September 30, 2008

"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States"


Matt Taibbi dissects the Palin Phenomenon:
"Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality..."

"I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate..."


Yeah, yeah, yeah...and John McCain is The Maverick.

Sarah Palin explains her campaign stump "joke" about Joe Biden's age to Katie Couric (who apparently is the only person who thinks the "joke" is funny):



More and more, Palin's voice reminds me of fingernails on a chalkboard. And, oh god, is she dumber than a box of rocks or what? Keep on talkin' Sarah. Every time you open your mouth, an angel makes sure another vote will be cast for Barack Obama.

Interview Sarah Palin

...courtesy of a computer-generated program that creates Palin-like answers to important questions most journalists will be prevented from asking her:
Q: How will you fix the economy?

The economy and putting it back on the side of the people, and that was some destruction. terrible destruction on that day. but since September 11, Americans uniting and rebuilding and committing to never letting that happen again. I agree with taking the fight to the terrorists who are concerned about the need to have nuclear weapons, what can we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not let them come onto our soil and try to find you some and I'll bring them to you. I answered him yes because I have not and I have not and I think our presence in Iraq that John McCain and I think it was AIG, important call there, though, because of the day are going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there.
For more, go here.

(h/t BoingBoing)

Palin & McCain Spores!




Shea Goodbye


shea

While most of the country gloats over the fact that the hapless Mets once again failed to reach the post season, ESPN.com's J.R. Moehringer waxes poetic over the final days of Shea Stadium ("named after the Cuban Guerilla leader Che Stadium"):
Shea is often compared to a concrete doughnut, a giant toilet, but seldom to a house of worship. Shea is routinely dismissed as a sin against aesthetics, and telling people you love it is like saying you love a nuclear reactor. Or a landfill. Built during a benighted period in American architecture, named after a lawyer, set virtually alongside the taxiways at LaGuardia, Shea has long been criticized, but recently it has become a laughingstock. Personally, I always found Shea beautiful, in its homely way, but I no longer admit this in public. I can't bear people cocking one eyebrow and saying, "Shea? Really?"

All love is indefensible, especially stadium love, which has nothing to do with aesthetics. The first stadium you see is the one you love, end of story. Maybe not see, but enter, since every baseball stadium is a complex delivery mechanism for that first view of its inner pastoral utopia. You leave the hot gritty streets, you walk through the long dark tunnel, you burst forth into that vista of sunlight and cool grass -- that's the moment you become a fan. It's as irrevocable, as seminal, as when you come through that other long dark tunnel, into the arms of a doctor who grabs your ankles and slaps your ass. And you have just as much choice in the matter.
Even if you are not a Mets fan but are still a fan of the game, you can probably relate to J.R.'s ruminations about the loss of a beloved home away from home.

rip

(thanks to reader Sal for the article and pic, and thanks to the mrs. for the t-shirt)

What an Adorable Couple


John sits by Sarah's side to make sure she doesn't say anything stupid again to Katie.

Fail:



So which was it Sarah? "Gotcha Journalism" or "a Voter" that caused you to say something Grandpa disapproved of?

September 29, 2008

Steven is a Piece of Work


Steven

Well, we survived the first weekend with "Action" Steve, but just barely. We are calling in the calvary (ie: a professional trainer) to help us ween Steven off the following bad habits:
• Jumping on people
• Stealing articles of clothing
• Confusing the apartment for the bathroom
• Confusing the great outdoors with leisure time (instead of pooping and peeing, he prefers to poke his head into every doorway and then, after a spell, simply lies down in the middle of the sidewalk
• Excessive barking
Other than the above, he's a joy. No, seriously. Sort of.

September 27, 2008

"You Were Wrong...You Were Wrong...You Were Wrong"


Has John McCain ever been right?



I don't think so, my friends.

Krup Hearts Jack Cafferty


Jack says if Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the Presidency doesn't "scare the hell out of you, it should":



Be sure to watch the whole thing: Cafferty essentially gives Wolf Blitzer a "You are a such a tool" look at the end of the clip.

September 15, 2008

R.I.P. David




David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

I wonder if he left a suicide note. And, if he did, were there footnotes?





Here's a great interview with Wallace from 1996, conducted while he was promoting his hefty masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

September 10, 2008

This is ALL the Obama campaign needs to do to win in November (IMHO):


Just repeatedly ask the American people the following three questions:
01) Are you better off than you were 8 years ago?

02) Do you think the country is headed in the right direction?

03) Can you afford 4 more years of the same?
Game. Set. Match.



UPDATE: This is pretty good Barack, but you still gotta simplify it for the simpletons:

September 09, 2008

Mitch Lives!




Available now.

In Praise of Liberals


Bob Herbert says it's time to stop thinking of "liberal" as a dirty word:
...Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.

So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.

Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.

“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”

Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.

Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.

The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression...

Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
Read the whole thing and "hold your head up."

September 05, 2008

Triumph Does The RNC


McLame: "I will be a great president because, have you heard, I was a POW 40 years ago and I learned to love my country."


That was more or less the total gist of McShameless' acceptance speech last night. Well, that plus some "Change We Can Trust" b.s. backed up by the claims that:
• He went to Washington to "fight corruption" (well, only after he was caught knee-deep in a corruption scandal which cost taxpayers $3 billion dollars)

• He has had the "courage to take on the G.O.P." (when he wasn't voting with George W. Bush 95% of the time)

• He "always tell(s) the truth" (except, of course, when he isn't).
Corrupt Corruption Fighter, Courageous Champion of George W. Bush's Failed Policies and Teller of Truthiness. That's a pretty thin resume. Heck, he doesn't even have any "EXECUTIVE" experience:





So, I guess the only thing that rang true during McSame's speech last night is the fact that, yes, we get it, he was a POW. But as both that Dirty Hippie Wesley Clark and that Hollywood Liberal Fred Thompson have said, it doesn't qualify someone to be president:



They're just sayin'...

One last thing: Green Screen! Stephen Colbert must be a very happy man...

Green Screen Update: The picture behind McCain was supposed to be of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But Republicans can't do anything right:
"You're gonna love this. Remember the weird green screen behind McCain as he was speaking last night? As his speech went on, we realized it was grass - grass from a larger photo of a house or some big mansion or something. In fact, the picture was of Walter Reed. No, not Walter Reed Army Medical Center where injured troops are treated - though that was clearly McCain's intent, to use our injured troops as a political prop (just as last night they dared show footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and the towers falling) - no, in fact, McCain posted a photo of Walter Reed Middle School, a school for kids in California that has nothing to do with Walter Reed the military hospital. They actually thought the school was the Army hospital. Apparently McCain just discovered the Google."
What's even more amazing about this fuckup, is that they eventually replaced the picture with an American flag video providing a blue screen behind McCain (blue screen is just as easy to mess with as green screen).