filed under: depends on how you look at it, I guess

I'm not a fan of Joe Biden. I find him creepy, stupid, and hypocritical. And often slightly if not outright racist. If he were Republican, he would have been drummed out of town long ago. He gets a pass because he is a Democrat, I think. I'm not a big media conspiracy guy, but I do believe that Joe Biden, with the things he has said and done, would have been murdered by the media years ago if he wasn't a Democrat... Here is a very small and very slight example of one of the things I dislike about Biden -- not criminal or disqualifying, although there has been plenty of that, too -- but just a display of arrogance that I find distasteful... Listen for the last little bit where he says that this is the first time in his life he has had a boss. 

link

Hmmm. Now see... I know there can be different interpretations of what representation means... but I would have thought the people would have been his boss.

filed under: Why I hate Political Correctness

I saw this little note on Drudge. (link)

Some school board members at a district in Utah don't want a school to have the students' chosen mascot, a cougar, because... it is disrespectful to women.

Wait. What?!

Yup. The board members want to protect the feelings of older women who prey sexually on younger men.

Now. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But still. It's not like the students wanted to call their school the MILFs. And no one is suggesting the school members would not have the same reaction if the students had chosen the Dirty Old Men.

But Come On!

I am sure that there were probably some sniggling teenaged boys who were leading the call for the new mascot. But does anyone really think that the world would see that name and immediately expect a bunch of desperate housewives to come running out onto the field to play the homecoming game?

Of course not.

And, by the way... what did the board members prefer?  The Chargers.

I ask you... Is that an appropriate mascot for a group of impressionable young minds growing up in an age when, before they have even worked a single day in their lives, they are already are on the hook for 15 trillion dollars?

filed under: She turned you into a Newt?!

This is a beautiful thing. link
This is why Newt may just win. Newt, Not Mitt.

Mitt Romney attacks Newt with his millions and Michelle Bachmann attacks Newt with her minions...

And Newt says, "I'll be happy to hold a free press conference every Tuesday and talk about ideas and have you meet with me personally and answer any questions you may have. Personally. Straight from the horse's mouth... or straight from the horse's ass... whatever you may think of me."

But you gotta worry about that. If Newt is able to wield the sword cheaply at Mitt's mighty fortress, he may bring it down and still push the media toward the big show... spinning a narrative that has him, not Mitt...(link) And he's already hacking away at the President. threatening to chase him around and challenge him to debates. (link) He's gonna be, or plan to be, it seems, like George Bush's Purse (link) or Traficant's hair... the albatross in the room... the 900 lbs gorrilla around the President's neck... a gadfly demanding free pressers... Because he, by Gid, has something to say...

And He's Not Mitt. Not Bush. Not McCain. Not Nixon.


Except that he is, in a way. In the sense that he is weirdly and strangely alien to the right and oddly attractive to the left... in a weird flirtatious way, he is offputting but not so bad you won't stand there and listen. You know. Just because it's fascinating to see it in motion, this mind. Like that chick at the party that thinks she's hot and because she thinks it... hell because she thinks at all... she is hot. She suddenly somehow becomes kinda hot, and well, you know the rest... Eventually she fucks you over. ( link...link ...link ...link ...link)

But still you go on believing (link)
But there's that moment that you kinda liked them, you know?

And there's an intellectual quality that I like behind the zaniness...(link link)

And he, Newt, will probably find a way before it's all said and done to run a modern day William McKinley front-porch strategy...(link)

And he's not Bush, but he is. And he's not Obama, but he is. And he's not Clinton, but he is. And he is not Woodrow Wilson, but he is... And he's not your enemy, but he is.

But we're in a difficult time. and we need some heavy thinking. Maybe a little heavy drinking, too. But not with our enemies... And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And all of that... So we flirt, but we know even as we flirt that he is not one of us.

I remember telling a friend of mine years ago that the evangelicals would turn on Bush when they discovered he was not one of them. And they did, finally, on immigration.

And I see that the left has turned on Obama but in the same way that they turned on Clinton over welfare going into the election... or that the right turned on Bush over prescription drugs going into the election... they don't like what they've seen but they're willing to think about it. But if another pretty girl entered the room? Another brainiac? Another freakshow? Another whatever floats your boat...

That might turn their heads.

What Obama promised and what he became? They hate him for that. And what Newt promised and what he became? They hate him for that. And Clinton and Bush and ...

But there's another reason. They also hate him because he is not one of us...

Because they are not us. That happens more and more with these guys. Hell, with Obama the burden of proof fell on him. to prove that he was one of us... Whatever that means that us, the people.  We always turn for those weirdly alien strangely familiar ones.

And it's the same with Mitt, too. With Mitt, it's because he's Mormom and he has that weird, Baptist coldness about him... He's Bill Henrickson without the wives. And that scares the shit out of some people. Out of Baptists.

But with Newt, it's because he has that quality that Obama has. Newt sees himself as the center of the universe. (link) Obama sees himself as the Transformational President... (link) and also as the center of the universe... (link)

Just think of these two in a debate. teleprompters off or on... (link link link link) and swinging away like boxers boxing over visions for the future...


whereas all mitt can offer is, well, a hardware store and a casino.

filed under: nothin' to see here, move along

If nothing else, it's bad optics. link

filed under: who needs torture

Ignore the fact that CNN's reporter asked a multiple choice question designed to give the President a little wink (Are they rapists, child-molestors or just nazi assholes?)... (link)

The real  issue here is: Who needs to torture them when you can just kill them without trial by a drone for saying things you don't like. (link) It's "not who we are" to waterboard.  But killing them because we don't like what they say?  Well that's just ducky.

filed under: a simple question

Drudge is leading at the moment with a variety of articles detailing crimes and illness that are befalling the OWS movement -- a death in Salt Lake City, lung sickness in Zucotti Park...

These are unfortunate events.  Some in the media have tried to tie even more to the movement, with claims in the NY Post that OWS is responsible for defacing the the 9-11 memorial.  An article in Salon argues that the charge is baseless.  (link)  SFGate has a story that there was murder in Oakland, but many in the movement there claim it had nothing to do with any of their people. (link)  Still, there have been some reports of rapes and lots of suggestion of drug usage, and the footage I posted earlier in the week that shows behavior that would be called bullying in schools.  All very unfortunate.

I hope it doesn't continue.

It was widely reported several weeks ago that Occupy had instituted a no snitching policy in its camps so that the public wouldn't get the wrong idea.  The Washington Times had one version of this story (link), and an officer in NYPD was reported as saying that there is little information getting out about such activities because the people in OWS are trying to handle things themselves.

Uhm. Here's a question:  What is the difference in that -- the no-snitching rule -- and what JoePa and Penn State (or the Catholic Church) have done?

filed under: trust, but verify

OK, so you don't want to go crazy on every little issue with worrying about who is saying what about whom and for what reasons.  Who has the time to check everything?  Right?  Still it is important to do just a little research because if you accept everything at face value then who knows what you are being fed?

Here is a quick example.

I read a little piece by Steve Kornacki in Salon that laid out plans for how Obama can defeat the Republicans (link).  Nothing earth-shattering in that.  And probably likely to happen, I think.  When it comes down to it, I just don't know that anyone running on the Republican side has enough appeal to win the middle and still hold on to the angry fire on the right.  It will be close, and it will depend on whether the economy stays down.  But I wouldn't bet the farm on Obama being a one-termer just yet.

Anyway...  Kornacki claims the House is standing in the way of Obama's jobs bill precisely to hold the economy down and increase their chances "even when there is wide agreement among economists that his proposals would add jobs and spur growth."  I might even agree on that.  At a minimum, the Republicans (and Democrats, too) seem unwilling to compromise, finding that sticking to their guns on "principles" is more likely to benefit them than a bad economy is likely to hurt them.  But the "wide agreement" thing caught my eye.  Really?

I clicked on the link to see what Kornacki took for "wide agreement" and the article listed only one economist, Moody's Mark Zandi.  Also, the article was from September 9, just shortly after Obama had given his speech before Congress -- before the policies had even been spelled out.  So how could there have been wide agreement by one single person before anyone even knew what was in the thing? Besides, Moody missed the housing and mortgage crisis and so anything they say at the moment is suspect to me.

So I googled Mark Zandi.  It just took ten seconds.  You can probably do it in five. I'm more easily distracted than you. 

Anyway, in the first several articles, I saw that Zandi had predicted in 2007 that the economy wouldn't grow much weaker, just before it went on its historical devastation tour.  Then in 2010, he predicted that the economy would be "off and running" by early 2011.  I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but that hasn't happened happened in mine.

So the "wide agreement" that Kornacki cites is by one guy who has been wrong on some of the major job movements of the past several years, and that guy made his prediction before the bill was even produced.

So, do you see why it's important to ask the question every once in a while?  It only takes a second.