It's official: Barry Obama and Jerry Wright are no longer BFFs.

I was really afraid that Obama might throw Rev. Wright under the bus, but no. All he said was that he was "outraged" and "saddened" over the "spectacle" of Wright's "performance" over the past few days, that Wright is "divisive and destructive," that he gives "comfort to those that prey on hate," and that there are now "no excuses" for the all the things Wright said prior to The Greatest Speech Tongue Has Ever Uttered (Obama's facile speech on race a few weeks ago, in case you missed the address that left Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglas, Henry Clay, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Chief Joseph, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Mother Jones, Woodrow Wilson, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Earl Warren, Adlai Stevenson, Barbara Jordan, Ronald Reagan, Thurgood Marshall, Bill Clinton, and Elie Weisel choking in St. Obama's dust).

So, no: Obama didn't throw Wright under the bus - he shoved him in front of a fucking subway train - and an express train at that.

But what we should all be asking ourselves is why? Why now? What has Rev. Wright said in the last three days that he hadn't said previously - and perhaps continuously - over the past twenty years? Easy. He's said one new thing - and one new thing only: Barack Obama is a politician. He "says what he has to say as a politician" and "does what politicians do" - or, as Obama paraphrased him, Wright suggested that the senator's "values and beliefs" - the lifetime that he has selflessly devoted to giving speeches - was nothing more than "political posturing". Now that is an unpardonable sin.

Tags: duly noted, politburo
humour: nauseated

Dateline Pittsburgh:

So we stopped into an ice cream parlor in Newport, Kentucky, yesterday - Sean and I were the only ones in the shop - and struck up a conversation with the only employee in the place (Richard, according to his name tag). Or, rather, he struck up conversation with us. As has been happening frequently over the past few days, the "Hillary" buttons that we've been wearing have drawn a lot of comment, engagement, and discussion. Mostly, it's been middle-aged women, but we've had quite a few men (especially men of color) and, at Cincinnati University, we were getting high fives and "that's what I'm talking abouts" from a lot of female students - of all races. That's all been encouraging.

Then there was Richard the Ice Cream Guy.

The first thing he says (after determining that we were, indeed, canvassing for Clinton) is "Yeah, how could anyone support a Muslim candidate? They're the guys we're fighting." We've been getting a lot of that - and I mean a lot - so that wasn't so unusual. And, of course, we spent a few minutes explaining that Barack Obama is not a Muslim and that, even if he were, that wouldn't be a good reason for not supporting him. Then we had to go through the flag in nonsense - and the national anthem nonsense. Honest to God, it sometimes feels like we've spent as much time correcting misinformation about and spurious criticisms of Obama than we have discussing Clinton on the issues - and, frankly, after half a dozen such conversations, I've been seriously tempted to just say, "Yeah, how could anyone vote for a Muslim?" and move on. Conscience forbids.

Anyway, after we've dismissed the idiocy (one never knows how successfully), Richard the Ice Cream Guy moves on. "Don't worry," he tells us. "Obama will never make it to the White House." He then goes on - at length - about "one of the guys that lives in his house" who works for Army Intelligence and the background checks that he and his partner had to go through when this guy moved in and how all the neighbors had to be interviewed and how this housemate or whatever has the highest possible security clearance in INSCOM. Okay, a bit dubious, perhaps, but still within the realm of possibility, maybe.

Then the confidential tone sets in. Apparently, this guy-that-lives-in-his-house informed Ice Cream Guy that "if Obama even gets close to winning, they'll take him out". Huh? Who? "The government. They already have it all planned out. If Obama wins the primaries and it looks like he's gonna win the election, they're gonna kill him. The Army's gonna kill him."

This, remember, was all prefaced by "Don't worry." We grabbed our bowls of coconut chocolate almond and headed for the exit. "Are we going to sit out here," I asked Sean, referring to their outdoor seating area, "or are we getting as far away from Scary Ice Cream Guy as possible?"

"We're getting far away."

Tags: duly noted, politburo, tin-foil hat?, travelogue
humour: unnerved

Dateline Colombus:

So, Leap Day in Ohio seems to be much like Leap Day anywhre else, if memory seves.

But can anyone tell me why this is called a Leap Year - or, indeed, why this is Leap Day? Where's the leaping? I would think that it's the common years that leap from February 28 to March 1. In an intercalary year like this one, an extra day is inserted, not skipped (or leapt over). This shouldn't be Leap Day, it should be Stay Where You Bloody Well Are for Another Twenty-four Hours Day.

Besides, technically, Leap Day (or SWYBWAFATH Day, as I prefer) was last Sunday. The extra day is inserted five days before the end of the month - and the rest are just renumbered. Whatever - enjoy the extra day.

Tags: duly noted
humour: geeky

And what's up with "gourmet pizzas"? I don't really care if you make your pizza with smoked crab, feta cheese, eggplant, wasabi, and mandarin oranges, why can't you make the damned things round? What's so bloody "gourmet" about misshapen wads of baked dough?

Tags: duly noted
humour: dorky

I may seldom have agreed with Buckley, but he was a very rare thing in American politics: an intelligent, articulate conservative with a sense of humor. He probably did more than anyone else to draw people to the conservative movement in the sixties and seventies, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater. And, with "Firing Line", he probably became America's first pundit.

He wasn't much of a neocon, so he'd been somewhat pushed to the margins over the past several years, but I still think the conservative movement will miss him - he was about the closest thing the right has had to a statesman since - hmmn...

Tags: duly noted, mourn not the dead, politburo
humour: blank

I was looking into some film recommendations for jiveturkey a wee while ago and discovered that I had somehow posted my minor "2007 in Review" entry as a private post. It's now rather belatedly unlocked.

Heh, I was wondering why it'd received no commentary whatsoever. Again... d'oh!

Tags: duly noted
humour: embarrassed

Most Christian holidays are based on pre-existing pagan festivals. Groundhog Day is the only one I know of that works the other way around. The pagan ritual of woodchuck voyeurism is apparently based on an apocryphal gospel in which Jesus emerged from his tomb on the third day, saw his shadow, and repaired back inside for another six weeks.


Evidently that's what happened today. Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his tree stump and cast a clear shadow, prompting the President of Punxsutawney's Inner Circle to read the following scroll on the rotund rodent's behalf:

"As I look around me,
A bright sky I see,
And a shadow beside me.
Six more weeks of winter it will be."

I guess Jesus wasn't much of a poet. Let's hope he's no better a weather forecaster.

Tags: duly noted
humour: displeased

Yes, it's that time of decade again, when another cyclic division of linear time passes "Go" - and probably forgets to ask for that $200. And time to look back, as fondly as possible, on the twelve months gone. Or not. I'd planned to post this on New Year's Eve, but 2007 was one of those why-be-bothered years in general.

Plus, I'm in New York for the next week or so and have 1) more free time than usual, 2) decent internet access compared to central Pennsylvania, thanks to ubiquitous wi-fi connections, and 3) little else to do while spending time at Sean's parents' house in Brooklyn. I'm at the keyboard. Let's go.

Politically, it looks as though 2007 was primarily looking forward to 2008 - and the national election which is still 300 odd days away. But who can blame anyone for wanting the Bush administration out of the way as soon as humanly possible? And if that means that we have an earlier primary season than ever before in human history, so be it. Just don't expect me to be very interested. The Bush admin is still doing enough damage that it needs to be monitored as closely as possible - the potential replacements can wait.

So, yeah - the past year saw far too many potentially important people devoting more time to campaigning than actually doing their jobs. And those that weren't preoccupied with their career paths - like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - were such useless excuses for politicians that they might as well not exist. Indeed, the country would be far better off if neither did exist - their places might be filled by people who could do slightly more than occupy space and waste limited natural resources by sustaining their miserable excuses for human life.

Then again, if they were replaced, it'd probably be by more Democrats - and "Democrat" should soon be appearing in thesauruses around the globe as a synonym for abortive, bootless, counterproductive, expendable, feckless, futile, incompetent, ineffectual, inept, pointless, unproductive, valueless, weak, and/or worthless - and translations thereof in every language that has produced a thesaurus.

The GOP, meanwhile, has spent the year attempting to give new meaning to the words "reckless", "regressive", and "venal" - they can't really further refine the definitions of "avaricious" or "short-sighed", can they? With the likes of Huckabee on the national stage, it remains to be seen whether the definition of "witless" needs to be re-examined.

Enough commentary, on with the lists!

Over-hyped news stories of the year:

1. The "success" of the "surge". Actually, this shouldn't really be considered "over-hyped" so much as wholly invented.
2. The inevitability of Hillary Clinton. Not only do I think she's far from inevitable, this has been going on ever since the Clinton's left the White House. Give it a rest and see what happens.
3. The visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A non-event surrounding a nonentity, surrounded by a lot of nonsense.
4. The unveiling of Windows Vista. *yawn*
5. The arrest of dissidents in Burma. This was more a transparent diversion for Bush's address to the UN than a news item. And, Mr. President, Burma doesn't exist - it's Myanmar. What next? Conflict in Constantinople? Riots in Rhodesia? Panic in Persia?

Over-hyped entertainment stories of the year:

1. The death of Anna Nicole Smith. Under-reported sidelight: Paternity rivals, Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead, had threesomes with Ms. Smith and may have been sometime lovers themselves. TMI: Abscesses of the buttocks were one of the contributing factors to Ms. Smith's timely demise.
2. The sentencing of Paris Hilton. Under-reported sidelight: Dr. Charles Sophy, the shrink who got Hilton sprung from prison due to an undisclosed "medical condition" also testified that she was "not capable of any meaningful participation" in the civil suit brought against her by diamond heiress Zeta Graff. TMI: Hilton's only known "medical condition" is the occasional flare-up from her herpes simplex infection.
3. The Trump-O'Donnell feud. Under-reported sidelight: No one cares about bitch-slapping between a woman whose mouth is larger than her brain and a man whose wallet is larger than his penis - the story was only covered to broadcast the insults they traded. TMI: Everything each said about the other was true.
4. The exploits of Lindsay Lohan. Under-reported sidelight: Nothing about