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DON’T

TRUST

SNAKES

“I know where I'm headed.”
ROGER THORNHILL


Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Bravo!

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posted at 12:16 AM

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Possibly my new favorite Palin quote

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

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posted at 11:00 AM

Friday, September 12, 2008

Code

Is there any doubt? At the rate things are going, lipstick will be all there is to distinguish the McCain campaign from the mud-wallow in which it is happily immersing itself.

It's safe to say that anyone this ad appeals to is from a culture I can't relate to at all.

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posted at 12:36 PM

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Birth control?

As an exercise, try figuring out Sarah's views about birth control. Does she believe adults should have access to the means of birth control they choose? It would be nice if someone could explore this.

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posted at 12:59 AM

Thursday, September 04, 2008

And there it is

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.” - The Hill, September 4, 2008

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posted at 2:03 PM

Sarah

I missed the last half of the speech. Did she get around to "uppity"? I think there are reasons for her selection that no one in the media wants to talk about.

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posted at 10:13 AM

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Governor, you're no Harry Truman

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posted at 7:40 PM

I was thinking someone needed to track down this actuarial information

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history. - Sam Harris, Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2008

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posted at 1:24 PM

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Why should I be in a position of debating with myself about the authenticity of this photo?

Inauthentic, btw.

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posted at 6:56 PM

Bristol's choice

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, according to aides of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, the aides said. - Reuters, September 1, 2008
Are they implying that a 17-year-old girl is entitled to decide the outcome of her pregnancy?

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posted at 12:40 AM

Friday, August 29, 2008

McCain-Palin

This was a show on ABC starring Geena Davis.

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posted at 10:28 AM

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Biden

I think Biden is a decent choice, but certainly not audacious. Just as Obama's ability to secure the nomination attests (among much else) to the shortage of compelling figures in the Democratic Party, so also does the fact that in the end he was choosing between Biden and a pair of relative nonentities.

It's a safe choice, a playing-not-to-lose choice, but still not too bad. Biden won't be bad at the bulldog role and is well situated to go after McCain. It's likely that average voters couldn't even tell you the difference between executive and legislative experience, so it probably was wiser for Obama to plug a different resumé gap with this selection. Now, at most, the two tickets will have one person with executive experience, and it will be interesting to see how McCain and others pay attention to that concern.

It makes sense for Obama not to rock the boat with his selection, since the swing voters he must court already find it peculiar enough to see a 46-year-old black man at the top of the ticket. It wouldn't have worked well in this situation to choose, for example, a nationally-unknown woman (and they all are nationally unknown with one exception who would have been an insane choice for other reasons). Obama has all kinds of unique challenges as to how he pitches himself for the rest of the race. Choosing Biden is one more way this candidate is coming down to earth for what will be very recognizable as a standard-issue stretch run. I would not put this selection in the same league with the only two inspired running-mate choices of the last quarter century: Gore and, yes, Cheney.

A lot of what Biden brings to an Obama administration could be secured by making him Secretary of State. It would be interesting to know how much the Obama camp considered an economy-centered choice for running mate, and how much the brushfire in Georgia—something of a blip, really—swayed the final choice. Any "home run" (or "swing for the fences") choice would have been an "economy" choice. Bloomberg, for example. Jon Corzine would have been quite an interesting choice in a parallel universe where he wore his seatbelt and didn't have a messy personal life (and where Wall Street experience didn't impute complicity in the mortgage/credit mess).

A final note, the text message thing was a complete bust, even in terms of what the expectations should have been that were dashed. The media consistently called them "text messages", but when I visited the Obama site and filled out the "be the first to know" page, all they asked for was an email address. In any event, my email arrived at 7:34 a.m.

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posted at 10:36 AM

Monday, August 18, 2008

I'm hardly the first, but . . .

I'll put my money on Biden. He appeals to the much-needed British-coal-miner demographic.

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posted at 1:54 AM

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

"Get off the fence and join me in my ivory tower, where we can debate the finer points of tort law"

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.” - New York Times, July 30, 2008
There's something priceless about reading quotes like this from someone whose idea of "mixing it up" is editing a torts casebook, at a time when Obama is A NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

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posted at 4:38 PM

Monday, July 28, 2008

No shit

Obama-Clinton Ticket Is Seen as Unlikely

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posted at 10:06 PM

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Get over yourselves, losers

Mr. Obama has asked his top donors to help raise money for her debt, and so far they have come up with less than $100,000 (though more in pledges), Clinton campaign officials said — a “paltry sum,” in the words of one.

Clinton donors and campaign officials say they remain surprised — and, among some, offended — that Mr. Obama has refused to ask his entire list of donors, more than 1.5 million people, to send $5, $10 or more to chip away at Mrs. Clinton’s debt. (Obama officials said they did not want to distract their donors for the main task at hand, raising money to defeat Mr. McCain.) - New York Times, July 9, 2008
What sense of entitlement?

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posted at 11:58 PM

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Hillary VP Deathwatch: 0.1%

I don't think it bodes well for Hillary's (nonexistent) chance to be on the ticket that the Obama campaign yesterday tapped Patti Solis-Doyle to serve as the running mate's chief of staff . . . considering that Hillary and Solis-Doyle have not spoken since Hillary flung Solis-Doyle from her campaign's balloon gondola.

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posted at 12:05 PM

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

It goes down well

Really, doesn't this look like it should be the logo for some Irish ale? It's a very not-American typeface. I can't really fault the color scheme, of course.

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posted at 12:02 AM

Saturday, June 07, 2008

What a historic day . . .

. . . for the National Building Museum. Who knew there was a National Building Museum?

From the website:
On Saturday, June 7, the Museum will be closed for a special event. We apologize for any inconvenience; please visit us on Sunday, June 8 for regularly scheduled programs and exhibits.

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posted at 9:08 AM

Thursday, June 05, 2008

'Cause if you really want to hear MWR's views . . .



This is the 75th entry over more than 2-1/2 years to bear the "Hillary Clinton" label. I'd like to claim that the tenor of these has evolved in a way that does credit to my thoughtfulness and my open-minded nature. But the fact is, I might have written the phrase "arrogant, vindictive, snake-like nature" yesterday (not) or at the very beginning (indeed).

The entries will taper off quickly. Though her departure was writ months ago, it continues in slow motion like the end of a bad dream. I shake out the cobwebs and realize I'm never going to be called upon to vote for her, and it's every bit as satisfying as grasping that there is no calculus test in three days, I didn't inadvertently kill that person, my Leica wasn't stolen from that luggage in Switzerland, etc. We all have our nightmares.

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posted at 12:45 AM