Is Andrew going to be ok?

I don't mean because of the blood pressure meds they'll have to put him on if HRC doesn't drop out soon, either. I found out yesterday that the series finale of the Wire is on Sunday. Sunday as in - the day of the Karl Rove lecture.

Dude, do you have to work at the lecture? Because I'm thinking you're reeeeeaaaalllllllyyyyy going to dislike Karl Rove if you've got to spend the evening with him instead of McNulty and Marlo.

(I almost said "That's Bunk!" but I resisted the urge for a bad pun and put it in parentheses so it wouldn't count.)

He's got my vote!

Ralph Nader, last night, on The Daily Show.

"We have all these problems! Look at daily life (grins) not on the show..."

(That was Ralph Nader making a funny)

"...you have congested traffic, you have day care costs that are tremendous, cell phone plans that are manipulated."

That's it. I'm hooked. A President Nader will eliminate traffic! Free day care for everyone! And Sprint will no longer tell me what services they offer me and at what price! That's my decision. Or Ralph's.

The Morning After

So I have a few questions on this Wednesday morning:

How did Vince Foster die? As far as I know, the Clintons didn't arrange to have him killed.

Why won't the Clintons release their tax returns? As far as I know, they don't have extremely unethical business dealings with despot governments and oligarchic global businessmen.

What was that Whitewater scandal all about?

What's the meaning of the word is?

I need a hobby that isn't following our twisted, dumbed down, and F'ed up polity.

He's left the building...save vs. despair

The man who made my ostracism from the ranks of the drunks and the popular kids ok just died.

I loved D&D. I am in no way ashamed to admit this. It was what kept us thinking about all the great things we could do for humanity, even when the great majority of humanity was treating us like shit. It was what kept outcasts and nerds thinking about how they were going to be your boss, rather than your servitor.

Gary Gygax was an ameliorator of social ills, and a rectifier of needless self-hatred. If people could get over the witless stigma that attaches to role-playing games, we'd be having a great deal more fun in this world.

Keep rolling twenties, my friend.

One More Thing

(HRC only cares about herself. Not the party, not the country, not the world. Nothing but her own path to power. Therefore, tearing down Senator Barack Obama - who is going to be the nominee when this thing is over with - is in line with her strategy. If he loses in November, she's running in 2012. That is why she is not dropping out. That is why she is going negative and lying about every god damned thing in the world, and race baiting, and playing to rampant American Islamophobia, etc, etc. Someone needs to stop her. Al Gore, where the F are you?)

So, I really want to counter the inevitable spin

But I promised below that I wouldn't comment on the primary race again. (But folks, the primary race is over. There's no way she can overcome his pledged delegate lead in the remaining states - all very BO friendly other than Pennsylvania, which might as well be after the general election its so far from today.)

(Also, apparently Ohioans buy dumb, negative bullshit. You know what? Screw HRC. I'm mad, even though I've rationalized the hell out of this and know that she can't win. Oh, maybe that's why I'm so mad, because she can't win but still wants to stay in because she thinks the presidency is owed to her, and is quite willing to sabotage a guaranteed Democratic landslide in November for the chance to lose to John McCain in an electoral cycle MADE for Democrats.)

(Whoops. I guess if I write in parentheses it doesn't count. Sort of like Iowa. And South Carolina. And ...)

Pants-crappingly exciting

I don't know if I can handle it. As I write this, Arsenal are seconds away from kicking off their second-leg game against Italian giants AC Milan and the Obama and Clinton campaigns are biting their nails in Ohio and Texas. There's no doubt about it, this is a big day.

Could Arsenal do what no English team has ever done and beat Milan at the San Siro? Could the Democratic party, at long last, have a nominee for a contest that should be theirs to lose?

UPDATE: The Arsenal game is underway, and my Gunners look threatening already, at three minutes in. Come on you reds!

Three's a crowd

With any big change in the relative delegate count unlikely, Tuesday’s primaries—especially those in Texas and Ohio—will be of little mathematical significance. Their impact on the race as a whole, however, is another story. Former rival Bill Richardson openly contends that the candidate who wakes up on Wednesday with the fewest delegates should step down. And, if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton truly wish to serve their party’s best interests, Richardson’s political anxieties will soon be extinguished, along with one candidate’s presidential aspirations.

Though Mike Huckabee may no longer be a good example of it, a split in the nomination race can prove devastating to its party. Democrats have lost the last three elections in which the race remained heated for a significant period of time. Republicans, too, have seen their party harmed by such discrepancies. What has recently been dubbed the “Nader effect,” splitting the vote does more than divide popularity among candidates of the same party; it often prompts independent voters to abandon those candidates entirely. Unsurprisingly, infighting begins to look more like sibling rivalry when the convention rolls around, and nobody wants to see that kind of petty bickering make its way into the White House.

If the aforementioned candidates would rather see power handed to their Democratic rivals than their Republican ones, they would do well to heed Richardson’s careful advice. Because, while both Clinton and Obama may be quite qualified to act as commander in chief, their constant squabbles will only ensure that neither gets the chance to prove it.

Jack's ad

Many are cooing at Jack Nicholson's self-made endorsement of Hillary Clinton, where he takes footage from "A Few Good Men" to reference the appeal of a Clinton presidency.

"There is nothing sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning."

Okay. Fine. But I'll bet that the Clinton camp is happy he didn't use the REST of that dialogue from the script.

"There is nothing sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote 'em all, I say. If you've never had a blowjob from a superior officer, you've missed the best in life. But I'll just take cold showers until they elect some gal President."

Yikes!

Get real

NBC Nightly News had a piece Monday night that covered a recently released study saying Americans got less sleep than the rest of the world, and that we were all tired.

Duh.

When I have time, which isn't often, I grab a power nap. It helps me a majority of the time. 15 or 20 minutes. I know I don't reach that restorative REM stage when I do that, so I'm also a big fan of the 2-hour nap when I'm really tired, but I almost never have that kind of time.

Anyhow, they had some sleep doctor on throughout this report, asked him the usual questions, and he said naps were good, but that there was no substitute for eight hours of sleep!

Eight freaking hours? Are you kidding me? Who gets eight hours of sleep every night? I get to bed by two or three. I get up around seven, eight if I'm lucky. Nine or ten on a rare weekend morning when I have no homework, don't have to go to the other job, and I don't have to try to rush to the bank in the twenty minutes they're open on Saturdays or run any other similar errands.

So I guess I'm curious. How much sleep do you get?

UISG

All ya'll Ed Board types have gone and riled up some shit with your endorsement of Atul (seriously, why?). It is fun to read the comments that UISG peeps write on our coverage, however. And how about the claim that the DI Metro Section has been running hits on VIP? That's a pretty serious charge.

So there's this email circulating...

I think it started about the time of the Iowa caucus, and it says all manner of things about Barack Obama being Muslim among other things. It seems so ridiculous to me, but people actually believe this. They read it in an email, so it must be true. When I watch Washington Journal on C-Span in the mornings, people call in every day and recite this email as if it's fact. I'm constantly amazed at how many people believe this. I've mentioned it to some Obama supporters (I am not one, by the way) and they seem unconcerned about it. I don't know if they realize how many people are buying into this.

When you think about it, it's quite a clever smear campaign. There was a member of Congress sworn in on the Koran last year, so it's pretty smart considering most of the country suffers from mediamnesia. So when these people call in to the TV shows or the radio shows they insist that it's true. They argue: "No! I remember hearing about it!" Yes, Mrs. Simpleton, you heard about a member of Congress, but it was not Barack Obama. It was Keith Ellison. The guy who called the cops on his neighboring office member Tom Tancredo shortly after said swear-in. There's just enough in the email to jog the feeble memory of the voters in this country. It's a dirty trick, but it's pretty smart.

So, this has been annoying me for quite some time because no matter how many times it's refuted, people are constantly in a panic about Obama being a Muslim. For one thing, it just perpetuates the belief that every Muslim is a terrorist and not to be trusted. For another thing, it's just dumb to think that someone with a funny name must be an America-hating-terrorist-liberal. I don't know where it started, but I never believed it was something from the Clinton campaign. Not until last night, anyway.

On 60 Minutes, a panel of Ohio voters were interviewed by Steve Kroft and one man said he liked Obama but he had concerns because Obama was Muslim and wouldn't say the national anthem. They then went to a clip of an interview with Hillary Clinton where Kroft asked her if she believed Obama was a Muslim. I expected her to denounce the rumor. Instead, I heard her say, "I take him at the basis of what he says" and "There's nothing to base that on... as far as I know." Video here

As far as I know?!? AS FAR AS I KNOW?!? Are you kidding me?? There's nothing to base that on period. Considering all of the times she's said she's proud to be standing next to Senator Obama and put forth all the niceties during the debates, I can't believe she didn't take this opportunity to reinforce this positive message in her campaign. Instead, she gave the impression that she's actually fine with people believing that. I'm not fine with people believing that, and I don't exactly have the Obama fever that's going around. I just think it's ignorant. Watching her response to that question, it was clear to me that she's not going to refute the rumors because it helps her little "Who do you want to answer the phone?" campaign if people think Barack Hussein Obama is an America-hating Muslim. Ick, Senator Clinton. Just Ick.

To the South

Hugo Chavez has jumped the shark. OK, that happened a long time ago. Now he's threatening Colombia with war.

Colombia bombed some FARC rebels in Ecuador, which was a bad idea, because now Chavez is all up in arms, and has sent 10 tank battalions to the Venezuelan-Colombian border and pulled staff out of the embassy in Bogota.

Now Ecuador is following suit, and the U.S. is urging a diplomatic solution, and Chavez is being Chavez, blustering and blathering his "anti-Imperialist" rhetoric while cracking down on civil liberties. Somehow, this nutjob is a fan favorite of lots of the American Left.

I really don't know what else to say. Here's something: One of the greatest tragedies of our horrendously terrible foreign policy over the last eight years is the rise of leaders like Chavez, Ahmadinejad, al-Sadr, Meshal, Musharraf, and Putin - and it is not a coincidence that U.S. policy begets leaders like these.

Broken Record Ralph

During last Sunday's Meet The Press, in an interview with Tim Russert, Ralph Nader didn't mention Iraq, didn't mention immigration...

...oh, but he did mention this;

"If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they oughta just wrap up, close down."

I see. So you concede that the Democrats should win in a landslide this year? Yet you run opposing who ever they nominate? And using your logic, can't we assume, since you're a better candidate than McCain or Obama (else you wouldn't be running), that if you don't landslide yourself that you should "wrap up" and "close down?"

Ralph, you are running on the exact same platform with the exact same ideas, for the third time. Do you really, honestly believe that it's going to be any different of a result this time? I don't care one way or the other about the whole "you-ruined-our-election garbage," I'm just tired of your boring-as-hell dog-and-pony routine with issues that pale in comparison to Iraq, immigration, etc.

You're a dopey old bastard, and I wish you'd go get a janitors job at some bowling alley in Toledo, Ohio, so none of us have to see your stupid-assed face again or listen to your oh-my-god-it's-tired schtik about workers rights and industrial deaths and product safety. Get stuck you sorry-assed git.

Dear Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC.

I know you're all in the same little fast food conglomerate, but I can't take it anymore, because you seem to be sharing piss-poor marketing strategies.

"Melty" is not a word. It is annoying. Stop using it.

That is all.