Don't feel you need to go into explanations as to why you choose as you do.

Sarah McNobody

if Obama doesn't win in a landslide, the Democratic party needs to shutter their doors and windows and head off into the sunset with head hanging low.  that said, it's very possible he won't win, which is to say that it's very possible, even likely, that 50% + 1 of voters who go to the polls are mouthbreathing idiots.  whether it's Gore, Kerry, Obama, Dukakis, Clinton, etc., the Democrat always seems to be playing an away game at a very hostile opponent's stadium, where the crowd always seems to work the refs and all of the bounces seem to go the Republicans' way.  the most apparent instance of this phenomenon came when the brilliant techies at the McCain camp flashed a green screen behind McCain during his acceptance speech which, from afar, was shown to be a picture of a random Hollywood Middle School named Walter Reed, and not, as intended, a picture of the military hospital of the same name.  aside from persistent murmurs and guffaws from Josh Marshall and a few others, this story didn't really seem to break into the MSM.  can you imagine had the tables been turned, had Obama's camp used the picture of a random hollywood middle school when trying to make a point about military veterans, how this would've definitively proven how out of touch and elitist Obama is and how he wouldn't know a military family if one hit him upside the head.  the school gaffe would be splayed across drudge, politico, etc., soon seeping into MSNBC, FOX, etc., and it would reinforce what everyone already knows, that, sadly, the Democrats are hapless and unserious when it comes to military affairs and national security.  

you may have played in an athletic event before where you sensed the refs were unjustifiably giving the other team all of the calls and the other team is cheating like rats.  well, if this were the fifth or sixth game in a row where this was happening, and it became obvious that the other team was getting away with murder, well, then I would think bending the rules or, rather, employing the other team's novel rules of engagement in return, would be a no-brainer in terms of response, strategy going forward.  So, instead of these feckless and pedantic ads breathlessly debunking McCain's maverick brand and preening about the equation "McCain = Bush" ad nauseam (b/c, by the way, "anybody but Bush" worked so well in '04 and essentially reprising the same theme for '08 would seem to me to be a sound strategy--NOT!!, FACE!!!), they should hit back and start aggressively pressing the story about how McCain publicly dressed down his wife by calling her a "trollop" (and who, by the way, uses that term who wasn't born in the 19th century??) and a "cunt."  to boot, the Obama camp, through surrogates, should begin directly questioning McCain's temperament, drawing upon the numerous examples of his verbal and physical abuse of colleagues and underlings.  they should highlight the recent court document that has surfaced re: Palin where a judge says the Palins' behavior viz. her sister's ex-husband "amounts to child abuse."  a good ad would juxtapose McCain's pattern of verbal and physical abuse and Palin's alleged child abuse.  (btw, any notion that Palin's family is off-limits is laughable.  can we imagine the outrage and tut-tutting and concerned murmuring and self-satisfied racism that would've become endemic to the MSM had a seventeen-year-old daughter of Barack and Michele got knocked up by her thuggish boyfriend?)  so maybe instead of these inane "original mavericks" spoof ads, the Obama camp (or better yet, a 527) could begin airing an ad that makes the following points: 

John McCain--thinks Obama/Biden are making sexist attacks against Palin etc.  Who's the sexist: McCain called his wife a trollop and a c* * t in public in front of press; openly joked about how ugly Chelsea Clinton was, laughed when one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton a bitch, and made some lame joke about gorilla rape.  there's more than enough material out there.  with Palin, they should mock her claim about being a "hockey mom," saying she can't have her cake and eat it too.  like all else, the hockey mom tag is just a false image she wants the public to buy into so we don't need to look farther.  an ad saying she's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, her church thinks Jews should be converted to Christianity (run this in Florida), is associated with a group that wants AK to secede from the US, and even though her family is evidently falling apart (with a pregnant seventeen year old), believes she should be telling your family how to live.  not your average hockey mom.  but then again, how is the public expected to known about who John mcCain would have as president when she's too scared to talk to the press and the public?  how arrogant and foolish is this woman, and what in God's green earth makes her think she's qualified to be vice president of the US who likely won't live through his full two terms.  and on this last longevity bit, they should just fudge.  yeah, he has a 30% chance of dying within 8 years, but he's also a cancer survivor (two times over), so that's gotta count for something.  find some random study that shows that that increases risk to mortality by 20% or more and bam, you've got a probability of President Sarah McNobody in a few years.  

i have to admit though, part of me basks in the schedenfreude of watching so many liberals, like Josh Marshall, Booman, et al., frantically coaching the Obama campaign on what to do, how to respond, like so many little league dads along the side of the field.  (of course, this is precisely the sort of thing i just did above, so i can see the allure).  

. . . adding, Marc Ambinder gives a pretty succinct distillation of the points I was trying to make above.  

zombies

via counterpunch, Bob Hope's best line ever.  

the soft bigotry of low expectations

yesterday i was walking along Murray ave. and a panhandler approached me and asked for "any nickels, dimes, quarters . . . "  I fished around in my pocket and found a bunch of change, handed it to him.  both he and I noticed that what i had thought was mostly silver turned out to be a couple of nickels and dimes but the rest pennies.  I said, "oh, let me see what else I have in my wallet."  he then proceeded to jostle the coins around in his hands while I searched for more and scoffed, "yeah, I mean, this is basically 20 cents."  I replied cheerily, "oh, yeah, I guess it is, my bad."  And handed over a crumpled one dollar bill.  "Take care," I said, and walked off.  

While it was going on, I was aware of how absurd it was that I was being shamed for the paltriness of my first offering, but I didn't care.  Apparently I'm not the only one who's not too guarded about being taken on a small-scale basis.