I tend to agree with Keith Olberman's opinions, but his snarky and smug delivery often renders his missives challenging material for those who aren't drinking the same particular brand of Kool Aid. It's too bad, because if we just de-emphasize his tone and extract his verbiage, the man is very often on the money. With seven days to go until Election Day, he took a lot of the sentiment represented in my seemingly endless drivel (see blog posts in recent weeks below) and summarized it in 5:45 last night on MSNBC's Countdown, without leaning too much on the "I'm smarter than you" vibe. Enjoy.
Strange, with the "retro" appeal not going away and adults of the 90's and 00's looking to the 70's and 80's for their popular culture points of reference, and 457 channels on t.v., we don't see much in the way of Fantasy Island re-runs. But we digress... as a 37 year-old, middle-management douchetard in America, I find a noticeable part of my enjoyment coming from playing Fantasy Football. Jessica refers to my weekly (okay, nightly) keyboard-pecking in pursuit of free agent acquisitions to exploit match-ups and help my teams win, as a matter of me "playing with [my] electronic dolls." I'm cool with that. (sing with me, will ya?) I gotta be meeeeeee!
In more timely news... I canvassed for Obama-Biden and Washington's incumbent governor Chris Gregoire today, and learned something: nobody is home on Sunday afternoon. Well, except for that one undecided couple. Hopefully they'll read their new Vote For Change pamphlet, but it's anyone's guess. This just in: The Anchorage Daily News - Alaska's largest newspaper - has endorsed Barack Obama for President. I'm sure Sarah Six Pack is sitting in a 5-star hotel somewhere on the trail, cozily adorned in some of the $150g in clothes and accessories the McCain campaign has so wisely spent on her Pretty Womanesque shopping spree (while being outspent 8 to 1 by Obama on advertising - way to go, guys!), enjoying a nice goblet of moose blood and discussing the complicated issues of the day with fellow hot dunce Elisabeth Hasselbeck, thinking, "Oh, no, Joe, say it ain't so, doggonit there ya goo again!" Oh, Sarah, you silly goose. Which reminds me of another public service announcement, courtesy once again of our old friend, Terry Tate: Office Linebacker.
Meanwhile in Denver, another 100,000 showed up today for an Obama speech.
Shifting back to what's really important... Eddie Murphy has signed on to play multiple roles (including that of Mr. Roarke) in a full-length silver screen feature of Fantasy Island!
Back to current events, I'd like to see the Tampa Bay Rays win the World Series, although I loathe their stadium with its unnecessary dome, fake grass and dirt, low lights, and tricky catwalks. I also like the Phillies because they share a hometown with Rocky Balboa and I've always liked their pitcher Jamie Moyer, a 45 year-old ex-Cub who threw well in his first World Series start last night. Alas, one must take sides and I side with the American League team that beat the Red Sox to get here. It's also a feel-good story, as they finished with a losing record in each of their first nine seasons as a team, posted the worst record in baseball last year, and then the best record in baseball in this, their tenth season. They also have the second-lowest team payroll in baseball. How can you NOT root for these guys?
The way I see it, Republican voters come primarily in any combination of these categories (is this entry becoming a rope-a-dope or what?): 1. Wealthy or otherwise affluent people who want the associated tax breaks, and/or work in the financial sector, which you strongly prefer remain deregulated so you can continue to run rough shod over our domestic economy. For that, you are a selfish prick. Also, you champion an economic model which can go by any name but is popularly known as trickle-down economics. I'll let you in on a little secret, Jack: the do-re-mi doesn't trickle down very far. It looks delightful on a flow chart and in your fantasy world, but here in the real world, it just doesn't play out that way. Your hero, Alan Greenspan, even admitted this last week. Whether you're kidding yourself or lying to the rest of us about your belief in this economic model, you're an asshole either way. 2. The Religious Right which votes on a series of illogically conflicted values and misrepresented "character issues." If someone from this group can reconcile these things for me, I'm all ears: pro-life vs. pro-death penalty, pro-gun, anti-sex education, an itchy trigger finger regarding international affairs, and the belief that "a periodic show of force oversees is necessary to re-energize the [U.S.] brand." And as we address character, someone please make a case for that of John McCain, who: was a poor student, an admitted thug, throughout his silver-spooned life has continually fucked up and fallen forward courtesy of his Daddy, broke the military field manual when captured by the Vietnamese as he shamelessly offered up far more information than the field manual allows in a cowardly quest to receive preferential treatment and medical attention not given to the other POWs, a documented philandering skirt-chaser who repeatedly shamed his family, a documented anger management problem who has been physically restrained from Young Republicans, other Senators and even called his wife a cunt in front of reporters, participated in the largest S&L scandal in history which defrauded American taxpayers of billions... If it's character you're looking for, look somewhere else. Or, admit that you just want the collection basket to remain tax-free so you'll always have a place to go for an hour every Sunday to make up for any assholishly hypocritical behavior you may have engaged in during the other 99.4% of the week. Just be honest. Jesus doesn't like a liar. He also doesn't like rich people. You're screwed, bro. 3. Uninformed Rural Suckers. As a group, your literacy is suspect. You don't read any newspapers other than the ones you can buy on the check-out line with headlines about Elvis sightings and UFOs. You don't read magazines other than the ones that tell us what Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are currently up to. And you don't watch news programs (Fox News Channel doesn't count, stupid). You sincerely believe that Obama is an "America-hating, anti-life terrorist who wants to convert our country into a Muslim Nation, whose birth certificate is a forgery and whose real father was a Commie." You call Obama a Socialist but you don't know what that means - it sounds bad because you heard someone use the word with a derogatory tone, so Barack must be one. The GOP ropes you into its tax plan because you fall hook, line and sinker for their line of shit regarding the foolish notion that one day you, too can become one of the rich bastards who benefit from it. Back here in the real world, the top one percent of Americans own 34.7% of the total wealth, and the top TEN percent own 69.8% of the wealth (stat courtesy of Ian Williams). And so I say, sir, that you indeed are a sucker. Wanna buy some magic beans? C'mon, dude. They're magic... Methinks thou hast put the suck back into sucker, Sucker.
If you want to hang with me on Election Day, I'll be in Chicago, either celebrating a victory for the Good Guys or trying to survive the riot. This revolution, I think, will be televised.
Finally, you can't keep a good man down and Terry has one more thing to say: Get Out the Vote, Sucka!
Trish and I have been emailing a lot lately, as like-minded and comparably passionate people concerning this election. She sent this to her peeps today and I just have to share:
Tonight's entry is not a rant driven by my personal political leanings, I swear. It is, though, a commentary on our civic duty, i.e., my insistence that you vote on November 4, without regard to your candidates of choice. This is a short note on Democracy as I see it in 2008.
Despite the polls you're seeing - even if they're posted on traditionally respected news outlets and especially if they're on Internet channels - are not enough to influence the matter of "should I vote on the 4th?" Even if you choose to allow for a Bradley Effect or any other of the sometimes accepted theories to explain the margin of error associated with statistical sampling, those numbers fill air time and they certainly get us in the ballpark of reality, but as we've seen, ballpark isn't close enough when the matter is decided by inches. So when it comes to the polls... Don't Believe the Hype. Every channel wants to deliver the news first, and it's common that a state's winner is announced only after 3-6% of its population of registered voters have been tallied at exit polls. So if you're driving home from work and think your vote isn't necessary because you heard the election is over or your state has been decided on the radio, your civic duty to vote remains. Election results should reflect the desires of the population. That's what Democracy is, by definition.
Let's agree to trust Merriam-Webster, shall we?. Democracy: 1 a: government by the people ; especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
I continue to be confused by Seattle area drivers, who tend to drive the speed limit or even slower in the left lane of the highway when there's little or no traffic. Further, while driving within said speed limit, they almost always slow down at the sight of a cop. I don't know, man.
My brother said something insightful today: "You can't go wrong with mac & cheese. Even if it sucks, you can throw a bunch of salt on it, and it'll taste pretty good."
Not as funny as the lady at the McCain rally the other day who called Barack Obama an Arab. If you know someone who re-defines stupid to an extraordinary level that you weren't previously sure existed, and you want to know if the human race offers something on a level of stupidity that beats it to an order that will have your head spinning while trying to decide in which category it most properly belongs, comedy or tragedy, just ease on down the road to a John McCain rally. Or, take a gander at some footage online. As a slight departure from all the delightfully entertaining Sarah Six Pack footage, here are a couple two-t'ree clips from McCain rallies last week which are indeed worth a few minutes of your time:
"European Socialist swine!" "Commie faggots!" "Get a job!" "Obama supports terrorism!" "Obama is a terrorist!" "Obama is a lawyer!" "Baby-killer!"
The material just writes itself.
[enter tongue-in-cheek inappropriateness] Is it mean to estimate that this is the kind of broad (below)who gives a guy a hand job while wearing a few low-grade rings and ends up shredding the poor dude's Johnson? In a related note, the origin of how the word "Johnson" became slang for penis is unclear. Shifting gears ever so slightly, she (below) isn't bad looking, but given her generally angry and ignorant disposition it'd have to go in her can and perhaps execute a move that begins like a Rusty Trombone but concludes with the surprise finish of a Strawberry Shortcake. Man, that's nasty business. For the record, I would not hit that kind of weather-worn, boney-ass dunce for all the tea in China. [aaaaaaand... scene]
No commentary needed to enhance the verbally subtle but imagerific heavy-handed comic value of this guy (below). Reminds me of a Sarah Palin joke... [inappropriateness makes a curtain call] What's the difference between her mouth and her vagina? Only some of the things that come out of her vagina are retarded. [thanks, folks, i'm here every tuesday, tip your waitress, try the veal, and GFY] Sure, it's inappropriate, but it's funny and she's a douchebag so I'm hangin' with it. To close on a classier note, a friend recently said of Palin, "Her entrance to the presidential landscape is breathtaking! I haven't felt this inspired since taking my daughter to see Legally Blonde 2!" (and the mighty Jude is blogified for the first time!)
I wasn't planning on waxing political, but I'm on a roll so what the hell, I'M NOT DONE YET.
LOGICAL GAPS. The GOP doesn't believe in governmental regulation of the financial sector - you know, the "irrational" preservation of the free market by controlling its excesses and thus harnessing the magnitude and frequency of the crash-boom nature of unsupervised capitalism - because they insist the free market "corrects itself" and should be let alone to do its thing despite the fact that only the upper 2% can handle the swings while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class continues to tighten the screws and compromise its already far-from-sexy standard of living. But they'll do whatever it takes to make sure you can't have an abortion, even in cases of rape and teen pregnancy because that somehow is the government's business. Still, though, the GOP opposes sex education in schools. They believe life begins at conception, which totally hoses me because now I'd have to celebrate in late October instead of April and everyone with a birthday in the second half of the fourth quarter gets screwed on presents thanks to the competing December birthday of Little Baby Jesus - but we digress... the pro-life party also supports the death penalty. There are enormous gaps in Republican values. A fella could get lost in those gaps. I noted these gaps to a Republican friend yesterday and he said, "The social issues are small potatoes. If women want the right to choose and the gays want to get married, go right ahead, knock yourself out." Ah, tolerance...
MORE LOGICAL GAPS. Experience was all-important while the GOP was focused on criticizing Obama for not having enough of it, but then along came Sarah Six Pack and suddenly, experience became a non-issue. John McCain's health records are a non-issue to the party, except they think Americans shouldn't be allowed to see them despite the fact that a 72 year-old man has a 1-in-3 chance of still being above ground at 75, and that's without factoring in the extensive war wounds and cancer that Sen. McCain has endured - yet they want us all to see Obama's college report cards, because the fact that he graduated with honors from an Ivy League school isn't enough detail for us to size up his academic record. McCain wanted so badly to talk in last week's debate about the idea that Obama knows a guy who did some bad shit 40 years ago, until his advisors reminded him, "yes, John, but you ARE a guy who did some bad shit TWENTY years ago, so don't let the debate go there, okay, maverick?"
The funniest part of the debate, rivaled only by Tom Brokaw's request for the candidates to stop blocking his teleprompter - he was pissed!
... was McCain's ongoing anger management. He visibly used so much energy restraining himself from the wild tantrum into which a much younger, sixtysomething year-old John McCain was known to erupt (he once publicly challenged a senatorial opponent to a fist fight), that he had no energy left to answer the questions. In a related note, the official count on how many times he used the term "my friends" during the debate is 21.
CRESCENDO. Thankfully, we'll soon be referring to John McCain as a former candidate, and to Barack Obama not as That One, but as the 44th President of the United States.
