McCain Finds Video Professor

The Internets? Why, they're a series of tubes...

John McCain on "mastering" the internet, from his latest NYT interview, truly pathetic stuff:

He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) and political Web sites and blogs.

“They go on for me,” he said. “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”

Asked which blogs he read, he said: “Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously. Everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics.”

At that point, Mrs. McCain, who had been intensely engaged with her BlackBerry, looked up and chastised her husband. “Meghan’s blog!” she said, reminding him of their daughter’s blog on his campaign Web site. “Meghan’s blog,” he said sheepishly.

As he answered questions, sipping a cup of coffee with his tie tight around his neck, his aides stared down at their BlackBerries.

As they tapped, Mr. McCain said he did not use a BlackBerry, though he regularly reads messages on those of his aides. “I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail,” Mr. McCain said.

Jingoism and Anheuser-Busch

I opened the Drudge Report this morning and saw this piece about the predictable xenophobic response to a European company (the fantastically-named InBev) angling to purchase Anheuser-Busch (the maker of Budweiser, Michelob, etc.).

The irony in this story is just too much for me to take.

I wrote a paper last semester about the history of the temperance movement in the United States (just a wiki-link, not my paper), and one of the overriding themes was how racism and xenophobia towards free-spirited Irish and German immigrants by tee-totalling nativist Protestant Americans basically led to Prohibition. The final push in the 1910s towards National Prohibition was given by the outpouring of racist anti-German sentiment during WWI against largely German-American brewers like the Anheuser and Busch families.

Now Americans are defending their German brewers against European infidels by saying crap like "Like baseball, apple pie and ice cold beer (wrapped in a red, white and blue label), Anheuser-Busch is an American original."

They were sure singing a different tune one hundred years ago.

The Face of the Clinton Campaign

this is what we're up against...

Drive to get anywhere

can you imagine if you lived in a place where you had to drive in order to just leave your house? seems so depressing to be so attached to a car

from a washpost story on inflation:

"We've had to cut back on a lot of stuff," said Stephanie Green, 30, of Mount Airy, N.C., after returning from a trip to a Bottom Dollar grocery store, where shoppers bag their own groceries to help keep food prices down.

"I used to spend about $120 a week to buy food. To be honest, now I spend anywhere from $200 to $220 a week," said Green, who has three children. And with the price of gasoline at $3.67 at her local service station, she said: "We're basically not going anywhere. We're going to get the kids, and besides that we don't go out of the house all week."

We're all going to keep in touch after the summer's over, right?!

from a politico interview with dubya:

— In January he plans to return to e-mail, which he gave up when he took office to avoid leaks. He said he looks forward to “e-mailing to my buddies,” and said he was a heavy e-mailer in Texas.

“I can remember, as governor, I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off e-mails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals,” he said. “One of the things that I will have ended my public service time with is a group of friends, a lot of friends. And I want to stay in touch with them, and there's no better way to communicate with them than through e-mail.”

did this remind anyone else of an onion article? (specifically, this one)

MSNBC's Russert: 'We Now Know Who the Nominee Will Be'

you can quibble with russert's style, but he wouldn't say it's over unless it is

Gruden's new toy: Josh Johnson

love the upside of this pick, especially in the 5th round

Obama Dirt Off Your Shoulder Remix

hilarious stuff

Pat Ewing Jr. Dunk Contest

yikes. pat nails it.

Onion Horoscope of the Week

we have a tie.

after much debate and dissension, we've determined that two horoscopes are worthy of honor this week:

Gemini May 21 - June 21

Friction in the workplace continues this Thursday, making you wish someone would finally cut you loose from the belt sander.

Virgo August 23 - September 22

People say you're a control freak, but if you had your way, they'd say it a little slower and maybe even a touch louder.

Way Down Upon the Suwanee River....

more from fucked up florida (honestly these kinds of stories grow on trees down there):


'On Strike' Mom Accused Of Neglect

OCALA, Fla. -- A Central Florida mother of four boys was arrested on Tuesday after telling authorities that she went "on strike" more than a month ago, leaving the teens home alone for hours every day because they would constantly fight.

Stagflation?

i saw this piece on the newshour last night (listen to it here) about the CPI and inflation fears, and then this front-page article in today's WSJ sounds the alarm with a more detailed economic analysis ... very interesting (and scary) stuff:

The U.S. faces an unwelcome combination of looming recession and persistent inflation that is reviving angst about stagflation, a condition not seen since the 1970s.

....

Stagflation, a term coined in the United Kingdom in 1965, defined the years from 1970 to 1981 in the U.S. Inflation rose to almost 15%. The economy went through three recessions. Unemployment reached 9%. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker finally conquered inflation, but only by dramatically boosting interest rates, causing a severe recession in 1981-82.

Today's circumstances are far from that. Inflation is lower. Unemployment has risen, but only to 4.9%.

Yet there are similarities ....

California Girls

i'm finding it physically impossible to stop listening to California Girls by the Magnetic Fields (from their (fantastic) new album Distortion) ... it's the ultimate tongue-firmly-in-cheek lost Beach Boys song:

See them on their big bright screen
tan and blonde and seventeen
Eating nonfood keeps them mean
but they're young forever
If they must grow up
they marry dukes and earls
I hate California girls

They ain't broke, so they put on airs,
the faux folks sans derrieres
They breathe coke and have affairs
with each passing rock star
They come on like squares
then get off like squirrels
I hate California girls

Looking down their perfect noses
at me and my kind
do they think we won't
well, never mind

Laughing through their perfect teeth
at everyone I know
do they think we wont
Get up an go?

So
I have planned my grand attacks
I will stand behind their backs
with my brand-new battle ax
Then they will they taste my wrath
They will hear me say
as the pavement whirls
"I hate California girls..."

check out a homemade video for the song:

Hillary and Tracy Flick

this is kind of old now, but it's still hilarious

NFL Network: Top 10 Runs of Regular-Season 2007

Area Senior Remembers a Simpler Time When His Anus Didn't Leak

Area Senior Remembers A Simpler Time When His Anus Didn't Leak

CARSON CITY, NV—Once, movies were a quarter, soda pop only cost a nickel, and Hank Fletcher's sphincter was strong enough to expand and contract when he intended.

really fantastic stuff here:

"How I loved to stroll down the promenade arm in arm with my best gal, Dorothy," Fletcher says, shifting in his chair as he pages wistfully through a faded old scrapbook. "We'd talk and laugh, unconstrained by bulky plastic sacks tied to our waists, and go into all the shops—never to buy anything, of course, just to look and to dream. We'd wander along the boardwalk all evening, she with her blue Gainsborough hat and I with my clean underpants, all the while holding hands and not ejecting fecal matter from our anuses."

"But Dorothy's been gone for many a year now," he adds as he closes the scrapbook, "and as for my anus, well, as I said before, it leaks constantly."

Onion Horoscope of the Week

Gemini May 21 - June 21

Everyone laughed when you said the CIA was running mind-control experiments, but they won't be laughing this week when you're admitted to a local insane asylum.

[The Onion's February 12 horoscopes]

------------

a classic riff on the "everyone laughed when ... but they won't be laughing now" horoscope, well done, Lloyd Schumner Sr., Retired Machinist and A.A.P.B.-certified Astrologer

Behind the Fro: The Roy Hibbert Story

here's a great behind-the-scenes look at Hibbert and the Hoyas from Dan Steinberg and the DC Sports Bog [Hibbert's Fro, and Presidential Politics]:

"Fifteen years down the line, after Jon and myself's careers are done in the NBA, hopefully I can his running mate. I'll be his vice president when he runs for president. I think he'll probably do it; he'll take care of the South, I'll take care of the North. He's from Alabama, he'll get the Southern votes and I'll take care of the swing states."

Hibbert was asked why Wallace got to be at the top of the ticket; " he's more charming, I think," the big man said, before deciding that Hoyas' enforcer Tyler Crawford would be their secretary of defense.

"I'm not agreeing to that," Wallace said of the presidential race. "I don't know what Roy's talking about."

In any case, Thompson was eventually asked whether he'd support a Wallace-Hibbert ticket.

"Not any time soon," he said. "Let's see what they do in the 20 years."

Chris Berman: Creepy Old Man

EDIT: youtube has taken down all the videos, but you can still see them HERE

-------------------------------------------------

this really has to be seen to be believed:



this of course follows the amazing clip broken last week on deadspin:



[from sportsbybrooks via deadspin]

Ex-Florida prison boss: Drunken orgies tainted system

This is truly an unbelievable story, and completely emblematic of how much of a backwards cesspool so much of Florida really is. You'd think a news report like this would be some kind of absurd anomaly until you actually follow the bizarre goings-on in my home state on a regular basis. Click through to stream the CNN video report. [CNN Article]

Here are some of the less prurient clips:

McDonough described a bizarre prison culture among those that ran the system -- one that he says seemed obsessed with inter-department softball games and the orgies after games.

"I cannot explain how big an obsession softball had become," he said. "People were promoted on the spot after a softball game at the drunken party to high positions in the department because they were able to hit a softball out of the park a couple times."

"The connection between the softball and the parties and the corruption and the beatings was greatly intertwined."

The parties and orgies were often carried out at a waterfront ranch house built on prison grounds for a former warden with taxpayer dollars, McDonough said. The house was complete with a bar, pool table and hot tub.

[Ex-Florida prison boss: Drunken orgies tainted system]

see Bush v. Gore, 431 U.S. 98 (2000)

See Bush v. Gore, 431 U.S. 98 (2000).

anyone want to guess that citation will show up in a Clinton v. Obama court battle?

I think it's time that i subscribe to the Journal, because along with the other recent stories I've blogged about, today's WSJ op-ed by Washington super-lawyer and conservative ideologue Ted Olson is a really thought-provoking piece about how (inevitable?) litigation over the Democratic nomination process might proceed. [click here for the op-ed].

I'm pretty much on the exact opposite side of Olson on most political issues, but he makes some fantastic points in this article that really make you consider the lens through which you view Bush v. Gore: as political hatchet-job or sincere legal construction. Here's my favorite part of the piece:

These superdelegates, Byzantine hyper-egalitarian Democratic Party delegate selection formulas, and the fact that many delegates are selected at conventions or by caucuses rather than primaries, combine to offer the distinct possibility that by convention time the candidate leading in the popular vote in the primaries will be trailing in the delegate count.

How ironic. For over seven years the Democratic Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave George W. Bush the presidency over popular-vote winner Al Gore in 2000. But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count, and thus the nominee, over the candidate favored by a majority of the party's primary voters.

[Clinton v. Obama: The Lawsuit]

If I Had a Hammer....

the Journal is really on a roll with me today, this is a really interesting piece about Jimmy Carter's furniture-making projects:



you can read the full story here ["Jimmy Carter Carves New Role In His Garage"] ... it really gives a sense of a very humble and unpretentious man, with little tidbits like:

After Mr. Carter's defeat in the 1980 presidential election, the White House staff raised money to buy him an elaborate woodworking shop as a parting gift. He had the equipment installed in the garage behind his home here in Plains. (The Carters haven't owned a car since he was elected president.)

The Heart Has Its Reasons

The Wall Street Journal has an amazing story about a torrid affair between a repressed housewife and a convict in prison for murder and how she helped break him out of jail [click here].

The back-story on how the reporter was able to gain their confidences is just as interesting [click here].

McCain and the Hoyas

thanks to the van buren boys, i found this great story by mike madden on salon.com [click here]:

John McCain and his senior strategists are among the most superstitious people in politics, and over the course of this primary season, the Hoyas have become something of an omen to Mark Salter, McCain's longtime speechwriter/Senate chief of staff/intellectual alter ego.

...

When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist endorsed McCain three days before the primary there, Salter was marooned in a ballroom without a TV to watch the Georgetown-West Virginia game. Tracking the score online while at a Rudy Giuliani speech (I'm a fan, too; my wife went to Georgetown, and we have our own tickets nowhere near as good as Salter's), I sent Salter updates by e-mail as the Hoyas prevailed on a last-second blocked shot by Patrick Ewing Jr. By then convinced the team's results were linked to his own, McCain called Salter afterward to tell him about the play. A few days later, he had won Florida and become the GOP front-runner.

Timing the National Anthem

this piece by SI's Dr. Z is hilarious ... here's an intro:

I time the national anthem before every football game. And every other sporting event. Actually, I time it every time I hear it. If you ask me why, then you'll be like some other people in the press box who have annoyed me through the years with that question. It's so obvious that I don't feel compelled to give them any answer at all, much less a sensible one.

"Say, why do you do that?"

"I do it because I do it, that's why I do it."

"What are you, nuts or something?" a fellow reporter remarked not too long ago. That's right, "Or something." That sums me up perfectly. I'm an Or Something. Which might explain why not too many people want to sit next to me in the press box. Which is fine with me.

The Year After Effect

I've always wondered how pitchers from the pre-war era (or modern-day japan) could pitch complete games every three days and rack up enormous innings-pitched counts, while today's pitchers are these delicate lilies who need truck-sized ice packs after getting through two-thirds of an inning

tom verducci has a great piece on SI.com explaining how to bring along young pitchers and his self-coined "year after effect" [click here]:

Why can't they throw 200 innings? Simply put, they're not conditioned for it yet. It's like training for a marathon. You need to build stamina incrementally. The unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season. It's a general rule of thumb, and one I've been tracking for about a decade. When teams violate the incremental safeguard, it's amazing how often they pay for it.

Onion horoscope of the week(s)

well, we missed a week, so we now present you the best of the last two weeks of the onion's horoscopes [january 29 and february 5]

Pisces February 19 - March 20

You will learn a very important lesson this week concerning the relative melting points of several different dental fillings.

Sagittarius November 22 - December 21

You'll save half-a-dozen orphans from a burning building this week, though to be fair, that's largely because you'll refuse to go back in for their parents.

Primary Election Law 101

slate's "jurisprudence" is a fantastic column, and they had a great entry this week describing the constitutional issues behind idiosyncratic primary rules [click here].

the column always does a really good job of explaining some really complicated legal issues in lay terminology, and this article is no different ... here's a taste:

What gives? Didn't the Supreme Court declare a "one person, one vote" principle back in the 1960s requiring the equal weighting of votes? And shouldn't this render most of these party rules unconstitutional? The short answer is no. Although most of the deviations from "one person, one vote" would be unconstitutional if a state put them to work in the general election for president, party primaries and caucuses are different. Aside from some really egregious no-nos, such as weighting candidate delegate strength according to the race of their supporters, courts are likely to stay out of disputes over the rules for choosing the parties' presidential nominees.

A Brokered Convention?

In today's daily report, The Week features a fantastic compilation of punditry regarding the split Democratic race (click here).

The most interesting piece they linked to was Roger Simon's latest missive about the potential shit-storm into which the Democratic convention in Denver could easily devolve. Simon gives the clearest explanation I've yet heard about the super-delegate situation:

Superdelegates are designed to protect front-runners and make sure dark horses don’t run away with things.

Superdelegates grow in number as the party gets more successful: They include all Democratic members of Congress, members of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic governors.

They also are the party warhorses and include “all former Democratic presidents, all former Democratic vice presidents, all former Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate, all former Democratic speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic minority leaders, as applicable, and all former chairs of the Democratic National Committee.”

This means that not only Bill Clinton, but Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, are superdelegates.

And their votes count just as much as the delegates chosen by actual primary voters.

If the Clintons succeed in seating the delegations of Michigan (where Clinton had the only name on the ballot) or Florida (where both candidates agreed to not campaign or compete), or if the Clintons attempt to steal the nomination by twisting the arms of super-delegates, all hell will break loose.

And I fully expect the Clinton machine to do anything and everything they can to win this race. Their 15 years of controlling the party apparatus will certainly serve them well if this race comes down to the proverbial smoky back room.

what is wrong with florida?

leave it to colbert to ask the real questions:

I'm selling my CDs!

i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and i finally made the decision to sell all my CDs and move towards vinyl for my physical media ... i almost always listen to MP3s (most of them downloaded) and my CDs just sit on a shelf ... i'll keep downloading MP3s and buy vinyl when i feel the need to have some kind of physical media ... it's always easy to just burn a CD from my MP3s if i need one

anyhoo, take a look at my amazon "storefront" and let me know if you're interested in buying anything (we could work out a separate deal, especially if you want to buy in bulk)

Onion horoscope of the week

we're starting a new feature: picking the best horoscope of the week from The Onion.

from a somewhat mediocre field, this beaut definitely shined:

Libra (September 23 - October 23)
It will smell like burnt toast, taste like burnt toast, and even look like burnt toast, but you'll be damned if it isn't just a massive cerebral hemorrhage of the frontal lobe.

[onion horoscopes]

Leeds Arsenal fan zone

this announcer is great ... fantastic stuff, i can't believe this actually goes on for 3 full minutes (you may want to stop after the first 30 seconds or so)

thanks deadspin

Mitt Romney - Who Let the Dogs Out?

wow, this is absolutely HILARIOUS ... the gray lady weighs in here

Friday Night Fights

check out both these knockouts from last night, pretty nasty:



thanks to deadspin

Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?

Just watched a fantastic documentary, Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock? ... it's a great look into the art world, really funny and illuminating

here's the village voice review:

Teri Horton's idea of a good time is drinking beer at the VFW; her idea of shopping is sifting through dumpsters behind Wal-Mart; her idea of art is Norman Rockwell. To the art-world elite, Horton is a plebian nightmare at worst, a kitschy curiosity at best. She's also a spunky septuagenarian former truck driver and the heroine of this documentary, which chronicles Horton's discovery of an alleged Jackson Pollock at a thrift shop and her subsequent battle with art experts to get the find legitimized. Horton enlists a forensic scientist to help prove authenticity through fingerprints, and while the forensics is marginally interesting, the most arresting piece of the film is Horton herself, as she asks of the art world, "Who the hell do they think they are?" Still, Pollock drags when Horton's offscreen, and with its NPR-inflected narration and executive producer Don Hewitt, the film might have fared better as a PBS special.

Blake Babies - "Out There"

i've been listening to blake babies' (click the link for a great story behind their name) best-of comp "innocence and experience" today and am reminded of how much of a badass juliana hatfield is ... here's my favorite song of theirs:



it has such a great gen-x / reality bites vibe, and juliana's bass is FANTASTIC

cover of "Close to Me"

why? made a fantastic cover of the cure's "close to me" ... totally drugged-out and laconic, i love it ... stream it here

I'm back!

[insert standard blogger apology for not posting here]

Differentiation of Fat Joe's Liquid Promiscuity

these excel charts are absolutely hilarious ... my favorites:

ESPN Sportscenter Commercial

one of my bros stars in this ad (hint: it's not rich eisen or bobby labonte)

It's Official!!

Myspace has officially jumped the shark:

Wanted: Friends for Barbara Walters's MySpace Page

She's butted heads with heads of state, endured the tug o'war between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump, even been mercilessly parodied on SNL – but there's one thing Barbara Walters admits intimidates her: her MySpace page.

"I am now on MySpace," the broadcast veteran, 78, told her View co-producer Bill Geddie on Barbara Live, her weekly Sirius radio show.

"What would bother me is if nobody got in touch with me," she admited. "What if … nobody wanted to be my friend. I would be very depressed."

Checking the computer to see just how many friends she actually does have on her MySpace page, Geddie was forced to inform Walters she has only two: MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson – who just happen to be two of Walters's 10 Most Fascinating People of 2007 to be profiled on her Dec. 6 ABC special.

"Nobody else wanted to be my friend?" said a disappointed Walters. "Nobody I went to high school with? … Nobody wanted to get in touch with me?"

The Hold Steady / Art Brut @ 9:30 Club 11/20/2007

what a fantastic triple bill tonight at the 9:30 club, i'll try to break it down band-by-band:

1990s
this band has been getting a lot of hype across the pond over the last year or so, and they were a fun warmup group ... they sounded a lot like 60s blues-rock / british invasion type of groups, i caught a lot of early rolling stones in their vibe ... their lead singer was shockingly / hilariously bad looking, with stereotypical british teeth / overbite, he was great


Art Brut
i've been listening to these guys a lot over the last couple of years, and i was REALLY impressed by their set ... they had an insane live show which really matched their sing-song/spoken word off-the-cuff punk style ... frontman eddie argos has to be seen to be believed, he's really a force on stage ... eddie's heavy english accent is a little hard to follow at times, and the video projector flashing select lyrics to each song was a great addition to the show ... it's hard to sum up in a blog post, but these guys put on one of the best performances i've seen all year, they just dominated the crowd ... if i was the hold steady, i might have been a little pissed at how much grandstanding they were doing after their set, i felt like the night was over when they stepped off the stage (in a good way)


The Hold Steady

but ohhhhhh, craig finn and the hold steady know how to hold their own

i'm convinced that these guys, if not for the drive-by truckers, would be the best american rock-and-roll band alive today ... i see the hold steady as the northern counterpart (they're from, and constantly sing about, minneapolis MN) to the drive-by truckers ... both groups cut to the heart of the american experience, but just from radically different perspectives

like singing a post-modern "thunder road" or "jack and diane", craig finn of the hold steady has an unbelievable knack for writing lyrics from the perspective of ordinary down-and-out american kids ... craig's cuttingly subversive lyrics are couched in this musical tension between quintessential, anthemic major-chord classic rock and the reckless fuck-it-all style of their fellow minneapolitans (and my favorite band) the replacements

seeing the hold steady live, it felt like watching the bastard child of elvis costello and woody allen fronting the e street band ... craig finn is hilarious, he's just a big set of horn-rim glasses bouncing all over the stage with these jittery nebbish mannerisms

Art Brut v. The Hold Steady
forgive me for getting all music critic on you, but these bands are perfect counterparts ... while art brut combines hilarious spoken-word lyrics with a textbook british punk-rock sound that evokes everyone from the jam to the arctic monkeys, the hold steady puts cutting spoken-word sing-song lyrics with a textbook american classic rock sound that evokes the boss ... i'm not sure who put this bill together, but it was fantastic planning

A Suburbanite's Fantasy of Urban Life

in a story in today's WashPost about the Shakespeare Theatre Company's new Sidney Harman Hall across from the Verizon Center's ticket booths on F Street, WashPost cultural writer/critic Philip Kennicott had a great lede that perfectly encapsulated the Main Street USA Disneyland vibe of Chinatown:

Sixth Street near Verizon Center is one of those curious Washington dead spaces. Only a block away, on the redeveloped Seventh Street NW, there is teeming nightlife, a forest of signs and logos and other enticements to eat, drink and shop. It is a suburbanite's fantasy of urban life -- brand names and bright lights -- but love it or hate it, there is bustle there.

BREAKING NEWS: Lloyd Carr Is Still Alive

broadcaster line of the day:

chris fowler: "lloyd is still alive"

in response to this rambling pile of crap that came out of (who else) lee corso's mouth:

"when businessmen die, they leave money; when coaches die, we leave pieces of ourselves, legacies, every kid we've touched, that's what he [retiring Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr] has done"