Month: August 2005

I have this thing about the news media and hurricane coverage. Irrespective of the fact that The Big Stinky (New Orleans) is currently in the process of being washed out to sea, I still can't believe the way cable TV news conducts itself during these fiascoes.

Hurricanes have always been gold for the media. They’re slow (guaranteeing several days of fill), they’re destructive (guaranteeing good video), and generally considered to be terrifying. But not only is hurricane coverage unbearable in its quantity, the awful part is that it’s always the same; every channel, every year, every hurricane.

Blow-dried, pensive anchor in studio: “How’s it looking out there?”

Live shot of storm-addled and soaking wet correspondent (with obligatory background debris flying about): “It’s really really windy!”

Anchor: “OK, thanks for that report. We’ll have another live update in 15.”

From there, they cut to a meteorologist who will spend a few minutes pointing at a flashing, luminous satellite image of the storm moving towards the coast. Finally, the cycle ends with some stock footage of harried citizens buying jugs of water in grocery stores and boarding up windows or fleeing the area on gridlocked highways.

Cut to the human interest story about the retards intent on riding out the storm on their front porch, flashlight in one hand and Old Fashioned in the other. Cue the montage about past hurricanes (remember that wacky Andrew?
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Good times. Good times.) and bring out that clip of a wrinkled Asian scientist explaining the NOAA hurricane rating system. Did you know that a Category 4 has sustained winds of 131-155 mph?

Well it's a goddamn fact.

Any force of man or nature that can level thousands of square miles of Florida or the deep south is a-o-fuckin'-k in my book.

Have you seen rural Mississippi? The hurricanes can't come fast enough. Christ, let's drop a daisy cutter or two and help ol' Katrina out.

In closing, hurricanes and tornadoes are not random.
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They form when moist air masses from the Gulf of Mexico mix with NASCAR collectibles, the sound of Larry the Cable Guy, and the aroma of grits.

So how often does your priest, rabbi, clergyman, etc call for somoene to be assassinated? If you're a card-carrying member of the Christian Coalition, the answer to that question is "occasionally". That word, of course, lacks a pejorative sting. But the fact that the answer isn't "never" is ridiculous enough to preclude arguments about scale.

Furthermore, how often does your clergyman lecture you on politics? I'm an admittedly lapsed religious practicioner, but after 18 years of Catholic education I can't remember one instance of a Priest ever standing up and delivering a homily about the Supreme Court, the inheritance tax, or whacking a world leader.
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Why? Well I always thought the reason for this was obvious – we don't go to church to get lectured on current affairs, and religious groups are tax-exempt, non-profit, non-partisan organizations for whom engaging in political advocacy is illegal and inappropriate.

"Apparently I am an elected official of some kind.

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"

Yes, Pat Robertson (who entertains me less than James Dobson simply because he's bat-shit insane as opposed to calculating and rational) is calling for the United States to make haste to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Quoth the rocket scientist:

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

"(He is) a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

One of my favorite people in this world is very religious and often says that the media loves making Christian leaders look stupid. In reality, the only thing that makes them look stupid is accurately quoting them. To claim that the media is framing them is just another weak variant of the "I got a bad grade because the professor hates me/because I'm black/etc" excuse.

The media didn't make James Dobson tell his followers that SpongeBob SquarePants is subliminal gay propaganda. The media didn't make all these tools anoint themselves as physicians and constitutional scholars overnight during the Terri Schiavo ordeal. And the media didn't do anything to Pat Robertson today that Pat Robertson didn't do to himself.

If these religious nutjobs have suddenly decided that they're political figures and sources of public policy information, then they (and their followers, even the ones who don't buy most of what the Robertsons and Dobsons say) have to deal with the fucking consequences.

If Robertson (and Dobson, and Reed, and Falwell) appoined themselves de facto advisors to the Republican Party, then welcome to the jungle. Don't start bitching now. "Oh, the media's making fun of me." That's politics, and you chose to make yourself a part of it. If you don't like it, stick to religion. After all, that's what you tell the IRS your organizations do, right?

Am I the only one who has a hard time taking the daily horse-race coverage of the Iraqi Constitution seriously?

Unless it's bulletproof or made of some sort of Earth-space metal compound that repels terrorists like Kryptonite, I really can't see how this document changes or will change anything. Let's all shit ourselves with excitement – a government that couldn't run its Iraq for five minutes without a massive occupying force from the U.

S. has a Constitution! This is even neater than those elections they had!

The Council debates the use of the phrase "cannon fodder" in the Iraqi Army charter

That Iraqi Assembly sure is cute. They're like a high school student council with more spirit. As you recall from your high school days, the primary function of the student council was to teach kids how democracy works – you debate, bargain, and vote with big smiles on your faces in order to legitimate decisions over which you have no control to begin with. And if you start getting any big ideas, the Principal comes down the hall and straightens things out.

I wonder if they included something about getting a new salad bar in the Iraqi National Cafeteria?

"Hey, where did this 'Article 27 – Oath of Undying Fealty to Exxon' come from?

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"

Keep this in mind as we watch Washington react to the rumored nationalization of Iraq's oil reserves and the use of sharia as the foundation for the legal system in the draft "Constitution". Something tells me that a few last-minute suggestions from Washington will end up sneaking into the final product.
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This exists (Note: Work-safe). They seem to focus very heavily on dogs, but let us assume that many of their tips are also applicable to fucking pigs, small game, domesticated llamas, the ring-tailed lemur, and the North Chilean Guanaco (closely related to the llama).

This past weekend the mighty TremFu ventured to Fort Wayne, Indiana at the request of some (new) acquaintances who apparently wanted to inject some rock into their lives. It was not until we arrived that I found out we were playing at a bar called the Brass Rail. Our Chicago and Champaign-Urbana readers are well aware that there is also a Brass Rail in downtown Champaign.

Two thoughts, one considerably less plausible than the other, entered my mind at this point. I considered the possibility that Brass Rail is some sort of chain-franchise operation that licenses dingy bars serving a mixed clientele of drunken hillbillies and college hipsters. Then I wised up and realized it's probably just a coincidence. Nevertheless, the extent to which Brass Rail-Fort Wayne is almost identical to Brass Rail-Champaign was hard to ignore.

Is the name some sort of reference that I'm not getting? What is it about the name "Brass Rail" that lends itself to PBR, $5 pitchers, and creepy old alcoholic men leering at 22 year old rockabilly girls? I urge our readers to report any other Brass Rails of which they are aware. This merits further study. (Note: there are Brass Rails in San Diego and Minneapolis, both of which are gay bars, and one in San Francisco that is a strip joint. I'm confused.)

In any case, Fort Wayne surprised me. Not an altogether bad place, contrary to my expectations. Good people, (at least) one good bar, and a lot of enormous apartment houses that look like Victorian castles. And an Arby's that never closes. Thanks to the Twin Rays, All Nite Skate (our hosts), and Michigan-based Lone Wolf & Cub. And Omar's pregnant cat…..what the hell was its name? Something horrible. He introduced it as "This is my cat _____. That is the worst cat name ever." Someone help me out or this is going to drive me crazy.

All men are genetically programmed to get a thrill out of seeing how far below the "E" their car's gas needle can go before re-fueling. We feel some small measure of victory when we pull into work in the morning with the "low fuel" light on and then drive home at the end of the day without having addressed this earnest warning. I'm starting to think the Democratic party is made up entirely of men who are operating it on the same principle.

One of my favorite websites is PollingReport.com. Not because its polls are reliable or especially accurate, but mostly because it's entertaining. Its hypotheticals are the political junkie's equivalent of sitting around a bar talking about who would win a game between the 1927 Yankees and the 2004 Red Sox.

They have a section devoted to 2008 Presidential Election preference polls conducted by various media and dedicated polling organizations. I find the sum of it to be unbearably depressing. This is best explained by way of examples. The following poll is representative of the standard Democratic Primary line of questioning:

"I know it is early, but if the Democratic primary for president were held today, which of the following would you support for the Democratic nomination for president? . . . " (Ipsos-Public Affairs poll. Dec. 17-19, 2004. Nationwide.)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton 33

Senator John Kerry 19

Senator John Edwards 15

Retired General Wesley Clark 11

Governor Bill Richardson 3

Senator Evan Bayh 2

Senator Russ Feingold 1

Governor Tom Vilsack 1

Governor Mark Warner 0

Other (vol.) 3

Unsure 9

That rotating sound you hear is William Jennings Bryan rolling over in his grave. Even Mondale and Dukakis are probably shitting themselves laughing.
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Is this it? Is this really the best of what they have to offer? An intolerable bitch who used to be First Lady and three losers from the 2004 race (followed by the usual smattering of Governors that no one knows). Great. Good luck with that.

The only person on this list who is electable is Bill Richardson.

Of the established veterans, he is the current highlight of the Democratic party.
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But of course he'll be outspent about a billion-to-one in the early primaries by Hillary and won't amount to anything as a candidate. For shame. Richardson is one of the Clinton acolytes who actually understands the idea of expressing a vision and projecting confidence.

In the late 1990s, after the 1996 election fiasco and the failed impeachment witch-hunt, the Republican party set itself up for success by flushing itself of its old, stale faces – Dole, Gingrich, Kemp, etc – and handing things over to a new generation. The Democrats seem unwilling or unable to do so right now. You know a party is in really bad shape when two guys who have been in Congress for about five fuckin' minutes (Barack Obama and Harold Ford) are the best thing they have to offer. But that's reality, and they'd be smarter to deal with it rather than put off rebuilding for four more years while the Ghosts of Elections Past take one more lap around the track.