That’s right people, its Wednesday. And to celebrate, I’m writing a blog entry. My life is really sad.
Actually, I’m celebrating the end (hopefully) of Democratic primary debate season. Last night, Senators Clinton and Obama held their twentieth pre-nomination debate on MSNBC from Cleveland State University. Again, I’m a little confused as to why Senator Clinton continues to agree to debate Obama on college campuses, where polling seems to indicate a vast majority of students favor the senator from Illinois. But at this point that no longer matters. What matters now is that, more likely than not, these exercises in futility are over – at least until the general election. If voters haven’t figured out by now where Clinton and Obama stand on the issues, they either haven’t been paying attention, or simply don’t want to know. Next Tuesday Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island will get their chance to narrow the field, and by Wednesday morning we’ll have a really good idea of whether this race is over, or just gearing up for six more weeks of madness.
During his warm-up speech at a rally for John McCain in Cincinnati yesterday, local radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham repeatedly referred to McCain's possible general election opponent as “Barack Hussein Obama”, and called him a political “hack” from Chicago who had received “sweetheart deals” while serving there. His remarks may have gone over well with the crowd, but he utterly failed to impress McCain. When informed of the comments after his address, McCain repudiated them saying, “My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign.” Not to be outdone, upon hearing of McCain’s repudiation, Cunningham renounced McCain, proclaiming he would now be throwing his support to Hillary Clinton. He then accused the candidate of “throwing him under the bus.” Note to Bill Cunningham. If you don’t want to end up under the bus, don’t lie down in front of it. John McCain has been on the wrong end of too many of those types of attacks to condone their use by anyone affiliated with him. Cunningham should have known that – and I’m sure he did. He just couldn’t help himself. That’s just the kind of person he is. He even tried to play it off in an interview with NPR Wednesday afternoon saying he regularly refers to people by their full names – even though he did not mention anyone else’s full legal name during his time on stage. From what I understand, those big black bias-ply tread marks are pretty hard to scrub off.
As an aside, the following are the names of some radio talk-show hosts: rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Lars Larson, Michael Savage, Mancow Muller. Who names these people? Seriously. Mancow?
Disgraced Idaho Senator Larry Craig is looking for pages to serve on his staff for the remainder of his term. I think this writes it’s own jokes.
The mayor of Arlington, Oregon, was recalled from office by her constituents after she posted a photo of herself posing in lingerie with a fire truck on her MySpace page. There is some reason to believe that the removal of two employees from the local golf course also contributed to her fate, but the picture seems to be the primary point of contention. I guess my first question is what is a forty-two year old woman doing with a MySpace page? Silly rabbit, the Internet is for kids! And tell me if this makes sense to you. Posing non-suggestively in your underwear next to an inanimate object gets you fired, but smoking crack in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend gets you re-elected? God bless America.
If you went to your local Starbucks looking for a frappuccino fix yesterday evening you probably returned home disappointed. The Seattle-based coffee chain close nearly all of it’s 7,100 stores for three hours to re-educate staff on how to brew coffee. Barista training. Remember the old days when you packed some grounds into the filter, ran the hot water through it and poured the stuff into a paper cup? Yeah, I don’t either. Now it comes with warm milk, foam, whipped cream, sprinkles, something called a java jacket, and costs seven dollars. I guess if people are going to pay that much for anything, they want to know it’s been made by a professional.
Finally, two 18 year-old girls were escorted off of a Southwest Airlines flight in Los Angeles. They claim they were discriminated against for being too pretty. (Insert uproarious laughter here.) Of course, Southwest has a different – and I’m guessing more accurate - version of events, which includes the teens confrontational behavior and use of profanity toward passengers and crew. Now I think I understand wanting to have some kind of cover story for getting thrown off an airplane, but you have to come up with something better than you were too pretty and other passengers were jealous. Obviously no one’s going to buy that. This is Southwest, not Morlock Air. They may not welcome passengers trying pass off belts as miniskirts, but no one in the history of flight has been thrown off an airplane for being too pretty. Too stupid? Yes. Too pretty? No.
2.27.2008
2.26.2008
Smurf-tacular!
Pretty crappy week for news. Unless you count another meaningless Democratic debate in which the candidates spend 90% of their time nodding in agreement with each other. I don’t count that sort of thing. But I love my readers. Both of you. So I soldier on.
As previously mentioned, the two remaining Democratic candidates held the first of two debates to be held prior to the primaries March 4 at the University of Texas in Austin this past Thursday evening. If this event was Senator Clinton’s idea, she needs to fire the genius that scheduled it against American Idol. I’d be willing to bet two, maybe three dollars that more people are reading these words than watched that dog and pony show. Generally, the purpose of a debate is to highlight the differences between the candidates - primarily regarding the issues. The problem in this case is that the differences between these two on the issues are so minimal, the debate just turns into an exercise into determining how many different ways one can agree with an opponent without using those words. The reason Senator Clinton has fallen behind in this race is the same reason she feels she should be winning this race. Despite all the talk about the importance of substance, this race has turned into an image contest, precisely because the substance is so similar. All the pundits and probably her advisors continue to tell her that her only chance to win the nomination is to promote to voters that Obama is nothing more than a voice and some words, while she has the issues all figures out. But a closer examination of the facts reveals what is essentially a distinction without a difference. And all other things being equal, voters seem to simply be choosing the character they like better. Not good for Senator Clinton.
In a very loosely related story, at a campaign rally in Dallas last week, Senator Obama had the good fortune to be introduced by all-time NFL rushing leader Emmitt Smith. In Texas, that’s about the equivalent of being endorsed by Jesus. If he can win the support of the Father (Troy Aikman) and the Holy Ghost (Michael Irvin), who can stand against him?
The New York Times ran a rather bizarre story on Senator John McCain this past week. The article seemed to suggest that McCain may have had a romantic affair with a female lobbyist ten years ago in exchange for some favors for several of her clients. The problem with the story is that despite the insinuations, the Times made no allegations and offered no real evidence of either an affair or a quid pro quo. Instead they cited anonymous disgruntled ex-McCain staffers who claim they may have warned McCain about the possibility of an appearance of some kind of impropriety so long ago that no one actually remembers what happened, all of which McCain and the lobbyist vehemently deny. All this adds up to absolutely nothing, and if the New York Times - the paper of record - didn’t know that, they should have. Unless they have a stained dress or text messages to underaged Senate pages locked away in the basement of the news room, a story that weak, about a presidential candidate, simply does not run. If the Times has evidence and/or sources willing to go on the record, let them print that. If not, move on.
Stanford University has decided to eliminate tuition for undergraduate students of families earning under $100,000 per year. In addition to tuition, they will also waive room and board for undergrads of families earning under $70,000 per year. This comes no the heels of Harvard limiting undergraduate tuition to 10% of family income for students of families making less than $180,000 per year. It’s part of a trend. Ivy League school - and their West Coast equivalents - have decided to do more to ensure that low-income students qualifying academically for a top tier education are not excluded because they can’t afford one. The reforms aren’t entirely altruistic. They began as an attempt to head off a Congressional investigation into why these school are not using more of their enormous multi-billion dollar financial endowments to assist needy students and lower the ridiculously high cost of post secondary education. But who really cares why they’re doing it. Somebody get me some sweats, flip-flops and an 18-pack of Ramen noodles. I’m going back to college baby!
Finally, in a surefire sign of the apocalypse, the Smurfs are making a comeback. The little blue critters, their mushroom houses and the inept black-robed wizard have returned to ruin the childhoods of a whole new generation of kids. But in response to criticism that the original show is no longer relevant to children of today, the Smurfs will be receiving an update. Gone are the days when the wise elder Smurf makes all the decisions, the males are responsible for all that is good in Smurf village, and the only attractive female sits around all day combing her hair. Specifics are in short supply, but rumor has it there will be several new Smurfs in the village. And as much as I hate to speculate as to who they might be, I’m going to anyway. Gay Smurf? Negro Smurf? Vertically Challenged Smurf - only two apples high. Feminine yet Staunchly Independent Female Athlete Smurf? Perhaps Gargamel will be given a wardrobe upgrade from basic black. A soft Egyptian cotton perhaps? With a nice collar? Maybe some tassels?
As previously mentioned, the two remaining Democratic candidates held the first of two debates to be held prior to the primaries March 4 at the University of Texas in Austin this past Thursday evening. If this event was Senator Clinton’s idea, she needs to fire the genius that scheduled it against American Idol. I’d be willing to bet two, maybe three dollars that more people are reading these words than watched that dog and pony show. Generally, the purpose of a debate is to highlight the differences between the candidates - primarily regarding the issues. The problem in this case is that the differences between these two on the issues are so minimal, the debate just turns into an exercise into determining how many different ways one can agree with an opponent without using those words. The reason Senator Clinton has fallen behind in this race is the same reason she feels she should be winning this race. Despite all the talk about the importance of substance, this race has turned into an image contest, precisely because the substance is so similar. All the pundits and probably her advisors continue to tell her that her only chance to win the nomination is to promote to voters that Obama is nothing more than a voice and some words, while she has the issues all figures out. But a closer examination of the facts reveals what is essentially a distinction without a difference. And all other things being equal, voters seem to simply be choosing the character they like better. Not good for Senator Clinton.
In a very loosely related story, at a campaign rally in Dallas last week, Senator Obama had the good fortune to be introduced by all-time NFL rushing leader Emmitt Smith. In Texas, that’s about the equivalent of being endorsed by Jesus. If he can win the support of the Father (Troy Aikman) and the Holy Ghost (Michael Irvin), who can stand against him?
The New York Times ran a rather bizarre story on Senator John McCain this past week. The article seemed to suggest that McCain may have had a romantic affair with a female lobbyist ten years ago in exchange for some favors for several of her clients. The problem with the story is that despite the insinuations, the Times made no allegations and offered no real evidence of either an affair or a quid pro quo. Instead they cited anonymous disgruntled ex-McCain staffers who claim they may have warned McCain about the possibility of an appearance of some kind of impropriety so long ago that no one actually remembers what happened, all of which McCain and the lobbyist vehemently deny. All this adds up to absolutely nothing, and if the New York Times - the paper of record - didn’t know that, they should have. Unless they have a stained dress or text messages to underaged Senate pages locked away in the basement of the news room, a story that weak, about a presidential candidate, simply does not run. If the Times has evidence and/or sources willing to go on the record, let them print that. If not, move on.
Stanford University has decided to eliminate tuition for undergraduate students of families earning under $100,000 per year. In addition to tuition, they will also waive room and board for undergrads of families earning under $70,000 per year. This comes no the heels of Harvard limiting undergraduate tuition to 10% of family income for students of families making less than $180,000 per year. It’s part of a trend. Ivy League school - and their West Coast equivalents - have decided to do more to ensure that low-income students qualifying academically for a top tier education are not excluded because they can’t afford one. The reforms aren’t entirely altruistic. They began as an attempt to head off a Congressional investigation into why these school are not using more of their enormous multi-billion dollar financial endowments to assist needy students and lower the ridiculously high cost of post secondary education. But who really cares why they’re doing it. Somebody get me some sweats, flip-flops and an 18-pack of Ramen noodles. I’m going back to college baby!
Finally, in a surefire sign of the apocalypse, the Smurfs are making a comeback. The little blue critters, their mushroom houses and the inept black-robed wizard have returned to ruin the childhoods of a whole new generation of kids. But in response to criticism that the original show is no longer relevant to children of today, the Smurfs will be receiving an update. Gone are the days when the wise elder Smurf makes all the decisions, the males are responsible for all that is good in Smurf village, and the only attractive female sits around all day combing her hair. Specifics are in short supply, but rumor has it there will be several new Smurfs in the village. And as much as I hate to speculate as to who they might be, I’m going to anyway. Gay Smurf? Negro Smurf? Vertically Challenged Smurf - only two apples high. Feminine yet Staunchly Independent Female Athlete Smurf? Perhaps Gargamel will be given a wardrobe upgrade from basic black. A soft Egyptian cotton perhaps? With a nice collar? Maybe some tassels?
2.20.2008
Premium Blend
Sometimes there’s just too much stuff to fit into the weekend wrap-up. Other times, I just fall asleep before I get through everything. One of those two things occurred yesterday. I suppose it doesn’t really matter which.
Fidel Castro has left the building. Officially. He actually left the building about a year-and-a-half ago due to an acute intestinal illness. But his letter of resignation published in the online version Cuban Communist Party newspaper early this morning made it official. It signals a fairly subdued end to the political career of one of the most significant revolutionaries of the twentieth century. While he may not have transformed his island into a dominating superpower like Lenin or Stalin, but he has survived multiple assassination attempts (including one via exploding cigar) and has managed to remain a telephone pole-sized thorn in the side of the United States for the past fifty years. Unfortunately for the Cuban people, the revolution was unable to transform Cuba into the communist worker’s paradise Castro promised. But Fidel has – to this point – managed to maintain a communist outpost right in the backyard of the most powerful capitalist nation on the face of the earth. Age seems to have accomplished what the CIA could not, and Castro has finally decided to step down, leaving the reigns of power in the hands of his brother Raul. And while there is talk of Raul being open to some degree of economic reform, no one expects any immediate changes. One thing is certain. For the first time in fifty years, an American administration will not have Fidel Castro to kick around any more.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suffered a resounding defeat at the polls on Monday as his party was routed by those headed by former exiles Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto (who was assassinated about a month ago). Musharraf remains as president for the moment, but will soon find himself addressing a parliament comprised mostly of former political enemies. The results this election would seem to herald the end of nine years of the general’s military rule. What this means in the grand scheme of geo-politics is as yet unknown. The Bush Administration has clung to Musharraf for the past seven years, claiming an alliance with the military dictator offered the United States the best defense against Pakistani-based terrorist groups. With the military dictatorship in shambles, it appears as though there will be opportunity to test that theory.
This coming Thursday, the U.S. Navy is expected to attempt to shoot down an aging spy satellite as it falls out of orbit. Originally, the plan had been to simply let its orbit degrade until it fell harmlessly to earth. But late last week the Pentagon decided that, due to the risk of some of the toxic fuel onboard the satellite landing in a populated area, they would attempt to destroy and render the instrument harmless before it hit the ground. It’s a nice story. I find it a little difficult to believe the Navy would spend billions to fire a missile to destroy a piece of space junk on the miniscule chance someone might inhale a whiff of toxic vapor. After all, this is a spy satellite. There is probably some equipment on board that the government would rather keep away from curious hands.
Late last week the House Oversight Committee held nationally televised hearings on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. Prior to the hearing, we all knew that the Mitchell Report named dozens of professional baseball players as having taken some form of performance-enhancing drugs – including future hall-of-fame pitcher Roger Clemens. Clemens’s trainer, one Brian McNamee, claimed he injected the pitcher with Human Growth Hormone on several occasions. Clemens claimed McNamee was a big fat liar, throwing people under the bus to try to save his own skin. After the shouting, finger-pointing, denials and grandstanding for the cameras, we know exactly NOTHING more than we did before, making these hearings the biggest steaming stinking pile of CRAP ever dumped upon daytime television viewers! What an absolute waste of time! One might think that in the midst of an economic downturn, a two-front foreign war, and a pivotal election campaign, Congress might have something better to do than make fools of themselves with baseball players. However, anyone foolish enough to think that would be wrong! After the farce was over, committee Chairman Henry Waxman (read Head Idiot) claimed he regretted the hearings had degenerated into partisan bickering and wished he had never held them, citing attempts to cancel them the day before. He only went through with it, he said, because Clemens lawyers insisted he be given the forum to clear his name. I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware individuals could dictate the agenda of the United States House of Representatives. Somebody get me a train ticket to Washington, I want a televised audience with Henry Waxman! Look, here’s the deal with steroids in baseball. They did it and they knew it and nobody cared. The players took performance-enhancing drugs, the league knew players were taking performance-enhancing drugs and they looked the other way. Why? Because it was good for business. Pitchers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddox said it best in a television commercial several years ago: chicks dig the long ball. Everyone loves a home run. Home runs put butts in the seats, which in turn puts dollars in pockets. If Major League Baseball had wanted to clean up the sport they could have. Each of the other three major sports leagues in this country developed some kind of drug policy including both testing and a system of repercussions for violators of the policy. (Ask Ricky Williams how well the NFL's drug-testing policy works.) But Baseball was making too much money from the Sosa-McGuire home run chase to jeopardize it by testing them for steroids. So they turned a blind eye and let it continue growing into the Hydra it is today. Baseball – the players, the union and the league - has no one to blame for the putrid pile of doo doo they are in but themselves.
Note to everyone who rushed out to purchase a Toshiba HD DVD player this past Christmas; HA HA! Suckers. Some people never learn. For those of you who haven’t heard, the high-definition DVD format wars are over. HD DVD lost, Blu-Ray won. The last straw came last week when Warner Bros. decided they would no longer release their hi-def titles in HD DVD format, and Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart decided to stock only Blu-Ray titles. Still sore from losing the VHS vs. Betamax wars of the 80s despite having a superior product, Blu-Ray creator Sony Corp. was not about to be defeated again, and lobbied hard to push their product on consumers. Even though boasting simpler manufacturing technology and the backing of software behemoth Microsoft, HD DVD was simply unable to gain any traction with movie studios and retailers. However, Sony may have won a hollow victory. The explosion of broadband internet connections, the replacement of old copper cables with fiber optics and ever expanding hard drive space are allowing consumers to directly download high-definition content from both legal and illegal sources, more or less rendering the physical DVD rental a thing of the past. So, if you are an avid DVD collector, head out and round out your movie collection with Blu-Ray discs at about $35 a pop. But if you’re just a casual movie renter like me, you may want to consider skipping the format war altogether.
Oil closed at $100.01 a barrel today. Did you hear that? That was the sound of the soul of America being sold to Saudi Arabia. Get used to it.
I was going to let this story go, but I just can’t. It’s too stupid to ignore. Boutique coffee shops are springing up all over the country. Offering up exotic brews from all over the world blended in machines costing more than a mid-size family car, these coffee bars routinely charge upwards of $20 a cup. One boutique is charging $65 dollars a cup for a special blend made from the feces of an animal that consumes the special coffee beans. And people are buying this stuff! They’re budgeting for it. Going without things, like food and clothing, in order to savor a $65 cup of poop. I don’t typically like to evaluate anyone without meeting him or her first, but anyone who would pay that kind of money for filtered animal dung is a complete moron. Complete. Moron.
I came across a statistic this week I found amusing. By the year 2050, the population of the United States will have increased to 430 million, an increase of 127 million over the current population. I’m sorry, but somebody’s going to have to live in Montana.
This just in. Barack Obama has defeated Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary by 17 points, capping his ninth straight primary election victory. Results are not yet in from Hawaii. The next significant Democratic contest will be semi-super Tuesday, March 4, when Texas and Ohio will cast their ballots. Senator Clinton once enjoyed huge leads in those states. Those leads have all but evaporated. On the Republican ticket, John McCain has taken both Wisconsin and Washington, surprising no one. Wake me up when this Republican race is over so I can start paying attention again.
Finally, a word about patriotism. I don’t think any word has ever been misused and abused the way this one has. It’s used as a conversation ender; a way to shut down anyone with whom there is a political disagreement. It’s used as a way to whip a crowd into a frenzy, to make us cheer for the good guys, to excuse what would under normal circumstances be considered inexcusable. It tends to manifest itself as blind, unadulterated love for the flag, and for the country for which it represents. It’s battle cry can often be heard as “Love it or get the hell out,” sometimes with a “you commie bastard” thrown in for good measure. And it is capable of transforming the most benign circumstance into a spectacle of the bizarre. That news anchor isn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin; he must hate America. Her car doesn’t have an “I support the troops” bumper sticker; she must not support the troops. You are not in favor of a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage; you are a lunatic secularist bent on destroying the Christian foundations of this nation with your socialist propaganda. What many self-proclaimed “patriots” continually fail to realize is that there is more to patriotism than waving the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. America is a fantastic idea. A place where all are created equal, and its’ citizens – either by the mere accident of birth or the privilege of acceptance - are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But America isn’t perfect. It never has been. And considering the way things are going it may never be. But the fact that something will not or cannot be perfected does not mean it should never be improved. And the only way to improve something is to first acknowledge that it is flawed. Pointing out a flaw does not make one unpatriotic. It makes one honest. Stating the fact that this country has serious issues with race and gender and class and so many other things does not negate the fact that we’ve come a long way from where we started in 1776. It simply means there is more work to do. Wanting to bring our soldiers home from wars on foreign soil does not mean people don’t respect the enormous sacrifice they’ve all made. It simply means people think our soldiers should live here, not die over there. Noticing that the actions of a single human being affect the quality of life of other human beings and the health of this tiny oasis in the cold dark void of space does not mean we want people put out of work and life reduced to the bare essentials. It simply means we think we can do better. America is more than earth and sea and sky. It is a work in progress. The foundations are pretty solid, but the building needs more work. And firing half the workers for pointing that out only slows down the job.
Fidel Castro has left the building. Officially. He actually left the building about a year-and-a-half ago due to an acute intestinal illness. But his letter of resignation published in the online version Cuban Communist Party newspaper early this morning made it official. It signals a fairly subdued end to the political career of one of the most significant revolutionaries of the twentieth century. While he may not have transformed his island into a dominating superpower like Lenin or Stalin, but he has survived multiple assassination attempts (including one via exploding cigar) and has managed to remain a telephone pole-sized thorn in the side of the United States for the past fifty years. Unfortunately for the Cuban people, the revolution was unable to transform Cuba into the communist worker’s paradise Castro promised. But Fidel has – to this point – managed to maintain a communist outpost right in the backyard of the most powerful capitalist nation on the face of the earth. Age seems to have accomplished what the CIA could not, and Castro has finally decided to step down, leaving the reigns of power in the hands of his brother Raul. And while there is talk of Raul being open to some degree of economic reform, no one expects any immediate changes. One thing is certain. For the first time in fifty years, an American administration will not have Fidel Castro to kick around any more.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suffered a resounding defeat at the polls on Monday as his party was routed by those headed by former exiles Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto (who was assassinated about a month ago). Musharraf remains as president for the moment, but will soon find himself addressing a parliament comprised mostly of former political enemies. The results this election would seem to herald the end of nine years of the general’s military rule. What this means in the grand scheme of geo-politics is as yet unknown. The Bush Administration has clung to Musharraf for the past seven years, claiming an alliance with the military dictator offered the United States the best defense against Pakistani-based terrorist groups. With the military dictatorship in shambles, it appears as though there will be opportunity to test that theory.
This coming Thursday, the U.S. Navy is expected to attempt to shoot down an aging spy satellite as it falls out of orbit. Originally, the plan had been to simply let its orbit degrade until it fell harmlessly to earth. But late last week the Pentagon decided that, due to the risk of some of the toxic fuel onboard the satellite landing in a populated area, they would attempt to destroy and render the instrument harmless before it hit the ground. It’s a nice story. I find it a little difficult to believe the Navy would spend billions to fire a missile to destroy a piece of space junk on the miniscule chance someone might inhale a whiff of toxic vapor. After all, this is a spy satellite. There is probably some equipment on board that the government would rather keep away from curious hands.
Late last week the House Oversight Committee held nationally televised hearings on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. Prior to the hearing, we all knew that the Mitchell Report named dozens of professional baseball players as having taken some form of performance-enhancing drugs – including future hall-of-fame pitcher Roger Clemens. Clemens’s trainer, one Brian McNamee, claimed he injected the pitcher with Human Growth Hormone on several occasions. Clemens claimed McNamee was a big fat liar, throwing people under the bus to try to save his own skin. After the shouting, finger-pointing, denials and grandstanding for the cameras, we know exactly NOTHING more than we did before, making these hearings the biggest steaming stinking pile of CRAP ever dumped upon daytime television viewers! What an absolute waste of time! One might think that in the midst of an economic downturn, a two-front foreign war, and a pivotal election campaign, Congress might have something better to do than make fools of themselves with baseball players. However, anyone foolish enough to think that would be wrong! After the farce was over, committee Chairman Henry Waxman (read Head Idiot) claimed he regretted the hearings had degenerated into partisan bickering and wished he had never held them, citing attempts to cancel them the day before. He only went through with it, he said, because Clemens lawyers insisted he be given the forum to clear his name. I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware individuals could dictate the agenda of the United States House of Representatives. Somebody get me a train ticket to Washington, I want a televised audience with Henry Waxman! Look, here’s the deal with steroids in baseball. They did it and they knew it and nobody cared. The players took performance-enhancing drugs, the league knew players were taking performance-enhancing drugs and they looked the other way. Why? Because it was good for business. Pitchers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddox said it best in a television commercial several years ago: chicks dig the long ball. Everyone loves a home run. Home runs put butts in the seats, which in turn puts dollars in pockets. If Major League Baseball had wanted to clean up the sport they could have. Each of the other three major sports leagues in this country developed some kind of drug policy including both testing and a system of repercussions for violators of the policy. (Ask Ricky Williams how well the NFL's drug-testing policy works.) But Baseball was making too much money from the Sosa-McGuire home run chase to jeopardize it by testing them for steroids. So they turned a blind eye and let it continue growing into the Hydra it is today. Baseball – the players, the union and the league - has no one to blame for the putrid pile of doo doo they are in but themselves.
Note to everyone who rushed out to purchase a Toshiba HD DVD player this past Christmas; HA HA! Suckers. Some people never learn. For those of you who haven’t heard, the high-definition DVD format wars are over. HD DVD lost, Blu-Ray won. The last straw came last week when Warner Bros. decided they would no longer release their hi-def titles in HD DVD format, and Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart decided to stock only Blu-Ray titles. Still sore from losing the VHS vs. Betamax wars of the 80s despite having a superior product, Blu-Ray creator Sony Corp. was not about to be defeated again, and lobbied hard to push their product on consumers. Even though boasting simpler manufacturing technology and the backing of software behemoth Microsoft, HD DVD was simply unable to gain any traction with movie studios and retailers. However, Sony may have won a hollow victory. The explosion of broadband internet connections, the replacement of old copper cables with fiber optics and ever expanding hard drive space are allowing consumers to directly download high-definition content from both legal and illegal sources, more or less rendering the physical DVD rental a thing of the past. So, if you are an avid DVD collector, head out and round out your movie collection with Blu-Ray discs at about $35 a pop. But if you’re just a casual movie renter like me, you may want to consider skipping the format war altogether.
Oil closed at $100.01 a barrel today. Did you hear that? That was the sound of the soul of America being sold to Saudi Arabia. Get used to it.
I was going to let this story go, but I just can’t. It’s too stupid to ignore. Boutique coffee shops are springing up all over the country. Offering up exotic brews from all over the world blended in machines costing more than a mid-size family car, these coffee bars routinely charge upwards of $20 a cup. One boutique is charging $65 dollars a cup for a special blend made from the feces of an animal that consumes the special coffee beans. And people are buying this stuff! They’re budgeting for it. Going without things, like food and clothing, in order to savor a $65 cup of poop. I don’t typically like to evaluate anyone without meeting him or her first, but anyone who would pay that kind of money for filtered animal dung is a complete moron. Complete. Moron.
I came across a statistic this week I found amusing. By the year 2050, the population of the United States will have increased to 430 million, an increase of 127 million over the current population. I’m sorry, but somebody’s going to have to live in Montana.
This just in. Barack Obama has defeated Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary by 17 points, capping his ninth straight primary election victory. Results are not yet in from Hawaii. The next significant Democratic contest will be semi-super Tuesday, March 4, when Texas and Ohio will cast their ballots. Senator Clinton once enjoyed huge leads in those states. Those leads have all but evaporated. On the Republican ticket, John McCain has taken both Wisconsin and Washington, surprising no one. Wake me up when this Republican race is over so I can start paying attention again.
Finally, a word about patriotism. I don’t think any word has ever been misused and abused the way this one has. It’s used as a conversation ender; a way to shut down anyone with whom there is a political disagreement. It’s used as a way to whip a crowd into a frenzy, to make us cheer for the good guys, to excuse what would under normal circumstances be considered inexcusable. It tends to manifest itself as blind, unadulterated love for the flag, and for the country for which it represents. It’s battle cry can often be heard as “Love it or get the hell out,” sometimes with a “you commie bastard” thrown in for good measure. And it is capable of transforming the most benign circumstance into a spectacle of the bizarre. That news anchor isn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin; he must hate America. Her car doesn’t have an “I support the troops” bumper sticker; she must not support the troops. You are not in favor of a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage; you are a lunatic secularist bent on destroying the Christian foundations of this nation with your socialist propaganda. What many self-proclaimed “patriots” continually fail to realize is that there is more to patriotism than waving the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. America is a fantastic idea. A place where all are created equal, and its’ citizens – either by the mere accident of birth or the privilege of acceptance - are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But America isn’t perfect. It never has been. And considering the way things are going it may never be. But the fact that something will not or cannot be perfected does not mean it should never be improved. And the only way to improve something is to first acknowledge that it is flawed. Pointing out a flaw does not make one unpatriotic. It makes one honest. Stating the fact that this country has serious issues with race and gender and class and so many other things does not negate the fact that we’ve come a long way from where we started in 1776. It simply means there is more work to do. Wanting to bring our soldiers home from wars on foreign soil does not mean people don’t respect the enormous sacrifice they’ve all made. It simply means people think our soldiers should live here, not die over there. Noticing that the actions of a single human being affect the quality of life of other human beings and the health of this tiny oasis in the cold dark void of space does not mean we want people put out of work and life reduced to the bare essentials. It simply means we think we can do better. America is more than earth and sea and sky. It is a work in progress. The foundations are pretty solid, but the building needs more work. And firing half the workers for pointing that out only slows down the job.
2.19.2008
Mmm... Chicken Good...
Happy President’s Day everyone! (I'm trying to make up for it's lack of real holiday cache with additional enthusiasm. Is it working?) Celebrate the good ones, malign the bad ones. Shop hard and prosper. Happy Family Day to our neighbors to the North. That's a new one for me, and I have to admit, it sounds fake. But I have it on good authority that it is an official, province-sponsored holiday. What can I say.
Tomorrow, Hawaii and Wisconsin will take their turns attempting to confound the political pundits and pollsters in what I like to call, the “Pineapple and Cheese Primaries.” (Elections are always more entertaining when you give them cute little nicknames.) Obama is expected to easily capture the state of his birth, but Wisconsin appears too close to call at this point. I guess I’m not surprised that a state known for beer, cheese and motorcycles would have trouble making up it’s mind. Depending on which poll you choose to believe either Clinton or Obama holds a narrow lead, but a lead that is well within the margin of error. So it could be another late night for dedicated followers of this Democratic primary process. If Obama wins he keeps the streak alive and continues to build momentum toward a showdown with Clinton in Texas and Ohio on March fourth. If Clinton wins it will be considered an upset, halting her February slide and putting her campaign back on track. It might be difficult to believe, but the next two weeks could determine the fate of the once inevitable campaign of Hillary Clinton.
The Senate Ethics Committee (I know, I know, but how often do you get to use the words senate and ethics in the same sentence) has found that Senator Larry Craig acted improperly during his incident at a Minneapolis airport bathroom last year. Well isn’t that something. Who would have thought that the act of soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom stall could be considered improper by anyone? Let alone the United States Senate. But at least now we can have some closure. Now that Craig has wears the scarlet ‘I’ we no longer have to worry about our children being solicited in bathrooms across the country. Our airports, train stations, subways and marinas are now safe from the scourge of senatorial gay sex. The only remaining unprotected place in the country is… Capitol Hill.
In an unprecedented show of intestinal fortitude, the House of Representatives called the President’s bluff and left town on vacation without re-authorizing the revised FISA legislation. Despite the claims that the sky would fall and the country would immediately be overrun by thousands of swarthy bearded men brandishing AK-47s if the House failed to capitulate to his whims, the elected representatives of the people finally refused to be a rubber stamp for whatever the President sent down the pipe and vowed to put a little more work into the surveillance legislation before sending it on to the Oval Office. The sticking point seems to be over whether or not to grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who assisted the government with their (possibly illegal) warrant-less wiretapping program. This would reportedly include all the major companies except of Qwest Communications, which had the good sense to at least ask a couple questions. Like waterboarding, this wiretapping business isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.
After posting a U.S. record 38.7 billion dollar net loss for 2007, the world’s (just barely) largest automobile manufacturer offered buyouts to every single one of its 74,000 blue-collar employees last week. In an effort to further cut costs and right the ship, General Motors unveiled a plan to give all its workers between $45,000 and $140,000 to either accept early retirement or to simply cut ties with the company altogether. The plan is to then replace those workers with new, lower cost employees. The average unionized GM worker earns an average base wage of $28.12 an hour. The new hires they the companies hope to replace them with will be paid between $14 and $16.23 and hour. If anyone needed proof that the days of high-paying, low-skilled labor in this country are over, here it is. And if this cost-cutting measure works for GM, you can guarantee Ford and Chrysler will follow close behind.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett offered to bail out bond insurance companies by using his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm to re-insure over 800 billion in municipal bonds. Now maybe I’m mistaken, but didn’t Warren Buffett give away his entire fortune not too long ago? How does he have that kind of money to pump into the economy? Isn’t that more than 5,000 times the total amount of the economic stimulus package just issued by Congress? Why don’t we just have this guy stimulated the economy on his own? Let the government waste it’s money on something else. I’m sure there is no shortage of unworthy projects.
A Jacksonville, Florida middle school teacher was suspended for ten days without pay this past week for duct taping a student to his desk. Apparently both the teacher and the student viewed the incident as a joke. The school board did not share their sense of humor. But seriously, what has this country come to that we can no longer duct-tape a seventh-grader to his desk for the amusement of the class? Come on. It’s not like they snuck off to have sex in the back of her car then eloped to Mexico to raise their love child. Wait, that sounds vaguely familiar….
Model turned violinist David Garrett (dubbed the David Beckham of classical music) tripped and fell down a flight of stairs two days after Christmas, smashing his million-dollar 1772 Guadagnini violin to pieces. This is only now becoming known because, well, if you totaled a million dollar violin, would you tell anybody? It is not yet known whether or not the instrument can be repaired, but in the mean time Garrett is playing a Stradivarius someone has loaned to him. Note to that fool; I hope your insurance is paid up.
A thirty-four year-old New York father was arrested over the weekend for the murder of his 14 year-old daughter. He reportedly became upset when he discovered she had been text-messaging a boy, strangling her and stuffing her body in the boiler of his apartment building. Cell phones are evil people. Evil.
In a desperate attempt to draw kids back to the library, some libraries in Michigan have begun holding video game tournaments featuring “Guitar Hero,” “Dance Dance Revolution,” and “Super Smash Bros.” In fact, the tournaments, in combination with over 1,800 video games available for loan account for the 12 percent increase in circulation at the Rochester Hills Public Library. No word as of yet on any increase in actual KNOWLEDGE, but one can only assume that given enough time, heat and pressure, kids would certainly be able to absorb the surrounding knowledge simply by sharing the same room. Ask any college student who’s fallen asleep on their textbook how well that works. I realize the public library system may be suffering from an epidemic of illiterate children with no attention spans, but I’m not sure getting them to stare blankly and a video screen and tap buttons on a controller for hours on end fulfills the mission of the library. Unless that mission has been revised to include scoring a million points and achieving guitar god status.
Finally, hidden camera footage taken at a meat processing plant in California has prompted the USDA to order a recall of 143 million pounds of beef dating back to 2006. Anyone notice a problem with this right away? Yes, since the recall includes beef sold two years ago, most of the meat in question has already been consumed. So that leaves one to wonder exactly what it is that they hope to recall. The moral of this story? Eat more chicken.
Tomorrow, Hawaii and Wisconsin will take their turns attempting to confound the political pundits and pollsters in what I like to call, the “Pineapple and Cheese Primaries.” (Elections are always more entertaining when you give them cute little nicknames.) Obama is expected to easily capture the state of his birth, but Wisconsin appears too close to call at this point. I guess I’m not surprised that a state known for beer, cheese and motorcycles would have trouble making up it’s mind. Depending on which poll you choose to believe either Clinton or Obama holds a narrow lead, but a lead that is well within the margin of error. So it could be another late night for dedicated followers of this Democratic primary process. If Obama wins he keeps the streak alive and continues to build momentum toward a showdown with Clinton in Texas and Ohio on March fourth. If Clinton wins it will be considered an upset, halting her February slide and putting her campaign back on track. It might be difficult to believe, but the next two weeks could determine the fate of the once inevitable campaign of Hillary Clinton.
The Senate Ethics Committee (I know, I know, but how often do you get to use the words senate and ethics in the same sentence) has found that Senator Larry Craig acted improperly during his incident at a Minneapolis airport bathroom last year. Well isn’t that something. Who would have thought that the act of soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom stall could be considered improper by anyone? Let alone the United States Senate. But at least now we can have some closure. Now that Craig has wears the scarlet ‘I’ we no longer have to worry about our children being solicited in bathrooms across the country. Our airports, train stations, subways and marinas are now safe from the scourge of senatorial gay sex. The only remaining unprotected place in the country is… Capitol Hill.
In an unprecedented show of intestinal fortitude, the House of Representatives called the President’s bluff and left town on vacation without re-authorizing the revised FISA legislation. Despite the claims that the sky would fall and the country would immediately be overrun by thousands of swarthy bearded men brandishing AK-47s if the House failed to capitulate to his whims, the elected representatives of the people finally refused to be a rubber stamp for whatever the President sent down the pipe and vowed to put a little more work into the surveillance legislation before sending it on to the Oval Office. The sticking point seems to be over whether or not to grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who assisted the government with their (possibly illegal) warrant-less wiretapping program. This would reportedly include all the major companies except of Qwest Communications, which had the good sense to at least ask a couple questions. Like waterboarding, this wiretapping business isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.
After posting a U.S. record 38.7 billion dollar net loss for 2007, the world’s (just barely) largest automobile manufacturer offered buyouts to every single one of its 74,000 blue-collar employees last week. In an effort to further cut costs and right the ship, General Motors unveiled a plan to give all its workers between $45,000 and $140,000 to either accept early retirement or to simply cut ties with the company altogether. The plan is to then replace those workers with new, lower cost employees. The average unionized GM worker earns an average base wage of $28.12 an hour. The new hires they the companies hope to replace them with will be paid between $14 and $16.23 and hour. If anyone needed proof that the days of high-paying, low-skilled labor in this country are over, here it is. And if this cost-cutting measure works for GM, you can guarantee Ford and Chrysler will follow close behind.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett offered to bail out bond insurance companies by using his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm to re-insure over 800 billion in municipal bonds. Now maybe I’m mistaken, but didn’t Warren Buffett give away his entire fortune not too long ago? How does he have that kind of money to pump into the economy? Isn’t that more than 5,000 times the total amount of the economic stimulus package just issued by Congress? Why don’t we just have this guy stimulated the economy on his own? Let the government waste it’s money on something else. I’m sure there is no shortage of unworthy projects.
A Jacksonville, Florida middle school teacher was suspended for ten days without pay this past week for duct taping a student to his desk. Apparently both the teacher and the student viewed the incident as a joke. The school board did not share their sense of humor. But seriously, what has this country come to that we can no longer duct-tape a seventh-grader to his desk for the amusement of the class? Come on. It’s not like they snuck off to have sex in the back of her car then eloped to Mexico to raise their love child. Wait, that sounds vaguely familiar….
Model turned violinist David Garrett (dubbed the David Beckham of classical music) tripped and fell down a flight of stairs two days after Christmas, smashing his million-dollar 1772 Guadagnini violin to pieces. This is only now becoming known because, well, if you totaled a million dollar violin, would you tell anybody? It is not yet known whether or not the instrument can be repaired, but in the mean time Garrett is playing a Stradivarius someone has loaned to him. Note to that fool; I hope your insurance is paid up.
A thirty-four year-old New York father was arrested over the weekend for the murder of his 14 year-old daughter. He reportedly became upset when he discovered she had been text-messaging a boy, strangling her and stuffing her body in the boiler of his apartment building. Cell phones are evil people. Evil.
In a desperate attempt to draw kids back to the library, some libraries in Michigan have begun holding video game tournaments featuring “Guitar Hero,” “Dance Dance Revolution,” and “Super Smash Bros.” In fact, the tournaments, in combination with over 1,800 video games available for loan account for the 12 percent increase in circulation at the Rochester Hills Public Library. No word as of yet on any increase in actual KNOWLEDGE, but one can only assume that given enough time, heat and pressure, kids would certainly be able to absorb the surrounding knowledge simply by sharing the same room. Ask any college student who’s fallen asleep on their textbook how well that works. I realize the public library system may be suffering from an epidemic of illiterate children with no attention spans, but I’m not sure getting them to stare blankly and a video screen and tap buttons on a controller for hours on end fulfills the mission of the library. Unless that mission has been revised to include scoring a million points and achieving guitar god status.
Finally, hidden camera footage taken at a meat processing plant in California has prompted the USDA to order a recall of 143 million pounds of beef dating back to 2006. Anyone notice a problem with this right away? Yes, since the recall includes beef sold two years ago, most of the meat in question has already been consumed. So that leaves one to wonder exactly what it is that they hope to recall. The moral of this story? Eat more chicken.
2.11.2008
The Year of the Rat
Happy New Year everyone! This past weekend was Chinese New Year. For those who keep track of such things, this year is the Year of the Rat. Strangely fitting for the year of a presidential campaign.
I believe it was a very wise man who once said the following: “You’ve got to know when to hold em, / Know when to fold em’ / Know when to walk away / Know when to run.” This past week, one Republican candidate figured it was time to walk away. One other candidate is still sitting at the table counting his money - what little of it there is.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has decided to call it quits. Well, to be accurate, he decided to call it suspended. I guess it sounds less wimpy than quitting. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (which is apparently an actual organization), Romney surprised his supporters and most of his staff by announcing that “for the good of the party”, he would pull out of the race so that the party would have time to coalesce around the front-runner and build a united front in anticipation of a difficult campaign against the Democrats in the fall. Although he had been labeled the only true conservative in the Republican race by self-proclaimed “true conservatives” like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, Romney continually lost religious voters to Huckabee and moderates and independents to McCain, leaving him a fairly small pool of supporters to draw from. Add that to the flip-flopper label and an inability to clearly express any ideas not involving the perpetual fear of terrorism, and it’s pretty easy to understand why his campaign never got any traction. And so ended one of the most inefficient political campaigns in history. But, ever the businessman, Romney was clever enough to say he was suspending his campaign. In reality it’s no different from quitting, but there is a distinct technical difference. Suspending his campaign allows the former governor to retain control over his delegates, providing him with a certain amount of leverage against the presumptive nominee. At this point Romney has not made any public proclamation of his intentions, but it might be reasonable to assume he is giving consideration to joining the ticket in the vice presidential slot. There are plenty of reasons why he may not want that job, but there are also a couple reason why he might be interested. If a McCain/Romney ticket were to succeed in their bid for the White House, four years from now a President McCain would be older than pasteurization and may not be interested in running for a second term, leaving the reigns to the former governor. That would place him in the position of incumbent, which he may be able to handle better than that of insurgent.
However, Mike Huckabee is doing everything he possibly can to ensure that it will be his name and not Romney’s which follows McCain on the 2008 presidential bumper stickers. On Saturday night he blew away the competition in Kansas, edged McCain in Louisiana, and came within two points of the Senator in Washington State. (There is even some dispute over the Washington state loss, as the state GOP party chairman decided to call the election for McCain, even though Huckabee was only 242 votes behind with 1500 votes remaining to be counted.) He’s kind of like that drop of water lodged in your ear after you’ve been swimming. So small, yet enough of a pain to make you want to dig your ear out with a spoon to get rid of it. Huckabee wants everyone to know he must be taken seriously. So far he appears to be succeeding.
Which brings us to the one guy left in the race who is not succeeding. Could someone please explain to me why Ron Paul is still forcing himself on the political process? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for advancing the political process by introducing alternative ideas into the mix. But Paul has selected the wrong venue for his experiment. The two political parties in this country have been established far too long and are too set in their ways to be significantly changed from within. If he wants to make a point, he needs to make it from the platform of a third party and quit wasting his time syphoning 2% of the vote from candidates with a legitimate chance of winning the Republican Party nomination.
Call it a clean sweep for Barack Obama. Four states, four victories, all by convincing margins. The conventional wisdom coming into this past weekend’s contests was that although he was expected to do well - if not capture all four states, Louisiana was to be Obama’s strength due to its large African-American population. But while he did take Louisiana, he captured Nebraska and Washington - states with, let’s face it, no black people - by a far greater margin. That would seem to suggest that his support extends beyond minority populations. What that means is open to interpretation. But whatever it means, Obama appears to be on a roll. If he can keep this roll going through Maryland, Virginia and D.C. this coming Tuesday, he will present a serious challenge to Senator Clinton’s campaign of inevitability in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.
My apologies to Senator Clinton. In viewing some election coverage this weekend I noticed I have been spelling her name incorrectly up to this point. Apparently Hillary is spelled with two Ls. Who knew? Anyway, the senator is attempting to downplay Obama’s victories by chalking them up to excited and energized activists and African-Americans. According to Clinton, Obama’s wins are coming in states that Democrats have no hope of winning in the fall (like Washington and Connecticut?), but her wins are coming in states the Democrats must win in the fall. That’s an interesting assertion. If I remember correctly, both Al Gore and John Kerry took New York, Massachusetts and California in 2000 and 2004, yet still lost their respective elections. I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would fail to capture states they usually carry if the only difference was Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. However, I do think it more likely that Democrats might capture states they DO NOT normally carry if the difference is Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. At this point, Clinton maintains a slight lead in delegates - a lead she finds shrinking every week - but faces the ever increasing momentum of the runaway freight train that is the Obama campaign. Sensing a need for a change in strategy, she has shaken up her campaign staff and brought in some new blood. She’s had a good month of fundraising since revealing that she had been having financial difficulties, so perhaps she will put a little effort into regaining some momentum between now and the Texas and Ohio primaries.
Oh, this just in. Al Gore is refusing to endorse either Democrat during the primary process. He doesn’t want to burn any bridges in his attempt to have environmental issues become an integral part the eventual nominee’s platform. It is said that wise men know when to hold their tongues.
A lawsuit has been filed by an interest group based in San Francisco to stop the indiscriminate, warrant-less searches of computers and cellular phones by Customs agents at the U.S. border. This may come as a surprise to many people (as unfortunately millions of Americans have never set foot outside their own country), but U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents have the authority to search, disassemble, remove, destroy and confiscate pretty much anything they want for pretty much any reason. If they think you’re hiding something on your person, you will be searched until they find what they are looking for, or are satisfied that you don’t have it. If they think you are hiding something in your car, they can take it apart - and they don’t have to put it back together, regardless of whether they find anything or not. These searches used to be limited to persons and physical objects. But in this post-9/11 era, border searches have been expended to include whatever may be on your hard drive, or floating around in cyberspace as well. The problem with this broad authority is that people carry private, sensitive personal and business information on their computers and cellphones. High level employees of multi-national corporations often carry trade secrets on their laptops, which may be rifled-through at anytime by any agent. And there is no guarantee that whomever is looking at your computer will forget what they’ve seen once they hand it back to you. Citing national security and the interests of the government in eliminating cross-border crime and child pornography, the administration claims the right to do whatever they damn well please whenever they deem it necessary. So this battle is likely to continue for a long time to come.
Apparently the Grammy Awards were held last night. I guess I didn’t realize people still wasted their time with awards shows anymore. But since they do I guess I should probably say something about it. Even when I watched awards shows in the past, I never liked the Grammy's. They’re a bit like the Oscars for me in that it is an entire show dedicated to an industry (a failing one at that) patting itself on the back. Jazz musician Herbie Hancock took home the coveted Album of the Year award, leaving the talented pain-in-the-ass whiner Kanye West - winner of three awards himself - visibly upset and in no mood to be interviewed after the show. British pop-tart, alcoholic and drug addict Amy Winehouse also took home five statues in addition to two performances, validating all her self-destructive habits with industry approval. A lot of people seem to think it’s cute that she’s this rebellious soul singer sticking her fingers in the eyes of the establishment. But there’s nothing rebellious about a musician drinking and snorting cocaine - they all do it. There is, however, a certain segment of the population that likes to watch famous people destroy themselves and laugh about it in line at the supermarket. Whether the name is Winehouse or Spears, as long as people continue to reward them for wasting their lives away, we’ll continue to have something to read about while waiting to pay for our bagged lettuce and frozen pizza.
Scary moments in upstate New York last night during an hockey game between the visiting Florida Panthers and the Buffalo Sabres. In a freak accidental collision with a teammate, Panthers forward Richard Zednik severed his carotid artery against the skate blade of teammate Olli Jokinen, requiring life-saving emergency surgery. Zednik is currently in stable condition at a Buffalo hospital. Mid-way through the third period Jokinen was hit hard just outside the face-off circle to the left of the Buffalo net. he went face-first to the ice, sending his skate straight up into the neck of Zednik who happened to be skating close behind him. Somehow Zednik managed to skate three-quarters of the length of the ice with blood streaming from his neck before collapsing into the arms of teammates and trainers and being taken off the ice. The game was delayed for twenty minutes while crews scraped the gruesome trail of blood from the ice and the Commissioner debated whether or not to continue the game. Once it was learned that Zednik would be okay, the powers that be decided the game would continue. There is a certain degree of irony to this story. The only other time this has happened in the NHL was also in Buffalo in 1989 when Sabres goaltender Clint Malarchuk had his jugular vein severed by a skate blade in front of his net. Bleeding profusely, Malarchuk somehow managed to leave the ice under his own power and miraculously, after receiving over 300 stitches to close the wound, he returned to practice four days later, and finished out the season in goal for the Sabres. The moral of this story is that maybe it’s time for the NHL to look at requiring some type of neck protection for their players. The Malarchuk incident led to a mandate that all goaltenders wear neck protection. The Steve Yzerman slap-shot to the eyes incident two years ago should have led to a mandate that players wear at least a visor, if not more. Maybe the Zednik incident will lead to the development of some type of sleeve or turtleneck undershirt of sorts to protect players from freak accidents like this. Hockey is a violent sport, but no one, fans nor players, want things like this to happen.
I believe it was a very wise man who once said the following: “You’ve got to know when to hold em, / Know when to fold em’ / Know when to walk away / Know when to run.” This past week, one Republican candidate figured it was time to walk away. One other candidate is still sitting at the table counting his money - what little of it there is.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has decided to call it quits. Well, to be accurate, he decided to call it suspended. I guess it sounds less wimpy than quitting. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (which is apparently an actual organization), Romney surprised his supporters and most of his staff by announcing that “for the good of the party”, he would pull out of the race so that the party would have time to coalesce around the front-runner and build a united front in anticipation of a difficult campaign against the Democrats in the fall. Although he had been labeled the only true conservative in the Republican race by self-proclaimed “true conservatives” like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, Romney continually lost religious voters to Huckabee and moderates and independents to McCain, leaving him a fairly small pool of supporters to draw from. Add that to the flip-flopper label and an inability to clearly express any ideas not involving the perpetual fear of terrorism, and it’s pretty easy to understand why his campaign never got any traction. And so ended one of the most inefficient political campaigns in history. But, ever the businessman, Romney was clever enough to say he was suspending his campaign. In reality it’s no different from quitting, but there is a distinct technical difference. Suspending his campaign allows the former governor to retain control over his delegates, providing him with a certain amount of leverage against the presumptive nominee. At this point Romney has not made any public proclamation of his intentions, but it might be reasonable to assume he is giving consideration to joining the ticket in the vice presidential slot. There are plenty of reasons why he may not want that job, but there are also a couple reason why he might be interested. If a McCain/Romney ticket were to succeed in their bid for the White House, four years from now a President McCain would be older than pasteurization and may not be interested in running for a second term, leaving the reigns to the former governor. That would place him in the position of incumbent, which he may be able to handle better than that of insurgent.
However, Mike Huckabee is doing everything he possibly can to ensure that it will be his name and not Romney’s which follows McCain on the 2008 presidential bumper stickers. On Saturday night he blew away the competition in Kansas, edged McCain in Louisiana, and came within two points of the Senator in Washington State. (There is even some dispute over the Washington state loss, as the state GOP party chairman decided to call the election for McCain, even though Huckabee was only 242 votes behind with 1500 votes remaining to be counted.) He’s kind of like that drop of water lodged in your ear after you’ve been swimming. So small, yet enough of a pain to make you want to dig your ear out with a spoon to get rid of it. Huckabee wants everyone to know he must be taken seriously. So far he appears to be succeeding.
Which brings us to the one guy left in the race who is not succeeding. Could someone please explain to me why Ron Paul is still forcing himself on the political process? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for advancing the political process by introducing alternative ideas into the mix. But Paul has selected the wrong venue for his experiment. The two political parties in this country have been established far too long and are too set in their ways to be significantly changed from within. If he wants to make a point, he needs to make it from the platform of a third party and quit wasting his time syphoning 2% of the vote from candidates with a legitimate chance of winning the Republican Party nomination.
Call it a clean sweep for Barack Obama. Four states, four victories, all by convincing margins. The conventional wisdom coming into this past weekend’s contests was that although he was expected to do well - if not capture all four states, Louisiana was to be Obama’s strength due to its large African-American population. But while he did take Louisiana, he captured Nebraska and Washington - states with, let’s face it, no black people - by a far greater margin. That would seem to suggest that his support extends beyond minority populations. What that means is open to interpretation. But whatever it means, Obama appears to be on a roll. If he can keep this roll going through Maryland, Virginia and D.C. this coming Tuesday, he will present a serious challenge to Senator Clinton’s campaign of inevitability in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.
My apologies to Senator Clinton. In viewing some election coverage this weekend I noticed I have been spelling her name incorrectly up to this point. Apparently Hillary is spelled with two Ls. Who knew? Anyway, the senator is attempting to downplay Obama’s victories by chalking them up to excited and energized activists and African-Americans. According to Clinton, Obama’s wins are coming in states that Democrats have no hope of winning in the fall (like Washington and Connecticut?), but her wins are coming in states the Democrats must win in the fall. That’s an interesting assertion. If I remember correctly, both Al Gore and John Kerry took New York, Massachusetts and California in 2000 and 2004, yet still lost their respective elections. I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would fail to capture states they usually carry if the only difference was Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. However, I do think it more likely that Democrats might capture states they DO NOT normally carry if the difference is Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. At this point, Clinton maintains a slight lead in delegates - a lead she finds shrinking every week - but faces the ever increasing momentum of the runaway freight train that is the Obama campaign. Sensing a need for a change in strategy, she has shaken up her campaign staff and brought in some new blood. She’s had a good month of fundraising since revealing that she had been having financial difficulties, so perhaps she will put a little effort into regaining some momentum between now and the Texas and Ohio primaries.
Oh, this just in. Al Gore is refusing to endorse either Democrat during the primary process. He doesn’t want to burn any bridges in his attempt to have environmental issues become an integral part the eventual nominee’s platform. It is said that wise men know when to hold their tongues.
A lawsuit has been filed by an interest group based in San Francisco to stop the indiscriminate, warrant-less searches of computers and cellular phones by Customs agents at the U.S. border. This may come as a surprise to many people (as unfortunately millions of Americans have never set foot outside their own country), but U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents have the authority to search, disassemble, remove, destroy and confiscate pretty much anything they want for pretty much any reason. If they think you’re hiding something on your person, you will be searched until they find what they are looking for, or are satisfied that you don’t have it. If they think you are hiding something in your car, they can take it apart - and they don’t have to put it back together, regardless of whether they find anything or not. These searches used to be limited to persons and physical objects. But in this post-9/11 era, border searches have been expended to include whatever may be on your hard drive, or floating around in cyberspace as well. The problem with this broad authority is that people carry private, sensitive personal and business information on their computers and cellphones. High level employees of multi-national corporations often carry trade secrets on their laptops, which may be rifled-through at anytime by any agent. And there is no guarantee that whomever is looking at your computer will forget what they’ve seen once they hand it back to you. Citing national security and the interests of the government in eliminating cross-border crime and child pornography, the administration claims the right to do whatever they damn well please whenever they deem it necessary. So this battle is likely to continue for a long time to come.
Apparently the Grammy Awards were held last night. I guess I didn’t realize people still wasted their time with awards shows anymore. But since they do I guess I should probably say something about it. Even when I watched awards shows in the past, I never liked the Grammy's. They’re a bit like the Oscars for me in that it is an entire show dedicated to an industry (a failing one at that) patting itself on the back. Jazz musician Herbie Hancock took home the coveted Album of the Year award, leaving the talented pain-in-the-ass whiner Kanye West - winner of three awards himself - visibly upset and in no mood to be interviewed after the show. British pop-tart, alcoholic and drug addict Amy Winehouse also took home five statues in addition to two performances, validating all her self-destructive habits with industry approval. A lot of people seem to think it’s cute that she’s this rebellious soul singer sticking her fingers in the eyes of the establishment. But there’s nothing rebellious about a musician drinking and snorting cocaine - they all do it. There is, however, a certain segment of the population that likes to watch famous people destroy themselves and laugh about it in line at the supermarket. Whether the name is Winehouse or Spears, as long as people continue to reward them for wasting their lives away, we’ll continue to have something to read about while waiting to pay for our bagged lettuce and frozen pizza.
Scary moments in upstate New York last night during an hockey game between the visiting Florida Panthers and the Buffalo Sabres. In a freak accidental collision with a teammate, Panthers forward Richard Zednik severed his carotid artery against the skate blade of teammate Olli Jokinen, requiring life-saving emergency surgery. Zednik is currently in stable condition at a Buffalo hospital. Mid-way through the third period Jokinen was hit hard just outside the face-off circle to the left of the Buffalo net. he went face-first to the ice, sending his skate straight up into the neck of Zednik who happened to be skating close behind him. Somehow Zednik managed to skate three-quarters of the length of the ice with blood streaming from his neck before collapsing into the arms of teammates and trainers and being taken off the ice. The game was delayed for twenty minutes while crews scraped the gruesome trail of blood from the ice and the Commissioner debated whether or not to continue the game. Once it was learned that Zednik would be okay, the powers that be decided the game would continue. There is a certain degree of irony to this story. The only other time this has happened in the NHL was also in Buffalo in 1989 when Sabres goaltender Clint Malarchuk had his jugular vein severed by a skate blade in front of his net. Bleeding profusely, Malarchuk somehow managed to leave the ice under his own power and miraculously, after receiving over 300 stitches to close the wound, he returned to practice four days later, and finished out the season in goal for the Sabres. The moral of this story is that maybe it’s time for the NHL to look at requiring some type of neck protection for their players. The Malarchuk incident led to a mandate that all goaltenders wear neck protection. The Steve Yzerman slap-shot to the eyes incident two years ago should have led to a mandate that players wear at least a visor, if not more. Maybe the Zednik incident will lead to the development of some type of sleeve or turtleneck undershirt of sorts to protect players from freak accidents like this. Hockey is a violent sport, but no one, fans nor players, want things like this to happen.
2.07.2008
Let-Down Wednesday
If you’re reading this, then you appear to have survived Tsunami Tuesday. Good for you. In doing so you have accomplished a feat of absolutely no significance. Kinda like Super Tuesday. Sort of.
If you were leaning toward voting Republican, yesterday’s events more-or-less solidified John McCain as the front-runner for the nomination and set the tone for the rest of the primary campaign. If you were leaning toward voting Democratic, then yesterday’s events more-or-less told you nothing. I’ve spent most of today listening to results and analysis from pretty much anyone with access to media and I’m more confused now than I was yesterday. Let’s review, shall we? This may take a while, so fire up some popcorn and park yourself in front of the computer for a little light reading. Republicans first. Not because I like them better. Their results are just easier to decipher.
Barring a stellar implosion, divine rapture or massive coronary, Arizona Senator John McCain will take the Republican presidential nomination. It’s just a matter of time. He won big states by large margins, and in the Republican system of winner-take-all primaries, that’s really all that matters. McCain carries three of the five most populous states in his win column (New York, California and Florida) with Texas and Pennsylvania looming on the horizon. By CNNs count, McCain has 218 more delegates than his two-and-a-half remaining rivals combined, (I’m sorry, but Ron Paul can really only be counted as half a candidate), and 57% of the total number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. And he’s accomplished all this in the face of what can only be described as vicious – if not venomous opposition from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He has little credibility among religious conservatives, less credibility with fiscal conservatives, and no credibility with anti-immigration conservatives. Radio talk show icon rush Limbaugh has mounted an anti-McCain campaign, with help from many of his peers like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter. One might think that with opposition like that no Republican candidate could ever amount to anything in a presidential primary race. Yet McCain continues to thrive, and he’s doing it on the support of defense conservatives, moderate conservatives and moderate-to-conservative independents, whose voices are drowning out those of the more traditional Republican primary voter. Given his record throughout his time in government it’s difficult to understand why the level of resistance is so high, but I do have a theory. The traditionally vocal Republican base voter has four core issues: taxes, defense, immigration and abortion. McCain has always been pro-life, and has always argued for a strong defense and robust military budget. But in the last eight years he has committed the cardinal sins of voting against tax cuts, (which he says he felt were fiscally irresponsible at the time), and insisting on a sensible immigration policy instead of simply militarizing the borders and throwing the bums out. In the Republican Party, those are two sins for which forgiveness and redemption are very hard to come by. In addition to that, passionate conservatives, like Limbaugh and Coulter, do not believe in compromise. NEVER. The word is not part of their vocabulary. They firmly believe that independents, moderates and liberals need to be soundly defeated – not worked with. And passionate conservatives view John McCain as a compromiser. And he made his biggest compromise on the issue of immigration with the biggest liberal icon of the past 40 years, the devil himself, Ted Kennedy. If tomorrow McCain were to heal the sick, feed the hungry and walk on water, it would not be enough to atone for making a deal with the devil. Yet, in spite of all this, he continues to win primary after primary by wide margins over his more conservative rivals. This primary race seems to be exposing a shift in the balance of power in the Republican Party. A shift away from the right toward the center. A shift toward a candidate who isn’t afraid of opposing ideas and shows a willingness to work with the opposition in the interest of actually accomplishing something for the people.
Mitt Romney is toast. Butter him up, fill him with some roast beef, dip him in some au jus and chow down because he’s finished. Sure he won some primaries yesterday, but aside from Rudy Giullani – who is no longer part of the discussion, the former Governor of Massachusetts has received the least bang for his buck throughout this process. His campaign has been worth over 90 million dollars, and he has spent a huge chuck of that (including more that 37 million dollars of his own personal fortune) on political advertising and other things, only to find himself staring longingly at John McCain’s taillights through a telescope. For the sake of comparison, McCain has raised less than half of Romney’s total, and Huckabee a mere 10% of that. For a businessman, that is incredibly inefficient. Touted by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter as the only true conservative candidate remaining in the GOP field, one would think that Romney should be doing much better in many of these races. So why isn’t he? Two things. Mike Huckabee is absolutely KILLING Mitt Romney. In every state with a religious conservative voting block, the two of them split the vote – often with Huckabee capturing the lion’s share. Evangelical Christians – especially in the South, are very suspicious of any one who is not an evangelical Christian. That includes Christians of other denominations, like say, Catholics, and Mormons. Spend a few hours listening to your talk radio show of choice and pay special attention to the callers identifying themselves as evangelicals. Take note of what they say about Mormons and why they don’t feel comfortable voting for one. As long as Romney continues splitting that conservative vote with Huckabee it will be impossible for him to compete with McCain. In addition to all that, more than a few voters view Romney much the same way many people view his hair – processed. A fraud. A flip-flopper. A fake. A guy who will say anything for a vote. Only six years ago Romney ran for (and was elected) governor of Massachusetts as pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Two positions that he now adamantly opposes. I think a lot of people, (myself included) just have a hard time taking him seriously. But, he’s a sucker for punishment, and has vowed to remain in the race until the convention, at which time he will throw himself on stage in a tantrum, screaming and flailing his arms and legs until someone finally pays attention to him and offers him some candy.
What Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee did Tuesday night was make his case for the vice presidential selection. In a surprise to just about everyone, he took Georgia from McCain, stomped all over everyone in Arkansas, and wrapped up Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia as well. And he accomplished all this on a shoestring budget of 9 million dollars and with Chuck Norris and Ric Flair as campaign managers. In some circles they would call that a miracle. Huckabee is a former Baptist minister and holds incredible sway with Bible Belt Republicans. He also comes off as an amiable, funny, really nice guy. Like him or not, he’s a better communicator than Romney – and perhaps even McCain - and is able to tell you what he believes and why he believes it before you get bored with him. Dyed-in-the-wool fiscal and small government conservatives still watch Huckabee out of the corner of their eyes due to his support of spending on education and use of taxes to balance the Arkansas budget. But at least they don’t throw him out like yesterdays trash the way they do some of the other candidates in this race. And with his strong showing in Southern states where the front-runner seems to lack any kind of influence, he could be a valuable asset to a John McCain general election campaign. At this point, 504 delegates behind McCain, Huckabee knows he has no realistic hope of capturing the nomination. But he also knows that at little as six months ago, absolutely no one knew who Mike Huckabee was. John McCain is old, and even if he were to become president, I think it’s unlikely he have the energy to pursue a second term. If Huckabee can get himself on the ticket and collect four years of experience, it puts him in a great position to pick up where McCain might leave off.
And now to the Democrats.
Super Tuesday produced some fairly significant victories for New York Senator Hilary Clinton. She captured the two biggest prizes of the evening in New York and California, as well as several other large-delegate states like New Jersey and Massachusetts as well as four others. There was a slightly embarrassing moment when her campaign declared a victory in Missouri, only to have to rescind that claim later when it turned out the state actually went to Obama. But aside from that, things went pretty well. Clinton is drawing female voters in huge numbers, and winning Hispanics 2 to 1 over her rival. That Hispanic vote put her over the top in California and sets her up for a big win in the upcoming delegate-rich Texas primary. But despite her achievements Tuesday night, Clinton is in no better position than she was in Tuesday morning. She did not open the gap between herself and Obama, and stories surfaced this afternoon that she may be having financial issues. Her fund-raising total for January came to approximately 15 million dollars compared to Obama’s 32 million, many of her donors have reached the contribute limit, and there is a report that she made a 5 million dollar personal loan to her campaign. And things are likely to get worse before they get better. Between now and the seemingly friendly contests in Texas and Ohio are about half-a-dozen contests which would seem to demographically favor the competition. She’s going to have to do a considerable amount of work to either hold off a surging Obama and perhaps steal wins in several states to tide her over, or try to capture some of his enthusiasm among younger voters, and convince others that her six years of experience are considerably more valuable than charisma and change. Clinton has been around for a long time and she has the battle scars to prove it. She’s tough and she’s a fighter, but this may be the most difficult battle she has ever engaged in.
If I’m Barack Obama, I’m feeling pretty good today. Not even two weeks ago the Illinois Senator trailed Clinton by 20+ points in some national polls. Fourteen days later he captures five more states than his rival, takes possibly more delegates, and performs better in her own back yard than she did in his. In many ways, the compressed schedule of the campaign, which favored Obama early on, is now his enemy. Ever since the victory in South Carolina, the Kennedy family endorsements and Edwards’s removal from the race, Obama has been quickly and steadily gaining ground on Clinton. Had Super Tuesday taken place a week later there is a very good chance he may have overtaken Clinton in places like New Jersey and California. Regardless of how this primary race turns out, Obama must be credited with bringing a huge number of people – particularly young people and independents – to a process they have until now been disinterested in. Every Democratic primary and caucus has enjoyed record turnout, and his rallies now routinely draw 20,000 people, filling arenas across the country. There is something about this man that excites and invigorates people and he’s translating that energy into votes and financial support. The longer this campaign goes, the more people he seems to win over. His Achilles heels are still low-income whites, white women and Hispanics, although a close vote in New Mexico might seem to indicate a breakthrough of sorts. I was reminded last week that there is still a segment of white voters who will not vote for Obama because he does not share their epidermal pigmentation. But there just might be enough open-minded individuals to overcome that handicap. Upcoming primaries in Maryland, Virginia, Washington and Louisiana would seem to play to the Senator’s strength, and if he is able to somehow sweep the contests between now and the Texas/Ohio primaries, he just might be able to build up enough momentum to overcome Senator Clinton’s advantage in those states. This primary race may very well come down to the rogue delegates of Michigan and Florida all well as the so called “super delegates,” which comprise 20% of all Democratic delegates and are not required to vote according to the wishes of the voters in the state in which they were elected. Why the party would create a system in which the votes of the people could easily be over-ridden by on a whim is completely beyond me, but that discussion is for another time. Make no mistake about it. If somehow Barack Obama manages to usurp Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, it will be nothing short of astonishing. For six years, everyone has known that Senator Clinton would be the inevitable Democratic candidate for 2008. For some skinny kid from Illinois to show up out of nowhere and defeat the invincible Clinton machine would rewrite the conventional wisdom of modern Democratic politics.
Finally, as much of a "dream ticket" as some voters and pundits seem to think it would be, I doubt we'll get a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton Democratic ticket. There might be a possibility for a Clinton/Obama ticket, but certainly not an Obama/Clinton ticket. Her negatives are just too high in the areas in which Obama does well. Independents and/or crossover Republicans aren't going to be drawn to Clinton, and Obama hasn’t done poorly enough in any major states to really need her on the ticket to draw out voters. My money is on an Obama/Richardson ticket. Richardson provides a significant amount of experience, credibility on immigration issues, plus strong Hispanic support, all without any of Clinton's negatives. And even if Obama were to get the nomination and offer her the Vice Presidency, I think her ego is too large to accept it. She's already played second fiddle in the white house for eight years. If she wants to go back there she will want to do it for all the marbles.
My problem envisioning a Clinton/Obama ticket is as follows. I think Obama REALLY wants to be President. If the Democrats win the election, and he were to become Vice President, and everything goes well for the new Clinton administration, he would have to wait eight years for his shot at the White House. How well did that work out for Al Gore? Part of what elected Bush in 2000 was Clinton fatigue. If the country was fatigued after eight years, imagine the level of fatigue after 16 years. And if Obama were to become Vice President of an administration that performs poorly, he wouldn’t be able to run against Clinton four years from now for the party nomination. If he were to then run again sometime in the future, he would be permanently tainted as Vice President of a failed administration. Barack Obama gains nothing by accepting a Vice Presidential nomination. If he were to lose the nomination to Clinton this time around, he would be better off finding something to occupy his time during the upcoming term – perhaps return to the Senate, keep himself in the public eye, and try again next time around.
If you were leaning toward voting Republican, yesterday’s events more-or-less solidified John McCain as the front-runner for the nomination and set the tone for the rest of the primary campaign. If you were leaning toward voting Democratic, then yesterday’s events more-or-less told you nothing. I’ve spent most of today listening to results and analysis from pretty much anyone with access to media and I’m more confused now than I was yesterday. Let’s review, shall we? This may take a while, so fire up some popcorn and park yourself in front of the computer for a little light reading. Republicans first. Not because I like them better. Their results are just easier to decipher.
Barring a stellar implosion, divine rapture or massive coronary, Arizona Senator John McCain will take the Republican presidential nomination. It’s just a matter of time. He won big states by large margins, and in the Republican system of winner-take-all primaries, that’s really all that matters. McCain carries three of the five most populous states in his win column (New York, California and Florida) with Texas and Pennsylvania looming on the horizon. By CNNs count, McCain has 218 more delegates than his two-and-a-half remaining rivals combined, (I’m sorry, but Ron Paul can really only be counted as half a candidate), and 57% of the total number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. And he’s accomplished all this in the face of what can only be described as vicious – if not venomous opposition from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He has little credibility among religious conservatives, less credibility with fiscal conservatives, and no credibility with anti-immigration conservatives. Radio talk show icon rush Limbaugh has mounted an anti-McCain campaign, with help from many of his peers like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter. One might think that with opposition like that no Republican candidate could ever amount to anything in a presidential primary race. Yet McCain continues to thrive, and he’s doing it on the support of defense conservatives, moderate conservatives and moderate-to-conservative independents, whose voices are drowning out those of the more traditional Republican primary voter. Given his record throughout his time in government it’s difficult to understand why the level of resistance is so high, but I do have a theory. The traditionally vocal Republican base voter has four core issues: taxes, defense, immigration and abortion. McCain has always been pro-life, and has always argued for a strong defense and robust military budget. But in the last eight years he has committed the cardinal sins of voting against tax cuts, (which he says he felt were fiscally irresponsible at the time), and insisting on a sensible immigration policy instead of simply militarizing the borders and throwing the bums out. In the Republican Party, those are two sins for which forgiveness and redemption are very hard to come by. In addition to that, passionate conservatives, like Limbaugh and Coulter, do not believe in compromise. NEVER. The word is not part of their vocabulary. They firmly believe that independents, moderates and liberals need to be soundly defeated – not worked with. And passionate conservatives view John McCain as a compromiser. And he made his biggest compromise on the issue of immigration with the biggest liberal icon of the past 40 years, the devil himself, Ted Kennedy. If tomorrow McCain were to heal the sick, feed the hungry and walk on water, it would not be enough to atone for making a deal with the devil. Yet, in spite of all this, he continues to win primary after primary by wide margins over his more conservative rivals. This primary race seems to be exposing a shift in the balance of power in the Republican Party. A shift away from the right toward the center. A shift toward a candidate who isn’t afraid of opposing ideas and shows a willingness to work with the opposition in the interest of actually accomplishing something for the people.
Mitt Romney is toast. Butter him up, fill him with some roast beef, dip him in some au jus and chow down because he’s finished. Sure he won some primaries yesterday, but aside from Rudy Giullani – who is no longer part of the discussion, the former Governor of Massachusetts has received the least bang for his buck throughout this process. His campaign has been worth over 90 million dollars, and he has spent a huge chuck of that (including more that 37 million dollars of his own personal fortune) on political advertising and other things, only to find himself staring longingly at John McCain’s taillights through a telescope. For the sake of comparison, McCain has raised less than half of Romney’s total, and Huckabee a mere 10% of that. For a businessman, that is incredibly inefficient. Touted by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter as the only true conservative candidate remaining in the GOP field, one would think that Romney should be doing much better in many of these races. So why isn’t he? Two things. Mike Huckabee is absolutely KILLING Mitt Romney. In every state with a religious conservative voting block, the two of them split the vote – often with Huckabee capturing the lion’s share. Evangelical Christians – especially in the South, are very suspicious of any one who is not an evangelical Christian. That includes Christians of other denominations, like say, Catholics, and Mormons. Spend a few hours listening to your talk radio show of choice and pay special attention to the callers identifying themselves as evangelicals. Take note of what they say about Mormons and why they don’t feel comfortable voting for one. As long as Romney continues splitting that conservative vote with Huckabee it will be impossible for him to compete with McCain. In addition to all that, more than a few voters view Romney much the same way many people view his hair – processed. A fraud. A flip-flopper. A fake. A guy who will say anything for a vote. Only six years ago Romney ran for (and was elected) governor of Massachusetts as pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Two positions that he now adamantly opposes. I think a lot of people, (myself included) just have a hard time taking him seriously. But, he’s a sucker for punishment, and has vowed to remain in the race until the convention, at which time he will throw himself on stage in a tantrum, screaming and flailing his arms and legs until someone finally pays attention to him and offers him some candy.
What Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee did Tuesday night was make his case for the vice presidential selection. In a surprise to just about everyone, he took Georgia from McCain, stomped all over everyone in Arkansas, and wrapped up Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia as well. And he accomplished all this on a shoestring budget of 9 million dollars and with Chuck Norris and Ric Flair as campaign managers. In some circles they would call that a miracle. Huckabee is a former Baptist minister and holds incredible sway with Bible Belt Republicans. He also comes off as an amiable, funny, really nice guy. Like him or not, he’s a better communicator than Romney – and perhaps even McCain - and is able to tell you what he believes and why he believes it before you get bored with him. Dyed-in-the-wool fiscal and small government conservatives still watch Huckabee out of the corner of their eyes due to his support of spending on education and use of taxes to balance the Arkansas budget. But at least they don’t throw him out like yesterdays trash the way they do some of the other candidates in this race. And with his strong showing in Southern states where the front-runner seems to lack any kind of influence, he could be a valuable asset to a John McCain general election campaign. At this point, 504 delegates behind McCain, Huckabee knows he has no realistic hope of capturing the nomination. But he also knows that at little as six months ago, absolutely no one knew who Mike Huckabee was. John McCain is old, and even if he were to become president, I think it’s unlikely he have the energy to pursue a second term. If Huckabee can get himself on the ticket and collect four years of experience, it puts him in a great position to pick up where McCain might leave off.
And now to the Democrats.
Super Tuesday produced some fairly significant victories for New York Senator Hilary Clinton. She captured the two biggest prizes of the evening in New York and California, as well as several other large-delegate states like New Jersey and Massachusetts as well as four others. There was a slightly embarrassing moment when her campaign declared a victory in Missouri, only to have to rescind that claim later when it turned out the state actually went to Obama. But aside from that, things went pretty well. Clinton is drawing female voters in huge numbers, and winning Hispanics 2 to 1 over her rival. That Hispanic vote put her over the top in California and sets her up for a big win in the upcoming delegate-rich Texas primary. But despite her achievements Tuesday night, Clinton is in no better position than she was in Tuesday morning. She did not open the gap between herself and Obama, and stories surfaced this afternoon that she may be having financial issues. Her fund-raising total for January came to approximately 15 million dollars compared to Obama’s 32 million, many of her donors have reached the contribute limit, and there is a report that she made a 5 million dollar personal loan to her campaign. And things are likely to get worse before they get better. Between now and the seemingly friendly contests in Texas and Ohio are about half-a-dozen contests which would seem to demographically favor the competition. She’s going to have to do a considerable amount of work to either hold off a surging Obama and perhaps steal wins in several states to tide her over, or try to capture some of his enthusiasm among younger voters, and convince others that her six years of experience are considerably more valuable than charisma and change. Clinton has been around for a long time and she has the battle scars to prove it. She’s tough and she’s a fighter, but this may be the most difficult battle she has ever engaged in.
If I’m Barack Obama, I’m feeling pretty good today. Not even two weeks ago the Illinois Senator trailed Clinton by 20+ points in some national polls. Fourteen days later he captures five more states than his rival, takes possibly more delegates, and performs better in her own back yard than she did in his. In many ways, the compressed schedule of the campaign, which favored Obama early on, is now his enemy. Ever since the victory in South Carolina, the Kennedy family endorsements and Edwards’s removal from the race, Obama has been quickly and steadily gaining ground on Clinton. Had Super Tuesday taken place a week later there is a very good chance he may have overtaken Clinton in places like New Jersey and California. Regardless of how this primary race turns out, Obama must be credited with bringing a huge number of people – particularly young people and independents – to a process they have until now been disinterested in. Every Democratic primary and caucus has enjoyed record turnout, and his rallies now routinely draw 20,000 people, filling arenas across the country. There is something about this man that excites and invigorates people and he’s translating that energy into votes and financial support. The longer this campaign goes, the more people he seems to win over. His Achilles heels are still low-income whites, white women and Hispanics, although a close vote in New Mexico might seem to indicate a breakthrough of sorts. I was reminded last week that there is still a segment of white voters who will not vote for Obama because he does not share their epidermal pigmentation. But there just might be enough open-minded individuals to overcome that handicap. Upcoming primaries in Maryland, Virginia, Washington and Louisiana would seem to play to the Senator’s strength, and if he is able to somehow sweep the contests between now and the Texas/Ohio primaries, he just might be able to build up enough momentum to overcome Senator Clinton’s advantage in those states. This primary race may very well come down to the rogue delegates of Michigan and Florida all well as the so called “super delegates,” which comprise 20% of all Democratic delegates and are not required to vote according to the wishes of the voters in the state in which they were elected. Why the party would create a system in which the votes of the people could easily be over-ridden by on a whim is completely beyond me, but that discussion is for another time. Make no mistake about it. If somehow Barack Obama manages to usurp Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, it will be nothing short of astonishing. For six years, everyone has known that Senator Clinton would be the inevitable Democratic candidate for 2008. For some skinny kid from Illinois to show up out of nowhere and defeat the invincible Clinton machine would rewrite the conventional wisdom of modern Democratic politics.
Finally, as much of a "dream ticket" as some voters and pundits seem to think it would be, I doubt we'll get a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton Democratic ticket. There might be a possibility for a Clinton/Obama ticket, but certainly not an Obama/Clinton ticket. Her negatives are just too high in the areas in which Obama does well. Independents and/or crossover Republicans aren't going to be drawn to Clinton, and Obama hasn’t done poorly enough in any major states to really need her on the ticket to draw out voters. My money is on an Obama/Richardson ticket. Richardson provides a significant amount of experience, credibility on immigration issues, plus strong Hispanic support, all without any of Clinton's negatives. And even if Obama were to get the nomination and offer her the Vice Presidency, I think her ego is too large to accept it. She's already played second fiddle in the white house for eight years. If she wants to go back there she will want to do it for all the marbles.
My problem envisioning a Clinton/Obama ticket is as follows. I think Obama REALLY wants to be President. If the Democrats win the election, and he were to become Vice President, and everything goes well for the new Clinton administration, he would have to wait eight years for his shot at the White House. How well did that work out for Al Gore? Part of what elected Bush in 2000 was Clinton fatigue. If the country was fatigued after eight years, imagine the level of fatigue after 16 years. And if Obama were to become Vice President of an administration that performs poorly, he wouldn’t be able to run against Clinton four years from now for the party nomination. If he were to then run again sometime in the future, he would be permanently tainted as Vice President of a failed administration. Barack Obama gains nothing by accepting a Vice Presidential nomination. If he were to lose the nomination to Clinton this time around, he would be better off finding something to occupy his time during the upcoming term – perhaps return to the Senate, keep himself in the public eye, and try again next time around.
2.05.2008
Tsunami!
Anger without the enthusiasm… anger without the enthusiasm….
Tomorrow is Tuesday. But it’s not just Tuesday. It’s more than Tuesday. It’s Super Tuesday. Uber-Tuesday. Tsunami Tuesday! Isn’t that exciting? Aren’t you excited? Well you should be. What do you mean why? Because it’s Super Tuesday, that’s why! Super Tuesday! Super!
Now that we’ve dispensed with the media hype we can get down to business. Twenty-four states will hold presidential primaries or caucuses tomorrow. Fifty-two percent of Democratic delegates and forty-one percent of Republican delegates will be awarded by the time the contests are over, many in a manner more confusing than the popularity of Ryan Seacrest. I had planned on going over the results as they rolled in tomorrow evening, but I realized this past weekend that I’m not as young as I used to be, and therefore cannot stay up as late as I used to. So instead of trying to assemble coherent sentences through bleary eyes and foggy brain, I’ll attempt to tackle the results of tomorrow’s primaries on Wednesday night.
If the opinion polls are to be believed – and there’s really no reason they should be – Barack Obama has virtually erased Hilary Clinton’s nationwide lead in a span of 12 days. In most national polls, the two senators are now well within the statistical margin of error. In some cases, like California for example, what was once a 30+ point lead for Senator Clinton may now be a four-point lead for Senator Obama. If these snapshots of voter opinion are accurate and hold through tomorrow, Obama will have pulled of a come-from-behind victory on the scale of what his Republican counterpart John McCain is poised to complete by the close of voting Tuesday evening.
About six months ago, Senator John McCain was all but politically extinct. He was old, broke, and buried at the bottom of the Republican heap. Well, it’s a new year, and McCain is a new man. He’s still old and broke, but he is now the (almost) undisputed Republican front-runner, leading by double digits in nearly every state poll and poised to clinch his party’s Presidential nomination. While this may seem like the ultimate resurrection story – a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Arizona desert, it makes some in the Republican Party very nervous, and very angry. A quick perusal of talk radio will tell you all you need to know about McCain’s detractors, for they are the biggest names in conservative media and entertainment. And the vitriol is of the sort usually reserved for union leaders, environmentalist, illegal immigrants and liberals. Last week on Sean Hannity’s radio show, author and political harpy Ann Coulter claimed that if McCain is ultimately selected to run for president, she will personally campaign for Hilary Clinton, citing her belief that Clinton would be “more conservative” and “tougher on terror” than McCain. Coulter was obviously not serious about supporting Clinton, but the mere fact that she would use the words “I will” and “campaign for” and “Clinton” in the same sentence goes to demonstrate just how terrified certain elements of the party are of losing a certain degree of their influence. So if McCain emerges from Super Tuesday victorious, we may be looking at a shift in the balance of power in the Republican Party. What that means for the country remains to be seen.
Most of you may not have noticed, but there were two more presidential debates last week ahead of the California primary. Why are there so many of these things? Have we ever had so many debates prior to the selection of nominees in which we have learned so little? Why continue subjecting people to this crap? How many ways can we listen to the candidates tell us the same things they told us a year ago when this whole mess began. Is it me, or do cable news channels continue to sponsor debates in the hope that someone will eventually break down and start throwing punches? Cable’s version of political pornography.
In other political news, President Bush unveiled his final budget plan today, weighing in at over 3.1 trillion dollars. For those of you who don’t like words, that budget number looks like this: $3,100,000,000,000. For those of you who need an English translation, that equates to one hell of a lot of money. But don’t worry, according to the President, he has specifically tailored this budget proposal to control spending. I’m not sure I understand how a 3.1 trillion dollar budget – which excludes any funding for the current wars (sure to follow in subsequent appropriations bills) – keeps a lid on spending, but what do I know. He’s the President, I’m sure that means he’s a wiser man than me. Can you feel the sarcasm? Can you?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced this morning that they would soon award a billion dollar contract to create a complete biometric database of everyone they possibly can over the next ten years. The idea is to record every fingerprint, palm print, iris scan, face recognition photo, security camera snapshot, social security number and EVERY other identifying media you can imagine, store it on a hard drive in the basement of FBI Headquarters and be able to call it up at a moments notice – all for your protection. That’s right ladies and gentlemen. If every iota of your personal information is not floating around on an FBI server, accessible by any joker in the building with a password or fifteen-year-old kid in Denmark with a broadband connection, terrorism wins. Terrorism wins big. So you might as well surrender your privacy now.
There was an interesting development in the Natalee Holloway case over the weekend. Remember Natalee Holloway? You know, Alabama teenager on a field trip with classmates to Aruba who disappeared the night before she was scheduled to return home? Well, in an interview airing on Dutch television over the weekend, prime suspect Joran van der Sloot admitted being with Holloway on an Aruban beach when she died, and that a friend of his with a boat (neither of his two alleged co-conspirators) took her body out to sea and disposed of it. He admitted to a bunch of other things as well, leading Dutch authorities to reopen the investigation and a Dutch judge to declare the videotaped “confession” admissible in court. Sounds like this case is resolved, doesn’t it? Only one problem. Joran van der Sloot now claims he made the whole thing up, that he simply told the guy what he wanted to hear. Unfortunately for van der Sloot, he told the guy exactly what the prosecutor wanted to hear as well. If you’re guilty and you know it, shut your mouth.
Disney’s “Hannah Montana” concert movie topped the box office this past weekend with a take in excess of 29 million dollars. In case you’re wondering, that figure is double the gross of its closest competition. Granted, it opened against such cinema juggernauts as “The Eye,” and “Over Her Dead Body,” but it’s pretty impressive none-the-less. In fact, the “film” performed so well that Disney plans to extend the planned one-week only run for another week. When I was little I dreamed of the day the word would be taken over by ten-year-olds like me. Alas, that day is upon us. Run for the hills.
According to AskMen.com, (what?) Grey’s Anatomy actress Katherine Heigl is this year’s most desirable woman. I don’t know who voted in this poll, but I’m going to assume they were all women. Partially because men don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy and have no idea who Katherine Heigl is. (I’m actually a little embarrassed that I do.) And also because men wouldn’t visit a website called AskMen.com. Men know what men think. We don’t need to ask other men what we think. So, to rephrase, according to all the women who voted in the AskMen.com poll, Katherine Heigl is this year’s most desirable woman. After reviewing the evidence, I don’t understand why. She’s pretty, but I’m not feeling the desire. There are probably fifteen or twenty ladies ahead of her on the desirability scale. Women have odd taste in women.
Finally tonight, in a move that NO ONE saw coming, Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight resigned tonight, in the midst of a decent season, turning the coaching duties over to his assistant coach and son, Pat. For those of you who don’t remember Knight for his coaching, you might remember him for throwing chairs at referees, or smacking his players in the face, or yelling obscenities at reporters during press conferences. There is no middle ground with this guy, you either think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the worst thing since stale, moldy bread. But the best part about this is that we no longer have to think of his at all. (You can probably tell which side of the fence I’m on.) Knight has always been an arrogant, abusive, annoying, ill-mannered son-of-a-you-know-what, and I’m sure college basketball will get along just fine without him. Good riddance Bobby.
Tomorrow is Tuesday. But it’s not just Tuesday. It’s more than Tuesday. It’s Super Tuesday. Uber-Tuesday. Tsunami Tuesday! Isn’t that exciting? Aren’t you excited? Well you should be. What do you mean why? Because it’s Super Tuesday, that’s why! Super Tuesday! Super!
Now that we’ve dispensed with the media hype we can get down to business. Twenty-four states will hold presidential primaries or caucuses tomorrow. Fifty-two percent of Democratic delegates and forty-one percent of Republican delegates will be awarded by the time the contests are over, many in a manner more confusing than the popularity of Ryan Seacrest. I had planned on going over the results as they rolled in tomorrow evening, but I realized this past weekend that I’m not as young as I used to be, and therefore cannot stay up as late as I used to. So instead of trying to assemble coherent sentences through bleary eyes and foggy brain, I’ll attempt to tackle the results of tomorrow’s primaries on Wednesday night.
If the opinion polls are to be believed – and there’s really no reason they should be – Barack Obama has virtually erased Hilary Clinton’s nationwide lead in a span of 12 days. In most national polls, the two senators are now well within the statistical margin of error. In some cases, like California for example, what was once a 30+ point lead for Senator Clinton may now be a four-point lead for Senator Obama. If these snapshots of voter opinion are accurate and hold through tomorrow, Obama will have pulled of a come-from-behind victory on the scale of what his Republican counterpart John McCain is poised to complete by the close of voting Tuesday evening.
About six months ago, Senator John McCain was all but politically extinct. He was old, broke, and buried at the bottom of the Republican heap. Well, it’s a new year, and McCain is a new man. He’s still old and broke, but he is now the (almost) undisputed Republican front-runner, leading by double digits in nearly every state poll and poised to clinch his party’s Presidential nomination. While this may seem like the ultimate resurrection story – a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Arizona desert, it makes some in the Republican Party very nervous, and very angry. A quick perusal of talk radio will tell you all you need to know about McCain’s detractors, for they are the biggest names in conservative media and entertainment. And the vitriol is of the sort usually reserved for union leaders, environmentalist, illegal immigrants and liberals. Last week on Sean Hannity’s radio show, author and political harpy Ann Coulter claimed that if McCain is ultimately selected to run for president, she will personally campaign for Hilary Clinton, citing her belief that Clinton would be “more conservative” and “tougher on terror” than McCain. Coulter was obviously not serious about supporting Clinton, but the mere fact that she would use the words “I will” and “campaign for” and “Clinton” in the same sentence goes to demonstrate just how terrified certain elements of the party are of losing a certain degree of their influence. So if McCain emerges from Super Tuesday victorious, we may be looking at a shift in the balance of power in the Republican Party. What that means for the country remains to be seen.
Most of you may not have noticed, but there were two more presidential debates last week ahead of the California primary. Why are there so many of these things? Have we ever had so many debates prior to the selection of nominees in which we have learned so little? Why continue subjecting people to this crap? How many ways can we listen to the candidates tell us the same things they told us a year ago when this whole mess began. Is it me, or do cable news channels continue to sponsor debates in the hope that someone will eventually break down and start throwing punches? Cable’s version of political pornography.
In other political news, President Bush unveiled his final budget plan today, weighing in at over 3.1 trillion dollars. For those of you who don’t like words, that budget number looks like this: $3,100,000,000,000. For those of you who need an English translation, that equates to one hell of a lot of money. But don’t worry, according to the President, he has specifically tailored this budget proposal to control spending. I’m not sure I understand how a 3.1 trillion dollar budget – which excludes any funding for the current wars (sure to follow in subsequent appropriations bills) – keeps a lid on spending, but what do I know. He’s the President, I’m sure that means he’s a wiser man than me. Can you feel the sarcasm? Can you?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced this morning that they would soon award a billion dollar contract to create a complete biometric database of everyone they possibly can over the next ten years. The idea is to record every fingerprint, palm print, iris scan, face recognition photo, security camera snapshot, social security number and EVERY other identifying media you can imagine, store it on a hard drive in the basement of FBI Headquarters and be able to call it up at a moments notice – all for your protection. That’s right ladies and gentlemen. If every iota of your personal information is not floating around on an FBI server, accessible by any joker in the building with a password or fifteen-year-old kid in Denmark with a broadband connection, terrorism wins. Terrorism wins big. So you might as well surrender your privacy now.
There was an interesting development in the Natalee Holloway case over the weekend. Remember Natalee Holloway? You know, Alabama teenager on a field trip with classmates to Aruba who disappeared the night before she was scheduled to return home? Well, in an interview airing on Dutch television over the weekend, prime suspect Joran van der Sloot admitted being with Holloway on an Aruban beach when she died, and that a friend of his with a boat (neither of his two alleged co-conspirators) took her body out to sea and disposed of it. He admitted to a bunch of other things as well, leading Dutch authorities to reopen the investigation and a Dutch judge to declare the videotaped “confession” admissible in court. Sounds like this case is resolved, doesn’t it? Only one problem. Joran van der Sloot now claims he made the whole thing up, that he simply told the guy what he wanted to hear. Unfortunately for van der Sloot, he told the guy exactly what the prosecutor wanted to hear as well. If you’re guilty and you know it, shut your mouth.
Disney’s “Hannah Montana” concert movie topped the box office this past weekend with a take in excess of 29 million dollars. In case you’re wondering, that figure is double the gross of its closest competition. Granted, it opened against such cinema juggernauts as “The Eye,” and “Over Her Dead Body,” but it’s pretty impressive none-the-less. In fact, the “film” performed so well that Disney plans to extend the planned one-week only run for another week. When I was little I dreamed of the day the word would be taken over by ten-year-olds like me. Alas, that day is upon us. Run for the hills.
According to AskMen.com, (what?) Grey’s Anatomy actress Katherine Heigl is this year’s most desirable woman. I don’t know who voted in this poll, but I’m going to assume they were all women. Partially because men don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy and have no idea who Katherine Heigl is. (I’m actually a little embarrassed that I do.) And also because men wouldn’t visit a website called AskMen.com. Men know what men think. We don’t need to ask other men what we think. So, to rephrase, according to all the women who voted in the AskMen.com poll, Katherine Heigl is this year’s most desirable woman. After reviewing the evidence, I don’t understand why. She’s pretty, but I’m not feeling the desire. There are probably fifteen or twenty ladies ahead of her on the desirability scale. Women have odd taste in women.
Finally tonight, in a move that NO ONE saw coming, Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight resigned tonight, in the midst of a decent season, turning the coaching duties over to his assistant coach and son, Pat. For those of you who don’t remember Knight for his coaching, you might remember him for throwing chairs at referees, or smacking his players in the face, or yelling obscenities at reporters during press conferences. There is no middle ground with this guy, you either think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the worst thing since stale, moldy bread. But the best part about this is that we no longer have to think of his at all. (You can probably tell which side of the fence I’m on.) Knight has always been an arrogant, abusive, annoying, ill-mannered son-of-a-you-know-what, and I’m sure college basketball will get along just fine without him. Good riddance Bobby.
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