It is worth mentioning that the NRSC website — National Republican Senatorial (Campaign) Committee — still has Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and his “Working for Alaska Interests” spiel, so that you may contribute money to him and TELL THE WORLD that you have contributed money to Ted Stevens.  Do it today, why don’t you?

The two discordant elements of the Church shooting story, and I am not the first, only, or most insightful observer of this — though I may be relatively unique in stringing it to one item of meme-like veracity.

His two great agitations were the Liberals and– the immediate spur to his attacks – the cutting off of his food stamps.  This makes him the poster-child, though a rather extreme one, for this item which has been bouncing in email boxes and all over the Internet for the past few years.

I am tempted to come up with a convuluted connection for the man.  He is angry at the Liberal Welfare system for having given him a crutch which served to have him not “pull himself up by his boot-straps” in finding another job.  OR… taking that British Telegraph ranking of America’s “100 Most Influential” Liberals and Conservatives which placed Bill Clinton as #1, the man is angry at the #1 Liberal signing the Welfare Reform Act in 1996 which served to weaken the Welfare Safety Net.  OR… concerning the gays, the church he aimed fire at was inclusive to homosexual rights, he thought there was some Affirmative Action program which gave preferential hiring to homosexual truck drivers.  OR… he views the Liberals as having hampered the trucking industry due to the lack of off-shore drilling and drilling at ANWR.  But I am getting away from the deal with the food stamps with those last two items of consideration.  Perhaps he has done some calculations which show that if those drillings, along with weakening government regulation of the trucking industry, he would still have enough money to make ends meet even with his lack of food stamps?

But, bottom line, he was nuts.

Barack Obama made a speech before a large crowd in Germany.  You know who else used to make speeches before large crowds in Germany?  Hitler.

Barack Obama is planning on making his nominating speech before a large crowd in a football stadium.  You know who else used to make speeches in sports stadiums?  Hitler.

Barack Obama speaks about how “This is the moment” and affirms that “Yes, we can”.  You know who else used to speak about how this is the moment that stuff can be done?  Hitler.

Barack Obama has a large political following amongst 20-something year olds.  You know who else used to have a large political following among 20-something year olds?  Hitler.

Barack Obama is a black man.  You know who else is black?  Bizarro-Hitler.

The similiarities are uncanny!

A question I have after reading these articles and related commentary relating to Russia’s go-after of “Emo Kids, and it may be telling that I don’t have any particular care about the fate of “Emo Kids”:

Has our high school clique set of sub-cultures fragmented over the years, or are standard issue types of personality types — conforming to various noncomformist modes — simply transfered from one model in one era to another in a different era?

Strictly speaking, there was no “Emo” when I was a high school student, though there seem to have been bands which have sort of retrospectively been retrofitted into that label.  Or perhaps this sub-genre broke out far enough that they could be properly labelled.  I don’t know.  The situation is absurd to the point where a local alternative news weekly previewed a concert for “Jimmy Eat World” by referring to them, a band who got commercial success in the early part of this decade, as “forerunners of Emo”, who remind us in this era of emo-backlash why emo was once good.  It does appear they, or the bands which could surface onto “Top 40” listings — were a lot less stratified and strident in their “emo”-ness or genre conventions, and hence… better… and more listenable.  “In the Middle” is a very good pop song. 

What the hell is “Emo” anyway?  Goth without the Occult references?  A smidgeon of a sort of skinny pants wearing indy-rock influence of olde?  Or, better labeled as as rather narcissistic angst-ridden depressed hyper – myopia.  I am not a fan, no.  Go buy some Cure tracks (for your fancy new “i-pod) and get back to me, alright?

Musically, the situation is sort of the “nothing new under the sun” land which is demonstrated in this used book of 1990s rock criticism I picked up once, which was hilarious because of the notes of an angry reader who basically wrote over and over again in the margins about such and such an act from the 1970s (all of them you know) being there long before such and such an act from the 1990s (all of them you know) and the latter being deriviative crap.   As for that land of teenage sub-cultures, and my question on whether they are splintering or just transfered (throw one kid into an earlier age and see him/her adapt)… hm.  Maybe it’s just a matter where we broadly define them as the dress-in-black Drama kids.

The experiment I am told one tries in assessing high school cliques is to watch how everyone assembles in a cafeteria.  The stars of the major sports of football and basketball and cheerleaders and such sit in the center of it all, and from there you branch out to not stars and stars of lesser sports and preppies and elected student government and you go on from there back on and on until you see Charlie Brown sitting forlornly outside under a tree pining for that red-headed girl he has been attracted to since grade school.  Or something like that.

McCain responded to Obama’s “I Am A Doughnut speech” with the words:

“I know doughnuts.  I have eaten doughnuts.  Doughnuts are my tasty friends.  Senator, you are no doughnut.”

Hoping to further branish his image as Kennedy-esque, Barack Obama stood before a massive crowd in Berlin (“Portland sized” says one local blogger from these parts) and repeated John F Kennedy’s famous pronouncment:

“I Am A Doughnut!”

John McCain has yet to comment from his current location at some down-home salt of the earth hicksville diner.

Incidentally, it should be noted the number of Americans who are doughnuts, or at least doughnut shaped, has increased markedly since the 1962(?) Kennedy speech.

It must be a very surreal experience to be in the path of Hurricane Dali.  Melted clocks as far as the eye can see.

“Progressive” talk radio feeds its own feedback loop.  Take the voices you hear about the book “The Prosecution of George W Bush for Murder” by Vincent Bugolosi..   This was one maddening nit-wittery of wit-nittering.  So your host for the “KPOJ Morning Show”, whatshisname, had the topic of “What should Bush’s Sentence be?”… regarding Bugolosi’s book.  He chimes in with the inane position that “There would be no chance under a President McCain, and there might be some chance under a President Obama.”  Uh huh. 

And then what do we get as a call?  “He should be sentenced to the Death Penalty… but Bush doesn’t deserve front page coverage in the newspapers.”  Now, Imagine, for a second, if George W Bush were actually sentenced to the death penalty.  Do you think for a second that that would not reach the front page of every newspaper worldwide?  An American President — Death Penalty?  WTF?