Monthly Archives: February 2008

The Quotable Editors

Idiots, Politics

In commentary upon a post by fellow blogger dday, The Poor Man’s The Editors hurls a dense little ball of righteous fire:

I’d like to know, for example, how close intelligence subcommittee head Jay Rockefeller has been to the various Bush-era deceptions and shannanigans — partly for the health of the Republic and yada yada, but mostly so I can settle a bet as to whether he is simply the stupidest man alive, or if he is the stupidest man alive and a corrupt asshole. I mean, seriously: how fucking stupid do you have to be to get rolled by Pat Roberts? That’s like getting grifted by the Pepperidge Farm guy. Jesus.

Amen, and Rah!

Impressions

Politics

Differences I’ve noticed lately:

  1. When Obama talks about his campaign, he tends to talk in the first-person plural: “we”. When Hillary talks about hers, she tends to do so in the first-person singular: “I”.

  2. When the Obama campaign is up, it generally seems to stop well short of gloating. When it’s down, as it notably was after New Hampshire, it does an admirable job of keeping its cool. When Hillary’s campaign is up, it seems to verge on the edge of unpleasantly smug. When it’s down, it seems to come completely unhinged.

    (Seriously. If this were a cheesy late-eighties cable movie, we’d have reached the scene where Supreme Commandantrix Clinton paces angrily before a line of nervous-looking lieutenants while barely able to keep from frothing at the mouth: “The next one of you idiots to say anything to the press about delegate strategies — anything at all! — will be lucky if all I do is fire him. Am I clear?”)

Aren’t the Clintons supposed to be running the most finely-tuned political machine of the last couple of decades? It needs oil, or something.

Ambivalence

Biking, Friends

Will just purchased a 2007 Cannondale Rush 4. I find my reaction evenly divided between three poles:

  1. Excitement on his behalf, because the Rush has the reputation of being a rather sweet marathoner.

  2. Anticipation of the chance for a test ride.

  3. Dread of the man-beating I can sense descending upon me the next time we attack hilly terrain together.

In other words, “Yay!”, “Woohoo!”, and “Oy” all at once.

Suggestions to the Clinton Campaign

Idiots, Politics

  1. If you’re going to accuse your opponent of plagiarism, it might be a good idea to check first that the alleged plagiaree is not, in fact, a friend of the alleged plagiarist, one who will readily tell the paper of record that not only do the two of them routinely kick speech ideas back and forth, but that in this particular instance he encouraged his friend to adopt the approach and rhetorical device used.

  2. Crack some windows at campaign HQ. Think about shelling out for a Vornado or two while you’re at it. (You do still have enough cash on hand for a couple of air circulators, right?) The stench of desperation has got to be giving some of your more sensitive staffers splitting headaches by now.

Stellar Displacement

Idiots, Politics

In a field that has seen more than its share of shameless posturing, this still manages to impress me:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

It’s like a neutron star of mendacity, a few inches of self-serving hyperbole layered atop a mind-bogglingly dense core of pure horseshit, the whole mess spinning thousands of times a second.

I haven’t seen this kind of devotion to the common good since Marion Barry expounded upon the virtues of smoking crack as an act of public service.

If we could only produce fertilizer of this purity on demand, we could make the deserts bloom.