From the Feb. 1st edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Found via The Big Picture, my favorite econoblog.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2009
If
This would be funnier if it was not so true.
From the Feb. 1st edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Found via The Big Picture, my favorite econoblog.
From the Feb. 1st edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Found via The Big Picture, my favorite econoblog.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Rachel Maddow and Power
Last night I caught this bit on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night:
While she makes the segment a little more about the stimulus package, which I think is very important, however I found her discussion about the security issue interesting. We HAVE been told that we need to worry about terrorist strikes against our infrastructure and yet there is no mass panic because, even though some people are going to be without electricity for a few weeks, this was expected. It reminded me of the Joker's speech from The Dark Knight where he talks about plans and how when things go to plan, no matter how grotesque the plan is, people don't panic. I think the example of weather-related utility failures is an even more interesting example than the ones offered up by the Joker in light of how we have been told we need to fear utility outages as a result of terrorist action.
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While she makes the segment a little more about the stimulus package, which I think is very important, however I found her discussion about the security issue interesting. We HAVE been told that we need to worry about terrorist strikes against our infrastructure and yet there is no mass panic because, even though some people are going to be without electricity for a few weeks, this was expected. It reminded me of the Joker's speech from The Dark Knight where he talks about plans and how when things go to plan, no matter how grotesque the plan is, people don't panic. I think the example of weather-related utility failures is an even more interesting example than the ones offered up by the Joker in light of how we have been told we need to fear utility outages as a result of terrorist action.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Morning After
So one of my friends posted this as her status line on Facebook not too long after the election was called for Oabama:
Please explain in the comments and use small words as I am apparently quite daft.
Before you go I would like to point out a couple of thoughts and data point which you may wish to consider:
1. From the OH SNAP! Department comes Alan Mendelowitz's bon mot which he dropped at the New America Foundation's forum Confronting Economic Meltdown. "The Bush administration, which took office as social conservatives, is now leaving as conservative socialists." Allan Mendelowitz is a member of the BoD and former chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, a former executive director of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, and a former executive vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. I suspect he knows whereof he speaks.
2. Adam Smith, in his seminal work on economics Wealth of Nations said:
3. Inevitably someone is going to bring up the 2001 interview Barack Obama did with Chicago public radio in which he used the phrase "redistributive change" and makes clear that he endorses the redistribution of wealth by the government. Before you do I would go and read this piece by David Bernstein who concludes that, "Barack Obama is undoubtedly liberal, and his background is in political community organizing in poor communities. Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more "fairly" distributed than it is currently?" And the goes on to ask:
...decides to brush up on her marxist theology in preparation for January, comrades.Now I understand not liking Obama for his politics however no one has been able to successfully explain to me how anything Obama has said or done is any more socialist than what the Bush administration has actually done in the past month?
Please explain in the comments and use small words as I am apparently quite daft.
Before you go I would like to point out a couple of thoughts and data point which you may wish to consider:
1. From the OH SNAP! Department comes Alan Mendelowitz's bon mot which he dropped at the New America Foundation's forum Confronting Economic Meltdown. "The Bush administration, which took office as social conservatives, is now leaving as conservative socialists." Allan Mendelowitz is a member of the BoD and former chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, a former executive director of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, and a former executive vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. I suspect he knows whereof he speaks.
2. Adam Smith, in his seminal work on economics Wealth of Nations said:
The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. (Book 5, Chapter 2, page 14)Was Adam Smith, cited by many as the father of modern economics, a socialist? Here he is clearly championing the same sort of "redistribution of the wealth" championed by President-elect Obama. Before you answer I would take the time to read the balance of Smith's magnum opus.
3. Inevitably someone is going to bring up the 2001 interview Barack Obama did with Chicago public radio in which he used the phrase "redistributive change" and makes clear that he endorses the redistribution of wealth by the government. Before you do I would go and read this piece by David Bernstein who concludes that, "Barack Obama is undoubtedly liberal, and his background is in political community organizing in poor communities. Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more "fairly" distributed than it is currently?" And the goes on to ask:
It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a "right to health care," or "equalizing educational opportunities," or "making the rich pay a fair share of taxes," or "ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college," and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as "redistribution" or "spreading the wealth," in which case he suddenly becomes "socialist"?Now I can understand if you are of a Libertarian bent and feel that ANY tax is a plan by the dirty commies to crap up your free market paradise and you need not weigh in here, but for those of you that think SOME taxes are a good thing, and I will assume this is most of my audience as I think most of you like police protection, the military, roads, and, hey, even getting to vote. (If you don't like these things then I would hope you can at least see the need for them.)
Monday, November 03, 2008
So have you ever...
...gotten so drunk you woke up in an alternate universe?*
I thought everything was fine but apparently I was wrong. Surely this could not happen in the dimension I call home. Heads of the American Nazi Party and the White Aryan Resistance** want Obama to win? Good God, I expect to meet myself any minute. The worst part about this is I did not even get drunk this weekend as far as I can remember. I did run into Flash (Ahhhahhhh! He'll save every one of us!) Friday night as well as Spank Me Elmo. Perhaps this is where I went wrong.
Edit: Guess what I just found via, oddly enough, one of the Korean blogs I read? A CafePress store where one can purchase Rednecks for Obama swag. I knew this election could represent a paradigm shift but clearly I have once again under-estimated my fellow man.
* BONUS QUESTION: Is this a question only a depressingly nerdy person would ask?
** So I know the White Aryan Resistance was going for the acronym WAR however I find it a little silly to have White in the title. Is it modifying Aryan? In this case isn't it a given that Aryan is going to mean white? I doubt there is a Black Aryan Resistance (BAR), Chinese Arayn Resistance (CAR), or Yellow Aryan Resistance (YAR, aka Piradical).
I thought everything was fine but apparently I was wrong. Surely this could not happen in the dimension I call home. Heads of the American Nazi Party and the White Aryan Resistance** want Obama to win? Good God, I expect to meet myself any minute. The worst part about this is I did not even get drunk this weekend as far as I can remember. I did run into Flash (Ahhhahhhh! He'll save every one of us!) Friday night as well as Spank Me Elmo. Perhaps this is where I went wrong.
Edit: Guess what I just found via, oddly enough, one of the Korean blogs I read? A CafePress store where one can purchase Rednecks for Obama swag. I knew this election could represent a paradigm shift but clearly I have once again under-estimated my fellow man.
* BONUS QUESTION: Is this a question only a depressingly nerdy person would ask?
** So I know the White Aryan Resistance was going for the acronym WAR however I find it a little silly to have White in the title. Is it modifying Aryan? In this case isn't it a given that Aryan is going to mean white? I doubt there is a Black Aryan Resistance (BAR), Chinese Arayn Resistance (CAR), or Yellow Aryan Resistance (YAR, aka Piradical).
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Word of the Week - Precondition
pre-con-di-tion
which takes place beginning at about 5:14 of the embedded video below): (Well since I can't get the damned embedding thing to work you will just have to check out the video here at Onegoodmove.org. Sorry about that.)
What Palin* is refering to is Obama's oft repeated willingness to meet with leaders with whom the U.S. is at odds without preconditions to the meeting. This first came up during the Democratic primary races, specifically at the YouTube/CNN debate on July 23rd, 2007 where Stephen Sorta asked:
Obama responded:
I would like to think that it is clear to any rational human being that Obama, should he become President, would not meet with these people without having any sort of diplomatic strategy. The mere suggestion of that is so, pardon my French, fucking silly that it boggles the mind that someone would even suggest it. Of course any meetings with the leaders would be only one part of a larger diplomatic initiative. What Obama meant is that he wants to get away from the tactic we have been employing in the Bush years of flat-out refusing to talk to people until they give in to our demands, something Iran is going to now attempt. At that point what is the point of even talking with them? We have gotten what we want and they have given up everything. It is a wonderful negotiating tactic when it works and one I engage in on occasion, however when it does not work one of two things happens. Either there are no negotiations or the party which made the demand and then backed off begins at a disadvantage, having already essentially lost one round.
It would bother me that the Republican ticket still tries to make hay out of this whenever they are given the opportunity, and I am fully aware that Brian Williams opened this door for Palin and there is a world of difference between that and bringing it up during campaign stops, however in this case Palin again demonstrated her, to use her phrase, ill-preparedness for assuming the office for which she is, according to a shrinking number of Republicans, qualified.
It also makes me smile that one could, were one of the mind, to turn this around and point out, as McCain has attempted to do with Obama, perhaps Palin does not know the difference between strategy and tactics. The short version being that preconditions, or lack thereof, is a tactic used in a diplomatic strategy.
* I am still trying to get to a Plain/pale in comparison joke but it is not working out well.
-nounI bring this up because of this exchange (
1. Something that must come before or is necessary to a subsequent result; condition: a precondition for a promotion.
-verb
2. to subject (a person or thing) to a special treatment in preparation for a subsequent experience, process, test, etc.: to precondition a surface to receive paint.
From Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Williams: Gov. Palin yesterday you tied this notion of an early test to the new president with this notion of preconditions that you both have been hammering the Obama campaign on. First of all what, in your mind, is a precondition?
Palin: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going in to a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them. So that's some ill-preparedness right there.
What Palin* is refering to is Obama's oft repeated willingness to meet with leaders with whom the U.S. is at odds without preconditions to the meeting. This first came up during the Democratic primary races, specifically at the YouTube/CNN debate on July 23rd, 2007 where Stephen Sorta asked:
In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?
Obama responded:
I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous. Now, Ronald Reagan and
Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.
I would like to think that it is clear to any rational human being that Obama, should he become President, would not meet with these people without having any sort of diplomatic strategy. The mere suggestion of that is so, pardon my French, fucking silly that it boggles the mind that someone would even suggest it. Of course any meetings with the leaders would be only one part of a larger diplomatic initiative. What Obama meant is that he wants to get away from the tactic we have been employing in the Bush years of flat-out refusing to talk to people until they give in to our demands, something Iran is going to now attempt. At that point what is the point of even talking with them? We have gotten what we want and they have given up everything. It is a wonderful negotiating tactic when it works and one I engage in on occasion, however when it does not work one of two things happens. Either there are no negotiations or the party which made the demand and then backed off begins at a disadvantage, having already essentially lost one round.
It would bother me that the Republican ticket still tries to make hay out of this whenever they are given the opportunity, and I am fully aware that Brian Williams opened this door for Palin and there is a world of difference between that and bringing it up during campaign stops, however in this case Palin again demonstrated her, to use her phrase, ill-preparedness for assuming the office for which she is, according to a shrinking number of Republicans, qualified.
It also makes me smile that one could, were one of the mind, to turn this around and point out, as McCain has attempted to do with Obama, perhaps Palin does not know the difference between strategy and tactics. The short version being that preconditions, or lack thereof, is a tactic used in a diplomatic strategy.
* I am still trying to get to a Plain/pale in comparison joke but it is not working out well.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Scatter-brained
I have been pretty scatter-brained of late however there are a couple of things I have seen today I feel are worthy of comment.
Gas Tax Holiday = Idiocy
The whole concept of a gas tax holiday sounds like a terrible plan. I am saying this as a person who just bought a rather fuel-hungry vehicle and plan on putting somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 miles on it right when the proposed tax holidays would be in effect. Clearly it is in my best interest in the short term for the gas tax holiday to happen however I think the negative long term effect of the holiday will FAR out weigh any positives (which I think would be minimal anyways.)
The biggest problem I see with the gas tax holiday is that by lowering prices you are going to increase demand of an already scarce resource. I believe the current high in oil prices are due to several factors including increased demand from developing nations such as China and India, a weakening dollar, and the fact we operate in a very narrow margin of consumption versus refining capacity. (While there may be some douchebaggery in the prices charged by the companies I believe this is a smaller percentage of the recent price increases than these fundamental supply versus demand issues.) This narrow margin is what concerns me. There is already an increase in demand during the summer along with a commensurate increase in prices. What the proposed holiday will do is decrease the price without bringing any more supply to the market. The decrease in prices will most likely lead to an additional increase in demand which will then lead to an increase in the base price. It is not out of the realm of possibility for the entire difference made in dropping the gas tax will be figured into the price by the end of the holiday therefore making gas more expensive in the long run.
Another down side to the tax holiday is that we will be tacking on an additional God only knows how much to the national debt. We have spent the last eight years under an administration who, rather than tax and spend, has cut taxes and increased spending. This has led us to the current issues we have with the weak dollar which contributes to the high gas prices we are currently seeing. We do not need to incur additional national debt at this point. The other option would be to cut back on programs which the gas tax funds, however as I understand it these are mostly programs which fix up things like the road on which you damn Earth-hating suburbanites feel the need to drive. Seems like increasing the usage of these resources while cutting their funding, while a very conservative move, is not a good plan.
I won't even go in to some of the issues mentioned in this New York Times article, such as hording and the tax break not actually figuring in to the final price at the pump (I typed pimp).
I guess I want your take away* from this to be that the idea of a gas tax holiday is political pandering in the short term and a recipe for even more problems in the future. I would much rather see politicians discussing long term solutions to this issue as well as more consumers making better decisions regarding energy consumption.**
Another Shot at Hillary
I have a HUGE amount of respect for Wil Wheaton and find myself nodding my head at many of his points, however now I feel the need to pick on him a little due to this post, which I think illustrates a larger problem in today's Democratic Party. I agree that the race for the Democratic nomination is over and, in the interest of full disclosure and all that, I have been backing Obama from the start. (Hell when I saw Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004(?) I knew I would be voting for him as soon as he was in a race where I had a vote.) I even agree with the people who are calling for Hillary to bow out at this point, what I cannot agree with is the tone with which some of the calls are being made.
Whether she is staying in, and there by prolonging, the race due to her ego or because she truly believes she is the better candidate is immaterial. I happen to think she honestly believes she is the better candidate and, again with the full disclosure, I admit to having an irrational dislike of Hillary. Something about her just bugs me and thus I am prone to think of her actions in the worst possible light. This line of thinking seems to run contrary to the majority of Obamites I am reading online who are ascribing Hillary's endurance to her, apparently Holmesian***, ego.
What I mean to address is the tone of the comments coming from the Obama side of things. Rather than being magnanimous and gracious they have become just as full of venom and as destructive as the attacks which we Obamites claim to hate. Wheaton's recent post contains a more restrained species of this vitriol however the post he links to, "Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party" is just the sort of thing I am talking about. While I may agree with the sentiment expressed, wish Hillary would get out of the race so we can start to heal as a party, and think the post is funny as hell, I am concerned that all these sorts of things are doing is making it more difficult for us to come back together as a party. Some posts go even further and leave me wondering if somehow the right wing blogosphere has switched sides, just asprofessional dillweed Rush Limbaugh encouraged the voters to do in recent primaries.
Hillary will get out of the race when she is ready to get out of the race. What us Obamites need to concentrate on is being gracious in victory, and not in a condescending way, either. In some ways I am surprised at how divisive this primary has turned out. While there are differences between the two platforms, I suspect many of these differences will be washed out by the construction of a national party platform over the coming months and then further washed out over the ensuing four years as the President works with Congress to enact this platform.
Oh well, I have wandered off my original point which was I do not like the tone of the Obama side of things right now. I think this tone is representative of the worst face of politics today and I expected better from us. At least when talking about other Democrats. If you want to bag on that wishy-washy douchebag John McCain then have it. (But not his service. Regardless of whether I think he is right or wrong, his record of service to this nation is an example to which we ALL should aspire.)
(As a WAY tangential aside I wonder why I refer to Obama by his last name and Hillary by her first name. The first justification was that there are two Clintons in the public eye and thus I have to use her personal name to identify her. That is just hogwash as contextual clues, such as feminine pronouns, should almost immediately clue the reader in and if you can not pick up on those then I am surprised you have stayed at this particular party for ANY length of time.)
* Fuck yes I just used a buzz word. Bite me.
** And before you try and pull my card on the sort of car I drive you better remember the following: I have used public transportation to get to and from work every day for the past year and plan to continue to do so for at least the next twelve months. For the last five months I have not owned a car AT ALL and only rented one when my list of chores got to be large enough that I could justify having a car for the weekend. I walk to the grocery store, book store, comic book store, and some bars these days so I am doing my part.
*** This is, in fact, a penis joke and not a Sherlock joke.
Gas Tax Holiday = Idiocy
The whole concept of a gas tax holiday sounds like a terrible plan. I am saying this as a person who just bought a rather fuel-hungry vehicle and plan on putting somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 miles on it right when the proposed tax holidays would be in effect. Clearly it is in my best interest in the short term for the gas tax holiday to happen however I think the negative long term effect of the holiday will FAR out weigh any positives (which I think would be minimal anyways.)
The biggest problem I see with the gas tax holiday is that by lowering prices you are going to increase demand of an already scarce resource. I believe the current high in oil prices are due to several factors including increased demand from developing nations such as China and India, a weakening dollar, and the fact we operate in a very narrow margin of consumption versus refining capacity. (While there may be some douchebaggery in the prices charged by the companies I believe this is a smaller percentage of the recent price increases than these fundamental supply versus demand issues.) This narrow margin is what concerns me. There is already an increase in demand during the summer along with a commensurate increase in prices. What the proposed holiday will do is decrease the price without bringing any more supply to the market. The decrease in prices will most likely lead to an additional increase in demand which will then lead to an increase in the base price. It is not out of the realm of possibility for the entire difference made in dropping the gas tax will be figured into the price by the end of the holiday therefore making gas more expensive in the long run.
Another down side to the tax holiday is that we will be tacking on an additional God only knows how much to the national debt. We have spent the last eight years under an administration who, rather than tax and spend, has cut taxes and increased spending. This has led us to the current issues we have with the weak dollar which contributes to the high gas prices we are currently seeing. We do not need to incur additional national debt at this point. The other option would be to cut back on programs which the gas tax funds, however as I understand it these are mostly programs which fix up things like the road on which you damn Earth-hating suburbanites feel the need to drive. Seems like increasing the usage of these resources while cutting their funding, while a very conservative move, is not a good plan.
I won't even go in to some of the issues mentioned in this New York Times article, such as hording and the tax break not actually figuring in to the final price at the pump (I typed pimp).
I guess I want your take away* from this to be that the idea of a gas tax holiday is political pandering in the short term and a recipe for even more problems in the future. I would much rather see politicians discussing long term solutions to this issue as well as more consumers making better decisions regarding energy consumption.**
Another Shot at Hillary
I have a HUGE amount of respect for Wil Wheaton and find myself nodding my head at many of his points, however now I feel the need to pick on him a little due to this post, which I think illustrates a larger problem in today's Democratic Party. I agree that the race for the Democratic nomination is over and, in the interest of full disclosure and all that, I have been backing Obama from the start. (Hell when I saw Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004(?) I knew I would be voting for him as soon as he was in a race where I had a vote.) I even agree with the people who are calling for Hillary to bow out at this point, what I cannot agree with is the tone with which some of the calls are being made.
Whether she is staying in, and there by prolonging, the race due to her ego or because she truly believes she is the better candidate is immaterial. I happen to think she honestly believes she is the better candidate and, again with the full disclosure, I admit to having an irrational dislike of Hillary. Something about her just bugs me and thus I am prone to think of her actions in the worst possible light. This line of thinking seems to run contrary to the majority of Obamites I am reading online who are ascribing Hillary's endurance to her, apparently Holmesian***, ego.
What I mean to address is the tone of the comments coming from the Obama side of things. Rather than being magnanimous and gracious they have become just as full of venom and as destructive as the attacks which we Obamites claim to hate. Wheaton's recent post contains a more restrained species of this vitriol however the post he links to, "Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party" is just the sort of thing I am talking about. While I may agree with the sentiment expressed, wish Hillary would get out of the race so we can start to heal as a party, and think the post is funny as hell, I am concerned that all these sorts of things are doing is making it more difficult for us to come back together as a party. Some posts go even further and leave me wondering if somehow the right wing blogosphere has switched sides, just as
Hillary will get out of the race when she is ready to get out of the race. What us Obamites need to concentrate on is being gracious in victory, and not in a condescending way, either. In some ways I am surprised at how divisive this primary has turned out. While there are differences between the two platforms, I suspect many of these differences will be washed out by the construction of a national party platform over the coming months and then further washed out over the ensuing four years as the President works with Congress to enact this platform.
Oh well, I have wandered off my original point which was I do not like the tone of the Obama side of things right now. I think this tone is representative of the worst face of politics today and I expected better from us. At least when talking about other Democrats. If you want to bag on that wishy-washy douchebag John McCain then have it. (But not his service. Regardless of whether I think he is right or wrong, his record of service to this nation is an example to which we ALL should aspire.)
(As a WAY tangential aside I wonder why I refer to Obama by his last name and Hillary by her first name. The first justification was that there are two Clintons in the public eye and thus I have to use her personal name to identify her. That is just hogwash as contextual clues, such as feminine pronouns, should almost immediately clue the reader in and if you can not pick up on those then I am surprised you have stayed at this particular party for ANY length of time.)
* Fuck yes I just used a buzz word. Bite me.
** And before you try and pull my card on the sort of car I drive you better remember the following: I have used public transportation to get to and from work every day for the past year and plan to continue to do so for at least the next twelve months. For the last five months I have not owned a car AT ALL and only rented one when my list of chores got to be large enough that I could justify having a car for the weekend. I walk to the grocery store, book store, comic book store, and some bars these days so I am doing my part.
*** This is, in fact, a penis joke and not a Sherlock joke.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Random Bits
I think it comes as no surprise that Tony Snow would say, "It turned out to be the most natural job transition I ever had," about his transition from Fox News commentator to White House Press Secretary. The thing I am wondering is whether this is a comment on Tony Snow himself or a comment on the Fox News organization.
You can view the Colbert Report segment where Tony drops this little nugget here.
With the Texas primaries next Tuesday this is somewhat timely and VERY funny. (Although it is no Luftwaffle.)
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Pete over at A Perfectly Cromulent Blog brought this to my attention. I have to say that I agree with Pete, or rather take a less nuanced view of it and wonder how the fuck these two highlights can even compare? I still tear up every time I see Eruzione put the biscuit in the basket. Please go vote for what maybe the single greatest sporting moment in the history of American sports. I am CERTAIN we all know which one I mean.
Here is the call that I bet people remember from that game even above the Eruzione goal:
While we are on the subject of hockey here is the highlight reel from Thursday night's Dallas game which I discuss here. Richards assists on the first, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh goals. Bourque's short-handed goal is mighty nice and Modano's goal, the Stars second, is just beautiful to watch.
And this? This is what an beating looks like. Morrow works Burish's head like a speed bag.
You can view the Colbert Report segment where Tony drops this little nugget here.
With the Texas primaries next Tuesday this is somewhat timely and VERY funny. (Although it is no Luftwaffle.)
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Pete over at A Perfectly Cromulent Blog brought this to my attention. I have to say that I agree with Pete, or rather take a less nuanced view of it and wonder how the fuck these two highlights can even compare? I still tear up every time I see Eruzione put the biscuit in the basket. Please go vote for what maybe the single greatest sporting moment in the history of American sports. I am CERTAIN we all know which one I mean.
Here is the call that I bet people remember from that game even above the Eruzione goal:
While we are on the subject of hockey here is the highlight reel from Thursday night's Dallas game which I discuss here. Richards assists on the first, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh goals. Bourque's short-handed goal is mighty nice and Modano's goal, the Stars second, is just beautiful to watch.
And this? This is what an beating looks like. Morrow works Burish's head like a speed bag.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Nothing to Say
I really don't have anything to say tonight. I saw this picture over on Pete's "A Perfectly Cromulent Blog" and thought it worth sharing:
In case you are wondering, I plan on voting for Obama in the primary March 4th and hopefully in November. More than anything I think Obama can inspire the nation to be better than we currently are much in the way that Kennedy inspired my parents generation. Of course in retrospect Kennedy was not that effective of a President, however without Kennedy inspiring the nation I do not think Johnson would have been able to accomplish the things he did. My hope is that Obama is able to inspire us AND accomplish something worthwhile during his time in office. This is the first time I have actually been excited about a candidate.
In case you are wondering, I plan on voting for Obama in the primary March 4th and hopefully in November. More than anything I think Obama can inspire the nation to be better than we currently are much in the way that Kennedy inspired my parents generation. Of course in retrospect Kennedy was not that effective of a President, however without Kennedy inspiring the nation I do not think Johnson would have been able to accomplish the things he did. My hope is that Obama is able to inspire us AND accomplish something worthwhile during his time in office. This is the first time I have actually been excited about a candidate.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Post-Partisan
Here are some interesting thoughts from Frank Luntz. I particularly like the bit about the nation being a post-partisan nation.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Something to ponder
I am reading Naomi Wolf's The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and I came across this quote which I thought was worthy of sharing:
Just something to think about. My review of Spook Country should be up by the end of the week quickly followed by my review of this book.
Those words ["...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."] at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. These men and the women who supported their work were walking further out into the unknown - betting on ordinary people's capacities - than anyone had ever walked in the history of the human race. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.
Just something to think about. My review of Spook Country should be up by the end of the week quickly followed by my review of this book.
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