2016 (cont)

last feb i wrote:

if obama ends his politically transcendent 8 years as the same straight arrow he is now the next president will win the election because he or she is a much harder-living version of obama whether democrat republican whatever because though we have boundless patience for rightness we have little for squareness.

today ross douthat writes:

Certainly there’s a strong anti-egghead bent on the Right, and you’re probably never going to see grassroots conservatives swooning for a purely cerebral candidate — a Adlai Stevenson or Bill Bradley type. But it’s possible for a candidate to have the common touch and to know a thing or two about domestic policy (see Clinton, William Jefferson), and I don’t see any evidence that a conservative politician couldn’t profit from trying to pull off that particular two-step.

greasy album of the week

spills and thrills, john paul keith & the one four fives.

headline: primordial greaser wins math bowl.

republican obstructionism

drum:

There will always be issues here and there that are so central to a party’s governing ideology that there’s really no room for compromise. The point is that Dems, for better or worse, never tried to make every single bill a destruction test of the opposing party’s governance. Republicans are doing exactly that, and that is something new under the sun.

i wont argue a winning strategy but i will say fuck you to anyone who parrots costs and competition and every other deceitful misdirection away from Obama Must Fail.

the road

violence of all things that walked before rendered into a great oily mass set aglow like some grounded apocalyptic phoenix and hacked beyond any earthly recognition with a rusted maul forged by some hellish apprentice:

They’re going to kill those people, aren’t they?
Yes.
Why do they have to do that?
I dont know.
Are they going to eat them?
I dont know.
They’re going to eat them, aren’t they?
Yes.
And we couldn’t help them because then they’d eat us too.
Yes.
And that’s why we couldn’t help them.
Yes.
Okay.

i have no desire to travel that road again. dude can take his choleric time with the next one. looking forward to the movie.

2012 (cont)

via drum:

Yes, Palin speaks in trite, childish platitudes but so do most Americans. Face it, the vast majority of our voters are not exactly rocket scientists and for many of them she will be a perfectly fine alternative to Obama.

no chance. said so here.

why im in love

i say king giuliani was on my flight. i say judi looked damn good. she says the other woman always does.

text of the day

[the boy] asked if we could have a tv in the bathroom. any question of paternity squashed.

andrew sullivan

one post in 24 hours. like waiting for beowulf. will he surface with the head of grendels ma or a set of serrated spoons used for grapefruit.

ksm in nyc

steven simon:

An open trial will also provide a catalyst for reflection among Americans on both 9/11 and its aftermath. The years before the attacks have been thoroughly hashed out through the report of the 9/11 commission and by memoirs and histories. The eight years since, a time of unremitting warfare, has had no similar opportunity for taking stock. Regrettably, no trial can provide closure for the traumas of that day. But a judgment in New York, where the greatest suffering was inflicted, will remind us both of the narrow viciousness of the terrorists’ cause and of the enduring strength of our own values.

have had no interest in wading into an argument against.

lagniappe

william cope moyers:

When I was in college, my family vacationed in Jamaica and I introduced myself to Paul McCartney and his wife Linda. One day we were having a drink at the open-air bar and I asked Paul if it was hard to write so many songs. “No,” he said, “it’s easy,” and in two minutes he wrote a song on a paper napkin and gave it to me.

palin prediction

the harder people hammer at her delusions the lesser the glee once shes exposed. like watching american idol: by season 3 aspergers aint funny.

on palin

sullivan:

And what’s truly telling about Washington is that a man like McCain, who perpetrated this nonsense and even now refuses to take an ounce of responsibility for it, is nonetheless invited on countless talk shows and treated like the hero he always was. And no one demands he account for this train-wreck outside his tested cant about Palin “exciting the base.”

If he had any sense of responsibility, he would resign. And if the Washington media had any sense of responsibility, it would never invite him on TV again without demanding he take responsibility for what he nearly did to the national security of this country. No one who put this person near the nuclear button should have a future in public life.

But this is Washington. And they protect their own.

there should be an over/under on exactly how many posts on one subject in one day before dudes quivering climax.

pundit watch

jay newton-small:

When I was up in Alaska in July, a lot of politicians and political aides up there said Palin’s not the kind to ask for mountains of briefing books to take home and stay up all night reading (hello, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama). She does, though, have great political instincts and timing. Witness her take down of former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, a fellow Republican. And in that regard she reminds me a lot of a certain Texas governor back in 1998-1999 whom no one thought would be THE Bush to follow in his father’s footsteps. George W. had a good amount of star power, aw shucks charm and, early on, a similar intimacy with foreign affairs. He also wasn’t a fan of briefing books, preferring to operate on instinct, much the way Palin does. Both have a similar mistrust of those outside their inner circles and little tolerance for those who challenge them: they both like to hear, ‘How high?’ when they ask you to jump. And platform-wise Palin has similar priorities to those espoused by Bush on the 2000 campaign trail. But what Bush had that Palin lacks right now is Karl Rove. And I don’t know if Palin’s noticed but Rove seems to be warming up to the former vice presidential nominee – going so far as to flatter her new book. Palin in 2012, compassionate conservatism part deux?

still trying to wrap my head around the obviousness of this post.

hak se wui (election)

david thomson:

No one has done more to uphold, extend, and enrich the film noir genre in recent years than Michael Mann…[but] I think Mann the director needs better writing than he has been getting.

which is why johnnie tos election is infinitely more enjoyable than heat or miami vice.

[4 netflix stars]

best of decade: tv

if one season of freaks and geeks qualifies then so should the great forsyte saga. also: british office over arrested development, west wing over half these motherfucking shows and whither dave chapelle, bitches?

one-beer plan

halfway through my Second And Final Beer the bartender gave the mouthy married women from mississippi free shots to shut them the fuck up about pigeons and such. with a conspiratorial nod he then gave one to me and the couple next to me. which of course got me protestingly drunk. to which the guy next to me alluded to:

Two hours and an unforeseen buyback later, the early-to-bed plan Flemming had established at the beginning of the evening was in serious jeopardy.

takes a big man to realize hes been parodied for five years. and im a big fucking man.

if i could skywrite

i would highlight

the dc football team is 1 of 8 teams to win 3 super bowls

obamaism (cont)

andrew sullivan walks the company line:

Here is a young president, prepared to allow himself to be portrayed as “weak” or “dithering” in the slow and meticulous arrival at public policy. He is trusting the reality to help expose what we need to do. He is allowing the debate – however messy and confusing and emotional – to take its time and reveal the real choices in front of us. This is politically risky, of course. Those who treat politics as a contact-sport, whose insistence is on the “game” of who wins which news cycle, or who can spin each moment in a political storm as a harbinger of whatever, will pounce and shriek and try to bounce the president into a decision. And those who believe that what matters in war is charging ahead regardless at all times will also grandstand against the president’s insistence on prudence.

But he won’t be bounced and his concern seems to be genuinely to do the right and the most sustainable thing. Which is a kind of strength we haven’t seen in a president since Reagan.

the washington dannys

sally jenkins:

[Riggo] certainly doesn’t regret anything he’s said about the 2-6 Redskins, or their owner, Daniel Snyder. It’s an awkward fact that Riggins, arguably the most beloved player in the history of the franchise, a Hall of Fame running back who from 1976 to 1985 hauled the team on his back to its greatest victories, has become the harshest critic in town. He accuses Snyder, the billionaire entrepreneur, of possessing “more ego than intellect” and ruining the team with meddling. He suggests: “It won’t be long before the logo is a profile of the owner. . . . I mean, that’s where this is going. He’s branding himself. I kind of like that, actually. At least it would be truth in advertising.”

cant say that wouldnt be preferable. absolutely no fucking reason to insist on using a name that offends the very group its supposed to honor.

obamaism (cont)

little green footballs walks the company line:

National security is still an important issue. But the main reason I can’t march along with the right wing blogosphere any more, not to put too fine a point on it, is that most of them have succumbed to Obama Derangement Syndrome. One “nontroversy” after another, followed by the outrage of the day, followed by conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, all delivered in breathless, angry prose that’s just wearying and depressing to read.

the brunchgoer

if some of the words in my head were pictures.

oblivian

a year ago:

he said he hung the flag out at 530 in the morning for veterans day. the rest of the conversation slurred, his statements crossing and re-crossing the border of comprehension; he is on the tail-end of a binge brought on by a ship finally sinking. i dont know whether any of us will understand why he held on like ahab when no one would have judged him had he sold the fucker in some glitzy seaside town for 40 million. probably because there are too many reasons to consider why: insecurity, narcissism, his word, because he is the son of an immigrant. like some henry james industrialist he reminded himself that all you need is two credit cards and an idea. but like the aging boxer who cant quit he also left the door open for swimming to the bottom in search of usable wood.

well the shits been dredged and there aint no more wood nowhere and of all them things im supposed to be pissed about i only half joke that missing a band ive never seen pisses me off most. thankfully i will be back in time to see the other oblivian.

military death penalty

michael scherer:

Under the military system, the President of the United States must affirmatively approve of the execution. In July of 2008, President Bush approved the execution of an Army private, Ronald A. Gray, who had been convicted in connection with four murders and eight rapes in the late 1980s. Gray has since appealed his case to federal courts, delaying his execution again.

no chance obama approves hasans execution, and not because of some sudden revelation about the barbarism of state-sponsored murder, but because of stone-cold calculation. will be hard to watch.

state of the union

sullivan:

The US is now bankrupt, trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of our lives, unable even to prevent the two most potentially dangerous Islamist states, Pakistan and Iran, from getting nukes, morally compromised and hanging on to global support only because of a new president who is even now being assaulted viciously at home for such grievous crimes as trying to get more people access to health insurance.

sad.

gods be good

fantasy worlds colliding: lena headey will play the vile, incestuous and totally hot queen cersei.

bete noire

people who slow down or stop entirely atop subway stairs to check their phone or light a cigarette as if dumbstruck by andean vistas instead of a wendys or a 99 cent store.

mad men (cont)

i thought reckoning was finally at hand once peggy dropkicked don so soon after betty had. but of course the writers dig don way too much to realize any suggestion of entropy. so here we are, suckered once again into rooting for dude because of our faith in others.

saturday night shower

lost with marriage is the particular optimism of drinking beer with one hand while scrubbing the nut sac just so (clean but hopefully not soapy tasting) with the other.

todays irony

figured on kittys back for piss breaks 1 & 2. that i instead stood through the entire thing slack-jawed and happily immobile is todays notable irony.

new york city serenade

there is no other place on the fucking planet id rather be than this loud fucking arena has always been the magic of bruce and i havent felt that magic in 10 years. but standing in front of the stage under them big madison square garden speakers i was 16 all over again listening on my aiwa headphones and hanging on to every life-affirming breath.

bedtime story

ill stand outside the door rather than pack into a tiny pisser. such was the case when some big motherfucker with tattooed dots all over his face bust past me. i walked in after him and said something like hell no. he slowly took off his sunglasses and asked me to repeat myself. i did. he then slowly took off his hat and again asked me to repeat myself. i repeated myself once more after which he calmly turned and walked out. pissing i wondered how the fuck i was going to explain to my sleeping wife and kids a broken jaw. but i was instead met by a bouncer who asked what i had said in the bathroom. i said there was a line. no foul language? i said there was a line. the big motherfucker remarked that i had in fact used inappropriate language and that as a reliable patron he shouldnt have to suffer such crass indignities.