Archive for August, 2008

polka dots

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

I was thinking about something often said to suggest a lack of racism.  “I don’t care if they’re white, black, purple, or polka dot.”  I wonder, though.  Let’s say that a purple skinned person with giant green polka dots were running for president.  Do you think he (she?) would be doing very well in the polls?  And what hurdles would they have to clear to appear a “safe” kind of purple skinned green polka dotted people?

that economic model involving hem-lines is broken

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I think the original “Freakonomics”-esque study might have been that one which correlates women’s hem-lines with the economy.  This seems to me somewhat an accident of a revelatory moment as the 1920s flushed into the 1930s, though the sociology behind it — carefree during those wild and crazy partying days and then practical and earthly as you forge ahead with basic survival in mind– is probably apt enough.

I will note however, that we just had a three day spurt of 100 degree temperatures followed by a current spurt where the temperature has plunged down twenty-five or thirty degrees and a bleak gray cloud portends frequent rain.  The hem-line was just about as far up as it could go, and now has gone down to the floor.  This indicates one of two things.  Either the local economy just sky-rocketed and then plummeted, or, my theory, the length of hem-lines are better correlated to changes in the weather.  But that’s just a crazy theory of mine.

Know what a Saxby Chambliss is?

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss weighs in on his Democratic challenger:

 “He’s a [U.S. Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] hand-picked guy,” Chambliss told reporters at a morning press conference, just hours after voters picked Martin over DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones as the Democratic Party nominee. “And there’s no more liberal member of the U.S. Senate than Chuck Schumer.”

Wait a minute.  According to the National Journal, there is no more liberal Senator than Barack Obama… just as in 2004 there was no more liberal a Senator than John Kerry… which suggests that if Obama were to lose this election and in four years the Democrats were to decide to nominate, say, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson — generally considered the most conservative Democrat in the Senate–, Nelson would somehow magically become the Senate’s most Liberal member.

But if Saxby Chambliss were to cite Obama as “most liberal”, at least he would have a source of some kind.  For the life of me I don’t know where he plucks this “no more liberal a Senator than Charles Schumer” from out of.  Maybe this can be a sport… there is no more Liberal a Senator than — fill in the blank, whoever you happen to be mentioning at the time.

Anyway, for more items on this political race, I suppose you can go to www.bluegeorgia.com.  I don’t know if such a site exists, but I sort of assume every state has a representative web-blog put up by some Democrats where the word “blue” is attached to the name of the state and followed by the suffix “.com”.  Except for the “new” states, which I sort of assume the word “blue” is substituted for the word “new”, because the two words rhyme and it is thought to be clever.  If this is the case, it is a good way to take a gander at the down-ticket political races.  The Georgia Senate race is the current “sleeper race du jour” in the Democratic blogosphere, a title that is in constant shuffling, with races being quietly dropped away when subsequent poll numbers show the “on the cusp of” title running the other direction.  In this we are spared of Kansas Senator Jim Slattery, for instance, and don’t any longer have to amuse ourselves with Nebraska Senator Kleeb.  But for the moment “Senator Jim Martin” is all the rage, as Vernon Jones — who from all appearances appears to be a Republican, and there is some digging to do to figure out what a “Vernon Jones” is — lost that primary.

Washington’s Top Two Primary

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Washington has its Primary Elections today.  Maybe I am just too danged wedded to the Two Party System — theoretically with third parties scattered about now demolished — and its orderliness of decisions, but I don’t really like the idea of the “Top Two Primary”, generally seeing it as a place where some mischief can be borne out, and where some flukes can be passed through.  I guess my fear is, I don’t know… Gordon Allen Pross, by dent of having built in the back of people’s minds by being on the ballot every primary since 1998 and with a segment of the population bemusing themselves in lieu of their vote for the surely transferred to general election Republican incumbent Hastings, will come in second to the unknown Democratic candidate George Fearing.  Or thus is a theoretical example.  Which, I suppose in the twiliht zone where that happens, will make me prophetic, and in the real world where it does not happen would demand of me a cleaner example — though the dynamics would still be at play.  (Then again, these things happen in our conventional system.  Gray Davis staved off his political death by a year by dumping money into the Republican primary on behalf of the ultimately winning candidate.  And the 2008 Montana Republican Primaries and the 1986 Illinois Lt Governor Primary testify to flukes.  So maybe one takes the ingredients of public back-psyches and accept these oddities.  Even if the state has given itselef one more volitile stray electoral ingredient.)

Well.  Warshingtonians.  Vote today.  You have… four hours?  Then you vote again in November.  See how that works?

Purpose-less Driven Forum

Monday, August 18th, 2008

That Evangelical Leader hosts a forum and asks questions for McCain and Obama.  He asks Obama which Supreme Court Justices he would not have nominated.  Obama lists two Justices from the “Conservative Bloc” of the Court.  When he as at bat, McCain is asked who he would not have nominated.  McCain lists the four members of the “Liberal Bloc”.

This dramatic illustration of the obvious illuminates us… how?

9/11 Truthers About Town

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

There’s this International Hostel located in Northeast.  It has a giant blue-background sign up for Barack Obama — Obama’s name written in large white block letters.  Someone has, in stages, been writing in the letters such things as “Tri-Lateral Commission”, “Council of Foreign Relations”, “9/11 Was an Inside Job”, “Infowars.com”, and “NO CHANGE!!!”

The sort of Insurgent 9/11 Truth plastering continues as stickers have been posted inviting the passer-by to some 9/11 Conspiracy websites — the same that are chalked about the town sidewalks.  It is an interesting change from things that go on in the pastm, and go on right now, where supporters of the other candidate would scribble anti-Obama and pro-McCain messages.  I assume that if there were a McCain sign of similar vintage somewhere in this city it would be vandalized in the same manner — CFR/Tri-Lateral/9-11 Inside Job — somehow they all blur into one.

I sort of want to catch the vandalizers in the act, because I want an answer as to what they think they are doing.  Is someone going to happen by this sign and think “Wow.  I never thought of that.”  Will this direct them to Alex Jones’s website or the various blogs — where they will be introduced to that neat oragami trick with the dollar bill to show the toppling towers if you fold the money just right?

In front of the public library, a giant “9/11 Inside Job blahdeblah911truth.blogspot.com” has been chalked, as often is the case.  Also as often is the case a man was hawking, while standing on this message, copies of “Street Roots”.  This seems an incongruent message, even if it is not mutually exclusive that 9/11 Truthers would be concerned with the plight of the Homeless or that a homeless man might think that 9/11 Was an inside job.  It’s dual purpose space, I suppose.

I am starting to think of referring to all manner of situations as “Inside Job”.  My apples have gotten rotten, for instance.  It was an Inside Job.  I accidentally died my underwear pink in the Laundary.  It was… an inside job.  Run with it, I say.

Michael Phelps versus Fred Phelps

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

I wonder.:

The Blog Pulse on Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps.

The blog pulse on Anti-Gay Activist Fred Phelps. 

Unfortunately, unlike the “Mark Foley”/”Tom Foley” situation of 2006, which saw a sudden blogging infusion of Tom Foley entirely tied to people mistakingly writing Tom Foley for Mark Foley — and thus identical graphs until a slight shift as October came when Tom Foley’s name came into reference due to some interest in the 5th Congressional race in Washington State, a deeper dig into these graphs shows no corallary between Michael Phelps and Fred Phelps — the graph spikes come due to interest in Fred Phelps being not allowed into Canada and in some various sundry controversies.  Michael Phelps’s spike comes from his new role as Greatest Olympian of all time — which I think is ahistorical and I point to such Olympic luminaries from the past as the Norse Gods Zeus and Thor.  But simply put, nobody is confusing Fred Phelps for Michael Phelps.  I am disappointed.

Nonetheless, Fred Phelps should start planning on capitalizing on Phelps-Mania and plan to stage his family/church “protests” at Michael Phelps appearances when he comes back to the States in Triumph.  There is no “gay” connection, you say?  Well, there’s not much “Gay” connection in much of Phelps’s protestations, but he can think of something.  Surely Michael Phelps’s Speedo-wearing has given him a following in the Homosexual Community?